Thanks giving.

We have entered the winterish season.  The natural world is dormant, almost dead.  The days are short and gray.  The once verdant fields and mountains are brown and gray, icy with frost and snow powder.  It feels right, this dark, desolate season of existence.  It makes sense to see the dead frozen corpses of wildflowers lining the highway.  It’s helpful to see the natural world a reflection of my internal states.

It’s harder too.  Thanksgiving day will mark six full months since Tim’s official transition off of this earth.  Six months since the day in the hospital that he released that last breath and I cradled his dead body in my arms.  Six months since that little slice of hell ended and my odd, awkward, painful second life forcibly began.  Six months feels significant.  Half a year.  A lifetime.  A blink.

With the holidays upon us I’m not thrilled to be entering into this supposed season of joy and peace.

I don’t feel a lot of joy and peace.

Joy and peace can totally fuck off.

Something I do feel, that is good and healing and happy to feel, is thankful.  I’m thankful to have had Tim in my life for 12 years.  To have grown into adulthood with him.  To have explored and traveled with him.  To have had babies with him.  To have sat next to him at dinner every night talking about anything or everything or nothing at all.  To have slept in the same bed with him. To have fought with him.  To have held his hand.  To have had nights out at shows and evenings at home with Netflix.  To have lived a life with him.  For 12 years.  I got to have him for 12 years.

With the 6 month mark coming up and the natural world transitioning, I am more raw now.  I feel more.  I remember more.

When I go to bed at night I am flooded with memories of Tim.  Not usually the stuff you think you will remember, like the nights I gave birth to our children or our wedding day. It’s the everyday stuff that comes to me most often.  The way his face looked when he laughed.  Seeing him come in the door just before dinner.  Cuddling next to him in bed.  Driving in our car.  His voice.  His warmth.  His physical presence.

It has taken time for the numbness to wear off and for the memories to return.  And I’m thankful for that.  It’s harder.  I hurt more and more often.  But I hurt because I need to hurt.  It hurts to loose your soul-mate.  To watch him die twice.  It hurts to face the rest of your life without your life-partner and father of your children.

But I HAD a soul mate.  My children HAD a father.  And I’m thankful for that.

Not everybody gets to love the way we loved.  Not everybody gets to connect the way we connected.  We were lucky to have crossed paths in this chaotic Universe…it’s possible we could have never even met…but we did…and we connected…and we worked on our connection to make it stronger…and we got to have that. And I would rather have had that and lost it then to never have experienced that kind of love and connection at all.

So, for that, I’m thankful.  Because I was loved.  I had a soul-mate.  And I still love him.