Grief: Another New Year Without You?

I threw out a couple more of your things today.  Not much.  But a little.  I still have your phone book. What for?

I have many things I am grateful for.  Good holidays with my daughter and my granddaughter Gwendy blue eyes who turned three on December 20th.  I'm going back on the 30th because after five and a half years I feel brave enough not to hide myself away.  I'm preparing for this fun sharing of the new year coming in by isolating - watching crap TV - and eating too much.  All those healthy options.  Why don't I do the healthy options?  I could be meditating, taking bubble baths, developing a taste for kale.  Okay - developing a taste for kale is never going to happen. I am cleaning up and throwing away a lot of my own unnecessary stuff as well.

For some odd reason my wedding ring and my husband's wedding ring were irritating the skin on my finger so instead I have been wearing a band with three rows of tiny black diamonds and two rows of tiny white diamonds.  Like my life...sparkly...but all the lovely moments are still surrounded by darkness.  There is so much I have done since you died that I love, that I am proud of.  I especially love my relationship with my granddaughter.

I just can't stand the though of starting another new year without you.  We had many fun and loving New Year's Eves together.  The last one you asked me to come upstairs with you but I was angry and I said no.  I didn't know it was the last chance I had to celebrate New Year's Eve with you.  I want another chance.  I want another chance for so many things.  I can't stand it but I will.  That's what we do.  Stand what we can't stand; bear what we can't bear.

I keep my husband alive in so many ways.  My granddaughter talks about Grandpa Artie - even though she never met him.  People all around the world know about us - about him.

I have made plans for the new year; in the new year.  I am going forward - I don't have a choice.  Time goes forward and drags me with it.  I was thinking of e-mailing all the people I still have e-mails for who knew Artie and ask them for stories about him.  Why?  They might make me smile but they won't be him.  He's dead.  There are no new memories.  Is this the year I'll try to date since I miss so much being held?  I don't know.  I want my husband to hold me - not some random man.  Yet maybe some random man will do a good job of holding me.

I need time to feel sorry for myself.  When I'm with my granddaughter I don't get much time for that. I don't even want much time then.  I like playing.  I like cuddling her.  I love it when she says something clever or when she just looks up and smiles at me.

I'm blessed in my family and friends.  I alway plan adventures for myself.

Who knows - I might even start that book I'm so good at not writing.  I don't do New Year's Resolutions.  I make a gratitude list - all the things that happened last year that I am grateful for.  Then I make a forgiveness list - things I would have liked to have done but didn't.  Some things on the forgiveness list (forgiving myself for not accomplishing them) go on the list of things to do this next year.  Or not.

A young friend asked me if I feel guilty about what I haven't done or don't do.  I said no.  Finally after 63 years I feel that what I do is enough.  Who I am is enough.  I could do more - but if I don't - nothing wrong with what I am doing.  I'm capable of so much more than I was in those desperate devastated first days after my husband's death.

But I'm not finished grieving.  I don't see how I ever could be.  I can do more and more and more.  I can have many exciting and content moments.  I can even triumph.  Nothing I do will ever stop me from looking up and wishing I could see a very loved face that no longer exists.

My new year will, hopefully, be full of many new things.  It will also be full of something old.  Death took my husband away.  The one person in the world who totally understood me and who tried so hard to take care of me is dead.  Dead doesn't change.  People often don't get that.  I don't believe in being happy about something I am sad about.  How can I be happy my husband is dead?  That would make me a liar.  I am happy about so much of the time we spent together.  I am happy about our love. I am happy about many things in my present.  But I cannot "follow my bliss".  My bliss is dead.  I must create a new meaning for bliss.

I take my grief with me into 2015.  Hopefully it will come with me in many new and exciting directions.  Hopefully my husband will be proud of me.

i don't know how to end this.  A new year is supposed to be a beginning not an ending.  Maybe what I wish for us all is that our beloved dead become more alive to us not less.  I wish for us all that their lives mean more to us than their death - that their love inspires us. That they make us laugh remembering so many things.  I wish that we continue to transform grief from something dark and deadly to something that shimmers and skips about leading us into wondrous places.

A Happy New Year?  A new year with happiness in it.  I love you my husband.  You love me.  That still makes me happy.  xo