My jaws are sore.
My head is a mess.
I don’t want to stop thinking about you.
I don’t feel like talking today.
I don’t want to participate in the discussion.
I don’t want to participate today.
I don’t want to participate in today.
I no longer want to participate.
I’m ‘better’ today.
Slightly better than yesterday.
I’m here.
I’m participating.
Today.
For me, the relative-by-marriage title ‘In-Law’ has always sounded somewhat less-than, separated from me. Never been a fan of the term but would use it in appropriate context, until recently.
My parents both passed-away three years ago. At that time Irene said to me that I was an orphan. I guess I was. That fact alone made me sad. When Irene passed-away last June my ‘credentials’ were again modified to include Widower. Now, I am an orphan and a widower. I don’t like what those words mean, they are both so lonely.
My relationship with Irene’s parents has grown since Irene’s passing. Something I would not have imagined to occur. But her parents are my connection to her entire life, not simply the 45 years (in total) that I was with her. Eddie and Frances have always been supportive and loving, and when Irene was ill, they were with me nearly every day at the hospital.
I have no living biological parents, but I still do have ‘parents’ I can count on. They are not my in-laws, they are my loving in-parents.
You birthed seven lives, and saved an additional one, all in one day. You provided seven families a long-
awaited bundle of joy, now in the hands of their forever home.
You impacted 7 + 1 (∞ x ∞ (∞))
Dearly missed∞.
Grief is whacky. Sure time ‘helps’ to heal the grieving soul but in actuality, help really isn’t a meaningful verb in context. I lost Irene 6 months ago, and while I don’t walk around the house with a lowered head all the time now, it still does occur. I know when I’m doing it too much when my neck starts to ache from the weight of my bowed head. I am far from grief relief, yet I’m not looking to be rid of it. Grief.
What I feel from losing Irene is unique to me. I’m the only one who feels this way, literally. Others may grieve but even among other individuals grief is different. My grief is different than that of Irene’s parents, and her siblings. Each one of us had an individual connection with her and their grief is unique as well. It’s the same for any relationship in life. The same for you, your loved ones and those you care for dearly.
What next?
I guess I should be thankful for how I feel? Such a dichotomy of answers and conclusions to this one. How could I be thankful? Because I’m still here? How could I not be thankful? Because she was my wife and we lovingly shared most of our lives together, that’s how.
There are so many things that make sense in life, and so many things that utterly do not make sense. Friends and family are always there for support and they definitely help, but the grief does not go away. It’s all in what I do from this point forward.
The ravages of linear time seems to be taking its toll on me and I feel older. I don’t like that. Perhaps I’m simply beginning to feel my actual age, I don’t know.
There are some good days, and there are some bad days. What do I do with them? There are good days with bad moments, and there are some bad days with good moments. Regardless, it’s all rather crappy. How can I eliminate one category and string the desired one in consecutive manner? I cannot. Deal with it.
Loss is loss, and it’s different for all who experience this reality of life. Life is real, and because that is so, death is real too. I am selfish to think that only one of those realities should ever become of me and my existence.
It just, is.
A good friend of mine recently spoke the title of this post. Only his intention was not for the purpose of me writing about it. Or maybe it was. It sure got me thinking though, a lot.
I have an ‘expiration date’. We all have an expiration date and we don’t even know when that will come to pass. Nor would we want to know.
My sister, who lost her 27 year old son to pneumonia just a few short years ago, talked about this with me just the other day. We talked about it because I asked. I am close with my older sister Kath, we have always had a special bond. She will still sometimes introduce me as her ‘baby brother’ and it makes me smile. She had great responsibility of the other two siblings in our family including our brother Gib, also older than me, and myself. Gib was more independent however and it was me who needed all the ‘mothering’.
I told Kath that a day doesn’t go by without me thinking about her son Sean, and how I hurt for her. And I asked her the hard question out of loving concern ‘How do you even process that?’ ‘That’, being Sean’s death. I’ve never had this discussion with her because I knew it would be emotional on both ends, and it was. But it was necessary, and it was good, and it was perfect.
During my phone conversation with Kath, I told her about those words my friend spoke last Friday. He spoke them out of love, determination, courage, and strength. He spoke them in front of everyone at his wife’s eulogy, and it was perfect.
I only have so many words and I’m trying to make them all count.
Petdad 