Tag: grieving who I used to be

Matt,

I don’t know why your anniversary on October 3rd hit me so hard.   It’s been 4 years and 9 months since you left this earth, but for some reason this anniversary hit me like a well thrown brick.   Perhaps it’s because we are only 3 months short of your 5th year angelversary   My brain knows you have been gone this long, my heart still struggles with this painful reality.

I feel like a broken piece of pottery.   Once whole.  Once beautiful.   Once useful.   Now I’ve been shattered so many times the pieces that compose me are sharp and  jagged.   No longer fitting perfectly together.   Leaving large gaps that will never fit together to make me whole again.

I look at pictures of us.  Smiling faces stare back at me.   You as an innocent child in my arms.   The joy radiating from my eyes.   I look at pictures of you and Mike.   Both happy and healthy.   Sadly,  there will be no more pictures of you.   What I have is all that will ever be.

My pictures look nothing like the broken woman I have morphed into.   My eyes carry a sadness that cannot be disguised.   My smile is nothing like the one before your death.   Some days I look at my reflection in the mirror and I want to cry.   I miss who I was before your death.   Now as I battle cancer, my reflection is even more painful.

I look like a ghost of the woman I was before.   Pain has taken its toll on my face and body.   Your loss continues to shock and shatter me.   Our pictures never gave a clue as to how our lives would take a turn that would change me into someone I no longer recognize.

My losses just keep piling on.   First your death.   Then my career.  Next were the friends who ran out of my life as fast as their legs would carry them.  Losing both Bella and Simon within weeks of each other was losing another connection to you.    Now, it’s my health.   I wonder if I will ever be able to piece myself together again.   I wonder if my body will return to a state of normal allowing me to enjoy the little things again.   Yoga and biking.   Walking the dogs and making dinner.   Things I always took for granted as I took for granted that you would beat your disease and live.

So now I struggle to pick up my pieces and find a way to make them fit.   The problem with broken pottery is once it’s broken it can never be repaired to the original state.   It will always show the cracks.   It will always show signs of damage.

The life I’m left to live is one I never saw coming.   I’ve read that grief consists of two parts.   The first being loss.   The next is the remaking of life.   Funny, life has continued to go on around me.   I am older and somewhat wiser.   I have learned not to sweat the small stuff.   As so much of life really is small stuff.   I have learned to stop and feel my grief.   I’ve forgiven myself for not being able to save you.   I know I will never return to the woman I was before your death.   I’m trying to rebuild my pieces.   Somedays I remember you, me and Mike holding hand and singing Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.   Humpty Dumpty had a big fall.   All the Kings’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Matt, never did I think I would be Humpty.   I miss you.   I miss me.   I miss who we used to be…………….