You Have to Start Somewhere

Very few areas of my life have been unchanged by Chris’s late stage illness and death. The number of times I have felt overwhelmed by his absence and by having to learn how to live a completely new life is officially countless. I remember many moments of doubt, despair, and paralysis in the days, weeks, and even months following his death.

Early on, I could see no way through except to survive one minute at a time, sometimes just sitting on the couch and staring out the window. As my mind raced, I turned to my hospital/hospice time filler of sudoku puzzles. Attempting to place numbers neatly in boxes to fit the rules of order was a calming distraction. There were many times where that failed because tears obscured my view of the page and a full minute seemed too hard, so I had to simply focus on breathing. I would draw air into my lungs, then control the exhalation to send the used breath blowing up over my face. By forcing the air out and fanning my eyelashes with it, I could get to the next breath after that.

Those hard to breathe moments make me sick to remember - that pain was excruciating. Chris felt so close then; he was just days out of our home, our last conversations still reverberating in my mind, the sensation of his hand in mine nearly palpable. Chris was still firmly my partner, our joined life the only thing I could fathom, yet he had been torn from my arms. The horror of that permanent parting twisted my insides into sobs that would catch in my chest until I let them out in pressure-relieving vents.  

How on earth did I move from the blast zone to the place I last wrote about, a new chapter?  

It’s something I have wondered about and yet that questioning seems ludicrous. How can I not answer that when I’m the one who has been doing the hard work? But that’s just it, the transformation has been so glacially incremental that I couldn’t see progress as one day bled into another.

Still, I did work harder on surviving than I have at anything else. I allowed (and even forced) myself to feel the emotions. I wrote my heart out on many quiet nights, working through important memories and feelings. I walked, cried a million tears, shared, despaired, read, listened, sought connection and community. All of those efforts plus the age-old remedy of time seem to have propelled me to today…

Perhaps an uncomplicated answer to my question of how this transformation occurred is that you simply have to start somewhere.

Backing up to those horrible December days of 2018, I see now that is exactly what you have to do, and I did it. Your brain absorbs the horrible news that your husband will die, and soon at that. You start somewhere, not knowing if it's the right place, but you jump into action and make the tough decisions to take the best care of him that you can. You stay right to the end. That is what you do when you vow "until death do us part."

But after he crosses his personal threshold to the other side and you realize that you didn't also die, then what? How do you manage the transition to your after? There is no choice but to start at the very beginning, which means you must leave your love alone and lifeless as you force your feet to walk out of the room. You drive home in the literal and figurative fog of the winter night, aware that this motion is launching you into an unwelcome, unfamiliar, new life. You take the next breath even when you don’t want to…

You start somewhere and then keep going, even when it doesn't feel like you are moving at all. One day things feel different in a bittersweet way. When they do, you see just how far you have come.

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Even now as I’m crying again from putting myself vividly back into Chris’s last days, I’m grateful for it all. I don’t understand why Chris had this experience and short life, and I am NOT saying that I am glad this happened to him or our family. Rather, since it did indeed happen and that cannot be changed, I am grateful for finding a path forward. I will forever treasure the lessons I learned from Chris, from our time together, from myself.

I am thankful for it all even as I do not understand it. I will remember that as I continue along my path, for surely there is so much work yet to be done with living this life.