9. When it Rains

Since Bret died I have listened to country western music – the whole “you left and I’m alone” vibe - but there is a silly song called “When it rains, it pours” and I’ve been thinking about how that encapsulates my life this last year. There have just been so many life-changing events that have happened to me this year that rate an ark level of catastrophe.

Bret‘s death has just knocked me off my axis. It clearly was not planned, expected, or anticipated, it just came completely out of left field. Right on the heels of Brian’s death. So many of the decisions I made in my life in the fog of Bret’s death I made from a place of immense sadness, loss, and numbness…like quitting my job and moving to Tucson. Some things that hit my life were expected, but with everything else at the time some were just bad timing… like becoming an empty nester as Ian went off to college. Not a bad event, but with losing his dad and then losing Bret it was more impactful to me than it may have been. I was Mom and Dad, and I felt that pressure. And some of the things that happened are just residual wash away from the shit storm I was in…like the people who were in my life and no longer are. And, unlike Noah, I feel I am doing all of this without a boat. As I so quickly approach the one-year mark of Bret‘s death and a year without him and on my own, really on my own, I feel like I’m still just trying to tread water and find something to hang onto. I now really feel the direction I am currently swimming is the wrong way and so I’m treading water and trying to figure out which direction to swim to next. What life raft can I hang onto? It will take me a while to figure out where I should go and how to get there, and I am not 100% sure I won’t choose wrong again.  

I miss Bret, every day.

I still miss Brian every day.

And will even when I get to where I am going,  but I didn’t have a choice about those losses.  For the many other losses in my life, I think they are a result of the loss of who I used to be and I can’t get that person back. She was destroyed. She is broken. She is gone.

And eventually when I get to some sort of landing place, days, weeks, months from now I might be stronger for it. I’m not sure of that and most days I truly doubt it, but I will be changed. I am changed. Never to go back, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not… Yet.