The Life of a Widow: This is the After Life... 5 Months Later

March 14, 2016

As I look at the calendar and the 15th is showing, another month has gone by without you. I realize how much I've regressed into disbelief over the last couple of weeks.

Sitting outside, here on the swing as we always loved to do, visions of you walking down the drive to get the mail, or your "Hi Buddy!" greeting when you walked through the door, or your "Good job, Sissy!" whenever Bailey did something cool at some point in the day and I finally got to tell you about it when you arrived home for the day after work; those visions go cascading through my mind.

Missing you feels like drowning. It hurts physically, not just emotionally. The realization that time is going by just as fast with you gone, if not faster, as it did with you here.

I know I speak for a few when I say there is a love-hate relationship with time flying. The hate part is I'm getting farther and farther away from the last time I saw your face, kissed those lips, stared into those blue-green eyes, held those hands and heard that voice. But the "love" side is with the passing time the hurt is dealt with differently, the waves space themselves out and aren't as high, ducks line up more smoothly and we are slowly figuring things out.

This is the "after" of life.

Some days I wonder if I'm making this look all too easy. Some days I wonder if people think I don't cry, or scream, or kick a bucket in the barn anymore.

Truth is; I cry a lot. I scream a lot. I've kicked a lot of buckets. Grief is a process and while we, as humans, wish the process wasn't such a rollercoaster with the worst up's, down's, twists and turns... But it is. Grief is a two steps forward, three steps back kind of process.

Some days are great and wonderful and beautiful. Other days are downright evil. Some days you laugh, smile and enjoy life. Other days you wallow in anger and despair, crying out in a stage 6 ugly cry begging for this all to be a horrible, drawn-out nightmare.

When you're raising 3 kids on your own and only 5 months into your widowhood journey; there are more down days than up days. Some days you find yourself yelling a lot. Other days you find yourself lazing it out on the couch because there is just not enough motivation in the world to get you off that couch. Some days you are so busy you don't know if you've found a rope or you've lost your horse.

The grief monster sneaks up on me in the most inappropriate times. While I'm driving, in the grocery store, while out with friends, reading a book with the kids, in the shower, while filling the woodstove; you get the point. Truth is, no one but God, Ben and I know how much I break down these days.

It's been 5 months and life is such a rollercoaster. Some days I think I've got it figured out and other days I'm merely surviving to the next minute grasping at any straw I can grab for some comfort. Some days I am at total grips with reality and other days, well, I'm not. I find myself in complete disbelief that this is my reality. That this actually happened to me... That MY husband passed away. Something very, very tragic happened to us. To my very young children.

I cry for my children the most. The dad they have to miss out on. The dad they won't remember a lot of, or at all. I know it is my job to keep Ben alive for his children and I will... But somedays I am caught up in the unfairness of it all. That my children have to grow up without their daddy. Their wonderful, involved, loving, amazing daddy.

It's no secret that we miss him to the moon and back but we are finding our way. We are choosing joy and happiness along the way and choosing to move *forward* with life as Ben wants us to.

As I walk down memory lane tonight, I leave you with some maternity family pictures from this time last year as we were waiting on the arrival of our 3rd beautiful baby, our Team Green Baby Buck.