Carpe Diem. And Then....

Taken from a hot air balloon - Aug 2012

Cleaning up a drawer that has been cluttered for way too long, I threw out Kurt's old accounting textbook today.  With a second glance and a longing look, but no regrets or tears.  I think accounting is pretty dry.  And he never really got to use that particular book anyway....

To be honest, there has been a shift as of late.  I've felt it for a while, slowly growing larger, but struggled to acknowledge it, admit it.  Even now, I feel guilty typing it.  But with the third year anniversary looming large things are... different.

I still miss Kurt intensely.  I still wish I was with him - dead or alive.  I still talk to him daily, and think of him constantly.  I'm still grieving my husband.  And finally starting to understand that I probably will for a long, long time.  But - and I hesitate to say this lest I slide and things change - I think I am slowly reclaiming my life.  I see the Phoenix I have become, rising from the ashes of not only us, but also of me.  And I'm okay with that fact.

I don't like it.  But I'm not fighting it.  I guess its just a part of my life.....

In the past 12 months, I have done things that I would never have done before.  I've soared in a hot air ballon.  Swam with the elephants in the jungles of northern Thailand.  Cuddled with full grown tigers.  Fed giraffes and rhinos.  Ziplined inverted through the lodgepole canopy.  Atended concerts and musicals.  Lost nearly 50 pounds.  Started going to - and dare I say enjoying - a gym.  I've looked at problems in the eye.  Faced the self-defined impossible.  And I have done each of these things alone.  Without someone familiar walking beside me.  For a girl who would not play in the basement or backyard growing up without someone else, that is huge.

Over time, something good has come from Kurt's death.  I have, in my own eyes, been given permission to live fully.  For today.  I'm not reckless.  But I'm also no longer bound by the I shouldn'ts, or I can'ts.  Because I have touched death intimately.  Kurt's greatest lesson - his biggest gift to me - was the deep seated understanding of how fleeting our mortality really is.  How fickle life can be.  And if I can help it, I am not going to live waiting for tomorrow at the expense of today.  Not going to wait for someone to take my hand and accompany me through life.  Because that person - that tomorrow - may never come.

Today may be all we have.

This knowledge, this understanding - and the life it will bring me and Gavin - is his final, and perhaps greatest legacy.  It won't change the world.  But it will change ours.....

Nearly a month ago now, I flew to San Diego.  Again, alone.  To an event called Camp Widow - a gathering for men and women on a journey similar to my own.  I have thought about blogging about that experience since returning but, honestly, haven't really known what to say - or how to say it.  So I haven't said anything.

In the keynote address, we were encouraged to find our "And then..."  To carry on our loved one's legacy, and life, by living our own.  I'll be honest - I walked out of that room thinking I have done a pretty poor job of that.  Thinking how the past nearly three years have been about reliving his death, not honouring his life.  But the words have stuck with me.  And just this past weekend, as I stood on the top of a 60 foot rope ladder I had just scaled, preparing to launch off my first zip line, I had an epiphany of sorts.  About how this past year has been different.  About how, in the midst of moments of intense, sometimes crippling grief, there has also been bursts of equally intense, liberating life.  Despite my struggles, my failures, and my tears, I am not only surviving.  I am actually, once again living.  I know that would make Kurt proud.


And because of that, I know I am, despite of myself - or perhaps because of it - succeeding.  I am creating an "And Then."  And because he is intimately a part of me, it is not only mine, but his as well. I will, after all, always be half of us....

As I mentioned, the three year anniversary is looming.  That day - and the days immediately before and after - weigh heavily on my mind.  I know in the weeks to come I will get caught up with, swept back to the past.  To a place and time I wish I had never been.

But my nightmare is also my privilege.  It has given me wisdom, knowledge, and gifts which I believe make me a better person.  Wisdom, knowledge, and gifts which those around me have never had the fortune - and misfortune - to acquire.  And I know that despite the darkness, there will be moments of light.

My job is simple.  But also very complex and difficult.  I have to find those moments.  And in them, in not only big ways, but also in smaller ways, I have to live.