I was listening to music tonight, and brought up Joe Cocker’s “Unchain My Heart” … and things started falling like dominoes in my thought process.
Aside from the fact that I like Joe Cocker – and I like that song: Bob is not the one that has my heart chained up: I am. I’m the only one that can logically unchain my heart. Bob is in another realm; living his life in a parallel universe. While he is absolutely aware of what is happening in my life, in the realm I live in here on Earth, he can’t in effect affect my life anymore.
On any level.
Stuff just got real in real time: time to let go and get on with it.
Time to unchain my heart and start living a real life again – not the half-assed life I have been stumbling through since March of 2018.
So.
Letting go of Bob the first time was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. In my entire life.
Letting go, now, a second time … is just as hard.
And as necessary as immediately clearing his side of the closet of his clothing after coming home from OHSU, 2018, a Widow: I knew if any of it stayed in the closet it would seriously undermine my survival. And Bob knew that too – we had talked of the “what ifs” for decades: I knew Bob would be okay with the closet purging. It took longer to clear the dresser of his underwear and jeans; that probably sounds stupid, but that is the reality of the situation and circumstances.
Later came other personal items that slowly left the shed and house.
Now it is time to push past the memories and tamp them down: time to stop dredging them up and reliving them every day. I can never forget Bob – but I can stop fanning the embers of those memories into raging flames that end up devastating me emotionally and wreak my heart physically by the days’ end.
While sorrow will always be present, I do believe it can be managed – after all, Yeshua sorrowed; yet He successfully got on with a purposeful life. If He did it: I CAN TOO.
I have decided that this year, I am designating specific time slots on specific days at specific ties of the year to revive the memories of Bob and relive those times: September 5th at exactly 12:20’noon (the first time I ever saw Bob’s face when he walked past the school corner after lunch – Cathlamet, WA); March 27th at exactly 10 PM (when Bob walked through the front door of his house where Doug had thrown his kegger and I carded Bob – Cathlamet, WA); April 19th at exactly 7 PM (when Bob stepped through my mother’s front door to take me out on our first date – Cathlamet, WA); July 6th at exactly 8 PM (when we bought our Wedding rings at Zale’s on Commerce – in Longview, WA); August 24th at exactly 4 PM (when we applied for our Marriage License at City Hall – in Cathlamet, WA); August 27th at exactly 9 PM (when we were married at Judge Hall’s house in Skamokawa, WA); May 24th at exactly 12:27’noon (when our daughter was born at Cowlitz General Hospital in Longview, WA); November 4th around 5 PM (when Bob arrived and held our newborn granddaughter at the hospital – in Aberdeen, WA); December 26th around Noon (when Bob walked our daughter to her groom at Lake Sacajawea – in Longview, WA); August 15th around 5 PM (when we finally made Vegas, NV – and Bob held our newborn grandson); June 5th (our last vacation together – the Olympic Peninsula, WA State); September 3rd (me honoring Bob’s enacted DNR Order at Peace Health Hospital – Longview, WA: we nearly lost him then); December 14th at exactly 8:05 AM (Bob’s last day on Earth at OHSU, Portland OR); August 30th around Noon (Bob’s Birthday; and the day his Celebration of Life took place at Eden Valley, WA). These dates and times will be revered, and set aside to honor Bob’s life and the life I shared with him … to remember, reflect, look at pictures, listen to voice recordings, view pictorial DVD’s and phone videos of him … and allow my thoughts to indulge in the tapping of intimacies of remembered married moments: I NEVER want to forget him, his face, his mannerisms, his touch, or his voice! For these few brief remembrances, Bob’s essence will live again in memory.
This will be my own grieving ritual; and may, over time, be subject to change (but for now, it stands as noted above).
But the rest of the year will be free to focus on what I need to rebuild my life … I will be unwinding the chains that I have wrapped around my heart as a safeguard – which has now, 1 year and 16 days later, become a crippling hindrance to real living.
When Bob walked beside me on earth, and loved me like a man, his love and passion was possible – he cared: deeply. But, Bob is no longer here – he can’t “set me free”; he can’t “let me go”. I HAVE TO set me free; I have to let the memories go because as wonderful as they are … they are literally killing any chance I have of moving forward in real life, in real time. I cannot build a new life, in the present, if I am trapped in my memories of a past that has no future. I can only fully live in the present.
When we started dating, Bob had a dart board – and when he wasn’t teaching me to golf, or we weren’t shooting a couple pool games at the Arcade (or taverns), we were shooting darts in his livingroom: I was tomboy competitive, and got good at all of those things ;-)
My goal for 2020, is to aim FOR and score a bullseye on rebuilding a new life.
O.N.E.D.A.Y.A.T.A.T.I.M.E.
In the moment; of the present day.
To start, I have transferred the phone videos to laptop picture files so they aren’t at my fingertips on the phone, and I won’t be tempted to replay them over and over, when I’m out and about. It’s time to get serious about moving forward. I have Bob’s phone – and thankful for that (it’s a tangible link to the fact that he WAS ALIVE AND MINE) – but, it is also a reminder that he is no longer here: he is not at home. He has been gone from home for 472 days. He can’t care for me in the realm I exist in anymore. He can’t love me no more on the level my life is on, in the now.
Bob loved live and Bob loved me: Bob's goal our entire married life was to embrace life and to make me happy – Bob would not/does not want me to waste my life with my heart chained to the past.
Bob would be the last person to want me to get lost in grief and walk through life under the invocation of a past that chains me to bittersweet grieving misery: Bob gave me joyous love for 44 years – it would pain his heart to think that his memory was causing my heart misery. He hung into life as long as he did, to help ease my letting go; so he could go Home without worry I was being left behind, with a shattered heart! It dishonors his memory to walk around with a chained heart.
I was brave for him the entire time he was dying.
Now, I need to be brave for me, to face living a life separate from memories that hamstring me and keep me in survival mode; my heart chained to a bittersweet abstraction.
It’s time to let go.
Elohim!
Give me strength …
Yeshua, walk with me in this garden if life; help me find the time to make time to smell the roses and appreciate the life I was blessed with while fully living the life I am blessed with.
Help me to be a healthy embodiment of my husband’s love legacy.
Amen.
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