This year has been very different for my grief and my emotional journey. I have fallen in love again. I am working full time. I have two girls who are growing up so fast without their dad.  Life is moving forward at such a clip I can barely catch my breath. The days just speed by, the weeks, the months. I am very caught up in all of the day-to-day functions of being a single parent and getting everything “done”. I often think about the early days of being at home alone with my grief and the ability to rest, think, pray, heal. The process still needs my attention, my time and my capacity, but not in the same quantity it did two years ago.

And yet, every day, I still grieve deeply. I identify as a widow. I think about my loss, Dave’s loss, our children’s loss. I long for him to be here and for all of this to have been a mistake.  At the same time, I am enjoying my life now. I have good things in my life and I like who I have become, it pains me to say. I am stronger than I ever knew. I am more compassionate than I ever knew. I am resourceful, thoughtful, protective, deeply appreciative, loving…all in a way that was deepened by losing Dave. Somehow I have grown enough to know that my days here on earth without him need to be lived fully. I do not take things for granted. I do not take people, opportunities, experiences or even the mundane for granted. I try to make good choices, I try to give and receive love freely. I try to be present as a parent, available as a friend, and I keep working on all parts of who I am emotionally and physically. I do all of this because I have walked beside my best friend in this world, as his strength left him and the thing, that made him, him, left him. I watched helplessly as his diseased brain waged war on his body and won, taking him to the other side, and leaving me here to figure it all out. He had no choice in the matter. He simply had to take it. So while I have a choice, I choose to live as fully as I can. I choose to eat delicious food, and go away on vacation.  I choose to be nice to people in every way that I can. I choose to see people’s pain and offer my love and help if it is accepted. I choose to keep learning and laughing. None of this is easy for me. It is so very hard, especially without Dave by my side. His absence is a constant reminder that being human has a 100% mortality rate. None of us know when our time here is going to be up, so the time for the proverbial “bucket list” is now.

How I wish Dave still had the chance to enjoy the ordinary, like a good series on Netflix or a great cup of coffee.  I miss being able to talk over our day, I even miss bickering with him about the butter that he always left uncovered, although one of our daughters has taken on that role. I miss his piles of crumpled papers from his pockets that he left on the dresser at night when he emptied his pockets. I miss his laugh, his voice. We all miss his cooking.  I miss the way he took care of me and the way I took care of him. In re-reading my early writing after his death, I was reminded of a moment at a coffee shop that reduced me to tears. I saw a couple who were picking up their coffees and the husband was busy fixing the wife’s coffee for her while she waited for their food. The intimacy of that act, struck me so profoundly. He knew her. He loved her. He was showing her that in the simple task of fixing her coffee. It’s not about the big showy things, or the far off ideas of “when we have this much time or money we will…” it is all about the everyday moments between you and those you love.

It breaks my heart when I see friends or people I know ignoring their opportunities to express themselves fully, or not allowing the love in or wasting their time caught up in emotions that prevent them from appreciating their lives. For most people though, lessons are hard learned. You have to go through something to understand it, but if you can benefit from my lesson, please don’t let the little things go unappreciated. Please be present for the love that is available to you.  Please take pleasure in someone bringing you a coffee made just the way you like it.

One of the memorial tattoos I got after Dave died, is a fern, with phlox flowers around it. In that early writing, I found some of the research I had done about these plants. To the Maori people, ferns represent peace, tranquility and spirituality along with new growth or new beginnings. Known as the Koru, ferns are also associated with nurturing and when it contains more than one frond, it represents the strength and healing of a loving relationship within family or community.  In West African Adinkran culture, ferns are a symbol of endurance and resourcefulness and are worn by those who have endured adversity and outlasted difficulty. In contemporary culture, the fern symbolizes the magic of love, the unfolding of a new life and that everything is reborn and continues. It represents transformation, renewal and hope for the future. Phlox flowers symbolize good partnership, harmony, and represent sweet dreams. When I found these meanings I stopped searching for what was going to make up the tattoo I wanted to commemorate our love and our life together.

So here I am two years into the unfolding of my new life. Harmony is returning, a lot of renewal has taken place. I have learned to heal through the strength I draw from what Dave taught me in our relationship and how he loved me.  Life continues to bloom for our daughters and bring them and me transformation. He is a part of everything we are. Sometimes that is still very painful but it is always good, it is always beautiful. I am enduring and so are they. We miss you Dave. Two years without you here is two too many.