A New Season

Today is the first official day of autumn. It's a new season of the year. And it's a new season of life for me and my family. 

I feel like I turned a corner this past week, like I moved into a new stage of grief. I'm starting to come out of the initial fog and learning to function again. Instead of blindly fumbling my way through the daily tasks of living, I'm doing things with thought and purpose. I'm able to look further than just getting through the day, than just getting through the week. I think I'm starting to be ready to look at life ahead. 

That's not to say that everything is easy. I still cry at little things, and sometimes at nothing in particular. I still dread having to deal with all the household tasks of shutting down the summer things and starting up the winter things. I'm still overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done. I still live in fear that I'll miss something important and there will be horrible consequences. I still feel sad when I think of our children's future life events and the fact that he won't be here to share them. I still feel lonely and broken at the thought of my life when my children are grown and my retirement looks nothing like the joyous retirement we had planned together. 

But even my sadness is not the bleak hopelessness that it was. It is becoming the sadness of acceptance rather than the sadness of fear and loss. It is the sadness of knowing I can go on without him rather than the sadness of not knowing how I could possibly go on without him. Life always gives us choices, but they aren't always the choices we want. I was not given the choice of growing old with him, but I may be given the choice of growing old without him. I have the choice of accepting my future - whatever it may be - with grace, with appreciation, with hopefulness, with a positive outlook; or of fighting against it with anger, with a sense of betrayal, with hopelessness, with a negative outlook. Just like I chose love for my husband, I choose grace and appreciation for the gift of the rest of my life. 

Before we got married, we talked about how we would always love each other, even if there were times when we didn't like each other. People can't choose how they feel, but they can choose how they act, and love is as much (or more) actions than it is feelings. Being human, we knew there would be times when we would drive each other up a wall. And we did. But we always chose to treat each other with love and with respect, and that carried us through the petty frustrations of day-to-day life as husband and wife. In the same way, I can choose how I act in response to my feelings of grief. I can live my life in a way that honors him and carries on his legacy, encouraging our children to grow into the fine adults we were raising them to be together, continuing to give generously of my time and talents to worthy causes, and doing all I can to make the world a better place. Or I can give in to my grief and close myself off to the world, refusing to celebrate the things he loved, not caring about the causes he supported, standing behind my children with less than my full energy and enthusiasm and encouragement. 

It would be so very easy to give in to the sadness. It is still a conscious effort to get out of bed every morning, when every fiber of my being just wants to curl up in the blankets and ignore the world. But that's not what he would want for me. It takes an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy to continuously keep up with my children's schoolwork and extracurricular activities, as well as their mental and emotional health. But that is what we agreed together that we wanted for our family. It is still overwhelming and terrifying to be fully in charge of everything about our home and property and finances and lives. But I learned so much from him, including his confidence in my capabilities, so not to fully step into and embrace that role would be dishonoring to him and to us as a team. 

So I choose the harder but better option. I choose to celebrate the life that I have, even if it isn't the one I would have chosen. I choose to live for my children when I don't feel like living for myself. I choose to continue striving to leave the world a better place than I found it. After all, in his 62 years of life, that's what he did. And even though I have no idea how many years I will have on this earth, I will do my best to do the same. 

Starting with this new season of the year, and of my life.