From Riches to Rags, and the Glory I Found There

  4 years a widow... 4 years into this journey and I can say, with some certainty, that it is a whole lot easier than it was 4 years ago...3 years ago...2 years ago...even 1 year ago. So, at the very least, it's trending up, eh? I haven't sobbed hysterically over my dead husband in ages, years even. The grief is much more sophisticated now, I get choked up, maybe let a tear or two fall out. Nothing quite so dramatic as the panic attacks I used to have. It's all quite tame and reasonable...you know...until its not...and it steals my breathe by sheer surprise. And a part of me forgets that there was ever a time when it felt normal for John to be dead. Because, 4 years in, it is normal. Normal for John to be dead. Normal to not know how to fix the broken things. Normal to sleep in bed alone. Normal to wish there was just a moment where I didn't have to manage all of these things all by myself. (Because being an independent woman is ridiculously overrated...0/10 - do not re...

    Let me be the keeper of the broken things. Give me the shards of memories you hold on to that hurt so much. Show me the stitches in your scars.  Let me carry them with you...for you. Because "grief demands a witness"...so let me be yours. I want to hear about your baby that barely got to be and how they changed your entire world while the world somehow kept spinning.  I want to hear about what haunts your dreams or keeps you up at night when the world seems to slumber peacefully around you. I want to hear why you cry in your car before going inside after everyone else has run in like its totally normal that you need an extra 5 minutes just to breathe it all out. My heart aches so much for the broken things of the world that we all clutch on to...terrified that if we stop clutching them that they'll slip through our fingers and the world will forget...we might forget. So let me keep your broken things too. And I will breathe the goodness of God into the shards and...

  You know, despite my tattoos...and piercings...and partially shaved head...I never considered that my look was very "alternative". At least not until someone said it was. I just thought that I was expressing myself in ways I might not have before. *I* like how I look...and I guess, if I'm being honest, what other people might think just doesn’t really factor into anything I do. But certainly not in the sense that I expect everyone to love everything about it all. My poor mom dislikes tattoos, my brother makes fun of my hair, and lots of people have said "oh...it's not quite my thing".  I never expected people to like these things about me the way I like them about me. I am not particularly bothered if it’s not your thing. It doesn't offend me. I'm not asking you to get a tattoo...or a piercing...or to shave your head. *I* did it because *I* wanted to...you just didn't factor into it. That being said...I've never been judged so...interesting...