With every passing day, it draws closer to a year without John. In jumbled order… somewhere around this time we were watching the Tour de France together. There was the terrible pop of bone… the awful MRI experience (for me not him)… the fevers. The frustrated phone calls from the porch… begging for compassion studies… there were none out there… We went to the Team Smitty fundraiser that AFD put on… it was amazing to be surrounded by so many friends and feel so much support and love. John and I were so moved. The last trip to the ER. The only time I rode in the ambulance with John. The only time that he let me… actually asked me to… stay overnight at the hospital… which was our last night together. And had I known how things would have ended up, I would have went out and bought him that first beer… only to hear something along the lines of, “This stuff is nasty… why would anyone drink this shit.”
In a few weeks… I will have been alone for a year… a widow for a year… and eventually that will grow to a year and a half… and two years…
A year ago there was so much support and love and encouragement…
then we lost the fight…
and much of the support and much of the love disappeared (or went dormant… I guess time will tell.)
It’s been a lonely and overwhelming since then.
I recently went off at Nathaniel when he put something in his mouth that he shouldn’t have (choking hazard)… I sternly told him “No!” and that he “knew better” and then told him “He was all I had left.” And then dissolved into tears.
They say time heals… apparently, I need more time…
Then there are the people who say… “move on”… “let go”… “John wouldn’t want you to be sad.”
No… John wouldn’t want me to be sad… he would want me to find love and happiness again… when he was first diagnosed with stage IV one of the first things he told me was that it was okay if I re-married… not a conversation you ever want to have with your spouse, but he made it clear that it was okay with him.
But… I’m not ready to even think about dating again… I hated dating years ago… I am who I am… not one to put on airs or false pretenses or for that matter makeup. I certainly don’t want to pursue it now… at my age all the good ones are taken… the bachelors are bachelors for a reason… then there is the plethora of divorcees with their own host of issues… no thank you… I have enough problems… I’ll keep my own problems…
For now things happen one day at a time… no looking to the big picture or the future. Other than trying to be as thrifty as possible so I will be able to keep the things that do make me happy- my house, the farm, and the horses. What happens will happen. For now…the priorities are to it’s take care of the kid and be the best parent I can be. Work to make his little life the best childhood that he can have. It may be a budget childhood… there won’t be any Disney (John & I did alright w/o Disney)… no exotic vacations. But hopefully when he looks back on it he will have had fun and been happy and felt loved.
Past the kid, there is taking care of the animals… working to afford everything… and repeating… It seems like whenever I get a handle on something… something happens… life’s ironies… Murphy’s law… what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and then one I heard somebody say… “I think God hates me.”
Maybe next year I’ll have a different take… maybe that year mark is a magic healer… stay tuned
But in this last 11 months and some odd days… I’ve learned, I’m stronger than I thought I was… I lack a multitude of organizational skills… my only domestic quality is living in a house… and you find out who your true friends are. Life goes on… it won’t ever be the same, but the sun still rises, sets, and rises again… You either live life of it passes you by. How you chose to live life is your decision. What your friends or family thinks you should do or how you should act… that is their choice… they don’t live your life and they aren’t in your shoes… the choice ultimately is mine and I fully intend to live my life the way that I chose to and not the way anybody else thinks I should. I do feel that John still surrounds us a lot of the time… in memories… and signs… in rainbows and mourning doves… and someday, I’ll see him again…
Rainbows & Mourning Doves 