Just a year ago, if someone would have told me what today would bring, I would have said they were crazy. Unthinkable it was that VST would be brought down by cancer. With very minimal pain for a guy that was in perpetual arthritic pain, there was no way we could have known how soon our goodbye would come. A counselor referred to this situation as being similar to death by car crash. In many ways it was just that fast.
As life often does, the sudden finality left us all reeling. Remembering back, it was suggested in the sweetest of words that VST and I would take long walks together and say the proper farewell. That we could have “Love Story” moments, heart-breaking-ly sweet and tender in which we shared our last words with one another. Death had other ideas. There is nothing sweet and tender about cancer. There was no time for deep conversations that tied everything up with a bow.
Two days before VST passed, I had the rare moment to sit and hold his hand. He was slipping into a coma, but still held my hand as he had so often done strolling into Lowe’s with his Darlin’ at his side. Even though he said nothing, he was listening with eyes closed, and an open heart. As we sat quietly, I thanked him for the life he shared with me. For sharing my deepest worries and best successes. For being the one I would tell my secrets to, while knowing he would understand better than anyone else. Talking through my tears, I shared until he had slipped away from me into a world between here and there.
VST died the next day. He took half of me to heaven. Plain and simple, there is no other way to put it. Life went into a strange mode in which I needed to find my way alone. I continued to talk to him every day, while sharing my grief with the one person that would understand. My VST. I talked to him about everything. Wearing a mask while driving, it didn’t look weird as I continued to tell him about the latest problem or success. We had reversed roles, and I was now the driver, while he rode shotgun. Listening.
As the days turned into months and the season rolled on by, the conversations became less. Earthside friends filled in for him. Until I find myself in today.
Grief and widowhood are the strangest experience anyone can ever go through. Truly, a wilderness of the unexpected. The mind plays cruel tricks when you think you might have heard footsteps in the kitchen, or someone in the bathroom. You think of something sweet you just need to tell your loved one, and in a nano-second, you catch yourself remembering that you need to hold that until you meet again on the other side. But, each day, things get better. Slowly, you find yourself again. Little by little, you accept that life is different now that they are gone. You heal.
These days, I find that my sorrow has been replaced by a joy from deep within. There are so many things for which to be grateful. Just this morning, I was thinking of VST and his distrust and dislike for doctors. Having a brilliant and analytical mind, he knew very well how to choose the medical path right for him. I have no doubt, if given two years of medical treatments or one week of Hospice, he would have chosen the one week. He left me on his own terms, quietly closing the door as he escaped on that spring morning last year. As he left, he was no victim, but finding his own path to heaven with God’s help. I know that as well as I knew his scent in the dark, or his hand holding mine.
These days, when thinking about him, I often smile at stories that we wrote together. The kids. The farm. The mountain house. The cabin. VC. RVing. Just being us. The happiness we wrote as our life story is in my heart. I can turn the pages and remember it all any time I want, and now, it is comforting. The focus on what we created brings a peace that quiets the voice of what might have been. There is a comfortable place for the two to exist in my heart now, and that brings acceptance and closure.
No matter where you are in you journey of grief, please know, things will get better. They will never be the same. That’s a given. Somedays you will slide backwards. Somedays you will catapult forward. It is a crazy journey, this path through widowhood. But, as in any journey, it is possible to end up in a place of peace and happiness, with the best memories comforting you. It is this I wish for us all.