I feel often times that we were fortunate for a relatively short course. As awful as losing him is, I don’t know what would have been left of me if I had been a CALS for 8 or 10 or 15 years.
There is the truth of flying around the country after he passed like a bird out of a cage, and one of my favorite things being able to pick up and go for dinner, drinks with friends, or just a walk at will. Heck it can be hard to do that married. As a CALS, it’s impossible.
I feel guilty to say it, and I miss HIM like crazy, but those evenings and weekends at home negotiating my own shower and meal times and days at work managing paid caregivers remotely, I can’t miss that.
Today is nine months exactly since Brian passed. It no longer feels “new”. The loud silence, as CALS PD Craig described it, is in my house still for sure, but it’s slowly being filled by the sounds of life.
I’m taking the livingroom apart this weekend. The tapestries Brian’s grandmother weaved and the dream catchers his sister made are leaving my walls and going to his niece.
I’m giving the enormous super special featured recliner we bought Brian to a friend. The chair is where he went when he could no longer walk, and there he stayed until he went to his hospital bed. I thought I’d keep it because it’s an amazing chair. Truth is, I sit in it every few weeks and I hate looking at that empty chair. Poof, off it goes to be used properly.
The NEXT next part of the journey is the life that belongs to the living.
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