I’ve been writing the following journal for over a year…in my head, on my notepad, thoughts spilling out of my head as I tried to fall asleep at night. I wanted to write something to mark the time that has passed since I lost the love of my life, but struggled in so many ways on just how to do that and how much to share. Maybe I hesitated with content and execution because I knew that deep down, the final product would be the last words I’d write about him. They would just have to be.
Not that grief is something you can turn off, but I recognize that for the sake of my own mental health, I have to finally say goodbye to the 28-year old him who loved me like no man had before or has since. Somewhere in the mental labyrinth that the last year at some point turned into, I had that realization: I had never fully mourned the love of my life, and would have to get past that hurdle before I could properly say goodbye to what he had since become: a very dear old friend, and what he will always be to me – a treasured soulmate.
Somewhere along the way I realized that while I acknowledge that he is the love of my life, I’d rather him be just one of the loves of my life, and that I had to become my own hero before I could even think about finding another one. And I know he’d want that too.
Here, these thoughts tell a story of the last 15 months of my life. It’s deeply personal and I offer a glimpse into a side of me very few have seen.
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One month. 30 days. 4 weeks.
The world is quieter now that you’re gone, somehow. I mean, I live a pretty calm existence for the most part (except during Dodgers games), but a little corner of my world and my heart – one no one can see – just seems empty/hollow now. The space where you and what you meant to me once resided.
It feels like it’s been much longer, mostly I would suspect because I had already started to grieve before you eventually took your last breath, selfishly trying to prepare for the moment I’d hear the news rather than give any thought into what you possibly could have been thinking.
This time I had to make it about my own emotions to protect myself from getting lost in the sadness like I did I when I first lost you 21 years ago, so all of these years later I found myself grieving the 28-year old you again – the man who loved me more than anyone has since – along with the 49-year old best friend you’d become.
But even knowing your death was just a matter of time, when I finally received the news, I went through all the stuff. Shock, relief that you were no longer in pain, disbelief, sobbing, despair like my heart hasn’t seen since you first broke my heart 20 years ago —- emotions which manifested themselves in long bouts of uncontrollable sobbing that even I didn’t know I was capable of. I just wanted to wrap my arms around you one last time. That’s normal, right? I hear you laughing with me good naturedly and I smile. You had the greatest smile; it would light up your eyes.
They don’t make sympathy cards for people who lose their soulmate, especially one you are no longer romantically involved with to who was married the first time you fell in love, and was happily re-married at the time of his death. And so I grieved alone.
Alone, just me and my complicated thoughts and feelings.
I went though the storybook again, pondered the what ifs one last time, imagined a scenario where instead of being so proud and stubborn when you came back into my life 2 1/2 years ago, I’d realized before it was too late that I was never going to meet anyone like you again.
I told J that I couldn’t imagine you finding a better person to marry, and I meant it. I wouldn’t have been able to give you what you needed the last two years since your diagnosis. I don’t think I would have deserved your love. I’m inherently too selfish. Because I’d had no other choice but to put up and keep up that wall around me over the years, I’d changed a lot since we first met, become more independent, confident and resourceful…which meant you no longer needed to save me.
I hear your voice sometimes, telling me to keep going. I never used to believe in that kind of thing, but I do now. I feel you, and it’s a very calming feeling. The way I felt whenever I spent time with you. Calm, grounded. One foot in front of the other. Stop worrying about what other people think of you. Just be you, and you’re wonderful. I unearth a long ago buried memory where you told me that every time you saw me you melted. I wonder now where that young girl went, the one who lit up when she was around you. I’m still trying to find her again.
The night before your funeral I sat out on my back deck right before a bad thunderstorm, fittingly, swept through the province. Mind you, I’d had a few glasses of Wisers, the whiskey you introduced me to, but I swear I saw you and heard you in the clouds telling me to start writing again, do what I’m good at, stop wasting precious time. So I finally finished a “love letter to the Dodgers” piece I’d been working on for Dodgers Nation for the last 4 months, before time had stood still in the moment I’d seen current photos of you with your family at Easter and knew it was just a matter of time.
You told me to write, and you were right. It did make me feel better.
Friends were as supportive as they could be without truly knowing the magnitude of my loss. When the only person in the world who truly knows what you meant to me is gone, it becomes a challenge beyond anything I ever thought I’d face to have to grieve that loss on my own without letting it destroy me, knowing that is the very last thing you’d want for me.
You told me many years ago that I’d find someone else, meet a man who would mean more to me than you did, who would open more room in his heart for me than you ever could.
In hindsight I acknowledge that you were right about a lot of things, but with this prediction, you could not have been more wrong.
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Six weeks.
Tonight out of the blue I remembered how genuinely happy you looked to see me at your wedding last November, and that familiar lump in my throat came back, wondering – mostly doubting – if anyone will ever be that happy to see me again.
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It’ll be 8 weeks on Tuesday. I know that even if you hadn’t gotten sick, you still wouldn’t be sitting here with me during Hurricane Dorian, laughing at how unnerved I am at the strong winds while I watch my Dodgers play, but in that alternate universe that I’ve visited more times over the last 6 months than is even close to healthy and productive, you are.
The ball in the box continues to get smaller but from time to time it grows again. I’ve started thinking more and more about your last days and what was going through your mind, wondering when you knew you weren’t going to make it. It’s not my place to have these thoughts, of course, but they are unstoppable.
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Two months tomorrow. I’ve dreamt about you more over the last few days than I have since you’ve been gone, and I’ve been crying regularly again. I’m back at the point where thinking about you and missing you is making me sad. You were always there over the years even when you weren’t, just a thought, text or phone call away, and just knowing that was a comfort and a constant.
The therapist I went to briefly 21 years ago after you broke my heart told me I had a dependent personality, and I’ve known all along he was right. I need the approval of others to feel worthy, as much as I realize how unhealthy that is. Now all these years later, the absence of another human in the world who really gets me and truly cares about me is gut-wrenching. I feel empty.
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3 months today. I’ve been crying fairly regularly again – partly emotional hangover from my Dodgers’ season ending early, causing me to feel sad and vulnerable again? Or something like that. I’ve started to rehash things in my head again…why you didn’t let me know when your marriage ended, why you didn’t see me as a romantic possibility anymore (or did you?), why I didn’t just tell my pride to go fuck itself and tell you that I have never and likely will never love anyone the way I love you.
On the Dodgers, my other emotional constant, I wrote a little about grief last week, about how grief is a natural product of having loved so deeply. I recognize that you weren’t and hadn’t been a part of my daily life in over 20 years, but if I needed an emotional well to go to where I could fill my bucket with feeling loved and truly being seen by someone, you were always just a daydream away. And I think that’s what I miss the most.
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15 weeks. Tales of true/lost/rediscovered love are hitting me like a ton of bricks – at unexpected times and in uncharted ways. Episode 2 of Modern Love shocked me in the way it spoke to me, reminded me of the love I had for you and how for so long it was enough for me just knowing you existed. I’m back to mourning the love we once had and realizing that you were all I have ever wanted. Why didn’t I just tell you that 3 years ago when I found out you were no longer married? Why did I put such a priority of protecting my pride, think it was so important to play it cool?
I found an American dime today. I’m keeping my American connection going, following my heart and staying involved in DN like I feel that you would have wanted me to. Keep writing. You were such a believer of me way back when, had so much more confidence in my abilities than I ever did. I’ve thought about those days more lately, remembering who I was when we first fell in love, entertaining the very real possibility that I was someone you thought needed saving, which was the perfect food for your hero appetite. The wall I’ve put up since then and the way life has required me to not need anyone…the grown up version of that young silly girl didn’t need you, didn’t need to be saved, has carved out a fully dimensional life for herself and didn’t need anyone.
Sure I can live without you – I’ve been doing it for the most part of 20 years. But I really wish I didn’t have to.
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6 months on Thursday. Up until a few minutes ago I hadn’t thought of you in a while, until I suddenly found myself remembering how in the last couple of years of your life, you became the best friend again who I fell in love with 2 decades ago, and you’d call me kid when we chatted. I drifted off briefly and imagined me meeting someone – some great guy who loves baseball like me – and introducing him to you to make sure you approved. Telling him that you were my first love and how you’d always be one of the most important people to me. Maybe having a meal or a drink with you and J, celebrating your cancer free diagnosis and laughing about silly life stuff that you and I always found funny.
I know those days, now, will never come, but once I allowed myself to imagine them, I then for the first time thought about how my last words to you made you cry, and realize that even the idea of someone caring deeply about me like you did is becoming further and further away from feeling realistic. I start to forget what it feels like to be loved, and I mourn the end of our romantic relationship all over again. I mean, I lost that part of you 20 years ago, but not knowing then that I may never find that kind of love again, I tried to push as many memories as I could to the back of my mind. I’m even starting to forget what you looked like, how your smile got to me, even 20 years after I fell in love with it the first time.
It’s time to let it go, I guess, or so says conventional wisdom. The medium I went to see in December confirmed that you were here with me, and never far from me, and she told me what I’ve known deep in my heart —- that I will have but one true live in my life.
Now I need to push forward and chase my passion like you told me I could back in 1998. Be myself, do something that will celebrate my uniqueness, you said. I’m doing that by getting more involved with DN and the Dodgers overall, and along the way I’ve found many more dimes.
I hope that means I’m headed in the right direction.
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April 1
It’s been about a year since I got back from my trip to LA, thought about you and then saw those horrible photos of you and your family at Easter. I knew then you were going to die and it wouldn’t be long, and I went into a sort of mental shock that hasn’t quite worn off since.
I acknowledge the irony of the realization that I come across dimes not when I’m looking for them, but just when my soul needs to see one. If I looked, it would be a fruitless search.
You’re trying to tell me something, and I need to figure out what it is before I can move on.
And I want to move on.
There’s a feeling that comes over me most nights, almost like clock work, as soon as my head hits the pillow. And I’ll be damned if I can describe it. It’s almost as though a very small butterfly that used to occupy my stomach along with a multitude of its friends is still showing signs of life, like those old cats who just keep getting fatter and fatter and live to be 99 in cat years. And it doesn’t stay awake for very long. It wakes up, realizes all of this friends are long gone, and goes back to sleep. But when it is awake, I’m transported back in time, I’m falling in love, someone loves me and looks forward to seeing me, misses me when I’m not around. I’m that person again, and I miss her. I miss you.
Where do the butterflies go? They stayed with me for years, coming alive at golf tournaments or coffee meet ups. The one that got away. I don’t know if I had built myself such a strong wall that when you came back unmarried and seemingly had no interest in me romantically anymore, now that there was no marriage blocking our way, that I stifled the remaining butterflies for fear of getting my heart destroyed again, or if they just weren’t there. They had lived long enough, and finally succumbed to their own heartbreak. Time.
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15 months today – and my last post about you. Life has changed dramatically since I last wrote, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t continued to think about you regularly.
But it’s just different now. In a way I may never be able to describe, I woke up on the 1-year anniversary of your death in a lighter mood than I’d been in since the previous April. I think I’d had a dream about you where we were laughing about something, high on a good course, and I knew somehow that you were ok and at peace. I no longer felt like I was searching for something.
You were gone, it was time to remember only the good times, and I was going to be ok. I posted the following on Facebook in memory, secure in the knowledge that I will carry you with me forever:
Never far from my thoughts, always in my heart. Lovingly remembered, today and every day.
I’m in that same spot on my back deck again, searching for you in the clouds. I see you, and I thank you for helping me through these last 15 months.
And for changing my life.
Life Is But A Dream 