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Saying Yes While My Heart Was Shattered

Hello Reader, It has been a while. The thing about grief is that the foundation of your life no longer feels steady. The illusion that it ever was has now been exposed, and that giant spotlight shining on the rubble feels overwhelming — uncertain, unsafe. In fact, nothing feels safe anymore because we now know the truth: that this whole life is only an illusion of safety. At any minute of any day, we could be the one taking our last inhalation with no exhale left. Jaw dropped, perhaps eyes still open, heart still beating for those last few minutes — and then it is over. There is only a body left. And in my case, it was his body.My now late husband’s beautiful body. Filled with fluid retention, swollen, unable to move. The light no longer in his eyes as I gently pushed down each lid to close them. Rest my love. Rest. The living no longer know what rest means. Rest is counterintuitive when you are the one left. Eating is foreign. Drinking, walking — anything normal feels abnormal. There isn’t one second, not even one, where you are not keenly aware that your foundation has been bombed and you’re bleeding out with no insight into how to make the bleeding stop. In fact, there isn’t even a desire to stop bleeding — because stopping bleeding feels like stopping grieving. And one never wants to forget, not a single second, what it was like to have that person here on earth. So attempting to stop the bleed isn’t even a desire. The bleeding is rapid at first. Blood flowing everywhere. You talk about it. Dream about it. Wake up choking as if being strangled. Blood falling out of your mouth. Tears down your face. Covered in agony. “My husband is dead,” said to random strangers. Aversion to eye contact because it risks more blood. But I could not help myself. Eye contact felt different now. It was as though the blood was contagious. Like a shark smelling blood, I too could see another’s wounds. I saw it in their eyes — that depth of pain rooted in my inner knowing: You’ve been through something too. And then there are the tears. Tears of such intensity that I would beg out loud for his return. “Baby, how can this be? How are you not here? How will I ever be able to do this without you?” Hysteria that would result in me sitting on the floor rocking back and forth until I could catch my breath. The brain is like scrambled eggs. Not yummy, fluffy eggs — but eggs with shells that don’t smell right, that keep falling out of the pan or are overcooked with such grit that it feels as though the pan will be ruined. My brain didn’t work. Hard because everything. Getting the mail, groceries, taking care of any household responsibility, bills — all the easy things felt like being disabled and having to figure out how to do simple tasks in a completely new way. Two weeks after his death, I began to shut down. In therapy, we call this agoraphobic — when the world outside your home feels intolerable, unsafe, impossible to enter. But clinical language feels sterile compared to the lived experience of it. It wasn’t just fear. It was collapse. I remember the first time I tried to go pick up cheesecake mix at Walmart. Of all places — fluorescent lights, beeping registers, vacationers everywhere — the ordinary chaos of the living. I wanteda tub of cheesecake. Something simple. Something normal. I didn’t even think twice. But the moment I walked through those sliding glass doors, panic overtook me. My chest tightened. Vision blurred. Sound distorted like I was underwater. My body knew before my brain could process it — this is not safe. I abandoned the two girlfriends I was with and raced back to the car. Hyperventilating.Sobbing.Gripping the car door like it was the only solid thing left in the world. How is the world still moving……when my world just ended? But here’s the truth I would learn slowly: My world did not end. My chapter ended.Cancer ended.My husband’s life ended.Our life as we knew it ended.Our hopes and dreams ended. So much of grief is grieving what was……and what could have been. It was a phone call that changed everything. My sister invited me and the kids to meet her family in Paris, France. Paris. It sounded absurd. Impossible. How could I get on a plane?Be around humans?Go to France… when my life had exploded?When even the idea of flossing my teeth felt hard? “I’ll talk to the kids,” I told her. We only had a few hours to commit. The trip was in three days. I sat down with our babies — our teenagers who will always be little to me and to their father. The grief exposed them in a childlike way, and the helplessness I felt to shield them and protect them made the bleeding out even more. They, too, were bleeding, and I could not make it better. Teenagers who had seen too much.Been through too much.Who held their dad’s hand.Who slept in the recliner next to his hospital bed.Who learned to say goodbye far too ear...