May 2, 2025
Dear David,
I don’t know what to do with this blog. You wanted me to keep it going and keep talking about you. I have written but posted nothing. It is hard to be venerable and so raw to basically anyone that wants to read this. Not knowing who is reading this and feeling like who even cares to read this? I mean I would listen to stories about you all day. I would read your thoughts forever but who wants to read this and feel bad? I don’t know. Maybe someone gets something from this. Every week that passes without some update just feels like I am failing. I am just existing. Not doing my best but I don’t know what that is anymore. I do what I can then start over the next day. Each day is like the last. They run into one another and most of the time I have to check the calendar or phone several times a day to remember what day it is.
Four months and nothing has changed. If anything, it feels worse. I am so sad and so lonely. I walk around thinking you are coming back. That it isn’t real. Deep, visceral sadness hits me in the car, at home, in the grocery store, sitting in a drive thru line, at work…it doesn’t matter where or when. One minute I am talking to someone and the next tears are rolling down my face making the person very uncomfortable. I talk to you all of the time. Can you hear me? I talk to the air. I talk to your pictures. I talk to the wind and the rain and the birds. I relive those last days over and over and over. Every detail. I don’t want to work or see anyone or do anything. I procrastinate and it makes me nauseous because you know that isn’t me. It is miserable being without you. I don’t fit anywhere. I don’t feel like anyone understands unless they too are going through it and people I have found in that situation either have moved past the part of grief I am in or they too are struggling or they have faith that forever eludes me. I know it isn’t an uncommon feeling but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. I don’t see I have a purpose. I don’t have an identity. I cannot seem to focus long enough to attempt to think about how to go from here. Focus is nonexistent except I seem to be able to focus on what I do not have anymore. Focus doesn’t seem to fail me then. I try to enumerate positives, but I don’t get very far. Anger bubbles up in irrational ways. I seem crazy to others and hormonally I am struggling also. Severe grief and perimenopause is a double whammy. Panic attacks are coming more frequently, although so far, I can feel it and do the things that help keep a full-blown attack at bay. SL and I are planning to go visit Adam in a couple of weeks and meet his family like we all planned to do. I cannot seem to get interested. You know I always wanted to go and explore, but all I seem to muster is crippling fear of leaving home. We have so many storms now and I am terrified or something happening with the trees around the house. I don’t know why that has become a real fear. I feel like it is such a fear now that I will eventually manifest something bad to happen. I don’t want to leave the cats. I just really don’t want to leave home. I don’t really cook much. Don’t really eat much. I eat to feel better and I never do so sometimes I don’t bother and other times I just eat just to feel something different from the sadness. I don’t want to talk to anyone, but I am talking to a therapist. It is getting harder to keep the appointments, to see any benefit, but I haven’t cancelled one yet. It helps in the moment having someone listening and empathizing but then I am alone again. I miss you so much. You are everywhere in the house and outside, and in the car, and I still find your beard hair in places. I find notes you wrote. You were always writing on your index cards. Your clothes are still in the closet where you left them. Your shoes, your socks, your things…all still here. People say there is no timeline for this. This isn’t a life. Not feeling anything but hopelessness and sadness. Never imagining seeing happiness again. Just existing. I am not suicidal. I am going to the doctor for checkups, eye appointments, taking my meds, working, etc…I don’t think a suicidal person would do those things, would she? It just feels like going through the motions. If I ever find something funny, I feel bad about laughing. I know you would say that is the most ridiculous thing because that is all we ever did was laugh and usually at inappropriate things and times. But guilt is there. Anger is there. Why you? So many horrible things going on in the world and why us? It should have been me instead. You had more to offer and to teach. Even worse thoughts of why wasn’t it someone else. Those are horrible thoughts. Spirituality is nearly nonexistent. I think I am merely hoping there is something just so I may have the chance to see you again. The cruelty of life doesn’t seem to serve a beneficial purpose. It hasn’t brought me closer to anything as I see it does for some people. I feel like a bad person. All the time. I feed the birds and the squirrels and stand inside and watch them enjoy the snacks. I get a little joy from that. It is brief. I want to want to do things. I have tried to declutter and organize and then I just stop because it is hard doing everything alone with no opinions or input and you knew how to do everything. You knew what to do and what to say in every situation. It is just lonely. Period. Things need to be done at the house and I don’t know who to call or what to ask for or how much is fair. These feelings and worry never go away. At the same time, I also just don’t care about things anymore while still worrying about things. It makes no sense. I stopped apologizing for not showing up or not participating and really people have stopped checking in or inviting me to do anything. Which is fine. Life moves on and when I am honest about how I am feeling, I sound like a broken record and who wants to be brought down by that? People don’t know what to say and that is ok too because there isn’t anything and I don’t feel like they understand anyway especially if they have husbands or wives and are able to go and do relationship things together then how can they know what this feels like? I feel weird and odd and like people sidestep around me. I feel like a third wheel. It is a horrible feeling to me. This just makes it easier to stay home and isolated and convince myself no one really cares anyway because they have their own lives. The loneliness and the missing you creates pain I don’t always feel on a physical level, but I think emotional pain hurts just as much in its own way. I feel clingy and I hate that feeling. I was never clingy. You know that. At least not until you got sick and we knew it was bad. Then I just wanted every moment burned into my brain and those last days are and it isn’t always comforting to relive that and think about what I could or should have done differently even knowing there was nothing you would have changed about the treatments and path you chose. You were always in control, always calm, always rational, and I followed that. I don’t have anyone in control now. I don’t have centering or grounding and the thoughts in my head are deafening and random and they come fast and constant. I don’t have you to say that is enough or stop now. I don’t have that person to calm my brain and settle my soul. I feel like I lost an arm or a leg or worse, a heart. Sometimes, I just want to sleep with no sounds, no thoughts, no responsibilities. Sleep for days but I never can. Life is there. A life I am forced to live without you now. So many things we were planning to do and didn’t get to do. So many things. There are also so many things we did do and I do hold on to those. I hope you are someplace nice. I hope you can hear me and do send the signs it seems like are coming from you. I hope I am not imagining these things in a sad, desperate attempt to hold on to something that is gone forever.