I got through a hard day yesterday. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, but I did. Honestly, I thought it would be worse- like gut wrenching, can’t get out of bed, crying my eyes out all day long. It wasn’t. I even had a good time with friends last night and laughed…a lot. I got through the first “us” day as just me. As a little reward, I decided to redecorate my room. It was my room now. Not ours. I needed it to be just mine now. It could be as girly as I wanted. No holding back now. I could see Eddie rolling his eyes saying “ugh here we go” and smiling because he knew that no matter what, I would do what I wanted (within reason) and he was ok with that. Just like I was okay with whatever equipment stuff or business choices he made. We always had a balance with each other that way. It worked for us and it worked well. So today as I impulsively shopped to “Maranize” the bedroom, I heard him commenting on certain things. He was commenting in the same “I don’t care, why do you ask me, you’re going to get whatever you want anyways” way. It was comforting. Comforting to know that eventhough I wasn’t crying or thinking of him 24/7, he was still there. I’m moving forward with him, not away or from him. He’s existing with me in a different way. He’s so present with me in every moment throughout my day. On paper I’m more alone than ever but in some strange way, I’ve never felt more connected.

Today would have been our 9 year wedding anniversary. I decided to get back into bed after the boys left and give myself some time to feel and cry today and grieve the life I lost along with Eddie. I scrolled through Facebook and the wedding pictures didn’t set me over the edge. What did was a video of an elderly ballerina with dementia who moved her arms and came alive with Swan Lake music playing. I cried because Eddie and I would never grow old together.We’ll never have the house we were going to build as our forever home. We’ll never have more summers at the lake. We’ll never have dinners together with the boys complaining “news is on”. We’ll never have our silly and sarcastic texts back and forth. We’ll never have us again. Today I’ll always be reminded of all of the “WE” things I won’t have anymore, no matter how big, little, good or bad that they were. What I will have though are the many AMAZING friends that show up and support me in every step that I take and the presence of Eddie with me through it all. For that today and everyday, I’m grateful.

Today I woke up and decided to clean out the kitchen. I mean let’s be honest, my cabinets and turn table could use some purging on any given day. I told my therapist of my plan, thinking it was such an odd place to clean when I couldn’t even clean out his labeled bin of stuff in the bathroom. She said that the kitchen was the heart of the home and it actually made perfect sense that I wanted to start there. Interesting. I started with the cabinet of cups. I got rid of all of his beer koozies- I don’t drink beer so no use to me anyways. That felt ok. Then I got rid of his beer glasses because I didn’t want anyone else to drink from them. Anyone who came over and wanted a glass could use the regular clear ones now, not Eddie’s. I also found and tossed all of those random toy pieces I threw in there in case someone actually found what they went to (no one ever did- shocker). It felt really good to clean out the stuff. He had already broken his special Papa Bear coffee cup from the boys (that had been glued together and placed in the dining room display cabinet months ago along with my Momma Bear cup that he also broke lol), so honestly it was nice there wasn’t anything with sentimental value I had to contemplate. It was all just stuff to Eddie anyways. He never put value on stuff. By the time I finished, the cabinet of cups looked more Lilly Pulitzer than Coors Light. More me and I was happy with that. After it was all cleaned out and I was making the boys pancakes around 7:00, I could hear him saying “ Maran, you’ve got to feed them earlier, it’s too late for them”. Then, as I always did when he said that (almost nightly because I couldn’t ever get my act together with early dinners), I shook my head, rolled my eyes and smiled at him. No matter what stuff was cleaned out, it didn’t matter. He was always going to be there.

Today I’m mad. Mad that Eddie chose to kill himself. He chose to leave us. To leave the boys without their father and me without my husband. How could he do this? Why would he do this? I’ll never really know, but I keep replaying that last week wondering what I missed. Torturing myself with the “what if’s” that my therapist tells me to stop. I know I can’t change it, but I wish there were answers. Maybe they wouldn’t even help. I don’t know. Maybe they would make it easier to move forward. I don’t know. I do know that none of this was my choice and I didn’t have a say in this huge thing that changed my life and for that I’m mad. I constantly have a pit in my stomach and am on the verge of tears for most of the day. Sure I can go about most things each day when I have to, but that empty feeling doesn’t completely go away. Some days it’s a little less or comes and goes. I know, well I hope, that eventually it stays away for long enough for me to feel good.

Today my head felt dizzy and fuzzy. If this was 4 weeks ago, I’d be 99.9% convinced I had a brain tumor, I know that’s not the case. My life is in slow motion, reliving all of these moments and memories of life with Eddie. What it was, what it was supposed to be. Even the grocery store, where I contemplated a rotissorie chicken wondering who would actually eat the legs now. I went back and forth with that damn chicken for about five minutes. People probably just thought I was crazy, but to me it was one more reminder that he was gone and my life was totally different. That chicken just raised a bunch of questions and brought up memories of dinners with it, which at the time seemed like nothing, but today I would give anything for those moments back. I finally just got the chicken because I still needed to make dinner and actually feed the kids something other than Halloween candy. Everything has changed in my life, but yet everything is still exactly how it was, minus one.

At my last session, my therapist told me to think about how I felt each day on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 obviously crappy and 10 pretty good, even great. Well, today has been three weeks since Eddie killed himself. Three weeks ago, when I woke up on Saturday the 17th, laid in bed and checked Facebook, did my hair and makeup and had my coffee, my world was still good. Still the way it was supposed to be. Even the texts to Eddie asking where he was and getting annoyed he wasn’t home yet to take the boys to soccer…it was all still normal. Then with one phone call, it turned into a nightmare that I still can’t believe I’m living in. I’m crushed and cry for the days and moments before that phone call that destroyed my world. It’s not fair. It doesn’t make sense and it probably never will. So yeah, today is a 1, but I’m going to try my best to make it a 2.

Eventhough I was shattered, I knew that I wanted to look good for Eddie. I barely had the energy to eat though, so figuring out what to wear was rough. Somehow I thought it would just all be work out and it was (mostly because of my friends working little miracles) One of my friends swooped in and just went shopping for me. Then found a seamstress to hem the perfect black vneck dress in less than 24 hours. I felt good in it. Sassy and myself, minus Eddie, but at least I knew he would have loved it. My friend who did my wedding makeup offered to do my wake makeup and at first I said no, but that morning decided to do it. She would be able to seal anything in when I cried too, so I knew that she was my best bet for looking like me that day. Part of me felt guilty for wanting to look good for the wake, Eddie was dead-what was I thinking right? Well, I was and am still me. I felt like me that day and it gave me the strength to get through it.