In our culture we celebrate birthdays, we celebrate anniversaries... we mark the days and we send tidings of love and joy to those celebrating milestones in their lives. I have been trying to tell myself that tomorrow will just be another day if I choose for it to be just another day. Recognizing the anniversary of Marc's death won't do anything to bring him back. If it is just another day, maybe it will end the loop that plays in my mind whenever I find myself back in that night 364 days ago.
Maybe if tomorrow is just another day the nightmare that began 364 days ago will lose its power over my emotions. If tomorrow is just another day maybe I will stop feeling this suffocating pain in my chest. Maybe I can stop feeling like I am yet again losing ground in my healing.... if tomorrow were just another day.......
In fourteen days I will begin one more year. The past 351 days have been filled with loss, grief, joy, love, friendship, gut wrenching pain, laughter, tears, the loss of normal and the arduous journey to create a new life with a new normal and with no idea of how or where to begin. For the past 351 days I've been "winging it" and hoping that I'm getting something right. Nearly each day that has passed since November 5th, 2016 has been full of grief, hope, self-doubt, immeasurable love and horrific, through to my core, terror. Terror of failing to find my way through the thick, suffocating blackness I found myself choking on that fateful Saturday night three hundred and fifty one days ago.
Bereavement.
When Marc first died I was numb and very little made sense to me; I still have difficulty remembering things from the first few months. During the early days following his death I remember having to assure people that I would not hurt myself....you know, that I wouldn't go to sleep with the intent of never waking up. To be honest, those assurances were sincere, I did not think that killing myself would serve any purpose.
Bereavement.
Thoughts of ending the relentless physical pain in my chest didn't enter my mind until I moved back to Florida. It was when I actually had to begin moving forward with life that the cold truth of my being alone struck me. It struck me in a way that was incomprehensible. The reality hit me hard... like an iron fist to the jaw... and when it struck me I began to question the point of my continued existence. What could possibly be the point of waking up tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that? I honestly didn't know. I was more alone than I have ever felt in my entire life. Yes, I had my friends and my family, but the loneliness I was feeling after losing my partner of 23 years is the deepest loneliness I've ever known.
Bereavement. Day by painful day of gut wrenching, soul shredding bereavement.
During those blackest times I did not confide in anyone just how dark my thoughts had turned. Instead, I told myself I'd give it one more day... the physical pain I was experiencing was crushing me. Every. single. day. I woke up feeling trapped and hopeless. My real life had become an actual living nightmare and I couldn't see a way out of it. My days were one long, continuous nightmare with no end in sight. It is impossible for me to pinpoint any specific day or time when I stopped thinking about slipping permanently into the darkness.
Bereavement.
The pain in my chest is still here but it has lessened. Each day that passes is still a question, "Will today be a good day, or will today be a bad day?" The bad days are the days when I can't catch my breath. On the bad days, tears come without warning. The bad days catch me off guard and I find myself feeling as though whatever forward ground I thought I had made is in danger of slipping completely away from me. Losing ground frightens me. Frightens the hell out of me, but fear is a liar and one thing I cannot tolerate is a liar. Thankfully, the bad days are becoming fewer and farther between.
351 days of bereavement.
Will I ever stop counting the days? I don't know if I'll ever stop counting, but I'm grateful that I'm still here to count the days if I so choose.
When I lost my dad in April of 2015 I did not have any time to mourn losing him. There were things that needed to be done and there just wasn't time for grief. I have missed my dad over the past two years. I have missed him very much, but I cannot say that I had mourned losing him. When Marc died, the loss of my dad hit me like a tidal wave. When I lost my husband, the grief of losing my dad swirled around me and mixed like thick black smoke with the fog of grief from losing Marc. There were moments when I literally could not breathe. It felt as though my lungs could not expand enough to draw the air into my lungs.
Now, here I am 94 days after the death of my husband and no matter how much I try to redirect my thoughts I still have those moments where I cannot breathe. It feels like time stops when it happens. What I am sure is probably no more than a second or two feels as though it is almost endless when it happens. I feel myself panic when I can't catch my breath because I'm terrified I'll stop breathing altogether - forever. I wish I could say the panic disappears as quickly as it comes, but I cannot say that. The panic lingers and leaves me wondering if I'll ever be able to find my way back to normal. I wonder, but I don't give up hope.
My life has rarely gone as planned and I have always found my way to being better than just okay with that fact. Joseph Campbell said, "We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." In my past there were times it was difficult to make my way through the mire, but I did it and I always came through stronger and with more knowledge than when I started. Today, 94 days after the death of my husband, it is important to remind myself that I have the strength to get through this anguish I feel in the very depths of my soul. It is important to remember how much love I still have in my life.
Life is not fair, nor does life owe/entitle a person anything. Life is what we make of it, good or bad and I have no idea what this newest version of my life has waiting for me, but I have to let go of the life (we) planned. Currently, I still feel stuck in the mire, but I know I will find my way through it. Eventually. The hanging on is not what I struggle with, it is the letting go that feels so monumentally impossible. Letting go of the life we had planned feels the way I imagine it would feel if white phosphorus were burning its way through my soul.
A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me how I am coping. When she asked me the question, the first word that came to mind was "love".
Love is how I cope, but the word love standing alone doesn't explain properly exactly what I mean. It explains perfectly how I cope, but it doesn't explain the many levels of the love I have in my life. My life has been incredibly blessed and Marc's death cannot diminish or nullify all of the good in my life. Marc was a large part of what has been good in my life, and he brought so many good things to my life, and his death does not erase any of the things I have had the good fortune of knowing. Yes, I must find my way forward without him and accept with open arms what life has waiting for me, without Marc, and I will. I will find my way because I have love in my heart. Not only love in my heart, but it runs deep in my soul and every single day I am reminded of this when I look around and take in all of the people who are a part of my not so average life.
I think I am going to go open a bottle of wine and have a toast to the life I have had and a toast to the life waiting for me. It is only 3:30 in the afternoon here in Virginia, but it is 5 o'clock somewhere and that is good enough for me. Prost to the USMA Class of '86 for reaching out to me and helping me through this difficult time. Prost to my friends, prost to my family, and prost to the love all of you so freely shower me with everyday. Prost to you. Thank you for the love. Love is how I cope. Love is the life I know, love is the world I know and love is what makes me weep, for both my loss and the joy waiting for me in my future life.
Little by little it feels as though Marc is being peeled away from every aspect of my life. He is disappearing and I am helpless to stop it. Even though I know he is gone, somewhere in the deepest parts of my soul I keep hoping that I am going to wake up from this horrible nightmare.
Last week I received a letter from the bank and it was addressed to "The Family of Marc Taylor". The bank wanted me to contact them so that they could remove Marc from our bank accounts, our mutual fund, insurance, etc. the letter was to inform me that I had thirteen days to call them... I called the bank yesterday and two hours later Marc had been wiped clean from all of our accounts. He has been erased and it is as if he was never there. Yes, I knew this day was coming but I thought it would be on my time; I thought I could push that day back and the day would arrive when I was ready for it to arrive.
The day I have been dodging arrived and it mowed me down like a freight train would mow down a stalled car sitting dead on the tracks. I was not ready. The reality of never seeing his name next to mine on our accounts, never again seeing his name next to mine on the address label of letters, never again seeing his car parked in the garage, never again being Marc and Diana is the train barreling down the tracks and I am the stalled car.
Forgiveness. In my heart of hearts I know the power of forgiveness and I believe it is essential to let go of anger in order to move forward in life. I had reached a point where the anger had left me and all I felt was pity. My pity came from forgiveness and sympathy. It is easier to forgive when you believe a person doesn't know any different. This past week my lesson seems to be learning how to forgive when a person does know better yet continues to move forward with intentionally cruel and abusive behavior. How do I find forgiveness for the kind of person who uses another's grief to further hurt and try to tear down a person mourning the loss of her husband?
The answer to forgiveness in light of blatant, purposeful cruelty has been an elusive thing for me this past week. The surge of anger I felt caught me by surprise. The anger caught me by surprise because I believed completely that I had let it go and had fully embraced forgiveness. It turns out, I was mistaken. Perhaps I am on the path back to forgiveness, because today what I feel is immense sadness.
Maybe all I needed was to voice how angry I was. Yesterday I let out the dark, suffocating emotion that I could only label as hatred. Hatred for the violation of Marc's memory and the violation of the love he had for people he called family. Today there is only sadness. Maybe the sadness is the precursor to forgiveness.
Yesterday was the calendar "anniversary" of two months since Marc died. Two months doesn't sound like a very long time does it? In my world it feels like an eternity. Since Marc's death Thanksgiving, Marc's Celebration of Life, our 23rd Wedding Anniversary, Christmas, and the turn of a new year have happened; in the short span of 2 months a lifetime has passed by - a lifetime of traditions and celebrations. Yesterday I put away the Christmas tree and packed away the decorations. I am still undecided as to whether the house felt more empty with the tree or without it. Grief is an inexplicable thing. There is nothing predictable about it, there is no pattern to follow, it is different for each person who experiences it.
Yes, today I am feeling sorry for myself. I have written and rewritten this entry no less than 4 times, this may be my 5th attempt - I have lost count. The first 5 times I wrote this I raised the curtain on all of the bullshit that happened immediately following Marc's death. Each entry just sounded like a hate letter. If I told you about all of the bullshit that occurred, most would say, "People sometimes do awful things during their grief." Thing is, the things done and said actually had nothing to do with grief, the things done and said were just another normal day in the life of the shitty fucking people who claimed to be Marc's family. Thank God for Marc's dad, Les, and Les' wife, Phyllis. Marc was a lot like his dad, in more ways than I can list here. Thank goodness.
When I first began learning about the crap pulled by his sisters and mother, I was crushed. That emotional blow came out as anger, then I just felt sorry for them. My heart hurt for them because I knew they were in pain.
Then, slowly, I discovered more and more about what was done and what was said, the bullshit they tried to pull and currently all I feel is seething hatred for the three of them.
Hatred, it is a powerful emotion and I am trying with everything that I am not to allow it to consume me. It would be easy to let all of my emotions be soaked up into hating those women. It would be so very easy. Projecting my feelings of loss, loneliness, emptiness, and despair into the hatred I feel right now would make sense to me if I were working with a client. Thing is, I also know that those women don't deserve a single moment of my life/thoughts/emotions ever again.
I miss my husband, I miss my life, I miss my past, my present, and I miss my future.
