Tragic hit my home. I surrendered all to it. I gave up my life to fight. To fight for someone I loved more than anyone. To fight for someone who couldn’t fight for themselves. My life was put on hold so that I could help someone that I love gain their life back. And even if it meant me mashing the pause button again on my life for someone I love, I would do it all over again.
Then death swooped in and that changed me.
I was numb for months. I couldn’t function mentally or physically. Mentally I was in a dark room with every piece of my life scattered on the floor, with no chance of seeing how to piece it back together. Physically I was the one in the room mute, spaced out, just observing everything & everyone like a ghost.
My life was stripped away by shallow breaths that eventually stopped.
Five years, 10 months, and twenty-seven days was how long I was his wife. Four years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days was how long we lived a normal life.
The last ten months and twenty-nine days were the hardest days, yet the best days of our marriage.
For 2,150 days I heard a strong heartbeat, it was always my lullaby at night. The last thing I heard before going to sleep. On the 2,151st day I crawled in the hospital bed and heard my lullaby slowly fade away until it was silent.
The life I knew for five years, ten months, and twenty-seven days suddenly ended.
They say reality really hits when you bury your loved one. That is far from the truth.
Three whole days passed that I didn’t get to see him. The fourth day as I was getting ready I was anxious, very nervous, but I was happy. Happy that after three whole days I would finally get to see his beautiful face again. The face that I had seen for over five years. The drive from my house to the funeral home was literally 4.4 miles, but felt like I was on the stretch of I20 with hundred of miles to go. The butterflies were roaming around in my stomach and a smile formed on my face that I couldn’t contained. I was thrown back in time to our first date. This feeling was exactly what it felt like. When I arrived I ask for a few minutes with him and our two kids. The three of us walked in hand and hand. We stood there over his body and stared. Not saying one single word. Seconds passed by, but I promise you it felt like hours. The kids talked to him, not fully understanding the process of what was happening. I gazed at him burning everything in my brain I possibly could all while praying that I never see the day that I can’t remember something about this man. In that moment reality knocked the breath out of me. This was the last time my family of four would be together on this earth.
The funeral was over, the dirt was thrown, and the house was emptied.
It was Sunday night. The day after his funeral. Our first night alone in our home. Family was worried, wanting someone to stay with us. Some even mentioned “it’s to soon for y’all to stay alone,” but I was different. I was from a different bred. This had changed me. I took on a whole new city, a new state, no family, and lived life there for almost a year because of this. I knew that at some point we had to cross that bridge of being a family of three and I knew it was better to do it sooner rather than later. We did it. Our first night consisted of a lot of crying, pretty much til they fell asleep. It was hard, but we survived it.
Days passed and I realized I was slowly changing.
My days and nights always consisted of me crying. Alot. I was mentally exhausted. I fought battles everyday in my mind. I fussed, cursed, fought, and blamed a man who wasn’t physically here because our family was destroyed by his death. I was deprived from sleep because every time I closed my eyes, my conversation with him about him wanting to go be with God played over and over. I never blamed God, but I did have a laundry list of questions for him. My kids and I started resenting each other. They blamed me for not letting them see him everyday while he was hospitalized and I resented them because every aspect of their daddy that I was missing was found in their tiny bodies. Our home that we lived in as a family, the one place we could find comfort became a holding cell that was slowly torturing us.
The memories surrounding me in our home gashed me open. Wound after wound was cut through my body til I was completely numb. I shut myself off to everyone around me. I was not the woman, momma, daughter, friend, granddaughter, aunt, and etc that I was before because I was no longer a wife. At just twenty-five the “W” that labeled me as a wife was now labeling me as a widow.
I changed. Everything changed.
I avoided any event that took place that I knew would involve someone giving me their condolences. I didn’t hang around at church like before. I always arrived after it started and would dart the door as soon as it was over to avoid someone asking me how I was doing or telling me they were praying for me. I needed the prayers, I did and still do, but I wasn’t going to stand in the holy temple of God or on the property and lie to a man or woman of God and tell them that “I’m doing good” when I knew that it was far from the truth as it could possibly be because I was not doing good. In fact I was barely living.
Days I spent before sitting on my grandma’s porch, watching the kids play, and chitt chatting with her until my husband came down the road ended. I had betrayed my grandma as a friend. In fact even now it’s rare that I do that. Sunday dinners at my parents became very hard. Each time was very emotional for me until I stopped going. There was a chair at that eating table that was empty. There was a face that was no longer there. There was a plate and glass that wouldn’t be placed. And there was one less mouth to be fed.
I became distant with my immediate family. My brother and sisters who I talked to daily and who knew everything about me suddenly felt like I was a stranger to them. In fact one told me that I wasn’t the same anymore. My parents begin to question me daily if I was alright or how was I? I had became a stranger to the two people that gave me life and I had no control over it. Holidays were hard. I tried so hard to pretend everything was ok and to fit in with my family like before, but it just didn’t happen. I found myself forcing a smile on my face all while observing every individual family around me and knowing mine was destroyed.
Destroyed by death.
I had become distant. I stayed away from people we socialized with as a couple. I avoided places we went as a couple or a family for fun. That life was over for me.
The woman I was before this, died the day her husband did. When his life ended, the life she always knew of did too, not only their’s but their children’s also. However their story will be told at a later date. Their family suffered the loss of not one, not two family members, but four. One by death physically and three by death mentally.
“I think the hardest part of losing someone, isn’t having to say goodbye, but rather learning to live without them. Always trying to fill the void, the emptiness that’s left inside your heart when they go.”
I was not the same.
Everything has changed.
I have changed.
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