A Man Called Otto. A Woman Called WTF.

I saw the movie “A Man Named Otto” last night. I was captivated. The story is about choices after the loss of a loved one, about how sometimes the universe has a different choice than the one you may desire, and how letting love and light in can mean life can be different but life can still be beautiful.

I’ve thought a lot about the movie this morning and how it parallels my life. About choices I made and about where I was a year and a half ago and where I am now. About how I’m open to what the universe has in store for me. 

In the month or two after My Favourite Husband (MFH) died, I felt I had no purpose. I did absolutely nothing to hasten my demise but if I would’ve been run over by an electric bicycle and earned my angel wings, I would’ve been OK with that. I loved that hard and now I was grieving that hard. 

I understand how people can die of a broken heart not long after their partner passes. When you find “your person” — the other half who makes you whole — your life is in sync. There’s balance and purpose and that purpose is to build a life together. When you lose the other part of your 'we,' the building stops, the construction incomplete. Purpose? Gone. So it’s a fair question to ask: “Why should I go on?" 

For me, the answer was within me all along. No matter the hurt, no matter the darkness, the loneliness, the despair, I know MFH like I know myself and he wouldn’t give up and nor should I. No one needed to tell me “he’d want you to go on” or “he’d want you to live your life” or “he’d want you to be happy.” No one knew him like I did. Only I could say those words to myself because only he and I spoke those words from our hearts aloud to each other.

Still, it was not easy. I fought hard for every fraction of a step that I took forward. I pushed and persevered, and there were times that I went to “shut the door” and when I did, much like Marisol did in the movie, a boot was firmly placed to keep that door open. Those boots were firm and insistent; the foot in the boot intentional with love.

Love that demanded life. Love that defined purpose as discovering passion for life and all that it offers. Love that knows life is a tapestry of joys and sorrows and dares you to open yourself up to experience it all. Love that knows that being without a partner does not men being without love in your life. 

Much like this movie, I have people who never gave up on me nor I on them. People who were persistent that I remain in the land of the living because I have so much to offer the world. And so my new life was born, whether I wanted it or not. 

My purpose is still to build a life. I’m still the engineer in charge of the construction but, this time, the building has a different blueprint. The materials though are the same: love and life. Giving everything that I have to spending what time I have here.

So the choices that I make are the choices that are the best for me in the moment. That has meant trying a new career, trying different hobbies, meeting new people and, yes, going on a date. Whether anyone agrees my choices or not doesn’t matter. They are not the architects of my days and how they are spent. 

The movie ends the way my life will end, my final chapter of my book written, my story complete. It is up to me to make sure that the pages between then and now are written true to myself, making every paragraph count, every chapter a legacy. 

❤️