Mourning

I haven’t been able to write all week. Actually, I haven’t been able to write for a couple of weeks. Chores have been falling by the wayside too, this week at least. Most of what I’ve been doing is reading.

Why?

Well, for starters I got a couple of new books, the next two in a series (which honestly I shouldn’t have purchased but I had a strong urge to keep reading) I actually reread what I already had as well. Except when I finished those books, instead of doing the chores I’d been ignoring, or trying my hand at some writing, I found another book to read.

Why?

Well, I didn’t know then, but I do now. This final book’s title is “The Happiest Season,” and it’s by Rosemarie Naramore. I’ve read it before, and I’ve had it on my reader for a while, but I honestly have no idea why I suddenly had to read that particular story again.

I mean it’s nice enough. It is in fact a sweet romance set at Christmas time, but I’d never before been inclined to reread it, since it’s a story about a young widow and her son. So it seemed a little weird that I’d WANT to reread it.

But this isn’t the only weird thing that’s happened this week. You see, all week, every time I looked at my clock above my TV, which shows the date, day, and temp along with the time, I got the feeling I’d forgotten something. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled out my planner thinking I must have spaced some appointment or other. This was particularly true last Thursday, the fifteenth.

Then I started reading “The Happiest Season” and right in the middle of it the heroine’s best friend brings up that the heroine was having so much trouble emotionally because her husband died at that time of year, and Bam!

I looked at that clock then closed my eyes fighting tears.

Yeah, I forgot something. Why did I have to have a reminder?

Probably because burying myself in one book after another wasn’t good for me, or my house. I wasn’t going to get past it until I faced it. My husband is not only dead he has now been dead a year. I’d been hiding in books instead of facing it.

It isn’t as if this is the only time in this past year I’ve mourned him. It isn’t.

I miss him horribly every time I climb into the bed we used to share. I missed him on Valentine’s Day, Easter, the last weekend in May (which is weird since that was his Rendezvous weekend and my health issues had prevented me from going with him for several years before his death, but I felt pangs of regret that he wasn’t there with his friends). I also missed him on my birthday. I missed him on the anniversary of our first date and his birthday and the anniversary of when he proposed. In fact, that whole week back in August had been a bad week for me too.

Then came November. Gearing up for National Novel Writing month (NaNoWriMo or NaNo for short) http://nanowrimo.org, I sorely missed that he would no longer be griping about how much time I was spending writing. Let’s face it I missed my husband.

Now though I’ve been in the group for several years, while only seeing them during NaNo, a few of them, the leaders most particularly knew in the past I had a man in my life. It was kind of hard to miss since for the last few years, I couldn’t drive for health reasons.

Anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, this local group does scheduled write-ins throughout the month and one of them was set for November 8^th. I went. And well, the leader present that day asked what happened to him. I did tell them, no reason not to. Cancer is an awful thing, but it’s a fact of life. I even pointed out that we only learned he had cancer after Christmas the previous year.

Everything was going fine, I answered all their questions about how and when he died without a tear, then one of the ladies present asked, “How long were you together?”

I looked at her and said, “You had to ask,” then tears welled in my eyes. It took me a minute before I could tell them that that day would have been our 28^th anniversary. I even mentioned that I’d hoped focusing on my writing at least on that day would have helped me through it. What actually helped me was the hug our leader gave me.

I also got through Thanksgiving — thanks to his sister who reminisced with me over our holiday feast. We both cried.

And I’ll admit to fighting tears at one point while at my sister’s over Christmas both because I missed my husband and because I knew he’d wanted to swing enough money for us to be able to spend the holiday with her, but hadn’t been able to. I only managed it because, well, I don’t have him anymore.

I knew I’d miss him, but why does it have to come at me in waves like this? And will I always have this hard of a time with it? Should I plan on having a bad time the week of his birthday and the week he died for the rest of my life?