Defining moments.

I had a beautiful moment last week.

It was a beautiful week and I had some lovely, laughable, make a heap of memory type moments, but one moment... I had one moment that was truly beautiful.

I was heading to a tropical hideaway..

Me and four friends. We were laughing easily and enjoying the gift of being away from reality.

As we were preparing to board the boat that would whisk us to clear seas and white sand, a crew member commented on our little group.

"All the girls having fun hey?" He asked me

"Yes... It's a girls get away. Much needed!!!" I replied with a smile.

"So.. You leave the husbands at home??" He continued.

"Yeah... Husbands at home..." And with that I walked away.

Husbands at home.

My smile faltered and my steps got instantly weighed with the heaviness of my situation.

 Husbands at home.. It echoed and taunted me.

Yeah.., I wanted to yell back over my shoulder. I left my husband at home... In his grave.

I wanted to lash out. 

The "widow-ness" of my situation was suddenly all I could hear and see.

Sometimes it's like that.. 

I felt the aloneness of my situation setting up camp and threaten to define the way I lived that day. 

Lonely is an emotion that was never designed to be a character trait.

And so... I trudge onto the boat.

The lonely widow.

The sea suddenly isn't so blue and the sky is again the barrier that hides heaven from me. All at once I'm again aware of the permanent nature of his leaving and I'm sad.

And here's that emotional battle again.

I don't want an emotion to become who I am and how I act.

My sadness is real and genuine and authentically, painfully real...But it's a manageable emotion.

Now.., I'm no expert in anything but I am learning that I get to control these emotions and manage them. They don't get to run free range in my existence and build a personality profile that reads:

Lost her husband.. Sad and angry widow who views the world through a discontent and bitter lens.

Here's how that looked and worked as I was sitting on that boat.

I closed my eyes and as the boat gained speed I faced into the wind and went there... To the deep and profound emotion of loss and sadness. I stared that place down... Again... and felt it all.

Loss of anything you love is going to mean that sadness, anger, discontent, fear... They all come knocking at the door. They have legitimate claim as guests. 

It's just the reality of loss. 

But what I'm learning is that when the guest status of sadness transfers to "permanent resident", I'm no longer feeling sad... I become sad. 

When the fear of what comes next moves in and sets up shop, I'm no longer feeling afraid,  I become a fearful person. 

When an alone feeling buys up the real estate, I'm no longer feeling alone but I become a lonely person.

Some emotions need dealing with. They need to be felt and experienced... But they are not meant to become a defining trait of my character. 

I'm not meant to be defined by sadness. Or loss. Or fear. Or bitterness.

My days are not meant to be defined by fear or sadness or loss or bitterness..

I'm not meant carry the emotional burden of "hard-done-by"..

So I lean in. I faced into the wind and the sea spray and the sun.... And I dealt with that emotion of deep and profound loss. And.. Then I was gifted that beautiful moment of peace.

I chose peace...

 I. Chose. Peace.

Look... I'm no expert and I'm learning about how to be without him. Learning how to be untethered from that future with him. Learning how to smile at my future that's coming.

 And here's my latest lesson as I walk these days- I get to choose what I'm defined by. I don't get to control the situation. If I did... He wouldn't have breathed his last breath and I wouldn't be a widow. 

But he did.

And I am.

So.... What will I be defined as?

I have met people who are bitter, angry, lost and lonely people. They are defined. There character traits are a reflection of EMOTIONS that are allowed to flourish in a negative way. 

I'm not being trite about emotions here.... It's hard. Because those emotions.. The bitterness, the anger, the loneliness... They are a real place. Tangible. 

I know them. One sentence from a crew hand on a Fijian island and I'm picking those emotions up and carrying them on board with me.

But I don't want them to be me.

I want to trade them in for something better. Something life giving. Because loneliness and bitterness and anger are NOT life giving. At all. 

So... What will I be defined as?

Well... I'm choosing peace.

So hopefully I'll be defined by the trait of peace.

I'm choosing hope.

Which is the confidence to walk into my tomorrows and be ok.

So I'll be defined by the trait of hope.

I'm choosing kindness.

Oh.... Kindness.

When I'm not feeling remarkably kind. Let me choose kindness still.

And let my life be defined by kindness.

When I'm not feeling like I have much hope left. Let me choose hope still.

Let me choose hope.

What are you being defined by?

Everyone has a story... A journey to walk. 

And within the steps of that journey, you get to CHOOSE what will be the defining traits you walk away with. 

I walked onto that boat in Fiji loaded down with the widow-ness, the loneliness, the unbelievable weight of loss.

And I took a moment. I took a moment to lean in and choose what would define my day.

Sheldon showed us how to determine and define the hardest days.

In his palliative days.

In his sickest, hardest, end days....

He chose kindness.

He chose peace in the face of death. 

He showed how his days were defined by the hope that he chose.

He chose courage in the snare of fear.

He chose.

He determined.

And his days were beautifully, wonderfully defined.

This Grief.

This Grief..

It made known the nature of it's stealthy self in early days of diagnosis. As we wrestled with the scary and the new terms- cancer, prognosis, treatment…

It arrived- this grief- in whispered “what ifs”…

Slowly. We didn’t label it grief because we didn’t immediately notice that it had arrived, such was the slow slide that it slid in with.

Until one day I saw it- this grief.. it had moved into our house.

It lingers and it lurks.

I carry it- noticing it’s bristles and rough edges on some days and barely registering it’s existence on others.

Here is what this grief is.

It is not a missing of the past. In fact, grief is rarely involved with what has been.

No. My grief, this grief that has moved into my life, is not about the past. 

This grief is all about the sudden and absolute direction change that my planned and imagined tomorrows has taken.

Memories… memories in their profound and abundant beauty is what the past offers me.

Beautiful.

Tough.

Never-going-to-forget-him type memories.

Grief is not intertwined in those past days we had.

No.

Grief does not get to touch the days he was whole and happy and here and mine.

Grief instead parades past me all of the days he is absent in the tomorrows we don’t have. That is where this grief lives- in the tomorrow moments we wanted and that we don’t have.

When I fell in love with him, I built a world of what we would do. 

I painted a picture of where we would go and what we would see.

I built our life in rooms of days and moments that we would share.

I imagined our life- right to the moments of our beautifully weathered, wrinkled and greying heads bent over the smile of a grandbaby.

It was built- a beautiful city of tomorrow moments- there in my mind.

It was a tangible, living entity- these dreams of our future. 

And now- he is gone.

And this grief is here.

This grief is this- the slow unbuilding of those never discovered days.

Walls and windows of that imagined future are knocked down.

And in the rubble of these never discovered days- you’ll find it.

This grief.

It is here-this grief... in the untethering of my future path from being with him, in the separation of imagined shared joys and milestones- I’m stepping over shards of what I desperately wanted but can no longer access. 

Our future. 

Our life. 

Raising our sons together. Growing old- with him by my side. 

Yes- here is this grief.

This grief is not an ugly reckoning. But a gentle untethering and a slow separation of who I was when he was mine and I was his. 

This grief is learning how to be present in the moments we dreamed about that are still going to happen- because I still need to live them well. 

This grief is learning how to be present in a now that was supposed to include him. These moments were built around him- around us being together. 

Yes- here is where it gets tricky- Me, my boys.. entering into the tomorrow days that are coming and knowing that they have altered from the imagined days we planned. 

Moments- first days of high school.. dancing at our sons wedding… kissing the soft, precious baby face of a brand new grandchild… They are moments that I will have.

I will know these days.

These days- these moments that a couple build for and dream about- they were designed to be the moments we would savour. That’s the majestic gift of having a great love that you choose to spend your life with- designing moments in your tomorrows that you will savour.

And now- that design is placed aside.

The plan has altered.

And THAT is this grief.

An altered plan.

This grief is not an emotion. Oh.. emotions are found within the wreckage and the rubble of these torn down towns.

 Anger.. a deep sadness, a profound longing for something that has stepped completely out of my grasp. These emotions that are work colleagues  of this grief are hard at work in these days. But grief is not an emotion.

Grief is a bulldozer.

Razing to the ground the one-days… exploding to smithereens the world of tomorrows and next times that I had so carefully constructed.

This grief.

An altered plan.

A diverged path.

An awareness that how the coming moments were meant to look, they’ll look no longer. He is not there. It's an altered plan.

I’m told about the acceptance that will come when grief has run it’s raged and ragged course. I think that coming to ‘acceptance’ is perhaps putting on the necessary hard hat and venturing into the current mess of these broken apart tomorrow days.

It’s maybe realising that my different days in the tomorrows that will arrive can still be lovely. They’ll be different- yes. He won’t be here. But they can be lovely. And maybe… perhaps that’s what sifting through this grief has become.

It’s become the rewriting of the story. A re-penning of what comes next. A reimagining of my tomorrow days without him... oh here.. oh here is this grief. 

And - trust me. I don’t want to rewrite or re-pen any part of it. But it must be done.

So much of this grief has already been worked out- by us.. by him.

In the months and maybe even years that he walked the cancer path- he grieved this too.

He grieved the untethering of our shared future.

He spoke of the tomorrow days that would not include his physicality… the days that I would keenly note the absence of his hand firmly entwined with mine.

The days that I would want and need to let him shoulder something magical or something truly tragic- those days he grieved...for they are no more. 

He grieved our lost tomorrows. oh.. how he grieved that the most. 

Nadine Kemp Photography

I hated that part with such a vengeance. Of all the pain that he endured in those days and months that were his end- this was hardest.

Watching him grieve a future that was crumbling around his broken and exhausted body.

We read it in each others eyes… the fade of those together dreams.

The tears that fell as we lay staring at each other was this… This grief. 

A goodbye to the plans and the tomorrow days.

A farewell to holding little sons close as they fell asleep in their daddy's safe embrace.. oh here.. here is that grief. In the embrace that we feel no more. 

Sometimes I wonder at it- the way that my future was so wrapped up in him. But isn’t that the crazy and beautiful gift of love? Hear me- you who love and who are loved. 

To love with abandon and commitment is tie yourself wholeheartedly to going in the same direction. And that direction is the shared, dreamed and  imagined future that you both commit to sailing- headlong and troubles be damned- into. It's saying- "Where you go, I'm going. Where I am, let that be where you are.... and together- oh together my darling- we will have all of those tomorrow days."    Yes. That’s love.  

It’s being two whole and complete halves that make up an even better and stronger whole.. 

And then… when one half of the whole leaves with that final goodbye. Well...  That’s this grief.

It’s the untethering of the cords of our shared future.

It’s the unanchoring of my tomorrows that were built with him.

It's the dawning recognition that where I am.. he cannot be. 

So.. here I sit in one of those tomorrow days that he grieved. 

I’m untethering and I’m unanchoring.

Unwinding my future from those dreams of where we would go and what we would become. 

Please don’t suppose that in my untethering of our shared tomorrow days I am relinquishing the fierce love that we shared in the yesterdays we had. Never.

He was mine and I was his.

And it was beautiful.

DeeZigner Images