They Are My Comfort

“You let time pass. That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you’re okay.”

– Cheryl Strayed

Hi my love-

Three years today, it's a disgusting thought, but it's reality. I think back to this day then and I shake my head. I'm able to smile at some of the memories but I have yet to reach a place where remembering is only a good thing. I smile, I do, I even laugh...a lot. I think outwardly I have progressed well. I can dance and sing and laugh like always in spite of being broken on the inside. It's funny how that happens.

I remember you getting all choked up and teary with pride listening to Like Eating Glass...song 4. I just rubbed your forearm and smiled. Even that is gone now...

I remember Evelyn hanging out a window laughing at us because we kept walking right past her when we first arrived. And I remember all her Neck friends kept saying "You have no idea how excited she is that you two are here".  Ugh...shaking my head.

There is so much more that I remember but I can't do it right now, I can feel myself getting pulled down and I just can't right now. I'm so tired of being in that place. It's not a good place, my breathing changes, I feel my heart beating in my throat and hear a ringing in my ears. It's too hard to be there just now. One day I will be able to only smile there, but not now.

What is it like where you are? Do you spend time with Evelyn? Do you miss us? I always wonder these things. I wonder if you two are friends where you are...do you protect and take care of her.  Does she help you too?  The not knowing is hard. The not knowing if you guys are okay. The need to console you and put my arms around you two because of what you experienced...it's crazy. The whole thing is, really. For you two, when it was over it was over. For me and others, it will never really be over. How unfair. How totally and completely un-friggin-fair. Deep sigh.

I just wanted you to know, I'm...okay. Not good, but I am okay. I have put my face to the sun many times and find great peace outdoors. The trees, the birds, the wind, and the scents and the sounds, they are my comfort.

I love you David...still. Don't ever lose sight of me love, please. I will always need you to find me.

I love you Evelyn...always.

50 (or not)

She knew he was awake, the soft sound of his breathing told her so.  She opened her eyes and watched him.  Arms bent with his hands behind his head on the pillow, staring at the ceiling...thinking.  Always thinking, sometimes a good thing, other times not.  Today though she saw peace on his face, today she was looking at the young boy she fell in love with 33 years ago.  Not the 50 year old man he was today...

We made it she thought, we are here...really here.  All the hard work and saving has finally paid off. The foregone honeymoon, extravagant gifts, vacations...everything. We wanted to escape to a tropical paradise, just the two of us, and we set the goal as his 50th birthday.  A number he had started dreading way back when.  "Let's turn that milestone into the best experience you've ever had, let's create a memory that is just for us in a place neither of us has ever been."  "Let's take the honeymoon we never had and then you will always have that as your 50th birthday present."  And so the plan was set...

I opened my eyes and reality hit, yet again.  The sight before me was an empty bed and empty pillows.  And cold.  Cold all around me, no tropical paradise for this gal.  Another milestone faced without you David.  "Happy Birthday my lover" I said to no one as a tear rolled down my cheek.  "Happy freaking birthday"!

I so had wanted this day to be one of the best of your life, a day for you to carry with you forever. There was so much I always wanted for you, so much I wanted to give you.  I'm sorry I will never get that chance and can only hope that while you were here with me I gave you everything you needed.  I hope that you knew, really knew just how much I adored you.  God how I still do.

Happy would be 50th my love.  I hope you are free and happy and spending time with Evelyn, she will have you doing tequila shots and whooping it up.  Hug her for me and when you feel her arms around you...know that they are mine.

I love you my husband, my David.

78 weeks

I feel like when you died I died too.  The slate of who I was wiped clean.

You didn't come back, either of you

I did.

I'm brand new. Bare naked and alone. An infant new to this world.

An infant without the luxury of having every little need cared for.

An infant without the luxury of gradually growing and adapting to this place I am in.

I am an infant thrown to the wolves...helpless and wailing with the need for protection and care. But none comes.

I have not been given the opportunity to ease into this life.  

I was born here, to this new life, with the weight of the world...with the weight of a parent...with the responsibilities of an adult.

How can an infant be expected to act and function like an adult.  It is impossible to think...

Yet here I am.

A year and a half later and I have grown no further.

Still

It's snowing again.  It's cold again...still.  And I am here...still.

I go to bed, I wake up.  Everything in between is a blur.  

I do like I do, like I've always done.  I clean, I manage, I finance, I cook, I raise humans, I pet care, I stock shelves, I chauffeur, I assist, I do and I do and I do...and I do it again and again, day after day.  We all do, by no means do I think I am alone here, we all do what we do.  But are we all unconscious to the middle, to what happens between when we wake up and when we go back to sleep?  I don't know...but I am.  I am unconscious to all that falls in the middle.

I seem to be going nowhere, not forward, not back.  I am just still...still here, still there.  I have mistaken the passage of time and the doing for progress.  I have felt that I have come so far from that worst day, but really I have gone nowhere.  My day is full of doing and dodging, gasping and breathing, blinking and shaking my head.  I am in a battle to survive.  Living, surviving that worst day was not good enough.  There was no 'phew...I made it', brush myself off and move on.  It is a fight that I have to live through day in and day out.  I liken it to one of those race car video games, you know...where you sit in a fake car and grab hold of a steering wheel, only I am not stepping on the 'gas' pedal...life is.  I am being whisked through a course...smooth sailing for a moment, then suddenly an obstacle is in my path, I dodge this way and I dodge that way.  Sometimes they are few and far between, other times they seem to come all at once,  I dodge and I shake and I blink but still I crash.  I stand back up, tears flowing, heart breaking, short of breath and I go again.   Why won't it stop...what do I have to do to get it to stop.  The sights, the sounds, the play by play recap.  The last images of my David, of Evelyn are burned into my eyes and the final, end result blows me away still.  Still I do not believe, I do not understand. 

It has been 9 long and short months since a handful of minutes changed everything and I have learned that I suck at race car driving, the sun will come up even if I can't see it, friendship is EVERYTHING, raising a teenager sucks...doing it alone sucks HUUUUGE, I am still head over heels in love with my husband, I will still speak to you here, I will go to sleep and wake up every day to do what I do even through the fog...and just maybe it is too soon to expect anything else.

I think of you both every other minute of every single day.  I miss you in a way that takes my breath away and I can not wait to be with you again for that is where I wish to be...for now.  I pray that you are okay, I pray that you are with me, and I pray for all of us that are hurting without you.

Peace guys!

This kind of loneliness

I found this on a website for widows and thought it was the best explanation I have found so far for the emptiness I feel and loneliness ...

Loneliness is not a surprising by-product of widowhood.  I mean, even for the people who have never been through it, it’s a no-brainer.  But frankly, I think that lonely is not a strong enough word.

There is a deep silence that comes with losing your spouse.  And it doesn't matter if you’re standing in the middle of a crowded room, you will still notice it.  It’s the quiet that comes when you don’t have that familiar voice whispering in your ear at a wedding, “Can you believe she wore that?  I mean, what was she thinking?”  It’s the missing sound of two glasses clinking together on your anniversary.  It’s the absence of someone breathing soundly next to you as you go to sleep at night.

Our friends are so good about trying to make sure that we know that we’re not alone.  And we know we’re not friendless.  We could call up any number of people if we just wanted to hang out. But we are alone. Our marriages were amputated in the prime of our lives and, for some of us, there is no prosthesis.

A lot of us, since our loss, have found comfort in chat rooms and support websites and that has helped relieve the discomfort of the amputation a little.  It’s like taking two Motrin after extensive surgery.  It eases the throbbing a bit, but when we look down, the limb is still missing.

We've found anonymous support from strangers who don’t know us but are as close as we can come to confiding in people who know exactly what we've been through.  We tell these strangers some of the most intimate details of our lives, knowing that out of thousands of people, one person might understand us and, out of thousands of people, no one will be heartless to enough say, “You did what?  You’re crazy!”  Because, if nothing else, we all have crazy in common.

It’s an anonymous way to just let our widowed freakiness spread its wings and fly.  We get support from people who understand what REAL retail therapy is.  People who get that a sleepless night with a newborn is one thing while a sleepless night with a dead spouse is a whole other deal.  People who understand how guilt, anger, frustration, and sadness all come in a beautifully wrapped package with our names on it, signed “With Love, Widowhood.”

Finding these groups has buffered the fact that, with our spouses gone, most of us have lost the person we would have leaned on when the worst thing we could have possibly imagine happening…happened.  It’s almost like we need to roll over in bed and say in utter disbelief to our spouses, “Did you hear that you died?  And you were so young!”  This would be followed by a hug from them, a pat on the back, and the murmuring of some comforting words while we cried on their shoulders.

But when we roll over, well, our spouses already know that they died.  It spoils it a little.
I don’t think that most people, who haven’t experienced loss, truly understand that element of solitude.  And that’s the very foundation of what makes us so lonely.  The person who cared when something really great or really bad happened is missing.  The person who was just as excited and saddened by the milestones of our kids is someplace else (I hope). The person who was just as invested in our lives and the decisions we made is now (again, hopefully) enjoying everlasting comfort while we slug it out down here on our own.

Do you remember the moment that you truly felt the change?  I mean, the time when you realized that this was it?  When you catapulted from married to involuntarily single?  For you, it may not have been a moment.  But it was for me.  I was leaving Wal-Mart (where so many of my breakdown moments occur) when I noticed that “Wild Hogs” was about to come out on DVD Now, my husband and I had had many failed attempts to go see that movie in the theater, so when I saw that big billboard up at the store, I automatically got excited.  I thought to myself, “I can’t wait to get home and tell him it’s finally out!”  I think there was an audible thud as reality came crashing down on me standing next to the stale cookies that were on sale.

As most of us feel, I would give anything for just one more day, one more conversation with my husband.  I've had dreams about it.  We’re just lying in bed and I’m telling him all about what the kids are up to.  We both know that he’s gone, but I’m filling him in anyway.

Those are the mornings I wake up and feel the most alone, the most like I’m missing that appendage.  And even though there are so many people I could call who would commiserate with me, they’re just not in my head and in my heart living my life.

And does it make sense when I say when I’m feeling this way sometimes I just want to be left alone?

---by Catherine Tidd

The countdown

You were always so big on the countdown...to when you would travel to me, or when I would come to you...the hours the minutes the seconds until we would be in each others arms again. Being separated was always so hard for you, for me,  and the countdown just seemed to help. You always did it...right from day one.  

I keep a countdown of my own these days, only mine doesn't seem to help with anything, it just is a reminder...a reminder of how long we have been separated, how long it has been since we have been in each others arms.  A reminder of how much time has passed since I laughed with, and hugged one of my very best friends, since we toasted to our lives that we were loving so much. It is a reminder of how much time has passed since you and she left, and I stayed.  A reminder of how many days I have cried hard tears for you, for Evelyn, for me, for our families...for our kids.

So here it is...Silly, I know, but there it is in terms you can relate to my love.

3 months or 13.1 weeks

92 days or 2, 208 hours

132,480 minutes or 7, 948, 800 seconds

Life is good, I have always said so.  I have worked very hard to always see it that way, no matter what.  This circumstance won't change that, cannot change that...I won't let it. 
I still feel that life is good.  I know that I am a little lost right now, having a very difficult time seeing through to the light but I must do it.  I must see the good in everything or ALL of this will have been for nothing.  I know there is a reason I was left to walk away.

David, I am so sad and broken.  Some days I don't feel like I can even stand up but I do.  I do it all and I don't think most people I see would even know how bad off I am right now.  I work hard at being 'normal', everyone has enough on their own plates, they don't need to worry about me too.  Besides, this is my gig, my experience, my journey.  There isn't one single thing anyone could do or say to change it for me.  I am the creator of my own life. Only I can choose to lay down and cower from what the universe throws at me...or stand as tall as I can, with my chin held high and tears in my eyes...and dance.  And I choose to dance, to love life, to gaze at the beauty of this world that I live in, to stand in awe by the ocean as I have always done.  I choose to live for me, for my family, for my friends...I choose to live for you my love and for Evelyn.

Ours...2010

Evelyn 

Best Sisters...

Best friends...

I may no longer have the privilege to have you at my side for all of my life, or to gaze into your beautiful beautiful face, or to smell that wondrous scent that is uniquely you, or to lay my hands on you and kiss your perfect mouth.  But I have all those moments, from when I was lucky enough to have it all with you, stored safely inside my soul.  I go there often and I break down hard when I do... for the loss, for the joy, for the beauty of it all.  And when I leave that place and come back to the now, I smile and wipe away the tears,  because I know that I was so very very lucky and so very blessed that you loved me so deeply.  That you spent so much time looking for me,  that you found me, and that we were husband and wife...we were David and Kristen Machado.

L O V E

Woo Hoo!  How freaking lucky am I?  

So thank you my David, thank you for finding me, for loving me and for giving me what we had. I hope that where you live you are happy, safe, free and whole again.  That you can see me and watch over me and that you know how adored you are.  You are a special, special man.

And David...I hope you still dance too.

Peace, love and happiness on this 92nd day.