Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Easier? Not exactly.

I'm starting the fourth year without my beloved Warren. The past three years have been a crescendo of unmitigated sadness and physical and emotional suffering and pain. The passage of time, everyone told me, would lessen the pain, the sadness and the anger. Everyone assured me that, with time, my life would get easier to bear.

I still get asked how I'm doing. I can't answer without either lying to make you feel better or telling the truth which would make you feel bad about asking. My close friends never ask. They already understand that my heart will never completely heal. They know that I cry every day. They know that his loss is more than I can bear. They know this because his loss is their loss too, and they all still feel it, deeply, in their own way.

So, easier is not exactly the word I would use. There is nothing easy about losing a person who has been such a loving force throughout most of your life. The only change that I can readily recognize is a lessening of the times the searing pain rams through my very being. But to me, that is not an insignificant change.

I can now look at any of the dozens of photos I have of him all over the house and not get totally crushed with sadness. I think I smile at them a little more, remembering where the photos were taken and what we were doing. Those flashbacks have a calming effect and bring up incredibly funny and loving memories.

This is not to say that my life is normal again. My road has been long, maybe longer than what others believe is normal or standard or commonplace. There is no "normal" in my life or at least what I perceive it to be. I'll admit I have fought "normal" all the way, unable to give up my pictures of a life I still long for. I knew it would be difficult, but DAMN!

So easier? No, it will never really be easier. But maybe heading toward tolerable. I wrote in November of 2017 that I was looking for tolerable days. I think they're finally starting to show up.

Copyright © 2020. Reisa Sterling Miller. All Rights Reserved.