I admit to having a hard time of it.
Okay. Yes. I did have a lovely trip to London. And yes it ended with a fractured proximal humerus (top of the arm bone at the shoulder) so kind of depressed about that.
Out of sling now! So a giant yay for that. And it is coming along. And yes, a miserable sore throat and cough for a week plus but that’s on the mend as well. All of which means I am out of excuses in the body department so that means facing down the truth:
My heart hurts.
Hurts so much I cannot fathom it. Not like the itch in the middle of the back where one can find any number of implements-but in the in-between spaces where one’s stealth emotions live.
During Jed’s illness I had spoken about the need to pay my acceptance of emotions on account and made a big deal of it with my therapist at the time. How I wasn’t going to run up the bill and end up in credit hell. Not expend more than I could handle at the end of the month. And was I ever proud of that concept. I was in the pay as I go mode. Out in front. Managing sadness and anger and frustration and pain.
Well … it is coming on ten months since Jed died and I am barely able to float.
What was I thinking?
It’s one thing to be a caregiver and provide material needs and so on but there was also all that grief I never even thought about. The whole we were but no longer what we were. The buddy that wasn’t my partner anymore, but still was somewhere buried inside. And now it is compounded.
Grief times grief times grief.
Tears at Paris Baguette as I cruise by the raisin buns. Passing by the pairs of shoes still so neatly stacked in the bookcase shelves we haven’t emptied yet. The notion that I haven’t had a good screaming battle with my best pal in a long, long time. Or laughed and smiled so deeply that my heart fluttered.
I have heard my body. It has said slow down sunny baby and be where you are.
I acknowledge I am in a sea of pain. I like to think I can see bits of land and maybe even a bird or two carrying flowers.
Maybe saying it will make it so.
And so it goes.
Girlboxing 
My darling, you are THERE. That place after the wave of guilt-ridden relief leaves you on the shore of Oh…he’s gone. Not just the he whose needs you cared for during his undoing, during that undoing of you as a we, but the he of the beforetimes. The he you laughed with and loved and fought with and did a million things suddenly coming back to you in yet another wave of Oh, oh, oh.
I know these waves, my precious, precious friend. I know you are strong and resilient and brilliant and brave. I also know that none of those things keep the waves from crashing and crashing and crashing, sometimes over a raisin bun.
The first time it happened to me–that huge crash that sent me tumbling–after Brian was a bottle of cream soda. After Chris? Smoked salmon. No one need wonder why, for me, it was food. Food is my love language.
In 25 days, my love language will wrap you up in (hopefully) yummy care. I will do all I can to keep those waves from crashing too hard on your head. I wish I could make them stop, even for a week, but I know, as you will soon, that in VAB, the crashes come harder because it is so safe and loving a space. You will, though, have ten pairs of arms holding you upright, ten hearts keeping you from drowning.
And cake. There will always be cake. I love you.
I am so beholden to your words and embraces. Awash in the love in your words. Feel already aglow in the love to come. Thank you beyond my ability to give thanks.