"I will not fail you, my love. I will continue on the path we shared and I know you will be there to help me, as you always were. And when we meet again at the journey’s end, and we laugh together once more, I will have a thousand things to tell you..."Today I need to do some venting. I'm tired, beyond stressed, and have now officially completed more law school than 5 years ago when April 6, 2007 was, unbeknownst to me at the time, my final day of my first year, take 1. It feels weird. Not good, not bad, just weird. Someone noticed my rings in class this morning and asked me if I got engaged. When I said no, that they're from my husband, she said, "oh, you're already married - I didn't know that!" I approached her after class and let her know the reality - it's getting easier to explain, and I was even able to do it without tears. But I'll be honest, it really sucked. It sucked even more when my "friend" (who was sitting next to me at the time) said, "well, you put your rings back on - what did you expect?"
Call me crazy, but sometimes I wish I could go back to those first few weeks when friends and family were always present and Jon's name was still fresh on everyone's lips...when it was okay for life to revolve around the fact that he was so conspicuously absent...when the flow of cards and letters and emails and flowers was constant and the world hadn't forgotten it was suddenly a lesser place without him. It's so difficult to talk with people I meet now who never knew him (and who will never knew the person I was back then). They don't - can't - understand the ten million things that made him so special and so easy to miss. So that's why sometimes, on days like these, I wish I could relive that time before everyone went back to their nice, normal lives...and before I discovered that some of the friends I assumed I could count on would let me down, while some of the people I would never have expected to stick by me went above and beyond.
An acquaintance of mine mentioned recently that he thinks it's good I'm no longer trying to date or pursue other relationships since I clearly still have what he calls "Jon issues." Ha. Jon issues? What the hell does that mean? And when exactly will I ever not have these "Jon issues?" The irony is that this guy is in the Army - when I chose to withdraw from law school and begin serving on active duty after Jon's death, I did it in part because I thought people in the Army would understand a little better than most how it feels to have lost my husband in combat. But the reality is that the Army is just a mirror image of the rest of society on a smaller and more magnified scale. There are wonderful, thoughtful, insightful people serving in the Army. And then there are thoughtless, selfish idiots too. Sometimes I think the Army has actually made things a little harder in separating me from my family and throwing me in among peers with whom I don't seem to belong and who deal with death through crude, inappropriate humor. They don't like to talk about or acknowledge the fact that this unfortunate reality can happen to anyone - no one is immune from it. So, in essence, being in the Army hasn't necessarily made things any easier. It's just given me a reason to drag myself out of bed in the morning - something else to focus on besides the fact that life without Jon is bland and, on most days, a dull shade of gray.
Before I started dating the third and final guy with whom I attempted to find some version of happiness, I remember he asked me how I felt about the fact that he had two kids (one of whom was only 14 years younger than I am - yeah, I was never too thrilled about that...). My question for him was, "how do you feel about the fact that I'm a widow?" I asked because it's amazing how many people have this preconceived bias against us for something over which we had absolutely no control - sure, they'll date someone who's divorced, separated, never been married, or any combination thereof. But widowed? Oh, no! Not that! Stay far, far away! Guess what - it's never going to be as simple for us as going to a bar and striking up a casual conversation with someone about where we're from and what we do for a living. We come with a lot of emotional heartache (or "baggage" if you prefer that term). But what people don't seem to realize is that being a widow is not a curse - if anything it should be seen a God-send. A fellow widow once told me that, in her humble opinion, any guy should consider himself lucky to end up with a woman who has lost the love of her life - we know what it means to love madly and deeply, and when we promised "forever," we bargained for nothing less. We know what it's like to have our worst nightmare become an inescapable reality and to wonder every day thereafter how much time we have before it's too late to say "I love you" to our family and friends one last time. But that's not exactly something you can effectively convey to someone after knowing them for all of 5 minutes - it doesn't go over too well when your opening line goes something like, "oh hi, my name is Jenna. I'm a widow. But don't be scared, it's okay. It just means I know the meaning of true love!" Uh huh. Right...
And now I need to try to focus on the work that I just can't seem to get myself to care much about in light of all these other concerns clouding my mind and detracting from my focus (or, at least, what remains of it). It just doesn't seem to matter the same way it did 5 years ago when my biggest source of anxiety was my upcoming final exams...who knew that April 6th, 2007 would be the last time those exams would even enter my stream of consciousness for the foreseeable future? I'm going to try to focus on the positives, like the wonderful weekend I spent with friends who understand the gravity of Jon's loss and the gaping hole that remains in his absence. Amazingly, the tears didn't hit me on Saturday, April 7th until I was lying in bed alone at the end of the day and and realized for the millionth time that I'd never hear the beating of Jon's heart beneath my cheek again...ever. I don't know how she knew I needed her, but when my best friend came through and crawled into bed next to me, talked to me about Jon until 3AM, and was still right there right next to me the next morning, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. The next day - Easter Sunday - I said a special prayer of thanks for the angels in my life who make all the gray seem a shade or two brighter.
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