I'm more than a statistic

"Did you know… 800,000 people are widowed each year?"

I did not know this but now it is my reality so I've become very aware. 

"Did you know… 700,000 of those are women?"

Figures. 

I have yet to meet a widower. 

At any age.  

"Did you know… most widows live in poverty?" 

(Over 115 million world wide)

I did not know this. Christopher and I were prepared. His job provided security for our kids and I. We also took extra precautions and filed the proper paperwork, always prepared for the "what ifs". 

We knew it could happen. We just never thought it would.

I have plans though. Not all is lost. 

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” 

― Charles Dickens 

"Did you know… “death of a spouse” is listed as the #1 stressor on the stress index scale and is considered one of life’s most devastating events?"

Yep. 

Well aware. 

But I'm doing it. 

Diving in head first. 

"Did you know… 60% of those who lose a spouse or significant other will experience a serious illness within 12 months?"

Once I came up for air I knew my health was a priority. I dug deep and leaned into the emotions. Allowed myself to feel the pain rather escape it. 

I'm strong, stronger than I have ever been but I know not everyone is like me. This is why I can't hide behind the curtains. This is why I have to share what I have been through. I can help others like me. I can be a light, however faint, on those dark days. 

The darkness is real and terrifying.

I want to be a lighthouse. 

"Did you know… The average age of widowhood is 55, and 75 percent of women will be widowed by age 56?"

The majority I know are under 40. I have met or known 4 in just the last year who have lost their husband. 

I hurt for them. I feel their heartbreaking. And I see them smiling, thriving, clasping to anything remarkable. 

It is tragic and beautiful and pushes me to work harder and give more. Their survival to live inspires me. 

"Did you know… most widow(er)s lose 75% of their support base when their spouse dies?"

All types of circumstances occur after death. We moved across the country. We left a lot behind. Our family is used to being nomadic though. I had to rebuild a life, in a new city, but I had done that before. Just not alone. 

I haven't been alone though. I lost a lot of people on August 12th but the ones that remained and those I gained afterward are what I focus on now. The energy I put out is what I attract and I must be putting out some good vibes because I'm blessed to have so many people in my life that love me. That love us. 

"Did you know… after 3 – 4 months most of the remaining support fades for a widow(er)?"

I have realized that we are inept to deal with grief as a society. 

Life goes on and people expect you to do the same. 

The more we open ourselves up to our emotions.

The less we talk and the more we listen.

Everything can change. 

I hope to change the face of grief. 

(I have a plan for that too.)

"Did you know… scamming and manipulation are common practice toward the widowed?"

This was the most shocking! So many men reaching out to me on social media or through my personal contact information. Men I have never met. It is UNREAL and disturbing. 

They won't prey on my vulnerability. 

"Did you know… it really is possible to die of a broken heart? Widow(er)s have a 30% elevated risk of death in the first 6 months after their spouses died."

My heart broke when we landed in Colorado returning from the funeral. All the pain and loss, my chest felt like it was being twisted and pulled apart. I could feel my heart, the muscle itself, splitting in two. 

I thought I was going to die. 

I didn't. 

Source:

http://peaceloveandgrief.com/?tag=widow-statistics 

Pep talk

Death is a transition, an ending and beginning for those that have stopped and those still breathing. 

I haven't accepted what has happened to me, I have adapted. 

Ego misled me. 

I had the belief that I was in control. 

I was a fool. 

Blinded by my assumption that I had already suffered enough. 

I thought that if I were a good person, laid low, loved my husband and my children, that I would be skimmed over. 

That this would NEVER happen to me. 

and then BAM!

I now know that my past, my suffering, my love and joy, every element of every hour, day, week, was in preparation for my life now. 

That suffering isn't limited or measured. 

It doesn't care if you've had your heart broken before. 

What you become after, when your heart begins to heal, what you decide to do with your discomfort is essentially all that matters. 

It's not easy, but I know life isn't meant to be effortless. 

I am destined for more. 

I wake every morning with a purpose in my heart. 

I'll be damned if I let this life go to waste. 

Bull-fookey

I made it. Day 366. I didn't crumble. 
I am grounded in my new life. 
I am strong enough to shed the sorrows I have been carrying around for the past year. 

I can set myself free. 

What I have learned this year is nothing is promised to us. 
If we make a promise, we have to keep it. 
It is our gift. 
If we love someone, we need to love them fully. 
Faults and all. 
It is our gift. 
It is our triumph.

I have learned that we are not perfect. We are not invincible. 
If you blink, a year goes by. 
I now know how depressed my husband was. I have felt his pain, I have grieved for him. His pain, his darkness has been mine. 

Has been. 
It is time to come to the light. For the both of us. 

I have felt every emotion this year, tiny receptors accepting what this world is capable of. 
Sensory overload. 
Good and bad. 

I have felt emotions that I didn't know existed. Created my own words for feelings I couldn't experience before, I wasn't open enough to accept them. 
But once you're ripped open you have no choice in the matter. 
My grandfather made up words, "bull-fookey" was his favorite. 
This year was bull-fookey to the core. 

I have fallen in love with my children over and over this year. I would search for answers, filling the void with nothing. When I found my way back to their tiny open arms, I realized they don't see my tears as a burden. 

They see me. 
Faults and all. 
Beautifully scarred. 
They accept me, they want me. 
I am theirs and they are mine. 

They are tiny miracles of Christopher and I.  

They will have to live with this loss much longer. 
I will fight for them. 
I will protect them. 
I will love them fiercely so they will never feel alone, they will never feel neglected, they will never feel lost. They will be whole and can go out into this big beautiful world with an infinite amount of love. 

I have learned that answers will not come when you want them. 

They will come when you need them. 

People will lie to your face, they will say horrible things. 
I have learned to forgive. 
The response of others is not for me to understand, my response is what matters. Their issues, their pain, their projection of what causes their words and actions is not my weight to carry. 
I have been there. I have felt that pain, spoken foolishly, viciously responded to people or issues that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with me. 
I have learned that our mistakes do not define who we are. Christopher taught me that. 

I have a new found love for my country, for the men and women who defend our freedom. They go beyond the call of duty and we have failed them. The policies have to change. The misconception that asking for help, that showing weakness is equivalent to failure, it has to change. I will fight for them because they fight for us. 

I have learned what faith is. Faith is not the promise of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is about the rainbow. Faith is the daily reminder that despite all the grim and agonizing journeys we may have to endure, we are still here. 
Still breathing. 
Still capable of experiencing joy. 
There is an abundance of wonder and it's intoxicating. 
It is a kaleidoscope.
Faith is what keeps one foot in front of the other. 

Faith is about choosing to live in the light and only in the dark when it is time to rest. 

I really like reading the dictionary

Tomorrow will be 11 months.
It's almost been a year and when I think about that day it still scares me. Even though I've lived through it, I've survived the pain it brought. It still terrifies me. I can see the two men standing at my door with such clarity it's as if they were standing in front of me now. I try not to think of that day because of how haunting it becomes. The knock, the numbness, screaming just because I have no idea what else to do. 



There are still accounts with his name on it. Memories of a life that will never exist again but I don't have the heart to take his name of because I feel like I'd be erasing him. 

We have been away from home and it was difficult unlocking the door this time. Before we arrived I had a flashback of Christopher, barefoot, opening the door at the exact time we pulled into the driveway because that's what he did. As if he'd been sitting by the window, completely devoted to welcoming us home. 
He wasn't here. 
There is an emptiness inside me that will never be filled. It will remain prodigious for the rest of my life. 

I'm not afraid of moving on, I've done that. One foot in front of another, I'll keep moving along. It's what I have to leave behind that continues to stab my consciousness. 
Fear and opportunity, they seem to work together like pain and joy. 

I've been reading the book The Goldfinch. It's about a 13 year old boy who loses his mother in the most horrific way and survives to only suffer continuing blows. One after another, after another. But he also understands love in the most profound way a 13 year old boy (or anyone I've met) can. Highly recommend it. 

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.” 
 Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

To know we're not alone in suffering, to know that ultimately we will all die one day, embracing it and opening ourselves up to the possibility of sharing not only our happiness but our miseries. I wish I didn't have to cry alone in fear of being shamed into believing I'm not strong if I do. 
Read the book. 

More or less

"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.