Life is Short
Starting over
Sunday Nov 28, 2021 at 11:30 am my husband, Aaron, died in the ICU with almost no warning. I arrived at the ICU while they were intubating him and I heard them call a code blue while I was sitting in the waiting room. I was in the room with him, and the doctors and nurses when they stopped doing chest compressions. All the beeping and talking and everything stopped and it was just the two of us in the quiet. I asked him what the hell he had done, and I promised him that I would be ok.
The news had started to spread before I even got home that afternoon. My husband was a bit of a local celebrity, so his loss was felt throughout the community, and people I didn’t even know were offering help and support, and sending cards, food, and flowers. I was completely flooded with messages and social media posts, and it was so overwhelming I wasn’t able to respond to everyone. At a certain point I realized that Aaron wasn’t here to see how many people’s lives he had affected, but I hoped that he knew, wherever he was.
I was 39 years old and suddenly a widow. I had no idea what to do next. I got through all the planning and the funeral with lots of support from my family and friends. My sister stayed at my house for a couple of nights so I wouldn’t be alone. Seeing him in the casket for the first time was truly jarring. He looked like himself, and I think he would have liked the clothes I picked out, but it was still so hard to believe at that point, I kept expecting him to jump up and tell us all it was a big joke. The visitation was exhausting, and people like to say things that they think are comforting but really aren’t. I smiled at people while they made comments about God’s plan, which apparently meant I had to be a widow before 40. My sister was a little more vocal, and at one point said, “well that’s a stupid fucking plan”.
I wore a red dress to Aaron’s funeral because it was one of his favourites, and I wanted to look nice for him. There was a moment at the funeral where they brought in the casket and stopped at the end of the center aisle, right beside me and I think that’s the moment that it started to feel real. I wrote a eulogy that read more like a roast, and made people laugh and cry, and I reminded everyone that life is short. I can guarantee he would have loved it, and I’m sure he was very annoyed to miss out on all the stories that were told that day. He would have loved to chime in with an inappropriate joke to make everyone laugh and shake their heads.
The next couple of weeks were a blur of more cards, and messages, and people stopping by to offer condolences. I appreciated it, but it was a lot to take in. There were some days that I went for long drives just so I wouldn’t be home if someone stopped by. It felt hard to be around people, but also hard to be alone, and everything felt so exhausting. That’s something I hadn’t realized about grief, it makes everything feel so hard, and heavy. There was a huge list of things to do, and I had no energy or motivation to do it. I did the things that had to be done right away and figured the rest could wait for a while.
After a couple of weeks I went back to work. It felt familiar, and getting back into a routine seemed to help a little. The holidays came up quickly, so I spent lots of time with my family so I wouldn’t be alone. My Christmas spirit was in short supply, and there were good days and bad days, but I got through it. Christmas shopping was hard, because I kept seeing things that Aaron would have loved, or thinking that I should ask his opinion about which gift he thought his mom would like better. I usually love Christmas shopping, but this year I did most of it in one day at my local Walmart, because that was the best I could do. I worked on New Year’s Eve, had a late dinner alone, and went to bed early. I didn’t feel like there was much to celebrate this year.
Somewhere along the line I decided that life is too short to sit around and be miserable, and I wanted to live my best life for Aaron. About 2 months after he died I turned 40, and with that came a new sense of not giving a shit about what other people thought, and wanting to do all the things that I had been putting off.
I started making a list of things I want to do this year. It started off pretty simple, but now ranges from simple, to scary, and somewhat crazy. Here are some of the highlights:
Go axe throwing
Go to a smash room
Wear a bikini
Get a boudoir photo shoot done
Get flashy colours in my hair
Shoot a gun
Take a pole dancing class
Go on a cruise
Go to Vegas
Get another tattoo
I will spend this year, or however long it takes, adding new things to this list and crossing off the things I have done. I will document my journey of grieving and being fearless here in hopes that it may help someone else that’s going through some bad shit right now.
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