Just A Sad Day

The children seem to be settling back into their home life but it has been hectic. I guess the fact that life was hectic before the accident possibly makes this seem somewhat normal, but I am tired. Tired and broken-hearted.

There are so many decisions to be made, important decisions about physiotherapy and medicines, homecare and renovations, how to rearrange things and how to handle finances. Then there are just the everyday choices that have not receded to make room for the new ones. They have just compounded. Today I found myself standing in Canadian Tire staring at the towel hooks. I just needed a hook, nothing special. But I found myself unable to choose. So many important decisions to make on a minute-by-minute basis, and I cannot even pick a hook for the bathroom door. I feel incapable of making a decision about even the simplest of things without first struggling to find the focus to do so.

It is difficult to function as one when you are used to functioning as two. Myron and I were opposites. Every personality test we ever took rated us as far apart as it could. He logical and detail oriented, I spontaneous. He calm and easy-going, I fiery and passionate. We balanced each other, like two people on a teeter-totter.

That see-saw was often in motion. We’d teeter back and forth between each other’s strengths and weaknesses. And although at times that was frustrating, I am reminded that there is something important that happens in the process. There is a vulnerability. We each had to learn to leave the security of the ground to allow the other side its chance to sink or soar. And that meant trusting the other to do the same. Sometimes it tipped on my side, sometimes on his. And sometimes we learned to hang in the balance, each providing what was needed to stay horizontal. We were learning more and more how to make it work.

Now the weight on the other end has vanished. I sit in the dirt after having crashed to the ground, staring up at his empty seat suspended in the air. There is no-one to balance me now. No one to provide the strength to help keep it in motion. Just me, looking up into the sky at the spot where my husband used to sit. And I mourn not only the man, but the process. The life we had experienced together. The vulnerability we had shared. There were many moments in our seventeen years where I wanted things my way. Now everything is going to be my way. And there is a horrible emptiness to it. The process of sharing that responsibility, of teetering back and forth, of balancing and soaring is a precious and valuable thing. And I miss it.
　
I began the process of packing up his clothing this week, sometimes efficiently, at moments sobbing as I tried to sort which items could possibly be meaningful to me or to one of my children in the future. How do I do this? How can I go through what remains of him and pick and choose what is important? Everything feels important. His weights in the basement, his baseball cleats and uniform, jerseys and dress shirts and his music collection. Each object brings on a new wave of pain and loss. I had fooled myself into thinking I was feeling acceptance. Now I suspect what I thought was acceptance is actually still shock. And in the moments where the shock subsides, there is only pain. Deep and debilitating pain.

I had moved my wedding band to my right hand the day we came home. I had decided to do it as a symbolic gesture that we were beginning a new life, but I cannot leave it as such. I confessed this tonight to my friend and my oldest daughter who said, “I don’t think you should ever have to take it off. It doesn’t matter what other people think if in your heart you still feel like you’re married.” She may be right or in time it might feel right to remove it. Today, I cannot. I’ve moved it back to my left hand. Right now I guess it is just symbolic of what I still long for. What I feel inside.

Someone gave me a quote from a novel. In essence it challenged me to not live in anger about the future I have lost, but to be thankful for every moment I was given. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to focus on those memories. But not today. Today was just a very sad day. A day where it felt like he should have come home for dinner. But the door never opened and he never came. It was just a very sad day.