Forget Me Not

I have been spending all my time trying to forget. Trying to push away all the awful memories that have haunted me these past few months. I have been trying to forget the terrible images that have invaded my head and how horrible I feel. It is not working.

What I fear now is forgetting the important parts. As the move inches closer and closer, I fear of forgetting you. I am terrified of losing you after we move. It is hard being in this house, seeing you everywhere. But when we move – that is it. There are no more new memories of you – just old ones.

I sat at dinner the other night with the children and we tried to recall all your corny jokes. They remember more than me. I am trying to find a happy medium of forgetting the image of you dying and remembering your beautiful face. It is a battle. It is a fight. It is sad and scary.

I went to the cemetery today. I have been gone so long and have missed you. My feet followed the path I now know so well and I didn’t get lost. I sat at your grave and cried. I sat under the warm sun just crying for you. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I go – it never feels like you can really be there. Sometimes I want to dig into the ground, just to really see for myself. My head knows you are dead, but my heart just doesn’t want to believe you are gone forever.

I told you about the children. About report cards and reading levels and the temper tantrums. I told you we were moving. I just talked and talked. You said nothing. I asked the air if you were here with me and when the wind blew I took it as a yes. I am grasping at straws, but I need something. I need some connection to you, because after we move I fear I will have lost them all.

I stared at the pile of dirt and feel like it is symbolic of my life now. Just one big pile of dirt that I am trying to clean up. I told you I was sorry. I told you I feel like a terrible wife for allowing this to happen. I know this isn’t my fault. But still, when your husband chooses death over life with you – you feel terrible about yourself. You just do.

I told you that I thought you make a bad choice when you decided to kill yourself. I talked to you about all the other ways we could have solved our problems. The only thing that has ever really mattered to me was keeping our family together. This has always been the only thing important to me and you knew this. Yet here you lie – dead to the world. You took the only thing I ever wanted away from me and it hurts – it still really hurts.

I thought about our life together and where do I go from here. It seems a long and treacherous road lies ahead. I can’t see beyond the next turn and only hope it is brighter than what I am leaving behind. I am trying not to drown in my own self pity and grief. I am trying to look ahead and feel better about the future. I am pained when I sit in the park with the children and seen fathers with their kids playing and laughing. I am devastated for them over and over. I just wish he could be here with us. I just wish a lot of things.

Tonight at dinner the children cried for you. It came out of nowhere and I wonder if they knew I went to see you today. I feel sometimes my visits spark their tears as if I brought a little piece of you home and they can sense it.

Your son took a picture of the two of you off the wall and just held it in his hands – stroking your face in the photo and asking you to come home. It is awful to watch this and feel hopeless beyond belief. It angers me and saddens me and makes me want to scream. But the moment didn’t last long. I told him we would hang the photo back up in his new room and the tears quickly went away.

I am trying to talk about you and remember you in the best way possible. I want the children and I to laugh at what you loved and think about you without sorrow. I just fear as time moves on and memories fade what I will be left with. The images that haunt or the sweet memories that I need.

I haven’t slept well all week – when I do sleep my dreams are littered with packing anxiety and dead bodies. It is a terrible combination and makes me not want to sleep at all.

Four weeks until we move. I have packed two boxes. At this rate I will be ready to move by the end of the year. I packed the two boxes today after the cemetery. It is difficult to wrap each item that once held such potential. The pudding cups I remember registering for because you loved them. The platter with our last name, the cake plate; these objects which once filled my heart with hope and optimism of a new life now feel empty and cold. I supposed in someway I am facing my demons. I must look at all my stuff with new eyes. It is amazing how losing someone can just put everything into a different perspective.

I view my life and the whole world in just a different way now. Not worse, not better, just very different.