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The calendar of the heart...


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creeps up on you. Sometimes you know it is coming. Other times it catches you unawares. I stopped counting the weeks, months and years some time ago, but the anniversaries have a way of making you deal with them. 5 years ago, my DH walked my daughter down the aisle. It was a day he was holding out for. A loose end he was tying up before he left us.

 

It has been a sad day for me. The marriage met its demise this year and although it is truly for the best for both of them, it is hard to think about the hope of that day and the reality of our lives now. I wonder what my DH would think of it all. Ex SIL is a great guy, just not the guy for DD. I will be forever thankful he and his family came into our lives when they did. They were a soft place to land for a time. We are all trying to stay friends, and that has it's own awkwardness.

 

The next few weeks will bring to mind the rapid decline and reality that life ends. Sometimes on our own terms, and certainly in Craig's case, he was where he wanted to be at the end and I am thankful for that. I have seen others struggle with the inevitability of death since then, and am always struck with the stoicism and grace he had. Clarity. God, I miss the certainty he had always. I miss him.

 

I am here, in this place in the mountains he built for us. It is easy and hard to be here. I feel him. But I feel the emptiness of his absence as well. It is easy to speak of him here. Friends share memories without the struggle that they seem to have at home. Not sure why that is, but maybe because life is just a little harder up here.

 

Anyway, rambling. Just wanted to wish all of you easy memories. I feel my heart breaking, but I know it will mend itself again, it always does. God, what a mess of scar tissue it must be.

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"Just wanted to wish all of you easy memories. I feel my heart breaking, but I know it will mend itself again, it always does. God, what a mess of scar tissue it must be".

 

So well said and I am sorry this has brought up the heartbreak that always seems to be lurking

 

take care

 

 

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Oh Hachi your post resonated with me so much. Thank you!! Especially this part "Just wanted to wish all of you easy memories. I feel my heart breaking, but I know it will mend itself again, it always does. God, what a mess of scar tissue it must be." 

Yes, on this long weekend in "our" house we always had such a wonderful start to our summer being here on the lake.  It is breaking my heart that I must leave here but being here is so not good for me anymore.

 

And then you said this "The next few weeks will bring to mind the rapid decline and reality that life ends. Sometimes on our own terms, and certainly in Craig's case, he was where he wanted to be at the end and I am thankful for that."

My DH too left on his own terms right here in this home that he and I built together and he always said he would be taken out in a box in this house.  He got his wish.

Me too.  In 10 days it will be his 4 yr sadiversary or more like my sadiversary.  Whats so weird for me is that I don't feel him here but everywhere I look I have memories of him.  Does that even make any sense??

Thank you for your rambling because I get it.

Gentle hug to all my wids!!

 

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Your post also resonates with me.

 

We are all so tied together.

 

Yes, we break and mend and break and mend.

 

Anyway, rambling. Just wanted to wish all of you easy memories. I feel my heart breaking, but I know it will mend itself again, it always does. God, what a mess of scar tissue it must be.

 

Easy memories to you too. (((hugs)))

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  • 4 weeks later...

So, I continue on with the calendar of the heart. Fathers day is tomorrow. The year he died, i am not sure we noticed Father's day. I know for sure that on June 16th, he broke his arm lifting a bottle of anti-freeze for the tractor he wanted to sell before he died.

 

Today, I was taking my parents out to lunch and was going to pick up my best friend, but she needed a few minutes so I took them to the cemetery where I had bought a small plot for the military stone I had ordered. A peaceful little area of the town cemetery where he never asked to be buried. But he was proud of his military service and I felt that his passing should be marked, whether or not his remains were there.

 

Anyway. I had no idea that the stone had been delivered and placed. Probably in time for memorial day. But it took my breath away to see it. It will be five years on July 6th. I wanted the stone placed by then. I wasn't really sure it would happen. So seeing it today was a myriad of feelings. Relief. Sadness. Pride. And a profound emptiness. My life is full these days. Really full. But the part of my life that was so completely half of a couple is empty. It is no more. And the emptiness echos in a sacred part of my soul that will forever and always belong to Craig.

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"And the emptiness echos in a sacred part of my soul that will forever and always belong to Craig." Wow such a true statement and mine will always belong to Gord. 

My Gord never did like to make a big deal of Father's Day so he went on a fishing weekend with his buddies.  That was his gift. We always had a nice supper when he got home. 

Gentle hugs to all my wids.

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I get it too...

I am just over three years out from loosing him but so many others went in the few years before him....

I think that the fog and numbness has lifted enough that the anniversaries of all their passings can have some weight and recognition again.  The days don't just slip by anymore, I am able to acknowledge and feel them.  I am going to say it is nice not to be so overwhelmed with grief that I can actually feel again.

Great post, thanks for giving me a place here too.

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  • 1 month later...

Hachi,

 

I haven't been on here in a long time but the calendar of the heart brought me back today. One week before the day my husband suddenly died. And I found your post which resonated so strongly. It made me cry and I remembered why this community was and is so important to me. To be among people who get it - who don't wonder why it still hurts and has an impact 5 years later - who don't think one isn't "getting on with life" if they happen to mention their dead spouse.

 

In the early months, this place reminded me I wasn't crazy. It still does.

 

And your final paragraph was just pure poetry.

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

It's not a specific date that brings me back here today. More the season. It's been playing me for a  few weeks now. I think it is the ritual of the wood. We moved into our last home 10 years ago. It has a wrap around porch and the first thing he wanted to do was stack 3 cords of wood on it. My lovely porch. I hated that wood. We had to compromise and agree to stack it only as high as the railing. :)

 

It was just one of those rites of fall... cutting splitting and stacking the wood. I can see him as clearly as if it was yesterday, his breath steaming in the fall air. I can hear the thud now and then of a piece of wood dropping, and I am tempted to run upstairs to the closet where his green army jacket is hanging to wrap myself inside it and see if it still smells like him.  It doesn't, of course, and I don't. I look out the window and see it is just the sound of the wind pushing his empty rocking chair against the house. 

 

The porch is full of wood. Now it comforts me to know he would be happy seeing it. I will be warmed this winter, both by the wood and the memories. The sadness comes and goes.. but the love stays. Someone has a tagline here. "Death ends a life, not a relationship"

 

 

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  • 7 months later...

Today is a mixture of events.... 6 years ago I was trying to figure out how to get him back to the cabin. The place he would die. I am here now. I arrived yesterday with new guy. The first day of summer. It was an exquisite sunset. One of the most beautiful I have ever seen. New guy was out in the neighborhood. I still call him NG even though we have been together for a few years now. Anyway, I texted him that he was missing it, but I didn't really mind. I was sharing it with DH. In his place. The place he always called home. It felt very peaceful and right to be alone with the sunset in this beautiful place he built for us. 

 

In the early years I couldn't steel myself to the pain of walking around the deck expecting to see him. Waiting for me to join him for the sunset in the long days of summer. I would tell myself that he wasn't there, but was always surprised to find that he wasn't. It was the same gut punch, time after time.

 

At 6 years I have learned to keep my thoughts to myself, but NG is keenly aware, and when my mood shifts, he knows that I can't help it. The calendar of the heart calls me back to my dear love. Always missed. Always remembered. Always a  treasured part of me....

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Wow, what a beautiful place hachi. The last few days I've had the pleasure of sharing stories of my dh because the person happens to be someone who used to work with him, and he didn't even realize that it was our house until he met me here. This person buying it had never been here before....

Big (((hugs)))...

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Hugs, my friend. There are so many experiences that come back to us that we cannot share with another because it is part of the intimacy we had with our late spouses. I’m not quite sure how my second husband John was able to share the home he had with his late wife with me. I know there were memories he had that he needed to experience alone. I remember the night before landscaping contractors were going to level our (undeveloped and fairly ugly) back yard to create the plan that John had planned for us. He stood in the back yard with tears running down his cheeks, knowing that the few flower bulbs that Cheryl had planted would be scraped away along with the weeds that were growing rampantly. I found John outside and gave him an appreciated hug, but then he needed his space to process his own lost dreams. 

 

Thanks for for the chance to remember this. Hope I didn’t hijack!

 

Hugs, 

 

Maureen

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You didn't hijack, my friend. You just validated that feeling that when we have that special someone ( and in here I include you and my NG) who can deal with the memory of a love no longer with us, well that is something to treasure.  I love how love wins. 

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