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Halfway To Who Knows Where
It is September 1, 2020. One half of a year has passed since starting this journey. 6 months. 181 days. 4,344 hours. 260,640 minutes. 15,38,400 seconds. I made it. I’m not sure what I expected to find when reaching this milestone. I just wanted to get here; to put the days of rawness behind me. And in 6 more months from now, I want to summit the peak of one year on this hijacked journey. To get through a year of firsts without her. To stand on top of 12 months widowed with a 360 degree view and see where I came from and look ahead to where I am…
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Ambushed
March 12, 2020. 12 days after. My tears are like a book tucked away on a shelf. I am content not to check them out. They are obedient and under control. Obedience. Control. I can function if I can control the waves of emotion rising up in me. I am on autopilot. Cruise control. Going through the motions. Moving through each day. Getting by. But today, this book flings itself off the shelf, spills open and demands its story told. Christy’s iPhone vibrates. I’ve watched other calls light up the home screen, usually spam calls leaving no message. Something about the numeric sequence of this call leads me to swipe…
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Hijacked – March 1, 2020
I hold her hand while gently talking to her. She labors through her breathing in the last hours of her life. I want her to let go, for her struggle for oxygen to be over. I watch her take her last breath. And just like that, my world changes. This last breath extinguishes our dreams. Eliminates hope. Sunsets a miracle. All the future plans for our lives together are irrelevant now. Christy dies shortly after midnight on March 1, 2020. Four hours earlier, I climbed into the back of an ambulance arranged by hospice. They advised me she could die en route. I get to make this decision for her…
