A new chapter

Soon I mark five years since you have been gone. It's a milestone "they" say. I have heard lots about the five year mark. It's the time you can talk about memories and not cry, it's when things start to get back to "normal". It's when most widows are re married by. None are true for me. What it is is five years without you. I still sometimes feel shocked when I realize this, like where the hell have I been ? What the hell has happened?  I remember cutting onions for a barbecue about 3 months after your death. I was in the kitchen and I was literally bowled over in shock that you were not here and never coming back. It hit me like a ton of bricks, like I had woken from a bomb blast with my ears ringing and the horror of what had happened was registering. That is the only way I can describe that feeling that day in the kitchen. The first inkling of the shock wearing off and what I would feel.

The shock is long gone, the feelings long ago felt for the first time. All is much more quiet in my soul now, I can talk to you and bring you and your spirit into my heart so much more easily than in the early days. But I grieve still and that is okay. Maybe I grieve memories of the grief now rather than new fresh painful grief. Like remembering the onion incident and feeling so sad for her who once had felt that. It really doesn't matter in the long run does it. It is five years without you. Period.

I'm living a new single life, in a new house you never saw nor ever will. I am living and loving without you to share in it. I will retire and see new grand children and make new memories and live out illnesses and old age and death without you. It is sad yet it is what it is. Is this the acceptance stage of grief Kubler-Ross wrote about? I've been through the five stages many times, I'm here to tell you they are not linear. I'm just grateful I feel acceptance today. I'll take that. As I prepare to go into the anniversary of the week you died and the hell we all felt I will accept whatever stage chooses to present itself. If it brings me closer to a memory of you - good or bad- I am open because it's of you.

"I'm learning to live without you now, but it hurts sometimes baby". I've been writing through this journey of grief these past five years so I don't forget. So I can somehow someway express to the world what you meant to me and how much I loved you and how your loss hurt me. But I am closing this chapter now honey. It doesn't mean I won't remember you, I know now I'll never forget you. This is my last blog. I said all I needed to say. I am turning it into a book for my safe keeping, to go with the first 1000 days book. I will keep them on my shelf and bring them down every so often if I feel the need to read about surviving your loss, that I did it and can continue to do it. I will take comfort that the words of how I did that- well and not so well- are there. That I lived and spoke and shared and grieved and remembered so to never forget. When I finish a book I'm reading I always feel a little loss, a death of sorts- but I always look forward to starting a new book. This sorta feels like that. A new chapter in my single life without you, but it is life nonetheless.

I'll always love you - my favorite ghost. xo