Eight Years

I don't write much anymore; life is just more complicated than it used to be. It's wonderful, beautiful and breathtaking. I'm very lucky to have found love again and even luckier to be the mama to 2 little girls that are now 3 and 1. They are all everything I could've ever wished for...and yet...

I still wonder what life could've been like, then I feel guilty for not appreciating my family in the here and now. Other times I'm so grateful for those experiences, they shaped my personality, thought processing, maturity and gave me the man and 2 little girls I'm lucky enough to call my own these days. I don't love one branch of my life more than the other. If I absolutely had to choose between the path that I'm on now versus the path that I was on with Tim I'd be standing at that crossroads for eternity, but I've also learned that I don't have to choose, that the happy and sad, the grateful and grieving pieces can all co-exist. 

8 is fairly insignificant to most, generally you think of big anniversaries being the first, or a multiple of 5. It took me longer than it should have to put together why this felt so big, then it sunk in. His lucky number, whether for baseball, coaching or softball, if he could be 8 (or some form that added up to it) he absolutely was. So that's why this feels like a significant anniversary, because to him, 8 would be a big deal.

I've felt more connected to him recently than I have in the past couple of years. I still miss him and there isn't a day that passes without some reminder, but I feel his presence more now and have more recently been able to hear the sound and cadence of his voice again. I think I was trying so hard not to forget for so long that I was not allowing my brain to access those memories. Many of the big ones still feel so far away & fuzzy, others (some of the more insignificant ones) are clear again but no matter how much I get, it still never feels like enough. Knowing that the pictures I have will forever be it, there won't be more, is a hard pill to swallow at times and I still get panicked, afraid I'm forgetting bits & pieces of his existence. 

These days though, mostly, I'm immensely grateful. Whether its for the support that was given to us, or gifts of food, of time, of advice, financial support and especially for friendship. While Tim & I both benefitted from friendships we can never repay, I saw the true meaning of friendship after he died. I saw a quote recently from a poem called Sisters from Rupi Kaur that said "On days I could not move it was women who came to water my feet until I was strong enough to stand. It was women who nourished me back to life." I couldn't describe my experience better (other than mentioning there were a number of male friends who also helped carry me when the load was too heavy to bear). 

From the friends that wouldn't let me just stay in bed and give up to my grandma who came to lie beside me, especially to my mama who did (& still does) any & everything I need but doesn't always do any & everything I want. From the wise advisor who told me in the kindest way that one day I was going to move on and I would be happy again even though it made me beyond angry at the time to hear it to the friends that kept driving 4+ hours (with one occupant's frequent stop requests the trip inevitably ended up being 6) to stay with me on hard weekends so I wasn't alone to the friends that hired me to work for them and kindly let me step back when I was too embarrassed to admit to anyone that I was still so depressed some days that I quite literally couldn't get out of bed. There were friends I hadn't seen in years that sent the kindest notes, strangers or friends of friends that poured their hearts out to me in messages I just couldn't gather the strength to respond to but still will go back and read. 

There was the sorority sister that put together the letter writing campaign that just kept going, each one giving me a little more life and hope in the day. The friends that always included and welcomed me, they came together to make sure I never felt like the odd one out in the midst of happily married couples. There were friends that just showed up, friends that never quit trying even when I was absolutely impossible to be around and friends that never failed to be themselves and treat me like they always did regardless of how unlike myself I was and the ones that would always answer in the middle of the night even if it the majority of the time they spent with me was just me sobbing uncontrollably until I wore out enough to fall asleep. 

The weekend that I still look back to for strength and inspiration was the one in which I moved into what was supposed to be our new house. We had packed up our old house together and put the vast majority of our belongings in storage until we found the right place (& inevitably until the place we found was renovated). We started the renovations the week before he was first hospitalized and it was finally ready for me to move in after he was gone. I knew this task was going to be monumental to try to overcome and as much as I hate asking for help, I did it. Little did I know that I would have an army of supporters to show up. I met the movers at our storage units and led them back to our house, absolutely terrified for what I was about to face alone and next thing I knew I had friends filling every corner of my house setting up my furniture, making my beds, unloading my boxes, hanging my clothes and most importantly, just being there when we came across the boxes of Tim's clothes or the mementos from our wedding day. The amount of love and support that got me through that day continues to carry me through hard times even now.

Not everything has been great, wonderful and positive though. I'm not proud of the way I've handled many situations over the past 8 years (& don't get me started on the years before that). I've learned a lot about forgiveness and rebuilding though. Tim's parents were always incredibly supportive of us and gave us more help than we often deserved. I desperately wanted to be independent of being under our parents' wings and often would be angry or upset at what I perceived to be overstepping boundaries. Even with a daughter in law that could often be akin to a sour patch kid they never quit caring and never quit trying. When Tim & I were first dating he had a "tradition" of getting breakfast at a gas station where a lady home cooked biscuits, grits, etc., would grab Zaxby's or something for lunch and order pizza for dinner and spend the ENTIRE day watching GameDay & college football. I made it through ONE of these days and was bored out of my mind. Our lunch that day was Zaxby's and I got a kids meal in which the prize was wax covered string. In my infinite boredom I made a wax covered string couple and declared it to be us. I stuck it to the mirror in Tim's bedroom and it sat there for years.

Right around the first anniversary of Tim's death Rickia gave me a gift. She had painstakingly peeled that wax string couple off of that mirror, delicately taken it to a frame shop and had it framed for me. It was a gesture that finally knocked me back to my senses and helped me to realize that while I had lost a husband, they lost their child. I hung it in my kitchen to remind me every day to get out of my own head and take the perspective of someone else before judging them, its one of the first pieces I brought to our new house and I hung it where we can see it from our dining table to remind me how lucky I am to have them in our lives.

8 years has somehow simultaneously passed in the extent of a lifetime as well as in the blink of an eye. I hope that in 8 years more I look back to this time and have even more regrets than I do in looking back in the last. Because that means I'm learning from my mistakes and, hopefully, becoming a better human.