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.