My Biggest Fan

It sounds so cliche, but it's true, my husband was my biggest fan. I'm having one of those moments in time where I REALLY need my other half. I need my sounding board; I NEED MY BIGGEST FAN. 
So much has been happening with me and the kids. There's the normal medical and schooling issues, but then there are the overwhelming medical and school issues for all of us.

One thing I never had to worry about was my education. I have always been one of those people that just naturally loved academics and learned very easily. Every time I would start freaking out, Steve would just say, "You know your going to ace that test, so quit worrying about it" he always reminded me of the last time I freaked out and everything turned out great. Law school is a whole new world. It's nothing like college, not even my Masters classes compare to how demanding this is. I miss my FREAK OUT partner. I am freaking out all by myself now and there's no voice of reason calming me down.

I am getting an average of about 5 hours of sleep a night, NOT continuous. My body and my brain are revolting . I'm losing focus on even simple things; it doesn't feel like widow fog anymore, it's sleep deprivation.

I'm going to have to make some medical decisions for myself in a few days and I need to make some life adjustments for us going forward and it absolutely sucks to have to make these decisions without him. It's one of those times in life where I don't just want him here, I NEED him here to "stand up when I can't."

I know that first he would tell me that he knows I can do this and then he would tell me to do what I felt was right, but having the memory of what he would say is not helping. He knew the darkest and the brightest parts of who I am and he always believed in me. Most days I just miss him, right now, I miss HOW SAFE I FELT just to be with him.

Happy Birthday, Babe!

I tried to psych myself up for today. Last year, his birthday was harder than most of the other holidays. So, I have been trying to figure out what to do to keep myself busy all week and I've come to realize that nothing I can do will stop the flood of emotions.

I woke up crying AGAIN about the things I should have done differently in that hospital room. The flashback memories of 8:45 p.m. to 11:06 p.m. that night just running circles in my mind.  I thought I had worked through all of that and let it go, but today it came back. The words to the song "Say Something" played like a soundtrack to it all.  I never realized how well that song fit the situation until today.  I stood there in that  room praying, while holding my breathe waiting for him to just breathe; just look at me and say something.

I've been trying to decide what I'm going to do today. My ideas ranged all the way from going to the grave to getting completely trashed  Just being honest here, I've never been trashed, but today seems like a good day to try anything that will stop the pain. Having kids keeps me from being able to do dumb things, so I didn't.

I thought about what Steve would be doing today if he was alive. He would probably have gone to breakfast with some CMA guys and gone for a ride. So, I got up and decided to take the money I would have spent on a birthday present for him and donated it to the CMA Run for the Son. I can't think of any better way to honor his life than that. Even in death, he's winning the lost. 


After donating to the CMA I decided to get my nose pierced. It was something Steve and I had talked about for a while and he loved the idea. I just never got around to doing it.
Before anyone starts in on biblical aspect of nose piercings read Genesis 24 where Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for his son and he was to give her a nose ring as a sign of engagement. So, I figured today, on his birthday, I would finally get around to getting that nose piercing. It didn't hurt that bad. I also went to Applebees with a friend. The very first birthday that Steve and I celebrated of his was at Applebees, so I did it again 20 years later.


Most people are very understanding about this journey, some are not. I have recently been told that it's time to move on and all the general cliche lines you hear: Steve would want you to be happy, you can't stay stuck here forever, you have to let go of the past, etc. I understand all of that, I really do. I also understand that people usually mean well when they say it. For the most part, I'm doing leaps and bounds better than I was but I have come to the realization that there are some days I AM GOING TO FEEL THIS PAIN; I am going to fall apart and nothing I can do will stop it AND it's o.k. It doesn't mean I have had a setback or that I'm worse than I was yesterday. It's actually proving my progress. It no longer takes weeks to recover and find my way out of the dark again. I'm not stuck in depression.

I don't know your experience with love and loss, I know that I have loved and been loved deeply and I've lost it. I only have 18 months and 9 days experience at this. I don't know what 3, 5, 10, 20 years down the road looks like. I think it will be much like the last 18 months; I think with time the pain will sting a little less, but I'm sure there will be days or circumstances that bring it all back again. I'm sure that the unanswered questions will flood my mind again. There is no way to know what the future holds and I'm honestly, not even worried about it. I've learned to live in the here and now, but there is no way to have loved Steve and intertwined our lives the way we did and not still feel the loss.
Grief really is the price we pay for love. Do not assume that someone who has experienced a loss is clinically depressed or refusing to let go or happy to be stuck in grief just because they periodically have days that the pain is overwhelming. Life does march on and so do we, but sometimes we have to pause and let our hearts take a rest.

UNDONE - This is what 18 months looks like

Yesterday was 18 months that he's been gone. I thought about it all day yesterday, but the pain hit today. Today the memories of the day after would not leave me alone. I woke up early and told my girls that their father was never coming back. I went to the office to keep the appointment I had made for 9:30 a.m.; they  never showed up. The office is where I fell apart the first time. I stood there in complete disbelief that he would leave me to figure out how to do all of this alone. Then, I went to the funeral home to answer a hundred questions about how I wanted his obituary and picked a casket. Picking the casket is where I fell apart the second time, how do you get past the pain of knowing the person you love most in this life is going to be buried in that box in the ground. The memories are so real that I still can still feel them. I wonder if I will always feel them. For the longest time, I kept flashing back to the hospital staff performing CPR and them yelling CLEAR every 2 minutes and the surgeon asking me what I want to do. Over the last 7 months I've been able to keep my mind busy enough to not constantly think about it. But, when the T.V. is on and CPR starts or doctors using AED happens, IT ALL COMES BACK. Will it always feel like this? I don't know for sure, but I'm beginning to think that no matter what I do or how far I go it will always sneak up on me. Love like that doesn't die. 

It has been 3 months since I wrote "Ruined by True Love" at 15 months (Ruined by True Love) and I have to say not  a lot has changed in the past 3 months. I have made small steps at developing a new normal for me and the girls. We've worked on making some new traditions and letting go of old ones. I've started listening to music again. Some days I can listen for an hour and some days the first song hits me and I'm done. 

I'm trying to figure out who I am without him; it's not an easy task. I was married at 18, somehow during the process of 18 years of marriage a lot of who we are was dependent on each other. So I'm learning to look at what WE liked and did together and figure out what I still like and want to do, alone. I often wonder if he could see me now, what he would see. 

The whole process feels like I'm coming UNDONE, like pieces of me are being taken apart and reassembled into something different. Not better or worse and probably not a lot different because we were so compatible, but it's still different. Some days I feel a little hopeful that I'm figuring out who I am, many days it just feels wrong because I shouldn't be figuring out who I am alone. 

The moral of the story is still at 18 months into this journey I am only able to take this a day at a time and I'm o.k. with that. 

I NEED YOUR HELP!

If you personally knew Steve, I need your help with a project. It's taken a long time for me to decide how to go about doing this and the blog seemed like the best option.

I have the privilege of having a lot of memories throughout the years of Steve. His incredible personality is unforgettable for those of us that knew him. My problem is that I'm concerned about how much our daughters will remember. Our youngest was 8 when he passed away, so she may not have concrete memories of how great of a man her father was.

So here's my plea. If you knew my husband well, I would love it if you would catalog some of your memories with him. There is no deadline for this. You can write it down right now or you can buy a notebook and write in it every day for a year. As long as your memories get written down, it will be exactly what I'm looking for. It can be funny moments, sad moments, spiritual moments, ridiculous moments, etc. The point is, I want them to know the kind of man he was from your perspective. You can email them to me, facebook message them to me, mail them to me, however you want to get it to me.

I appreciate your help and I know that the girls will too.