Small Things

By Jan Warner
eyeseepic@aol.com
Stop Thief: Don’t Steal My Grief
www.griefspeaksout.com

This morning I went to fold some sheets and missed the other pair of hands to hold the other end and help me.

I watched what turned out to be the last episode of one the TV shows Artie and I liked to watch together.  After the characters/actors said goodbye - it was another loss.  A teeny tiny one.

Am getting nervous about the show.  Nothing special about that.  Went to a print shop to make programs and called the editing studio to ask them to make a few small changes.  Have my first tech rehearsal tomorrow.  There's a lovely dinner for me after the show my daughter is organizing.  How can I be doing this without Artie?  Crawling into bed with our teddy bears and the covers we slept under doesn't calm me like holding on to my husband like my life depended on it.  I don't like being a grown up without him!!  

I'm sure everything will be fine - but there is that empty space.  I think I've said that sometimes I walk down the street with my hand curled outward.  It doesn't make me outwardly look crazy - but what I'm doing is pretending Artie is holding my hand.

I am so lucky.  I even have a film clip of him saying, "Oh God, we're so lucky." (he wasn't talking about us - but he is now - in the show!!)   I do have a letter he wrote to me how he watches me try new things - fall - and get up - and try again - and how proud he is to be my husband.  All these gifts.  I'm doing it.  I'm uncomfortable - but I'm doing it.  I just want him back.  That's all.  I need his shoulder to lean on today.  

Small things.  Some days missing the small things hurts more than missing the big things.  I wish I had died first - but I don't because he would have had a harder time surviving than I do.  Once when I was in the hospital I was angry with him because he didn't spend much time visiting.  I later found out he was laying in bed in our house crying because he was so afraid I was going to die.  I didn't.  He did.  

Sorry for having a sad old bad old day again.  I'll be happy later.  Just not right now.  I'd like to listen to a hypnosis CD - I think that would help - but I'm waiting for an e-mail from the editing place.  All this new technology makes me a stranger in a strange land.  I still think I need paper for things!!

Hope some of you out there are having happy days.  That's the trick - if you're climbing the grief rope and you slide down and get rope burn - you just have to breathe and start climbing back up.  No - that's not fun.  Maybe I'll jump on a trampoline so high I'll reach the sky - like a little kid.  (in my imagination, of course, in real life my hips would complain!!)  Thank you all for being there.  xo