 He was my knight in shining armor.
When I saw him standing there, holding his bicycle, among a sea of other strangers just beyond the grassy knoll, I knew. He was the man I was waiting for. He was the man who was going to save me. I never would have admitted that I needed (or wanted) saving. I was 3 years widowed, and I was just fine. I had lost a husband, raised a toddler on my own through infancy, purchased my first home, and moved from California to Colorado to start again. I was doing well, making a life for us, and playing strong, on the outside. On the inside, I was lonely. I wanted companionship. I wanted to feel like a woman again. To be kissed, admired, held, loved. I wanted to not be alone. I wanted the dream of a family that hadn’t been fulfilled, and I wanted to feel that I deserved it. I wanted a different life.  I took my mom to the hospital this morning.
It’s a familiar drive, one we’ve become accustomed to over the past year. We talk about the family, my dad, her doctor. We talk about how far she’s come, and how acupuncture has been pivotal in supporting her through the intensity of modern medicine. We talk about me opening a practice again someday. She says I can make a difference. I do not ask her if she is scared. It is not a question worth answering. Since the diagnosis last year -- Stage 4 Undifferentiated Pleomorphic Sarcoma -- her 77 year old body has endured two major surgeries, six weeks of radiation, six rounds of chemotherapy, experimental immunotherapy, multiple biopsies, and countless blood draws, CT scans, and MRIs. Today is what we hope will be the third and final surgery to remove a large mass in her right thigh, a mass that materialized five months ago out of nothingness, ghost cells that played silently on a seemingly clear MRI before building a spiral around her nerves and vessels. We can be thankful, at least, that they decided to say hello. To give her a chance to fight.  Three years ago, I dreamed of this day. I somehow knew, even in those first few days, that things would be okay. But I didn’t want to live through the beginning. It felt like purgatory.
I was desperate to get to the other side. To have permission to start over. To fall in love. To be happy. To laugh unapologetically. To bury the widow. But grief is not a mountain. There is no summit, and there is no other side. Grief cannot be conquered, or left behind. Nor can the people that you loved. There is no starting over, because you are forever changed. You cannot go back to the person you were. And the person you become through grief is an ever-evolving wonder. It’s challenging for us to accept that there are races we cannot finish. Our minds want to untangle the past from the present, the sadness from the hope, the gratitude from the regret. We want to move past that which did not fulfill our dreams and expectations, or find resolution in death as the inevitable ending that we must embrace. Moving on is the mantra. But as the years change, and we along with them, so too does our relationship to the grief, and to our loved one cemented in time. Moving on deems impossible, for we take all of it with us. Every day, every year, a new experience of the past; a new understanding of the present. Three years ago, I dreamed of this day. And if you’d told me there was no other side, I’d have been crushed. But maybe you could have told me this, too: You are on the other side. Because the minute George crossed over, so did I. There the journey began, and so it continues, evolving and informing my life with infinite teachings. The last three years have not been easy, but they have been important. Like the butterfly’s struggle to emerge from the cocoon (without the struggle, it cannot survive) -- grief sits at the cornerstone of my human experience, challenging me to become a better version of who I thought I wanted to be. With love and peace in my heart, I step into this new year. A new season of evolution and wonder, with my beautiful and precious grief.  A few weeks ago, I thought I had finished the first draft of my memoir, and I was elated.
For about five minutes. That elation quickly turned to pride, turned to fear, turned to doubt, turned to shame. As I began to review the draft, starting from the beginning, the negative personal commentary began its long and relentless rant. I wrote this in my journal on October 29, 2015. Today, reading this while compiling the narrative for my memoir (which is getting there guys, I'm really close!), I want to share it. Because we, as a society, are so afraid to look at, think about, acknowledge, and come to terms with death. Yet there is nothing more certain than the inescapable truth that everything that lives, will die. And often we have little say in how or when this happens.
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