76. Pure, Unadulterated Joy

"There was never enough time.  Until there was too much time." 

~Anonymous

Before I walked down the aisle on the day of my wedding, I experienced a moment of pure, unadulterated panic - I could literally hear the galloping of my heart resonating in my ears.  Oh my God, I am really going to do this.  And I am so lucky - I'm embarking on a future with the love of my life, and all because I was fortunate enough to have found him at such a young age - all the much more time for us to enjoy together, I thought.  I cannot believe this is happening to me.  This cannot be real.  This cannot be happening to me.  This is the moment I've been waiting for.  This is real.  My mom's hands were shaking as she straightened my necklace and checked one last time to make sure everything was in its place.  Yet I was the one who was shaking, in the metaphorical sense of the word.  I was shaking...from pure, unadulterated joy.

It's hard to believe that a love like that can be so suddenly - and so unfairly - ripped away.  For years, I hoped for a different outcome.  I thought if I immersed myself in all the sadness and wished for it enough, I could somehow change what happened.  Nope.  The outcome I have is the outcome I got.  It's the same outcome I will always have.  No matter how many tears I cry and no matter how often I wish it, I cannot bring Jon back.  For some unknown reason, this is my course, and I have little choice but to follow it.

Since Jon's death, I haven't experienced a joy that even comes close to what I felt on the day of my wedding...but I have felt a sense of accomplishment, of pride, and of strength.  I've mentored other young widows in the early days of their grief, I've continued on to achieve great personal feats, and I've found ways to honor Jon's legacy through memorial projects and events.  None of these things can serve as a substitute for the man who brought me such joy on the day I said "I do"...but perhaps, in time, the belief that I'll be okay will grow into something resembling an alternate form of happiness.

It's just me now.  Me and only me.  I don't mean to sound selfish, but it's actually not so bad.  The worst part of being alone is letting yourself believe that you're alone.  Now that I seem to have conquered that fear, I feel ready to take on the other challenges life has to offer.  Lesson learned?  I should have done this a long, long time ago.

75. Peace and Tranquility

"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you will never completely get over the loss of your beloved.  But this is also the good news.  They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up.  And you come through.  It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold - but you learn to dance with the limp."
~Anne Lamott

I haven't written too much recently.  Part of me wonders why.  The other part knows it's because the well of emotions sometimes runs dry - it's exhausting to feel so much all the time.

At this time last year, the brokenness of my heart and the effect of that brokenness of my future were all I could think about.  Now, a certain degree of numbness has taken the place of that tangled web of untouched emotions.  Or maybe it's just that the rawness of the wound is slightly less acute.  Perhaps - gasp! - I've even learned to live with it.  A year ago, I had so much to say...because it hadn't been said.  I had so much to feel...because I had not allowed myself to feel it.  When I finally recognized the need for both of these things, the weight of Jon's loss seemed unbearable, and I prayed that God would put an end to the intensity of my grief.  This has got to be it for me, I thought.  He wouldn't make me live with this forever.  Alternatively, I prayed for some peace and tranquility.

Apparently, the powers that be have decided on the latter option.  After helplessly floundering at rock bottom for a while, a sense of inner calm has started to replace the defenses I constructed around my heart.  Until recently, these defenses caused me to flee from all hints of intimacy and hold the people I love at arms length.  Instead of facing the magnitude of my grief, I threw myself into relationships that I wasn't ready for...or that were bound to fail.  I lived without really living, rebelled against everything I knew, and, quite literally, resigned myself to drowning in the sorrow of my husband's absence.  I figured I'd had the best I could possibly have and would simply have to find a way to pass the time until it was my time too.

Ironically, this new and unfamiliar calmness leaves me feeling slightly wary.  Is it because I made it through yet another happy holiday season relatively unscathed?  Is it because I perpetually have too little time and too much to do?  Is it because I have managed to find ways to laugh in spite of the pain?  Because I understand that no amount of sadness or tears will bring my husband back?  Because I stopped caring so much about what other people think and, instead, embrace my story and his legacy?  I find myself thinking that this might just be another bubble that will burst.  I instinctively assume this is the crest of a wave that I'll continue to ride until it's over and I hit another low.  But maybe it's more than that.  Maybe I've finally managed to put more than a band-aid on a wound that has become somewhat more tolerable - it's there, I know it's there, I've stopped pretending it's not there, and I know it's there to stay.  Maybe Jon is trying to tell me that I've proved, by succumbing to the full extent of the heartache, how much I love him and always will.  Maybe he's somehow giving me permission to feel a little more of the good in life after all of the bad.  I've been afraid - terrified, even - of the good for a long time now. But maybe there's hope for me yet.

How long will this last?  I don't know.  This time around, my expectations are lower and my assumptions are less erratic.  This wave feels less like an emotional tsunami and more like the ebb and flow of a gentle tide.  I think I'd like to ride it out or a while and see where it takes me.  Peace.  Tranquility.  I cherish both...and pray for more.

74. Lucky

"You have a life.  You make plans, you fall in love, you have fantasies.  And none of them involve all of them ending in the blink of an eye." 

~Grey's Anatomy, Season 8

Merry Christmas.  Happy New Year.  Happy holidays.  Blah.  Blah.  Blah.  Christmas used to be my favorite holiday.  And yet when Jon and I watched the infamous "Grinch" movie on Christmas Eve of 2006 - the day before he went back to Iraq - I never imagined that I'd end up feeling somewhat "grinchy" towards the whole idea of the holiday season in the years to come.

As this year draws to a close, I place my hopes for the future in the little things I can't control but that may finally bring me a little inner peace and tranquility.  I'm going to continue to focus on how I feel, not on what others think I should feel.  I'm going to try to take it one day at a time instead of worrying so much about the challenges and hardships the future might hold.  I'm going to stop trying to formulate the perfect 20-year-plan; Jon and I had one of those and it definitely didn't include the current reality.  I struggle with the notion of letting go of the things I cannot change, but no matter how often I analyze the days leading up to Jon's death or turn over and over the details of what happened in my mind, I know I can't bring him back.  I can do a lot of things, but trading in my todays for more yesterdays is not one of them.  On some days, this is slightly easier to comprehend.  On the days I'm overcome with disbelief, I make stupid mistakes and drown my sorrows in unhealthy choices.  But I'm going to strive for more of the slightly easier days.  At least, I'll do my best - and that's all I can do.

Above all else, I'm going to stick to my rejection of the superstitions that some people think of as "lucky" or "unlucky."  In the past, I've whispered magic words on the first day of each new month in the hope that it will bring me good luck during the month ahead; a bird relieved itself on Jon's mother's head a few weeks before he deployed to Iraq; and it poured with rain on the day of my wedding.  These things are all supposed to be "lucky."  At this point, though, it's somehow gotten beyond that for me.  I put new shoes on the kitchen counter top.  I shrug it off when I break a mirror - I've already had the worst of bad luck when it comes to what matters most to me.  I mix my underwear with my socks when I travel.  I walk under ladders, ignore pennies when I see them on the ground, I knock on things other than wood, open umbrellas inside, and think little of it when the 13th happens to fall on a Friday.

What's truly lucky is the fact that I've experienced a love many people never find.  I often look around me and assume that every couple and family I see have what I thought Jon and I would share at this point in life.  And yet I know this is not true.  I realize that some people never have that kind of love. I had it - albeit fleetingly - and it has changed me forever.  There's no going back to the simplicity of life before, and I wouldn't want to.  I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if I hadn't made the choices that led me to meet and fall in love with Jon.  Ultimately, however, I wouldn't change a thing.  Jon once told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him - so why would I change the best thing that ever happened to me?  I'm lucky to have loved a man who made me feel more alive and filled with joy that I could ever have imagined.  I'm lucky to call myself his wife.  I'm lucky to have laughed so hard at my memories of our time together that I've cried...and to have cried so hard in moments of weakness that all I can do next is laugh.  Luck, if you ask me, is in the heart of the beholder.

The last picture taken of Jon and I at 11:48 pm on December 24th, 2006.  Appropriately, we fell asleep in each other's arms.