This post will probably look more like a journal entry than an update. This Forum has always been a great place for me because it’s a place where people do understand. If it’s too lengthy or too full of personal musings, just skip it. I write for myself yes but also for those who may get a speck of comfort from seeing my path.
I find myself tonight again in Northern MN, a place Brian and I spent so much time together. Friends asked me to come up, I did not expect to return until I had Brian’s ashes, which will be sometime in 2020 as his remains are part of a study.
I’m staying on one side of a bunglow, and due to my host’s stomach issues have spent more time alone than I anticipated. I brought my dog up, and that’s been nice. I arrived yesterday and will go back to the cities in the morning. I have not been unhappy to spend more time alone. In fact, it does not feel “ alone”. It feels like time with memories, time with what one CALS widower called “the loud silence” of Brian’s absence. That loud silence is both painful and oddly comforting.
Home, this state of Minnesota from Watertown and Waverley, to Minneapolis, all the way to the Canadian border resonates powerfully for me, from both sides of my family. My father’s side dates back in this state to 1861 in the very city I live in now. My mother’s parents came from Finland to Northern Minnesota during WWI. His family had a similar story. My love for Brian included all that I am, every part of my being. Our time together so appropriately happened here. Time will tell me if those very deep roots are a reason to stay put or to eventually seek a new home as I learn to live with this incalculable loss.
I went to a restaurant today in Grand Marais that we went to often, ordered and ate my fish as I looked at the lake. I got orders for my friends to go. It was a beautiful day, and I both enjoyed it and hurried through it. I loved the lake, and the empty chair across the table from me was not really empty but filled with memories of wine and food and conversation shared, filled with memories of a love that was as much a small miracle as it’s loss was a devastation.
That’s the noise in that loud silence of the loss of Brian. The memories are a beautiful thing, but the inner screams starts when I think gone now, gone forever. I’ll start a new job Tuesday and you won’t be there to see me off. I’ll never have a glass of wine with you again. We will never play with our animals together again, wake together to the cats marching on us. We will never make that drive together again up Highway 61, the first and the last travels of our time together.
On my drive back to the cabin today, I thought of something that brought me a wee bit of comfort “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”. Sometimes I can. Sometimes. Sometimes I have only the inner scream.
I see pictures of myself now, particularly my eyes and I think, who IS that? She does not look a thing like me, or the me from “the time before”. Who is she? I am still learning who she is, and likely will be for a long time to come.
I am both far less and far more broken up than those in my life would think. I encounter many comments and situations that make me want to say “No, it’s not what you think”. It can’t be what they think. Grief is it’s own world, and you only know what it’s like if you live there.
I have many goals for the year ahead. Eat healthy, invest wisely, knock it out of the park on this new job. I am so looking forward to being with people everyday and in spaces that do not trigger my memories from the hardest parts of my time with Brian,for at least my working life. I am also looking forward to being able to do things again that I do well.
“They” keep saying the second year is harder than the first. Maybe it is, but if I can go into it moving forward and accomplishing something, great. It seems to me that there are many ways to live through and to not live through a loss this great. I do intend to live.