Join me on my journey

I really wanted to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. I wanted to reach out and kiss you and tell you how happy and proud I am to be your wife and, in a world where nothing seems permanent, we made our marriage last a quarter of a century. 

I really wanted to … but I couldn’t.

Because you’re gone. 

There’s nothing to celebrate. We didn’t make it to our 25th. You are buried in a beautiful country cemetery and I’m alone with memories. So I started what would have been our silver anniversary sad and melancholy. Facebook was an ass and didn’t help because there are so many photos of us together celebrating over the years. Those posts made me smile for the time we had together but made me cry — ugly cry — because we wouldn’t be making anymore memories.

No more suppers at the quaint neighbourhood French restaurant. No more anniversaries spent at a local junkyard scavenging for car parts for your latest project, followed by a celebratory Costco hot dog. 

I didn’t want to be sad alone, so I called my Mom. She let me cry. She let me tell her the story about the eternity band I wanted for our 25th. The one where I told you I’d like a band and you said, “What if I don’t make it to our 25th?” to which I saucily replied: “Well, you better get on it now then!” And you laughed. But it’s not so funny now.

I told her about our plan to take a trip for our 25th and that’s when I got angry.

I told her that “he fucked that up” and Mom replied, “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his plan, Honey.” And she’s right because neither you nor I want you gone. But I’m angry that you are gone. 

This isn’t the first time in the past year that I’ve been angry that you died — angry with you, angry with the world, angry with God, angry with myself. 

Aggressive metal music didn’t help. Cleaning didn’t help. Stomping around the house didn’t help. Nothing helped, although it did exhaust me. 

And when I sat down and took a beat to deep breathe and exhale the pain, I knew it was time to begin to flip the lens. I’ve done so much work this year in defining how I want my grief to look; how I want my life to look. I’ve worked on celebrating and appreciating what I did have and trying not to focus as much on what I can never have because the story of us is complete.

I’ve worked so hard to live in the light, to push through the pain; to be grateful for the many years we did have together. There are couples who didn’t get the time we did, who don’t have the years of memories to treasure.

Flipping the lens didn’t bring me instant peace but it did soothe my heart and make it a little less heavy, a little more grateful. Grateful for the life I lived then and grateful for the life I’m building now.

So … welcome to my life. To my blog. To my journey. It’s a journey on which I’m learning that grief and loss are sneaky. You think you’ve escaped their grip. You think you’ve left them behind. But you haven’t and, at any unexpected moment, they can pull you back in. But when that happens, it doesn’t mean I stop moving forward and building the new life I’ve envisioned for myself.

When I was widowed in 2021, it shattered me — much like any loss breaks apart the hearts of those left behind. After my first few months of deep, raw grief, I began to slowly think about how I wanted my life to look and how I wanted my grief to look in my life. I grew up in a society where mourners are expected to “hide” their grief and move on; where you don’t talk about your deceased loved ones as much because it might make someone feel awkward. 

I knew that form of grieving was not for me. I wanted to get to a place where I could celebrate what I had and not live in constant sorrow for what never could be. I want to take my past and my present and put them together to find a beautiful future. 

Over the last year, I’ve been journalling some of my thoughts, feelings and experiences I’ve had in my journey. 

In this blog, I will be writing about where I am now in my grief journey but also pulling excerpts from my journals to show where I’ve been and how far I’ve come.

I wanted to share them because grief is a very personal journey and there is no roadmap or guidebook to it. Everyone experiences loss and grief and my hope is this space will connect us and make the road ahead feel less lonely for all of us.

If you would like to share your experiences, please do so in the comments — and together we can create a community where we can find a way through our grief that works for each of us.

Much love ❤️