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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.