Echos

This will be my 10th Christmas without Jerry. It is still painful to look at his photo and realize he's not coming home. No, I'm not over it. It is unlikely I'll ever be over it. No, I don't have a boyfriend and I haven't remarried. I can't even imagine that. That man in the photo is what I see if I even consider meeting someone else.

Ten years. So long to be away from someone you shared your whole life with. I met and married him when I was 17 and he died when I was 52. A whole life.

You know, he wasn't perfect, and he made me furious at times. But he was so very good to me. I always felt like I mattered, that someone loved me and cared about me. There would always be someone to catch me if I fell and set me back on my feet. If the car broke down, I knew who to call. There was always someone to help with the heavy lifting.

Oh, but that's not the worst of it. There were things to do and new places to go and he'd be there with me. We shared memories and even fears. At least, I did. He never wanted to worry me. I hate that because that's what makes the marriage. You both have to share the bad along with the good. He wanted nothing to darken my days.

How much he'd suffer if he knew how dark my life became with his leaving. Sarah was the only light I had to light my way.

This year, that light is gone. For the first time in 13 years, my beautiful Sarah will not be with me for Christmas. She has gone to live with her dad and I will probably never have Christmas with her again unless I live to see her grown. She is far away, and they never come here for Christmas and I've never been there for it.

Sarah was the light that kept me focused and the joy that kept me laughing. So this week has been very hard. There will be no lights, no tree, no presents, no decorations, and no excited laughter. No peaking at packages, no Christmas stories, no special meals. It will be just another dark day in an empty house filled with the echos.

The old year is dying and day by day I do too. I haven't been sorry to see a year end in 10 years. I will not care this year either. I do not look forward to a new one. Why should I?

The Killing of Tom Browder

Follow this link:

https://writing-my-life-away.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-killing-of-tom-browder.html

Hitting My First Challenge

The Narrowing Ledge

Someone told me recently that I hadn't posted to this blog in a while so I decided it might be a good idea to do that. Not that many people are out there waiting with bated breath to read it. Still, it's good to keep it updated. I'm positive that someday social archeologist will dig into blogs to discover what we were thinking and how it applied to our religious rituals. 

In recent weeks my life has sort of fallen apart. In fact, in the last three years, things have just gotten bad. Serious medical problems that required surgery, my car totaled, another medical issue that drained my bank account. And then they decided to take Sarah away. After 5 years she will leave me to live with her dad. I won't go into all of it here because it is depressing enough living it. I don't see any reason to live all of it over again in writing. Let's just say writing has been at the bottom of my list of to-dos.

I'll just say I'm still here and working a new job from home. This will help get the bills back under control and give me some breathing space. I didn't want to go back to work but with Sarah gone, I'll need to stay occupied or I'll lose my mind. 

I will anyway.

March Madness: Medication Changes Coming

The Hell I See and Hear

It is February 5 and I'm officially over the worst of the holidays. All that remains is Valentine's Day, and that doesn't really matter, anyway. Jerry usually forgot such things. It isn't the day, rather it is the images and atmosphere that are troubling. But so are normal days.

This morning, as I was on my way home from dropping Sarah off at school, I was thinking about something related to a story element. It was unrelated to anything I am working on so I can't tell you why I thought about it. I suspect, in hindsight, that I was just messing around in my head. I should never do that. I know better. 

As I cruised along at 35 mph, I suddenly had a horrific flashback. Really, I don't have them often anymore but I still get them occasionally. I could see Jerry in the bathroom, in the middle of the night, when I got up to see about him. He was in the dark and said he was all right. He wasn't, but I didn't know. Then, remember waking up to him thrashing around on the bed, his wedding ring hitting the headboard railing and making that horrible sound. I saw myself jumping out of bed, running around the bed, calling him and then the room goes horribly quiet. By the time I got the light on and saw him I knew. But 10 years later I still try to wake him. I pat his cheek, call him, scream for help. 

It is all so vivid but I'm sitting in my car, driving down Virginia Street at 7:30 a.m. in 2019. It isn't January 29, 2009 at 3 a.m. in the middle of the ice storm of the century. I keep driving and I shout, over and over. "STOP. STOP. STOP. STOP" When that fails to stop the scenes, I pray for it to stop. Miraculously, it does as I pull into my street. 

My firm opinion is that hell is reliving all the horrible things you've seen, done, and thought in your entire life. My brain doesn't let go of trauma so I fervently hope I've served my time. I'm trying to be faithful so that something better is waiting and the hell I see and hear won't follow me.

Someone once told me it gets better. They lied. I don't relive it as often.