I'm really ready to wake up now

In life, it seems that there are occasions that cause us to remember exactly where we were and what was happening around us. For my generation, it was John F. Kennedy's assassination, the first man on the moon, Watergate. For me personally, it was exactly two weeks ago at this moment that my life imploded. In the past, I've wondered how I would feel and react if I lost a loved one, and always pictured it as a dramatic explosion -- grief, tears, sadness exploding out of me and ultimately travelling away from me. I've always been a "glass half full" kind of person, and have been able to find positive aspects of many terrible situations -- my father's death from cancer, the loss of a grandchild after only 29 days. But this -- this is too much for me to comprehend, and instead of a huge explosion, I can only feel my grief and sadness turning in on me and crushing me with its weight.

Two weeks ago today, at nearly this exact moment, I came home from my second day at a new job to find my husband dead in our bed -- nearly exactly where I'd left him that morning. At first, I thought he was teasing me and would jump up from the bed laughing at my horror. Instead, he lay there looking as if he was asleep -- but gone from me completely. My son, who is 8 and had been home alone with my husband's corpse, played in the backyard, convinced that daddy was in fact sleeping. I couldn't comprehend what was happening, and couldn't even figure out how to use the phone to call for help that would come too late to do anything but try to comfort me as I lay prostrate on the floor, unable to breathe through my grief and guilt.

Dave hadn't felt well that morning, and I'd taken him to the ER only five days prior to his death. After what seemed like extensive tests, they sent him home with warnings about heart disease in diabetics, particularly diabetics like him who struggled to keep his glucose below 300. I asked Dave three times to let me take him to the ER again, but he was so sure it was nothing he refused. Why didn't I insist? If I'd only nagged him more to go to the hospital, maybe they could have saved him from what was later determined to be coronary artery disease (undiagnosed until then.) Why was it so important that I run off to work instead of making sure the man I loved was OK? There must have been something else I could have done.

We had a fight the night before he died because he hated the meetings I sometimes have at night. He wanted me home all the time, and I couldn't understand why he couldn't understand that I'm me because of the things that I'm involved in, too. We argued, but as soon as the lights were out, there he was, reaching for me and holding me while I fell asleep. In the morning, he told me that he was sorry, and that he was just mad because he missed me when I wasn't with him. I climbed back into bed to cuddle for a few minutes, and asked him again to let me take him to the ER. Why did I listen to him?

Two weeks later, all the out of town family and friends have returned to their lives as they should, and I'm left here with DJ to contemplate the rest of my life without Dave. My mental slide show, unlike the one I made for his funeral, never ends. I see his face, full of glee as he took his beloved boat out on American Lake. I feel his arms around me as we lay in bed, but he's not really there. I think of the many things he wanted to do -- go to Tombstone, take DJ to the Great Wolf Lodge, travel to Maine in September to visit the kids and see the fall leaves. I smell his cologne in the closet and his farts in the bed. I look at the pictures of him, with me, with DJ, with the grandkids and I'm overcome with pain. I hear his voice as I trip over every single incomplete project that he started but never finished. Now that it appears that I'll have to give up his truck since my income has dropped by 2/3's, I see him sitting in the driver's seat every time I look out into the drive.

At work, I'm doing better, and don't seem so inclined to cry every five minutes now that I'm busy. But when I leave my building, I look out at the lake, and there's Dave in the boat again -- free, happy, and loving life. I cry all the way to the day camp I had to put DJ in now that I'm working and there's no one at home to keep him company and plot new adventures. I try to stay composed in front of DJ since he's taken to ask me not to cry anymore. As soon as I'm alone in the bathroom or in the office checking email, the tears start again.

My oldest daughter, a wife and mother herself, finds it hard to grieve for Dave as her sister and I and DJ do. She can't forgive him for the way he treated me at times, even though I have. She's eager for me to move on and look for someone who will "treat me better than Dave did." I love her, and appreciate that she's worried about me, but she underestimates the strength of my bond with Dave.

Of all his transgressions, it was Dave's need to have someone in the moment that was hardest. There were so many women that he met online (and apparently, in Starbucks) who filled a temporary need he had to have human contact. Since his disability made it impossible for him to work, he struggled mightily with loneliness and depression, and seemed to think that having some woman tell him how great he was would make it better. He told me once that he deliberately chose women who he considered 'beneath' me in class and looks, as if that made it more tolerable to me. Every time I found out about one of them, he'd cry and beg me to forgive him, and I always did. I didn't understand, but I did know that he needed some kind of validation that required a laser-like focus on him and his needs. The most hurtful part of this was the flowers left on his grave with a personal note from his latest. She had to have known that I'd read the note -- obviously, Dave wouldn't. I have a primal need to reach out and hurt her in return, and can only hope that she feels pain like mine soon. I write this now knowing that family and friends might read it and know my shame -- I put up with a man who cheated on me because I loved him too much to kick him out. That shame can't replace my sadness, unfortunately -- so now both weigh me down.

I've visited the grave every day, and can do little more than sit on the grass and cry. I once told Dave I'd never forgive him if he died before me, but in my mind I was picturing us in our 80's, not our 50's, when that happened. We needed more time.

My father died when I was 16, and my mom was the same age I am. I wonder if I'm going to live out the rest of my life alone, as she has. Have I used up my allotment of love and passion now that Dave is gone? Will I ever feel as safe and comfortable with someone besides him? I'm no spring chicken, and definitely not representative of the best my generation has to offer in the dating market. I also can't think that I'll find someone who will suit me as well as Dave is. Don't get me wrong -- there were lots of problems in our marriage, but in spite of them, we persevered, and never doubted our love. We fought, but appreciated the ability to put that all behind us. I'm not sure that being alone isn't preferable to settling for someone who can't possibly make me as happy as Dave did, but I also miss the companionship and affection of my marriage.

So, I go on -- trying to stand up straight beneath the weight of my sorrow. It seems to increase with every passing day, and I wonder if I'll be able to tolerate it after another week or two. And in those occasional moments when I forget what's transpired since that horrible moment two weeks ago today, I look up and expect him to walk into the room with that silly grin of his. When I realize what I had forgotten, I can only think: I'm really ready to wake up from this horrible dream right now.