Death Lives in the Present

In less than a month, I will celebrate the 2nd birthday of my second daughter. I have also recently celebrated my second wedding anniversary and the second anniversary of taking a new home with my now husband. I’ve been working at my new career for the last two and a half years. Two years ago was a busy time for me!

This past week, I attended a funeral of a relative of my husband’s and was reminded of a different kind of anniversary. Over seven years ago, I lost my then husband, the father of my first daughter, to melanoma. His death was horrible and tragic and parts of it haunt me still. My least favorite saying in the world is thattime heals. Time doesn’t heal by default. Time, plus hard work and personal growth, heals. All time can do is blunt the pain from a searing knife to a dull, ill-defined ache. We have to do the rest.

The good news is that we can do the hard part. There is a wealth of information, books, support groups, and internet resources that can help us, not to mention friends and family. Of all of these, the single most important skill that I have had to learn is how to make the memories of my deceased husband a part of my current life. Nothing has been more difficult for me, nor more beneficial.

At first, I was depressed beyond my own belief. Well-meaning friends and family commented that at least I had my daughter to give me comfort. I should expect my daughter to give me comfort? You mean the daughter in the throws of the terrible twos? The daughter that I imagined looking at me with eyes that imploredwhere is Daddy? The daughter who had her own needs and cared not one whit that all I wanted to do was crawl under my covers and hibernate for about three weeks? That daughter? Yeah, not so much. True, my responsibility to her kept me going. She even saved my life at one point. But it wasn’t exactly the kind ofcomfort I needed at that moment.

I did find what I needed to get through the acute grief. It took a long time but finally I was dating again and moving forward with my life. Slowly, though, something new took its place. Anxiety. When my entire life transformed two years ago, it got worse. I had everything I could want new career, new house, new husband-to-be, new baby on the way but I couldn’t sleep though the night. To get better from that, I had to go back and get temporarily worse. I had to allow myself to be sad again, to feel grief again. I had to stop finding ways to get around the grief, through the grief, and past the grief. I had to learn that my grief will always be there in the background. When I shut off the grief, I had shut everything else off too. Two years later, by feeling the grief, I get to feel the joy too. Finally.

I will always be a widow. That is not the sum of who I am but it is a part of who I am. I am also a teacher, a mother, a wife, a friend, an artist, a writer, a dreamer, an athlete, and a hundred things more that I just haven’t gotten to trying yet. Sometimes, I will be sad. That is my present, not my past. Sometimes though, I will be happy too and that is my present, and my gift.