Homesick

"Home is wherever I'm with you" -- Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Sometimes I get homesick. Not homesick for a place, or even for a person, but for the way things used to be. Now don't get me wrong -- there is nothing about my life now I would be willing to trade for the world.... I have a beautiful son and a loving husband, and there is no way I would give any of that up. I accept the fact that in order to have them in my life, I had to lose my old one. But I am allowed to still miss it, sometimes, right?

But I can  never go back. You know how it is when you miss a place, maybe your hometown, or a place you used to live and so you go back to visit? It's not the same, never the same. Sometimes reality just makes your memory less sweet, less fond, as if the reality takes away the way your mind has made that place to be. Sometimes I feel that way about my old life. I remember it in a way I sort of suspect it was not, not really. If I sit and focus on the details I still recall reality, or at least my version of reality, but I still think that time has softened it. It's like looking through the world with a soft focused lens in a dim light.... the light is still there, but some of the harsh details are melted away -- you can't see the wrinkles on someones face anymore.

I find myself sometimes wandering back there in my mind.... remembering things I used to do, conversations I used to have with Mike, places we used to visit. Just simple things, like what we would do when I came home from work, and how that was. It stands in really stark contrast to how things are now -- and I wonder what life would have been like if he hadn't died. I guess it's only natural that the mind wanders there. It's hard, actually, to imagine away my current life and think about what I would be doing instead. Would we have had any kids? Would we have finally got a house? Where would we be living? I don't know. My mind lacks sufficient imagination to fill in any of these details -- all it seems to be able to do is conjure up memories. I guess that's what my old life is now, memories.

And so when I do allow myself these little moments, I get homesick. I don't know why. I just know that even if there was a way to go back, that it wouldn't be the same, because I am not the same. And maybe that is why I get homesick.... because I know that not only can't I go back, but because I also don't want to go back. And that is perhaps the hardest fact I've had to accept on this whole roller coaster of grief. Maybe it's a real sign of healing, maybe not, but as people before me have said, "It is what it is." Let's just leave it at that.

Chili and other musings

It's funny how the most mundane things can trigger so many memories.

A few weeks ago I made a big batch of veggie chili -- thanks in large part to far too many peppers and zucchini than I knew what to do with. The chili reminded me of the veggie chili that (and my Milwaukee friends will know this bit) you could get every Saturday and Sunday at both Fuel and Comet Cafes. I used to make it a point to have a cup of that veggie deliciousness every weekend :)

So of course this makes my mind wander back to a far different time in my life. And as I continued to stir and simmer the pot of chili, I thought of Mike's chili. He loved to make chilli. And I thought of how he would often take all the ingredients over to his parent's house and promise them supper. But he would start cooking far too late, and take far too long, so no one actually got a bowl of chili until around midnight. But it was so good that everyone would stay up waiting for it to be done. "Ready yet?" and he would reply "You can't hurry chili, the flavors need time to marinate!" As I thought about those many evenings, as we sat around his parent's kitchen table, I could smell the aroma in my mind.

And it's during these moments of memories, that you feel transported back in time. And it feels so real. And then I remember, all those moments of things and events that got me from that point to here -- alone in my kitchen stirring a pot of veggie chili.

I can hear my new baby stirring in the next room & need to go to him. And I think about how much we wanted to have a family, but how that all got derailed due to all sorts of things that got in the way.... and how when he died I thought that was it, I would never be a mommy. And how amazing it is that I was given this second chance, and a second life and there.... in the next room is proof that life not only goes on, but can continue to be absolutely amazing. And then the thought finally hit me, why it is so difficult to ever fully "get over" a loss this big.....

See, I can go on and have a new life. My life has changed, and continues to change -- in so many ways. I get to keep making new memories.....and he never will. He will always be the same, static and stuck, back in those moments that seem like they are getting longer and longer ago.

But that big bowl of chili that we all sat around and ate at midnight..... that will always be a memory so fresh I can almost taste it.