Living in the After

Every night I am reminded. I am living without Larry by my side. 

Sometimes I sleep. Often I don’t. If I sleep, I often wake up with sadness. After spending half my life with this man, there are few activities, few places I might go to eat, few roads I might travel, few topics of trivia, few spectacular sunsets that I do not want to share.

Sometimes I am caught off guard. Last week I made the last entry in a journal, picked out another from the collection of blank books that were gifts from Larry, and as I settled the old one onto the stack of journals from the last four years, I took some time to review what was written on those pages. 
I knew better. I was taken back into nightmare scenarios, days of uncertainty, tough conversations, declarations of devotion, and endless processing of my feelings and my inner dialogue with anger, fear, and faith. I scanned passages for glimmers of hope, and read of discouragement and despair. I noted that three years ago I wrote: “What am I praying for? For suffering to end. For the fatigue and despair and hopelessness that is Larry’s life to be transformed.” On June 29 of last year, that prayer was answered.

These nights I have flashbacks of hospital rooms, machines and monitors, a constant stream of medical personnel and doctors who were specialists for specific issues, times of waiting, not knowing, asking, hoping. Watching him sleep. Listening to his breathing. This is a tender season of memories of constant vigilance, frequent calls to the paramedics to help Larry up after he had fallen, of increasing discomfort, fatigue, and discouragement from being taken off the transplant list.

I wish it would stop. I wish I could get over it. I know better. The only way over is through. I am getting through.

I am grateful for the words and wisdom of others. John Pavlovitz, whom I admire for his courageous blog postings that address our national struggles for integrity and compassion, has written about his own grief, and the universal commonalities in loss. This is an excerpt:

“Acknowledging our Grief Anniversaries”

In the wake of losing a loved one, everything in your life becomes a potential surprise memorial. Out of nowhere you are broadsided by days of the week or times of day or numbers on the calendar, or songs that were playing ... These seemingly incessant reminders force you once again to observe the loss anew.

And since these days and times and triggers aren’t obvious to most people in our lives (and since we don’t have the time or the words to describe them all), they are usually unaware of just how much and just how often we mourn. Even those who are closest to us and care for us greatly remain largely oblivious to our recurring sadness. Our grief can feel like a very lonely journey, which in many ways it is because it is specific to us and to the one we’ve lost. It is a customized but hidden wound.

When someone you love deeply dies, the calendar of your life is altered forever. It gets divided into the time before and after that moment. 

(johnpavlovitz.com)