I Can't Even Imagine...

Lately I've noticed myself thinking of an activity we enjoyed and suddenly realizing we will never share it again. It's not a new thing, but it seems to shake me up more lately. Each time this happens it's as if I'd never realized it before, as if I'm learning it for the first time, and I feel a moment of panic. Maybe I'm emerging from some of the deepest denial and numbness and it's gradually beginning to occur to me, I mean really occur to me, that he's actually gone and I just don't know how to process that information yet.

I sometimes wonder what Jeff would be doing if he were in my place. I always imagined he'd cope much better than me, that he'd have handled this much more logically and he'd be a thousand steps further down the road than I am. But after listening to one of his voice mails I realized that I really don't know how he would have reacted. It was one of the last messages he'd left, a week or so before he died. He'd worked late and was letting me know he was on his way home, and as he often did when leaving voice mails, he talked about how much he loved me and how much our relationship meant to him. And he said "I can't even imagine my life without you."

It was something we said often, although we typically meant that we couldn't imagine what our lives would have been like if we'd not met. On occasion we did talk about what we'd do if the worst happened, but unless you've gone through it you can't even begin to guess at how you'll react. One of the most frequent things I've heard from friends or acquaintances who are married, is some variation of, "You're so strong, I could never handle this." Well, I was absolutely certain I wouldn't either. I would be one of those perfectly healthy widows who died shortly after her husband, not for any unknown physical ailment, but simply of grief, because I couldn't go on any longer with a broken heart.

Some days I feel his loss so strongly that it seems like the air is being sucked out of the room and I'm caught in a vacuum and I'm sure that I'm going up to bed for the last time, but no matter how horrible I feel, emotionally or physically, I'm still here. Honestly, nobody is more surprised that I'm still here and in good health than myself... but I don't think it's strength, or that I've found a way to cope, I think my body is just running on some sort of auto pilot and the rest of me has no choice but to go along for the ride.

This isn't unusual, I find. The more I read up on grief and how people respond to it the more I find that I'm not alone, there are countless other widows and widowers who have felt very similar things. It can be comforting to see that, to know that what I'm going though is normal, and that one day I will move forward and integrate these changes into my life.

Yes, that new normal idea again. I couldn't have begun to imagine.