What I have Learned

I have learned that it's still hard, that grief is messy, takes time, and scares people. Hell, it even scares me sometimes. Like yesterday I was so angry and sad all day. It was a particularly difficult day. I was crying alot, yelling alot, and little Kanyon had it hard too, because when Momma ain't happy, neither is he.  I really needed a punching bag. I think I need to invest in one. It was such a hard day I called in my angels to send me someone or something to get through the day. Later my friend called and after me sharing with her the space I was in offered to do my errands and go grocery shopping with me. A huge relief, to be able to leave her in the car with sleeping Kanyon while I went in to get some food, then to drop off glass at the recycle bins, while I smashed each glass bottle hard blasting them into the abyss of the long bins. I took Darol's truck on the errand run since I had my mini trampoline to return. I luckily had Darol's gloves on while picking up each glass bottle and throwing them in. Some of the glass was sharp and broken up, so the gloves protected me from cuts. Before I put the gloves on I smelled them, they smelled like him. I smelled them for a while before placing them on my hands and then beginning my smashing, bashing recycling event.



I woke up this morning with a major left shoulder and neck pain thing going on. I am sure it's linked to my anger from yesterday. What triggered it? Who cares really, anything can set off a grief release. Looking back I am sure it was a culmination of the weekend's events of doing the Race for the Cure, seeing Darol's Dad after a year of not seeing him, my friend lovingly sharing with me that our distanced relationship was because she didn't know how to handle my grief, and seeing another friend being newly in love with a wonderful man and pregnant. All beautiful things to have experienced and I regret not one of them, I had more fun this weekend than I have had in a long time, and it was also charged with a lot of the reality and reflection that my husband is a memory, no longer a living, breathing, love making, baby making, here to take silly face photo shots with me, kiss me kind of existence. Definite things to be angry and sad about.



About a year and 5 months after my husband's death I finally tonight read the pamphlet, "What you need to know about Melanoma", I found in Darol's top bedside drawer while looking for his favorite Tiger Balm for my pained shoulder and neck. It's crazy that I am now reading it. Where was this thing when he was first diagnosed and in stage one. I am sure I could have found it easily, and I wonder why I didn't do more research and find out more in the beginning and read everything I could on it, so I knew what I was dealing with. I am educated, I've been in the medical field, was a dental assistant for 8 years, and yet I let this deeply personal issue go. I just trusted that Darol had it handled and knew about it. We had just gotten married, bought a new home and had moved. The second diagnosis in the lymph nodes I was pregnant 6 months with Kanyon.  I didn't want to know, obviously. Wow, some major denial happening there. I just wanted to believe  that he would heal and it would all go away. Death was not an option. I still wonder if he would be around if I had done the research and really made it a bigger deal than Darol made it, if I had encouraged chemo and western methods strongly the second time when it had spread. The fact remains I can't go back and I really do feel peace that even if he had taken it more serious and done chemo, that it may not have given him any longer, and that it may have made our sweet time together a lot more traumatic with perhaps a lower quality of life. Then we'll never know, because we can't push the rewind button. We do the best we can while the real life is happening and then look back with clear and new perspective of what might have been.