365

Time is such a strange thing. This year has felt like forever and yet part of me feels like you died only today. Today I don’t feel the same pain that consumed me when I found your body – the overwhelming sensation that I am forever changed. The rawness of it – the shock, the nonsense of what happened – that has little by little seeped out of me over the last 365 days.

This morning I stood in front of a mirror, trying to figure out who I am and where I am going. I walked away without any answers. All I could focus on was today you are dead a year. You have missed so much in one little year, it is utterly astounding. More importantly, what you will continue to miss pains me even more.

You have missed teaching your son to tie his shoes and how to throw a football. You have missed your daughter entering kindergarten and learning how to read. You have missed your oldest son excel to great heights in his career. You have missed birthdays, soccer games, report cards and skinned knees. You have missed major temper tantrums and truly lovely peaceful moments. You have missed watching your children smile, hearing their laughter and feeling their kisses.

You have missed 365 nights of spending time with me.

I have officially survived a year of firsts. I have celebrated every holiday, birthday, anniversary and day without you here by my side. I have gotten out of bed every morning without you. I have somehow gotten our children through the first year of your death. There is an odd sense of relief knowing that this year is over. But then I think back and just can’t believe I have survived this year without going insane. I really do not know how I got through it. How I got up each and every morning, got my children out of the house and started our day. I really absolutely have no idea how I did it. The only thought that continually comes to mind is that I did it for them. I have lived every day this year trying to act normal for my children. I did everything and still do everything just for my babies.

This morning the children and I along with a few friends went to the cemetery. The kids made you birthday cards and put them at the foot of your stone covered with bright shinny rocks. I thought I was going to be fine. I didn’t think I would cry. I thought I could be strong. I was very wrong. I looked at the children placing the cards just right, I looked at my friends and then I looked at your name. The weight of the world crashed onto me for a moment and I just went hysterical. The finality of it all. The end of the end. How you have been gone for a year is just madness to try and comprehend.

Your headstone is covered in rocks – a reminder to me of how many times I have visited you over the year. I stood there today just taking in the whole year – feeling everything I have gone through almost at the same time. It is strange – strange to think you will be there forever. So unbelievably difficult to imagine I really will never ever see you again.

Parts of me have spent this past year on an emotional roller coaster. I have spent the last year loving you, missing you, hating you and feeling guilty about you. Some days I only feel one of these emotions. Sometimes I feel them all in a matter of seconds. I don’t feel closure today. I don’t know what I feel.

What I do realize today is that I am always going to love you, miss you, hate you and feel some guilt towards your death. These feeling don’t go away just because the first year is over. In fact, I think in a way I will always and forever feel this way. Maybe some of my feelings will lessen over the years. Maybe someday I will actually have to sit and close my eyes to picture the day you died. Maybe the haunting of the garage will someday fade away. But the deep feelings I have for you will always be with me forever and forever.

In some ways the scariest part of you being gone lies ahead. As the truth of my life unfolds before me, I am left realizing that yes, you are really dead. You are never coming back. My children have a dead father and I am really all alone. I think back to ten years ago when we were engaged. The world was open to so may amazing possibilities. The road we were going to travel down together was filled with so many plans, dreams and wonderful things waiting for us.

Now I sit here alone, writing about death and suicide and the next ten years terrify me. I am forced to take a path in life I never intended. I am walking this new route with two small children in tow. I am not sure what the future holds and only know that at the end of the day, there are two perfect beings who need me always.

I hope that I can make a wonderful life for them despite this major pitfall. I hope that I can make you proud of us and live our life filled with love and happiness. I hope you know that no matter what happens to us – you are always here with us. Always in our hearts and we will never stop loving you.

There are two things that I have been dreading for some time. Dealing with your year anniversary was a big one. Turning the corner of my street and seeing a moving truck was another. The house has been empty for six months. I have felt your loss and the loss of the house as if they were one in the same. Really it was the loss of my old life that I have been missing.

Today as I returned home from the cemetery there was a moving truck parked outside my old house. Today of all days my dead house is being inhabited. I cried for you and over the house today. But I don’t believe in coincidences. I feel very strongly that somehow G-d was closing all the doors of my old life today.

I pray that whatever door opens next is filled with a peace my children and I have not known for a long long time.