Life After Death: Thirteen Days

Day 66: 01/10/2017

     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.  

   



     

Life After Death: Forgiveness? Maybe.

Day 63: 01/07/2017

     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.
     

Life After Death: Hatred

Day 62: 01/06/2017

     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.