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"The searing pain that accompanies loss can feel suffocating. The reality is that grief is not something that most people get “through” (this implies that there is somehow a finite ending point). Similarly, to suggest to someone who has experienced loss that it is something that he or she will “get over” can add excruciating insult to injury. Rather, loss is something that we assimilate to. It changes and transforms us. Some losses leave an indelible mark on our hearts and alter the fabric of who we are and how we move forward with our lives."

Joy Lere, Psy.D.

Who I'm becoming is slowly unfurling. The dust has settled and I'm starting to link the moments, the mistakes, the happiness, the passions, the regrets, and the agonies from the years I've lived so far. Carefully connecting the past into what I want my future to be, taking the hard lessons and the memories I breezed by because I thought they were less than, because I couldn't see the importance in simplicity.  

I'm curating a new existence for myself. 

Over the past 33 (in a week 34) years I've lived many different lives. If I met any of my former selves today, they'd be strangers. This time last year I would have been able to pin point every one of them. I could have told you with an assurance  this is who Lindsey is because of who this Lindsey is and this one and that one. 

I categorized myself into compartments, only revisiting them when I needed to. When it suited me to feel what needed to be felt. 

Before death, I convinced myself that this was necessary. 

After death, all bets were off. 

Even our timeline as human beings. Our evolution as a society is marked by before and after death. 

How could I miss the poignancy?

My life has been irrevocably changed by death. I write these words and these thoughts because it allows me to open the box of my life before. No longer in compartments but a big jumbled mess of me, of who I am. The words flow out of me and a memory sparks. A feeling or idea that gives me hope for my life after death. Or brings me to my knees, some days the memories are just too much. Accepting and knowing that this is my life now, it was traumatic at first, but now has ignited a fire inside me that I can't put out. I live to understand, not compare or contrast, but to truly become vulnerable to others and their experiences. There is no room for comparison in grief. 

Just as my life, is mine. My grief is the same way. 

I don't talk about my children and their grief often because I feel that it is their own story to tell. And because I have no idea what they are feeling. They acknowledge and comprehend what has happened, some days are bad but mostly their lives are happy and content. I can't compare our losses, I just try to empathize with theirs as they continue to grow. 

They are young and resilient. 

Wise and in some ways all knowing but one day those views will change and the hurt may be an obstacle. A lot of my grief and heartache is because I know there is a void in their lives that they will always endure. As a parent you want to protect your children and this loss is a ravenous beast at times. I want them to know that they are not alone. I want them to be comfortable opening themselves up. Allowing the rawness to sweep over them at times, mindful it won't last forever. 

The void, that will never go away but they'll learn to live with it just as I am. 

Pure and kind. Confident in their decisions but grasping that mistakes are just that, they don't encompass who we are but only guide our future choices. 

One day they'll be old enough to read these words and understand the gravity of my loss. 

A wife. A best friend. A lover. A connection. A human. 

Old enough to realize there is more to the story than just grief. There is and was love.

Enough to fill the sky.

I want to document my life with the man that is a part of me.  

A part of them. 

Such a tragic love story. At least I get to choose the ending. 

I'll never listen to Journey the same way again

I have prayed for patience my entire life. I never understood why. Why would I diligently pray for something so boring? As a teenager I naively thought that it was to prolong my love for procrastination. In relationships, I would always jump in head first, far too quickly. I would rush from place, person and thing because as much as I prayed for it, I had none. 

I still prayed. 

Now, I'm incredibly patient. In all things. 
And my childish, unknowing, pure heart. 
That girl. Her prayers were answered. 

When I met Christopher, I learned rather quickly that having patience would pay off in the end. Trying to rush or antagonize over his job would only make things worse. He was committed to his duties and I trusted him. I also began to understand a much darker, scarier side to his job and the weight he carried. He had a mask as well. 
He trusted me. 

We were both damaged. Sad childhoods that connected us together. 
He got it, I got it. 
It wasn't all sad but his life mirrored mine in so many ways that eventually after we shed years of hurt and misunderstandings, we let fate guide us. 

Christopher was not the easiest person to live with at first. I moved into his one bedroom apartment at the beginning of May 2009, but really I had moved in long before that. His apartment flooded the day I moved in. Most of my things were going to a storage unit but his, our, entire apartment was flooded. He called me that morning pissed off because when his alarm went off, he rolled over only to place his feet in a wet, squishy, earthworm infested carpet. 
He was at my house an hour later. 

"Water under the bridge, and feet. Heh." 

The apartment complex moved us into a 3 bedroom apartment and we entered the "honeymoon phase". Moving day to day, learning each others habits and quirks that once weren't so obvious. Incredibly eager, over the moon, unsure but committed. 

Christopher was adamant about his hangers and clothes facing a certain direction and I thought he was insane the first time I did his laundry. 

Oh, no. 

He was very serious. 

He eventually learned though that if he liked having the "laundry fairy" wash and put away his clothes then he'll get over the hanger facing the wrong direction. 

Until this day, I still hang his clothes the way he liked. 

A lot of our friends lived in the same apartment complex or nearby and we indulged in a life of happiness, too much drinking and many thoughts and stories from men that frightened but entranced me at the same time. 
I was ecstatic for our life ahead and then in June, finally back into our apartment. Planning adventures for the summer. Turbo died. 


Delaney was Christopher's best friend. Robert, Bobby, Turbo. 
He and I became friends as well and more importantly, I began to truly understand what it meant when these men referred to each other as "brothers". 
Christopher changed. I held him as he sobbed and pleaded with me to give him answers. We drove to West Virginia for the funeral and I was amazed by the love and dedication shown to Turbo and his family. It was heartbreaking and at times unbearable. There were also moments of joy. Provoked by the overwhelming grief and pain, and being able to still laugh, it was illicit. 
Feelings I am far more comfortable with now. 

The etchings of tragedy on our souls, we all have them, they started to manifest within Christopher. He couldn't see past death, how everyone he loved had to die. I ached for him, mostly because I didn't know how to help him, I hadn't experienced death like he had. My only solution was to love him through it. To fight for the good in him. I lost, a lot. His demons were clawing at him and one night he snapped. 
He loved Crown Royal. 

"Lindsey doesn't like the devil juice." 

He had too much that night and we were listening to music, talking. The tv was on but we were using it as a light rather than entertainment. Our conversation turned, he slammed his hand down on our coffee table and crash. The glass top shattered and I lost it, which only made matters worse. Demanding to know why he would do that! Knowing it was a mistake but our coffee table is ruined now and there is glass everywhere. I was a brat. Finally, we calmed down and he started to clean up the mess. The shock sobered him up a bit and he apologized profusely. 

He had just gotten back from JRTC in Louisiana.

We had just found out we were having a baby. 

He stopped drinking Crown that night. 

We decided if we had a boy, we would name him Robert. 

Our son was born April 30th 2010. Alexander Robert Wilbur. 

I no longer pray for patience. I acquired that a long time ago without even realizing it. I now pray for courage and a tenaciously kind heart, for humility and to accept what I do not understand. 

To trust. I pray for these things so I can raise our son and our daughter to live up to their names. 

And so all this pain and all this hurt doesn't amount to nothing. 

Lamentation

The last time I saw my husband, felt him, held him, he was dead. 

I was so afraid to see his body. I had no idea what to expect. It had been over a week since they delivered the news of his death, I prepared myself as best I could. 
Deep breath, Lindsey.
He's in there. 

Once the funeral director had set everything up I was allowed to be with him. Gasps of horror, deep, painful sorrow. I began to sob. I hadn't really cried before this moment. 
None of it had seemed real before I saw him. And then I caressed his head and felt the staples in his skull from the autopsy. 
I jumped back. Scared and unsure. I was pleading with myself to wake up from this nightmare but it just continued. Our life together was crumbling and shattering in front of my eyes and I couldn't do anything to stop it. His body was cremated two days later. 

10 months in, I am still recovering from the burns. 
I was with him in that box. 

I can't describe in words how painful it is to know that he was being burned. He was dead. I know he didn't feel it and this is what he wanted. Part of me is grateful because I can't promise that if he were buried, I may or may not try to dig him up. 

I've witnessed pain like this in the flesh only once. Watching a mother scream and wail, clinging to her son's dead body, determined to be buried with him. 

Strangers suffering silently, effortlessly mourning, waking up early to cry alone. Shifting with every crack, some cracks have scarred over but they are deep and still tender. 
Roots. 

Christopher and I nurtured each other, we planted our tree. 


When you love someone those roots start to form. Some relationships can be easily plucked, and some, no matter how much you dig and tug, they aren't going anywhere. It settles within you. Like the earth beneath your feet. 

I'm tripping. Fumbling around, accomplishing daily tasks and existing in a non committal society of social media and chance encounters. 
Cultivating relationships with people that will allow me to drone on about Christopher and how much we love him. 
Who aren't bothered by my tears. 
Who experience my joy and accept this scarred heart. 
Because they know, they're scarred too. 

Father's Day is going to be brutal. 
The hurts will continue and I'm beginning to understand why people claim grief is worst the first and second year. 

All the memories and flashbacks from August are flooding my thoughts. Pain I haven't allowed myself to feel because it wasn't real. 
He's not deployed. 
He's not coming home. 
The death certificate should be here any day. 

It's real. 
The scars run deep.