Return

When I asked him if I will ever be able to be as happy and carefree as I remember being before I ever met Chris, and before this tragedy occurred, Clay reassured me that I will be. I hope he’s right.

When I told him about my fight with Diane and about how I listened to her, came home, had the conversation with Chris and “let go”, I thought he would be happy for me and support my newfound ability to release my past. Instead he cautioned me about the danger of suppressing my feelings. I spent the entire weekend monitoring every single one of my thoughts and obsessively wondering, “Am I suppressing or moving on? Am I suppressing or moving on? Am I suppressing or moving on?” It was like finding a big ball in the street and holding it feeling lucky to have found it and having someone come along and smack it right out of my hands.

I was supposed to sing at an open mike with a friend, tonight, but he had car trouble and couldn’t make it in time so I’m home instead, feeling rather empty and quite nervous. The nervousness has been with me since Christmas, 2004. It’s a feeling of things having gone terribly wrong. I feel like I am never going to be able to return to the peace of mind I once had.

Imagining what Chris and I might be talking about right now, sitting on the couch together is not enough. Sometimes I feel as though I’m going mad. I’m having a hard time again.

I went to a Martin Luther King Concert last night and when the children’s chorus began to sing “We Shall Overcome” I remembered for the first time that Chris and I didn’t just meet in choir. We met at the Martin Luther King Day concert we performed in back in 1999. That’s what we were doing that day. Last night when the children began to sing some of the same songs Chris and I sang in our concert seven years ago, I was powerless to stop my tears. The memory was unexpected. The music was unexpected. My grief was unexpected. Last night’s concert was joyful, sad, thought-provoking and extremely moving.

This Tuesday will be the 2nd anniversary of my and Chris’ wedding day. I can’t believe I married him two whole years ago. Time has been blurry since his diagnosis. I don’t know whether time is going to fall back into a pattern I can follow ever again. Two years ago on the happiest day of my life, we stood beneath the trees on the Boston Common and said our vows, taking each other as husband and wife. I was a wife. I have to keep reminding myself that I was once a wife. I once had the honor of wearing those stripes. I was the proudest wife. I’m going to the trees Tuesday after work to honor our love for one another. I’m just going to grab a coffee and sit under the trees for a while.

What I want most in life is to someday be as happy as I once was.