Category: living forward

I love Pat.  I have loved him since I met him at the age of 21.  I spent half of my life with the man.  I fell in love with him, I married him,  I carried his children…I took care of him when he was sick, I held him as he took his last breath in this world, I love him still today.  These are the facts and there is no denying any of them.

But time keeps ticking.  Life continues on.  You have a choice to continue to live without your love beside you and search for a new path…a new future, or you can choose to sit in sorrow, missing your late spouse forever feeling alone, lost, confused and desperate.

I have decided to live and find a new path.  I opened my mind, and more importantly, I opened my heart.  I took the risk and put myself out there and I found someone to let in again.  I didn’t think this was possible.  I didn’t think I could ever open myself up to someone or be able to have loving feelings for anyone else…I didn’t understand how this is possible when my heart is filled with so much love for Pat.  I have read about others having what the widow world calls a chapter 2.  I have heard others stories about being surprised by falling in love again.  But I couldn’t possibly wrap my brain around how this could actually happen.  I didn’t believe it.   I think that is what people who haven’t lost their spouse thinks as well.  It doesn’t make any sense…until you are there, living it and then it all makes sense.

I read it somewhere that loving again is like growing a second heart.  I get that now.  Loving someone new has absolutely nothing to do with loving Pat.  It is absolutely amazing and so hard to explain to someone who has never experienced it.  A new love is completely different, completely separate from the first.  It doesn’t replace the love or erase it or mean you are even healed.  It simply means your heart is still beating.  You are still alive and capable of so much.

I believe that the meaning of life is to love, as simple as that.  To love and grow and share it with others.  Without love there is no reason for anything.  There is no purpose greater than to love.  I have love in my heart and have enough room in there to love more than one person without taking anything from either one.

I don’t believe that my past defines me.  And I don’t believe that my work towards having a new path in life erases anything I had with Pat.  My future can’t take away anything from my past.  Everything that has happened to me, and everything means Pat and his love, has led me to this exact moment and place in my life.  It has brought me to the door of new possibilities and new love.

Some say it is too soon.  Some say I couldn’t have really loved Pat if I could find another.  Some say I should be alone and in mourning for much, much more time.  Some say a lot.  But the reality of it all is that I am not some.  I am me.  I am living this.  This is my story, my life.  I have experienced it.   They don’t understand…they don’t understand anything, even though they claim they do.  There is no way they could possibly.

And I am happy that they don’t understand.  I wish on no one the pain and loss I have experienced.  I believe it is time for me to find some happiness.  Let me have love,  let me have my life.  I don’t need to be weighed down with judgments, or thoughts, or opinions.

I am tired of trying to make others understand the unexplainable.   This is my chance at tomorrow’s happiness and it does not in any way erase my past.  It only adds to my story.

I have been unhappy lately. And in trying to figure out what is making me unhappy I do what I always do….I think and analyze, and reanalyze and over analyze and drive myself crazy until my head is completely messed up and I don’t know which way is up anymore. And then I stop and have a moment of clarity and things make sense again.  What I realized this time is that I simply don’t know what I am doing.  I have a lot of thoughts, and dreams and ideas, but I have no plan.  I am afraid of a plan; of taking the step into really doing and living.

I had a plan once.  In fact I had my life all planned out and it was amazing.   I knew what we wanted, where we going and what we were doing…as much as one can.  I was happy with the plan and working towards all that we wanted.

But that plan was demolished the day he died…actually it was over the day we received the diagnosis of cancer, I just didn’t realize it yet.  Everything I had planned for my life was tipped over on its side.  At first it was just that…a bit shaken. A bump in the road… something we were going to get through and then continue back on to our planned route of life.  But as time went by and he got sicker and sicker and eventually died, my life and plans were not just shaken but my world was turned upside down.

I’ve spent the time since his death trying to get back on my own two feet and feel a sense of balance or control over my life.  At times I think I am feeling secure in my position, but then I get knocked off-balance again and taken to the ground.  It’s like spinning in circles and getting dizzy.  When you stop you can feel like you are on solid ground, but your head keeps spinning and you fall to your knees.  That is how I feel.  The world just keeps spinning and I keep falling down.

I keep getting back up though.  I keep pressing on and trying to figure it out.  But I what I figured out today is that I don’t have a plan for my life because I am terrified of it being taken from me.  I am afraid of setting out on another path and having tragedy destroy it again.  I am scared of losing again.  Maybe if I don’t plan on anything or have  no expectations, then I can’t be disappointed.  But I am.   I am disappointed in myself.  This isn’t me.  Not even the new me.  I set goals.  I make plans.  I work towards something.  I dream and I live.  But I am not…I haven’t really since he died.  I’ve talked
about it, but I haven’t really done it.  I haven’t really done anything.  I haven’t been able to decide which direction to take or where I should go.

My epiphany today:

My indecision with life is a decision for my life and I am not happy with that decision…at all.

So what do I do now?  That is the part of my clarity that always
gets me…now I know what the problem is and why I am feeling a certain way, but I must do something about it.  I am not going to sit here knowing what is making me unhappy and complain about it or feel sorry for myself.  I have to do something about it… Not just think about it, or read about it, or even talk about it. I need to make a decision and whether or not it succeeds or fails, at least I got out there and did something with my life.

Though, I feel like I could stay in this place I am in forever.  My life could pass along quickly and I would be fine…but I want more than just fine.  I want amazing.  I want an amazing life.  All the pieces are right in front of me.  There are a lot of opportunities and possibilities and people in my path that I simply need to embrace.  I know this.  I honestly have known this for some time.  I was just happy with indecision and fear and being stuck in this place.  I have been justifying where I am at and making excuses for myself and for  my lack of motivation.  But that has gotten me nowhere but a place of unhappiness.

I am in control of my own destiny and happiness.  All the opportunities and possibilities and pieces can all be brought to my door,  but if I don’t make the move and do something with them, they will simply sit at my doorstep wasted forever or even worse,  move along to someone who is willing to take the risk.   I want to be that person.  I have to be that person or what is this life I have been given really for.

I know what I want in the big scheme of life.  It’s the little steps I am unsure of.  I have to start putting my focus and heart into reaching for what I want.  I have to realize my strength and see all that I have overcome already.  I can handle if things don’t go perfectly…because I know they won’t.  I may make some bad decisions but I can survive that and learn from them and try again.
Losing Pat has taught me that much.  I am strong and determined and I am not going to be held down forever.  God has a plan for me and instead of just sitting here waiting for it to be handed to me, I am going to start trying to find it.   He won’t lead me wrong.

I need to see what is right in front of me.

I need to make a plan and go after it.

I need to make a decision and just see what happens.

I am not going to let indecision be my decision.  I’m going to take control and pray that eventually the spinning will stop and I will once again find myself back on solid ground.

“In sickness and in health, til death due us part”…I lived my vows through and through.  I loved my husband, I cared for my husband and I was there until the very end.  I was by his side during every test, every appointment, every treatment, every moment.  There is no doubt that I loved him.   And yet as I have become a widow and have started to try and live forward in my life, I feel as though my love for him is being questioned, or doubted.  Me finding a life for myself does not take away anything from the love I had and still have for my husband.  Finding happiness and a new path is honoring him.  He would have given anything to  still be here living and loving.  Why would I simply curl up and mourn him forever and not live a life that I am lucky to have?  He would be screaming at me if I did.

We did a lot of talking to each other throughout his sickness and especially after the 6 month to live moment.  We talked about everything you can imagine.  We talked about the past, the present, our regrets, our hopes, our fears and we talked about what was heading our way as he was dying.  He told me everything he wanted for me.  He wanted me to take risks and do what I love.  He told me to get out of a job I hated and figure out what I truly believe in and spend my time doing that.  He told me to find happiness and live freely.  He wanted me to find love again, he wanted me to find my passion, and he wanted me to do this for him.  And so that is what I am trying to do.

It’s not easy though.  It’s really pretty damn hard.  It’s almost too much pressure for me at times.  I don’t want to disappoint him.  I don’t want to not fully take advantage of the gift of life I still have.  I want to see and do everything for him…in his memory.  But I am still unsure of what I am doing.  It’s been almost two years…in one sense that seems like a long time and in another it doesn’t.  I have accepted that my life that I had before is over.  I have acknowledged that I am no longer the same person who wants the same things out of life.  I have let people go and I have let people in.  It hasn’t been an easy two years in any way that you look at it.  I am still scared of losing…people I care about, things I love.  I am still scared of screwing up and taking risks and not finding my path.  And parenting….I can’t even begin to tell you how hard this is.  Doing this solo is practically breaking me.  And I do break…but I get up.  Each time I get up and dust myself off and figure it out.

That’s what we widows do….we figure it out.  People need to understand that our past life with our late spouses, and our new lives we are creating for ourselves are two separate entities.  We carry the pain and the love and the loss and everything that went with our former life forward with us into our new life, but we can never go back.  It is not an option for us.  We can not live as though it is or else we are destined to live a sad, lonely life.  And I am not going to do that.

My struggle on this day is that I am doing the best I can and yet I don’t feel like I am doing anything.  I am going through the days trying to make the right choices for me and the boys and trying to figure things out, but at the end of the day, I feel as though I am right back to where I started.   I am stuck at that starting line trying to figure out which foot to put in front of the other in order to get going.  I see many paths laid out in front of me and  I am full aware that it is up to me to make the choice, and start heading down the road of life again.  For some reason, I keep making a u-turn just as I am getting started.

So that’s where I’m with the on going battle in my head.  I am still making a couple more practice laps around the track of fear before I really strap on my running shoes and start living.  But I will do it.  And that is something that I keep reminding myself.  There is no timeline for this grief process or the healing process or for that matter, the whole process of life.  I just need to keep getting up and remember that I loved my husband and I gave him everything and all of me…and it is time for me to do the same for me.  That is what he would have wanted.