January 9, 2025
What do I do when I have a gazillion things I want and need to tell David all throughout the day because that is what we did. We talked about everything and nothing. All day long.
What do I do when I miss him so much, I find it difficult to breathe at times and I have a pain in my stomach and my chest that has not gone away since he died. And it feels like what is left of my heart will beat right out of my chest.
What do I do when I cannot remember the last time I ate or took my meds because I lose time throughout the day and the days go from early morning to horrible darkness in about ten minutes.
What do I do when I have been his constant caretaker for 18 months and personal assistant for much longer than that and now there are no appointments to remember, or prescriptions to pick up or pill boxes to fill, or breakfast to cook, or feet and backs to rub, or faces to kiss or encouragement to give or clothes to wash.
What do I do when he knew I had a weird, unnatural intimidation of gas stations and pumping gas and he always tried to do that so I didn’t have to do it alone.
What do I do when I am so lonely for him it hurts and people keep reaching out to me but I do not want to even answer the phone or texts because they are not him and cannot fill that void and they cannot possibly understand. Especially the ones with husbands and wives.
What do I do when I realize I will never receive another text from him or get a funny reel on Instagram, or hear him laugh or hear his voice.
What do I do when there is no one to touch. To feel close to anymore. No one that wants me and knows me and loves me in those ways without any conditions or expectations or judgement.
What do I do if I never see another face or heart in random things because I haven’t since he died and maybe I will never see anything clearly again without him in the world.
What do I do when my car needs to be repaired or something in the house breaks and the person that did those repairs is no longer here to fix them and the people I ask aren’t able to help me or they just say call someone and that is something I have never had to do and don’t even know what to ask for or if I am getting taken advantage of.
What do I do when people think I am so strong and took care of him but really he also took care of me in a lot of ways for a long time that no one understands.
What do I do when I will eventually drive thru the new round about at the five way stop that he was so interested to see and wont ever get to see and so many other things like that he took an interest in.
What do I do when I cannot get out of bed and I feel paralyzed every morning because it just happens all over again day after day.
What do I do when I lay here and sleep will not come because he isn’t here and never will be again.
What do I do when I have regrets of things I should have done or said differently years ago and all the intrusive thoughts come for me in the night.
What do I do when I beg to not wake up and I still find myself starting over every day.
What do I do in those horrible multiple moments that happen every single day when I realize oh yeah…he’s gone.
What do I do when I open social media out of loneliness and cannot get past the first picture of some smiling family or people in love and I just have to close the laptop and sit with being that person.
What do I do when no one cares to get a text when I am headed home and I won’t see that little heart pop up next to my text when I said I was coming home. Or that little heart that would pop up on anything I said basically. Or those three dots that made me excited to see what he was sending every time he was writing something or simply just be glad I was home.
What do I do with all the things in the house that are his that make this house our home that I see every second of the day.
What do I do when we have Instagram accounts we both follow and enjoy watching together and talking about and I see his name on these he has liked and that just stopped and now I find it incredibly painful to watch our favorite accounts without him.
What do I do when I don’t want to ever have to go back to work because I may get fired because I don’t feel like I will ever be able to mentally be engaged because I have been altered as a person. I am no longer the same and won’t be an asset anymore in any job.
What do I do when friends get irritated because I don’t respond to them and they eventually stop texting or leaving messages and I don’t even feel guilty about it now because I am numb to everything except this grief but maybe one day I will need a friend or maybe I won’t and that will be even sadder.
What do I do when I cannot explain these feelings to someone who has not lost a significant other or person on this level and in this way.
What do I do when I feel so badly for our cats that I know miss him so much that it hurts me to see them and he wanted another dog but knew the timing wasn’t right and now he wil never have one to show an incredible amount of love to again.
What do I do when I try to make necessary phone calls to cancel medical insurance or deal with presenting death certificates to do the things I will have to do to remove his name from things and the people on the other end of the phone are cold and even rude and all I can do is cry when I hang up because they don’t understand or even care to.
What do I do when I have to remove him as my emergency contact and beneficiary, and it feels like losing him all over again.
What do I do when I cannot listen to any music or watch any TV because everything is something we shared and it brings me to my knees to think about doing something like that without him.
What do I do when I am driving along and the tears come hard and fast and I can hardly see and there are no windshield wipers for my eyes.
What do I do when I cannot have a conversation without the tears coming and someone looking at me like I am insane because they don’t understand this level of pain or care to.
What do I do when there use to be so much laughter and now there is silence.
What do I do when I am lonely for the rest of my life.
What do I do when I don’t want to leave the house out of fear.
What do I do when I begged him for many months to please write and leave me and SL things to read and I would ask if he had and he would say no but he would and I know he didn’t get a chance because his got sick and died so fast and I am too afraid to open his laptop and not find anything there and that will be the end. And his mom explained that he would not have been able to exist in the two places in time. Either he had to be doing treatment and things to get better or he would have to give up and write me things for after he was gone. And I understand that he would have felt exactly that but it doesn’t make the longing go away of wanting some comforting words from him I can read over and over to know how he felt because one of my toxic traits is I need reassurance. His reassurance.\
What do I do when these things on this list keep coming faster and faster and I think what’s the point of any of it because there is nothing for me now.
What do I do when I have never eaten anywhere alone ever in my life or seen a movie without him or gone on a trip without him.
What do I do when people say I have to keep going but they still have their person alive and well and have a reason to believe that and someone to come home to.
What do I do when vacations are over because that was our thing and now he isn’t here to do those things with anymore.
What do I do when people say I am so strong but I know that isn’t true because I am thinking I cannot go on another day when I am just trying to make it hour by hour at this point.
What do I do when there is no one there for me in the ways he was. To never be wanted or held or hugged tightly again.
What do I do when I feel all this but I also know I am still in a bit of shock and disbelief and the real grief hasn’t hit me yet and I don’t know when or where I will be when it does.
What do I do when there is nothing else to do.
