The End of an Awful Year

Note: This post was actually written on January 3, 2010, but not posted until today.

Tomorrow I go back to work. I am relieved – this past week, since Christmas, has been awful. Christmas itself was manageable – the kids and I went home for the holiday with my whole family, just like we used to have when we lived there. There was one big missing piece without Kirk there, but we got through it okay – better than I expected actually.

But since coming back here on the 28th, it has gotten really tough. The 29th was our anniversary, and as I expected, it was really difficult. By far the worst day since his birthday, maybe the worst day since the first few weeks of all this. It was especially tough because the weather got bad here and it was not safe to drive, so I couldn’t go to the accident site, which I had really wanted to do that day. I felt upset and also guilty, almost as if I was neglecting him by not going. He hated for me to drive in bad weather, and I knew he would not have wanted me to do it. Mostly though, all I could think of is what if I am sitting by the side of the road where he died and someone slides on the ice and kills me – then the kids will have lost both their parents in the same spot. Paranoid maybe, but it kept me home.

I had thought that once I got through that day I would get an emotional break on the 30th and during the day on New Year’s Eve, and then struggle again on New Year’s Eve. It was not to be. To my surprise, the 30th and all of the 31st were every bit as difficult as the anniversary. The sadness was as intense as it was six months ago, with frequent tears, and more ready to break through at all times. The day of New Year’s Eve felt especially strange, because I was going to the neighborhood party that night, and I found myself apprehensive, nervous, even fearful about it. While I know the neighbors right around me well now, I do not know the rest of the neighborhood, and I was irrationally uncomfortable about going to an event that included strangers.

It was reminiscent of the first few weeks after Kirk died, a time during which I had an overwhelming feeling that people were staring at me in public. I felt they could see the weakness and pain in me, and that it made me a spectacle. The worst time was in the airport here, leaving to fly home for the funeral. I felt incredibly weak, trembly, and breathless, like I was going to have a panic attack. This discomfort in public went away after the first few weeks, but it came back (although not quite as strongly) when I thought about attending the New Years Eve Party. I suspect it was because I know that the whole neighborhood knows what happened, and felt that they would be looking at me – “there’s the woman who lost her husband.” I hate being someone everyone else whispers about.

Feeling this way made me realize how much I hate that this has become my story, his story, our story. I am the woman who lost her husband in the awful accident. We are the couple whose happy life ended when he was killed. He is the funny, great guy who died tragically, and too soon. This is not who I want us to be, who I want me to be, and I know it is absolutely not who he would want to be. His death has defined every waking moment, every decision, every emotion for over eight months, and it seems so wrong – there is so much more to us than that. I can’t stand it – it makes me want to scream. It makes me so sad that this should be our legacy, or at least an unavoidable part of it.

But I made myself go to the party, and it was okay. Everyone was nice, and I didn’t feel whispered about (although I think I must have been, in a caring way). It was hard though, to see everyone in couples. I see couples every day of course, but usually I am moving – at the grocery store, the movies, Home Depot - so I am not confronted with them for long. It was harder to be in a contained space for several hours with all of them. There was one couple in particular who clearly really loved each other, and it showed in the same way it would have if someone was watching me and Kirk. No big yukky PDA went on. It was more the way they held hands or leaned into each other when they were standing together. And when they weren’t together, they would look up from time to time and make eye contact across the room. Once when they had been apart for a while he stepped away from the group he was with, and went up behind her. He put his arms around her and lowered his head into her neck and just held her, kind of rocking her, inhaling her. She reached up and held his head in her arms, without ever stopping the conversation she was in. You could tell that it was not unexpected for him to embrace her this way – it was natural and easy. That would have been us. It made me happy for them, and sad for me. I stayed until 11:30 and then came home. I could not be there at midnight – everyone paired off and me wishing I was.

When I got home I turned on a movie and tried to ignore the clock. As it got closer to midnight I realized that for the first time since I lost him, I was about to have a moment where I would know exactly what we were doing together one year ago. There is no other moment I can know that about. I can know that on a certain day (like a birthday) we did a specific thing last year – went to a certain restaurant, gave each other a specific gift, had a party at our house. But the only actual moment on which I can know our history is midnight on New Year’s Eve. For thirty years, at that very moment, we kissed each other. Every time, every year. Even if I fell asleep, he would stay awake and then wake me up and kiss me at midnight. This year as the clock crept toward that moment, I couldn’t breathe for the want of him. I missed him so very much. I stared at the TV, willing myself not to look at the clock, afraid to see the moment of midnight, the moment that had held happiness for so many years and now held only sadness.

I managed to not look at the time, and stayed up way past midnight so I would be exhausted when I got into bed and could hopefully fall asleep. It didn’t work – I had to break out the Tylenol PM. I have needed it most nights since coming back home after Christmas. I haven’t used it since the first two weeks of all this, but this past week it has been impossible to sleep without it. I don’t like needing it. I got up super early today so I would be really tired tonight – I don’t want to take it the night before I have to get up for work.

I think this was just too much time off of work without companionship, and with the added effect of the holidays, it was overwhelming. I am exhausted, weary, like I have no strength to keep facing this. Another grief lesson – two weeks of vacation sounds appealing, but in the reality of my new life, it can backfire.

I want to say that maybe 2010 will be better than 2009. The problem is, 2009 held both the loss of Kirk, and the last few months of Kirk. So was it a horrible year, or a wonderful year? Can 2010 – a year in which I will not have him for even one day - be better than the last year in which he was with me? Can it be worse than the year in which I lost him? I wish I didn’t have to find out.