As I stare out my vehicle’s windshield, I can see another season is beginning to take shape. Spring is springing. My second without my bride, and the deterioration of my quality of experience that her absence has afforded.
New feelings of deep sadness because the days don’t slow down for anything. New levels of fragility leading me to tears overflowing.
The memories of not being able to sleep in hotels together. The many hotels we’d spent our time in, in the many different phases of our relationship. The many mornings we would all get up on a weekend to act out your plans for the day in the pursuit of your eager desire to be a successful entrepreneur.
These have been the overflow the last two mornings. These have been the renewal fuel for me to accept what I can do in the moment to propel myself into the next moments. Moments feeding moments. Step by step. Wave by emotional wave.
Instantaneous thoughts of what I will never be able to do again, immediately followed by what might be possible. Mixed with thoughts of how I would feel if I were to truly become successful in a way that wasn’t a part of our plans. The many things my deceased bride and I wanted to do.
Wave by emotional wave.
It hasn’t been easy living this life without my wife. It hasn’t been easy navigating parenting without her presence. She was the social planner, and the one who kept us interacting with the world around us. It hasn’t been a slow descent into something I don’t know how to describe. It’s been hard to live daily without the motivation to plan for fear that because life is so fragile, whatever we plan will end prematurely. At least, that’s been my experience. The things I have been really good at have ended prematurely. Without explanation, or consideration to what could possibly come next.
How do I build, or rebuild, without my partner? We’d been going strong with supporting each other through all of the phases of life together. We weren’t perfect in our execution of that support, but we were still here for each other. Where I was good at being the behind-the-scenes encouragement for the things she had in her heart to accomplish, or she was being the supportive nurturer that was in her DNA, we both worked together in such a way as to keep an element of wonder for what the future would bring.
Now that she is no longer here to fulfill that role, I find my days extending into such an unknown that I feel as though I’ve forgotten how to put action to my dreams. I feel like I felt before she came along. Now there are added responsibilities with the care and rearing of our 14-year-old son, Jonah Kai. I struggle to engage with so much of what is required of me as his sole parent now that I struggle to engage with him. One-on-one, father to son. There was no adjustment window to prepare to be his father without the support and matching energy of his mother.
Add on top of it his delayed capabilities to comprehend what has happened and what is happening. I am so proud of him for what he does display: levels of comprehension.
Or…maybe this is the beginning of how I reverse the trajectory of my life, because it feels like I can finally understand what it is to live from the end. What if the questions I am asking of myself were all meant to lead me to one singular question that would empower my sense of purpose and meaning? Question being, What does it look like to live from the end of my life and time in this body?
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