Every day this year has been a milestone approaching the 365th day marking the one year anniversary of losing my husband. Some have been easy, some not so easy and some down right miserable. January and February bring about our anniversary, my birthday, the day I lost Robert, Valentine's Day (stupid ass holiday) and Robert's birthday. Seems I've been preparing all year with baby steps for these 2 months.
There is no rhyme or reason to grieving and I do believe everyone has their own process, their own method of madness. Because really it is madness. Madness = dealing = hopefully coping = hopefully embracing something new... So that's the real deal then right - starting anew. Starting anew by default means you have to finish something.
I've thought a lot lately about finalizing and finishing the things I've been avoiding. In many cases, ok in most cases, these things are insignificant.... If you want to know how unimportant clothes, a car, your last Christmas gift, your job, your facebook account, etc., IS - just ask someone that has been left behind to handle the tasks of finalizing the details.
So what's left for me...closing out a FB account, closing a credit card, cleaning the home office (lord this room is like a black hole to me - I enter it and lose all sense of time and space), selling a car, packing the toiletries that I couldn't bear to do 10 months ago and still want to vomit thinking about it and finally complete the closing of Robert's estate.
These things should be relatively easy to do but...
~there is something about having the FB account open that maybe this is still really one big joke gone wrong and he will send me a message.
~If I leave his credit card open - he might be able to get back to me.
~If I leave his office as is, he can return in his ugly fleece sweatpants, t-shirt and bed-head (yes he really did work from home like this).
~If I sell his car - how will I know when I pull into the garage if he is home?
~If I pack up his toiletries, I will smell him, see him standing next me in our bathroom with toothpaste running down his arm and onto his shirt - and I'm scolding him telling him it has bleach in it and I won't be able to get the bleach out of his shirt - and he smiles and calls me the laundry fairy.
And yes, closing the estate - means all things related to Robert in an official way are done. It is putting the last nail in the coffin.
And it hurts.
Yes, I will take care of these things because it turns out when you hang onto them too long, they begin to suffocate you. Little by little, you feel them closing in until the desire to finish becomes more than the pain to hold off. Because the emotional game of pretending things could be different, is damaging. It is brutal and there are no winners.
So here's to the next 2 months that will again test me. Provide me opportunity to grow, evolve and change. My hand has been forced and I will succumb. May I have the ability to do so with grace, gratitude and the over whelming new reality of what really matters. This is the purest way that I can honor my husband, my children, my family and friends.
