A few days ago I was driving home from an appointment, enjoying my heated seats and the stereo in my new car. I was thinking of how much I love my new gym, and I was feeling unusually happy. Inevitably when this happens I feel guilty because I probably wouldn’t be enjoying any of these things if Patrick were still here.
Getting used to living without your spouse is really hard. First of all, there is the actual living…waking up, getting out of bed, getting dressed, eating. None of those things were easy at first. I went through the motions and eventually it got a little easier. Once you master continuing to be alive, you have to decide if you are ever going to really LIVE again. That is a little harder to come to terms with.
A lot has changed for me and not all of it is awful. I am in school, learning new things. I am recently taking better care of myself. I am cooking and kind of enjoying it a little. I am keeping my house tidy so that someone else can come and really clean it! lol I’ve learned to do more around the house and yard. I have a lot of new friends and deeper relationships with older friends. I get paid to be retired! My retirement future is honestly more secure than it would have been. I will get to enjoy my retirement years.
My life is pretty ok right now and it really sucks that he is not here to enjoy it with me! The thing is, as much as losing him sucks, it happened, it’s my reality. It makes no sense that God would take him from the girls and I, but we don’t always get to know the reason. And even though most of my new life would have never been, it IS. As I like to say, “It is, what it is”. This is the life I have been given. I could choose to spend all of my time mourning or I can choose to live.
I decided to look up the meaning of “It is what it is” and it’s actually kind of harsh and uses multiple curse words but it does sum things up perfectly. This is the way it’s going to be! Deal with it! I’m putting the link in case you want to see it.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=It%20is%20what%20it%20is
I am going to try and enjoy things without guilt. I know this is what he would’ve wanted.
I’m not going to apologize for knowing my new friends or enjoying my car. This doesn’t mean that I don’t miss him. I will always think about him. Every. Single. Day. Hopefully it will be with a smile on my face.
Earlier I was sitting at Camille’s soccer game. As is typical we weren’t happy with some of the calls and the other coach was a little obnoxious. One of the dads was being quite vocal about it and his wife scolded him a little. I laughed to myself and thought this was the first time I was happy Patrick was not there. He probably would have considered it s challenge to be more obnoxious and I would have been stressed that he was going to get the ref angry. I would have said “PATRICK!!!!!!!” many times! This would have been said very quickly and somewhat quietly because he didn’t like to be scolded. And MAYBE he would have listened or probably he would have just gotten up and walked away. If I’m being honest, I guess I would have been happy to deal with him if he could have been there. Instead, I just laughed and smiled. It doesn’t always hurt unbearably and it’s good when I have a happy or funny memory.
I will keep working on the guilt. I think it’s going to be a work in progress and that’s fine.