You were Mine, But never mine to Keep

There is something about losing someone you love that completely changes your perspective on life. When James had passed, I automatically went into survival mode. The crazy thing is, you don’t realize it until time passes and you become more aware of how you deal with certain situations.

To be quite frank, I can’t remember much from the first year after he left. It was like I was a ghost watching the world carry on while I stayed frozen in time. The brain fog was real (still is at times), so was the nausea, the loss of appetite, insomnia and my favorite, the hair loss. As if I didn’t lose enough from postpartum.

So, if you know someone who is in their first year of grief you might want to check if they’re eating or not. No one really talks about how much your body cops with grief, I’ll tell you that one. If I’ve learned anything after experiencing the first year, it’s that you become better at masking your grief in front of people to shelter them from the deep pain you truly feel.

If I was to describe what the first year of grief was like, I’d probably say It is the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt. It’s overwhelming, exhausting and you’re in a constant state of fight or flight mode. I can hand on heart say I would rather give birth a million times over and it still wouldn’t be equivalent to the type of pain grief holds. The deep, raw heartache and emptiness you feel losing your person is unbearable.

How do you go from living everyday with your husband to not ever speaking to him, seeing him, touching him. That sense of relief watching him walk through the door everyday. Being his passenger princess, tag teaming this parenting gig and all the annoying things husbands do in between… yes even those things. They are actually the very things you miss the most. Going from calling each other everyday to not getting an answer on the other end of the phone. You’re no longer “married” on a form, you’re a “widow”. Let’s not forget him taking the bins out on rubbish day. Lord knows how many I’ve missed since he’s been gone. But that’s another story for another time, just ask my brother in-law Brandon lol.

It is such a traumatic experience that I don’t even think the mind can comprehend it. Top that off with having to make funeral arrangements, deal with the financial changes within your family dynamic, raise your children, see faces on a daily basis and trying your best to hold it together while literally dying inside. You can definitely expect a breakdown waiting to emerge just around the corner.

I thought I knew what it meant to love someone completely. But now I can truly admit that I never realised how much you could, until they’re physically not here. Losing James had completely broken me. There have been many moments where I have felt so defeated I no longer wanted to be here. Times I would think my kids were better off without me because I was in so much pain I couldn’t function.

I just wanted to be with him.

I spent the first 6 months of grief so done and full of anger with God.

Why would you take him away? We had a great marriage. There were couples who didn’t fight for theirs?

He was the best father. There were fathers who never wanted to take care of their children? 

He fought so hard to stay, but there were people in the world who took their life for granted? 

Confused? Yes!

How did I just meet the love of my life, marry him, birth his babies, create a home together and then be left becoming a solo parent?

Although I felt this way toward God, I could still feel his presence surrounding me. Crazy right. As a person of faith, when you’ve done a lot of life with God you will know what it feels like to be in his presence and what it feels like when you resist. And trust me, your girl was resisting all the damn way. I just couldn’t see what his plan was for me.

29 and now a widow, wow you got me gooood Lord! I did not sign up for this! I was down for the growing old together watching our kids leave the nest forever type of love.

Despite feeling like this, the more I expressed my anger toward God and asked all the questions, the more he revealed to me. I knew he was answering my prayers through the people I would meet along the way to give me perspective and comfort. I would tell him I was hurting, ask him why? and plead for him to just take me or bring him back at any capacity. Sick or not I would do it again. But as time passed, he made me realise what it truly means to be a life partner for someone here on earth. Someone to navigate life with. A helper. I was that for James and he was that for me.

When I met James, he was so deep in grief following the passing of his father. The years we dated were special, but it was not all sunshine and rainbows it was in fact full of breakdowns, years of dealing with deep depression and working through past trauma. I remember thinking, come on God, why do I have to deal with all of this? Could he not sort this out before he met me Lol.  

Don’t worry, we often talked about this part of our lives and would laugh because we almost didn’t pass this stage, let’s be honest.

Behind this dark handsome 6 ‘4 ft dude was really a guy paralyzed in his grief because he held onto it so tight never really knowing how to release the burden. He just needed someone to help him. I wholeheartedly believe that this season of our life set us up for a strong marriage and a love that would weather many storms ahead unknowingly. 

I was so oblivious to grief. I thought I could understand it because I was helping him navigate it. But James was the one that introduced me to grief. And I will always be grateful that I got to experience what it felt like to hold, to sit and to feel the pain of someone you love, lose someone they loved. I have seen how grief can paralyze you, and how it can spiral into deep depression if you don’t choose to embrace it in all its forms. And when I say forms, I mean the parts where you feel crazy, lost, broken, unstable and just in a pit where no one understands. Let me just remind you, You’re not alone. I have felt all these things at some stage.

Supporting someone you love in their grief can be difficult. They don’t need someone to fix their struggles. No one can change their reality, and they know that. They just need someone to sit with them in their sorrow. I believe that grief can either make or break your relationships, and for us it made it one hundred times stronger.

As soon as I met him, he shared his hopes and desires to become a father, not to get married lol but to become a father. Like alright mate, slow your horse down, we’re only on our second date. But this was literally how our love story went. No time was wasted. After being friends for a year, We dated for 2 years, got married and pregnant in our third year, birthed our second child in the fourth and then he was diagnosed with Cancer and began treatment in the fifth. At the end of our sixth year together he left me with two kids and graduated to heaven. Rude right lol kidding. 

Yes, I was relieved he was in no more pain, and at peace that he was now with our creator (Goals) but to say this didn’t pain me is a lie. I used to hate this grief, this pain and burden that I now carry on earth, but God has shown me how beautiful grief can be. For I had the opportunity to love so deeply on this earth, at this capacity. Walking someone right through to the end of their life is the most beautiful experience I will hold onto forever. Especially when it’s the love of your life. I am so grateful that if the tables were turned and he was the one left here on earth to raise our kids my heart would break for him knowing how much he was already grieving the loss of his father.

For that, I would gladly take this cup from him.

He was mine, but never mine to keep on earth…

I was his life partner to help get him to his destination. For that I will always thank God.