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. 

I'm afraid to answer the door

Onto greener pastures.

I'm done being the grieving widow. I have felt this way for a few weeks now but today I gave myself permission. 

My therapist and I go through the time lines, the conversation is not always in sequence but today we finally arrived at a crossroad. 

1. Grieve longer (maybe even forever)
I think those who knew Christopher and I, and hopefully, by reading these words you can understand/have understood the depth of love that the two of us share(d). It would only be natural for me to continue grieving. Carrying this heavy weight and hurt around. He was my true love. My everything. Everything I was depended on him. His love, his friendship, his thoughts, his advice. Everything I wanted to be, involved him. Sometimes to the point where I could easily lose sight of who Lindsey was. He never expected this or asked me to do this, it just happened over the course of our relationship. It happened way before I even met Christopher. 

Remember, Jim? 
Yeah. 

The shift came when we moved to Colorado. Finally.
I belonged somewhere. My people. My vibe. I found Lindsey. 

She was just hidden in the curves of the mountains. 

Side note: Go to Colorado. Go out west. Soak it all in. 


Christopher deployed in March, we had just moved there in August so I had the warmer months to get settled and find my groove. 
Maneuvering our new adventures with two kids and adjusting to the geographical single parent role. We made friends. We hiked. Foraged. Built a life in this hippie Mayberry-esque town. 

Then life. 

I could grieve forever and would have every right to. 

2. Fight for answers
I can't answer my front door. I have to give myself a pep talk to do so, even when I know a delivery or someone is going to be there in 30 minutes or less. Anxiety and fear sink in and I make someone else answer or just won't at all. This is because of all the unanswered questions and speculations left lingering about. The closure that I still haven't received. 

One day he was fine, the next "pilots are at the door". 

Debilitating. 
Can't move on because everyone has lied. 
Everyone. 
From the beginning. 

I could fight. Blow up. Demand answers. 

Demand answers from people that have lied to my face, who have watched me scream and wail over my husband's casket. 

3. What I've chosen to do 

Move forward. 

I'm going to brag a bit and share what my therapist said today. 

"You are transitioning in and out of grief beautifully." 

I knew it was time. 

She knows everything. All the darkness. All the light. She's kept me balanced and honest. And honesty hurts. It is painful but it is necessary to move forward. I gave myself permission today. The last painful hurt,  the last amount of guilt and anger was shed. I released it to her and I didn't explode. She accepted me. 

"Most folks would rather believe in comforting bullshit than face scary reality. The sad thing is, you face scary reality, and things can actually begin to get better." 

Waylon Lewis 

I'm always going to miss my husband. There will be days, painful days but there will be more joy and more happiness than there ever was before. We understand how much it means now. The three of us have endured and will endure a hurt that most people won't go through till much later, if at all. 

It has changed us. 
It has softened me. 
It is ever evolving. 
I'm just going to keep flowing. 

I still have no clue who I am or what I want but I'm figuring it out. I also no longer need Christopher to make me feel loved or accepted or like I matter. 
I know what we had and what we shared and I will cling tightly to that. 

I'm also learning how to love myself. 
That I am a really good human being.
A being. 

The appreciation of my existence no longer depends on the love from someone else.  

I can love myself and in turn can love others purely. 
As it should be. 

Addendum. 

Otis Redding
Good to me  

I'm not crazy

Song of the day: 

Animal Collective

Kinda Bonkers

But maybe I am. I looked it up. 
The definition of crazy is a mentally deranged person. 

I looked up deranged.

 mad; insane 

I looked up insane. 

in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill 

There we go. 


Then I found this. 

"Complicated Grief Disorder, also known as traumatic or prolonged grief. The new diagnosis refers to a situation in which many of grief’s common symptoms—such as powerful pining for the deceased, great difficulty moving on, a sense that life is meaningless, and bitterness or anger about the loss—­last longer than six months."

Powerful pining. 
Check.
Difficulty moving on, if this includes extreme anxiety about decisions having to be made that would have normally been made with him, if this means I sleep with his dirty, smelly tan t-shirt every night because I pray to God or anyone listening that they will send him back to me, then...
Check. 
Sense that life is meaningless. Honestly, there are days. What's the point? What's the reason? Old life, new life, balance. How? 
Check.
Bitterness and anger about the loss.
Oh, yeah. Not at Christopher though, and believe me I've tried being angry at him. I chose him in this life though and there were some that didn't understand why I chose him over and over and over again. But I did. In life and death.
Check.

Yesterday was a really hard day. I was insulted from the start and then it just spiraled. The saving grace was Alexander's baseball game, nail biting excitement. They lost but they played with such spirit and tenacity, hard to focus on a crummy day when these kids are out there hustling their hearts out. Parents cheering, yelling at umpires (they get a beating, huh), mesmerized by seven and eight year olds playing like pint sized pros. Reminders that life is still here, ticking along and even if the start felt meaningless, those pint sized pros need their fans. 

I've noticed a pattern. The date creeps, adding another number to the months that he's been gone. I wonder if he'd be in the same spot had it been me that died? Sobbing, praying for answers and questioning life at its core. Doing his absolute best to create a happy life for our kids. Existing and grasping at any straw that resembles some form of what he used to be, what we were, what I was.  

It is possible I'm insane. I don't need a straight jacket. 
This type of insane comes from deep, complicated, grief.

Deep.
Complicated.
Grief.

I don't buy the disorder part. Love is not a disorder and just because he's dead, well that doesn't mean I can stop loving. 

He can't be replaced. I can be a highly functioning griever. 

I won't stop moving and shaking, my heart may just always be breaking.

Maybe I should write country songs? 

I don't need a straight jacket, just a tan t-shirt. 

I don't smile like I did before

Sundays were my favorite day of the week. I would wake up, peek over and he was already awake staring back or up, cooking breakfast, beginning the one day we cherished. There weren't any interruptions on Sundays. Our day to recharge from the week, to spend as much time as we possibly could doing what we loved. At the top of that list was just being together. I can taste it. I can see him standing there, I can smell him. And then it's gone and I'm racing trying to remember every detail, every line on his face, every eye lash that protected his spirit. The spirit that is aligned with mine. 

I'm having to redefine my Sundays. And every other day in between. 

I can write all of this down, desperate for someone to understand but until your life has been interrupted abruptly, completely ripped at the seams and everything you are, everything you hoped for and dreamed of is just sprawled out in the streets exposed. 

Run over by the rat race. Damaged. Raw. 

Nerve endings that you don't think will ever heal. 

I'm not talking about a hurt that goes away either. It's not like I stubbed my toe. This pain. This solitude. This crushing weight of reality. I can't describe that type of pain to you. You have to feel it. From what I've gathered, numbing the pain is easier, I can't do that though. I've tried. I've tried to run away from this, it's not going anywhere. I end up right where I began so I have to find a way to face this. To live with the pain, learn how to silence it when necessary and let it roar when the time is right. This Sunday it's thunderous. I'm allowing it, not without a little preparation for the next time it comes around. The theme this week and since I've come out of the fog has been defining who I am. What I want out of this. Small steps. 

Sundays are for peace.

Sundays are for smiling until you finally see a glimpse of yourself.

Sundays are for dogs.

Sundays are for yoga and walks.

Sundays are for sunshine and swimming pools.

Sundays are for cold, dreary weather.

Sundays are for hot tea and bonfires.

Sundays are for board games.

Sundays are for endless giggles.

Sundays are for donuts or long, drawn out brunches. 

Sundays are for freezing moments so you don't, won't forget. 

Sundays are for woods, and letting you know your aren't alone.

Sundays are for family, and not always with the ones who share your DNA. 

Sundays are for Stevie Wonder.

Sundays are for wonder.

Sundays are for wander.

Sundays are for enchantment.

Sundays are for Lindsey.

Sundays are for remembrance. 

Sundays are for love.

My days are never the same. I will never be the same. Adjusting to this is challenging and some days I feel like I'm coasting. I don't know what I want, who I want, how I want. I ask myself these questions all the time, the only answer I can come up with is travel. Chris and I travelled all the time. Together and separate, we would joke that our "seven year itch" was our nomadic spirit calling, time to move. Time to shake a leg. I hear you. 

I hear you and I'm listening. 

First stop is Disney World as soon as school gets out. The kids have no idea and I can't wait to see their astonished little faces. 

Sundays are for surprises.