Tears Abound

Gosh, the floodgates are open. I never know for sure what triggers it. Yesterday, I thought it was the Christmas things that are out, but today I think it is more the Halloween decs. Seeing ghosts and skeletons and cemeteries and RIP and coffins and things having to do with the dead...it seems to be haunting me. I think it has to do with the stage of grief that I'm in...the realistic stage, which means that everything feels real and skeletons on the door make me think of Brian being a skeleton, and scary cemeteries make me feel mad that I should never be scared when I am out there, and coffins look too real and ghosts are so far from my reach and more welcomed visitors than anything, if they would ever show up in my dreams.

I am stretched very thin. So what? So are a lot of people. Everyone is busy. Yet, for some reason, I feel like I have been doing 2-3 days worth of work each day, that I finally leave school after 5pm, and then I come home and drop. And it doesn't stop there because my kids need my attention and so does my house and my dog and my home. I am back to having no time to exercise...how could I when my days stretch into 10-11 hour days at it is? A lot of the work I am doing is catch-up for the last several years of doing the bare minimum. The last few years of teaching, I put as much on hold as I could and focused only on my students. This year I am spending my time looking for lost papers, a lost answer key, a lost pack of notes for this chapter or that...plus I am a perfectionist. My mom would be so proud that I finally admit it. So I spend entirely too much time trying to get things the way I want them. That adds to my frustration and workload. A lot of this has to do with teaching in general, and the other part is all about me in general.

Whatever the reason, the stress is getting to me. I've felt weepy all day. Luckily the busyness of the day helps keep me distracted and on track. I can at least be productive. It is the down times that catch up with me. I didn't dress down today for pajama day, and when I got to school and realized so many teachers did even with conferences, I felt like crying. I had to make a phone call for school today on my plan period, and when the line was busy, I thought I might start crying. Then I realized I forgot my lunch, and I more felt like throwing something. It seems to go on like this all day. Stupid stuff, really. So it isn't that the busy line makes me cry or the lack of pj's...more my life in general, and all I need is a reason...doesn't even have to be a good one, to feel sad.

I suppose at some point I should be over this. I can imagine some people who wonder why I'm not. I would guess those people have never lost someone they love as much as I love Brian. So I really don't care if they think I should be past it. I can even understand feeling relieved that Brian is no longer suffering, so maybe I should be at peace with it.

But it is my daily life, my minute-to-minute. It is the lack of emails from Brian everyday, sometimes saying he loved me, sometimes sending me a cool social studies website, sometimes asking what was for supper, sometimes asking me to bring home a resource book he had loaned me. It is sleeping alone and no one to share the bathroom with. It is cooking for myself and a 4 year-old when the girls are gone. It is the tools in the garage that are in disarray. It is the quiet of the night after the kids go to bed, when it really hits me that I am alone. It is no date nights or dinners out...it is no more going to gushy movies because I can't put myself though watching someone else's romance story. It is parent-teacher conferences, as in ONE parent, the only parent. It is never wanting Tye out of my sight, yet longing for the break of time for me. It is missing him calling me Sweet Thing and just everything. It is the daddy bringing his child to school, or the husband dropping things off at school, or someone to help with homework duty and someone to help run baths and so much more. It is the little things that are the hardest, the subsequent losses, day after heartbreaking day.

It is wondering if my heart will ever recover, and wondering when this cloud of grief will lift, or even lighten. It is wondering why everyone else is so happy and why I'm not. It is being tired of people feeling sorry for me, and being tired of people ignoring my loss...sounds contradictory, I know. It is being tired of making excuses because my husband is dead or because of my loss or because I'm an only parent, yet knowing that this fact, that I am a widow, has changed me. I am sure that all of me will never completely recover. I doubt I will ever feel whole again because what was taken from me, from my soul, is irreplaceable.

I don't expect anyone to really know what it feels like to lose Brian, from my perspective. I find myself wanting to talk about him all the time and remember him. My grief is a burden, no doubt, even to myself. Often people nod and recognize, but there are no words, so things get left unsaid. A few daring people stick their necks out and dig deep. From my own background, I've realized that this comes more with each person's experience with grief. I find myself more willing to get into deep conversations with someone, now that I have my own loss. I know I wasn't like that before losing my mom. I had absolutely no understanding of what it would feel like to lose my mom, and I have been fascinated with myself of how stupid I was, how ignorant and how thoughtless. I think we do what we know to do at the time.

Overall, I have been very blessed with the kindness and compassion of so many. It is hard for me to share my feelings, not wanting to seem like I've not appreciated everything, because I do. It is just that a loss this magnitude, it is like an explosion in which some of the pieces were blown to smithereens, and no matter the attempts to repair, nothing will ever go back together the right way.

At this point, I'm just hoping for functional. I often pray that the rest of my life won't just be a waste. What am I supposed to do now? Can my purpose in life really have been to be Rachel and Amberlea and Tye's mom, and to love Brian and help him die? What about the rest of my life? I'm on auto-pilot right now, and frankly don't feel like getting off that track because it is working for me.

I'm rambling...guess I can do that when it is my blog. I can only hope and pray that I haven't fallen off God's radar, and He still has plans for me, that maybe the pieces can be put back together to resemble some form of a new version.

Until then, everyday feels like a new explosion. Maybe I should suck it up and get on. Maybe I should shut-up and stop feeling sorry for myself. I almost feel like I'm spinning my wheels, trying to get off the Autobahn, with no exit in sight. I keep trying to figure out why this all happened, and there is no answer. I wish I would happen to run into a burning bush that might want to give me some direction. Right now every happy thought is overshadowed by 3-4 sad ones...