18 Years / 4 ½ Weeks

Good morning. I have to confess I’m having a really, really hard time this morning. I’ve had a run of pretty good days this week and then yesterday I remembered what today was and how worried I was about one person that morning. His work often took him around Manhattan to various different large office buildings, eventually to include the Empire State Building, but he wasn’t working yet that morning. On that day, he was fine. As I sit here, today, 18 years later, however…he has been dead for four and a half weeks. So of course, it’s all rushing back. It’s okay. These things are going to happen. The hardest part is over and just as it gets a bit easier each year to deal with this day, this too will get a bit easier each year. So they tell me. Last night, I had really realistic dreams about him. It was like I was really there. We were hanging out and he was giving me the warmest hugs, which became straight-up snuggling, just lounging around with my head on his shoulder. I was in complete bliss. But I had to wake up. Fast-forward to this morning and find me sitting in my living room, on his couch, wishing these arms did the same thing and my brain is just…backsliding. Back to the stage of “forcefully rejecting that this is true, really happening, and permanent.” I meditate for thirty minutes today instead of twenty because I know it’s going to take some extra time for me to get comfortable and get into the groove. They’re reading the names at the laundromat. I mean, on the TV at the laundromat. For the first time in four and a half weeks… heck, for the first time in a few years, I’m actually not going to become overwhelmed and crumble into a pile of misery all day. At the age of 38, I’m just beginning to really internalize the fact that wrecking myself will not undo the terrible things that have happened. I’m going to power through and get done the massive pile of stuff that I absolutely must get done before 4 pm today, somehow. As for how I will go on without Bill, well, that’s better not even thought about. Just stay alive, breathe, and try to make progress. It’ll get easier. So they tell me.