The in between...

The 2 year anniversary is edging closer each day now.  For a couple of weeks the flashbacks have been coming.  Re-living the awful moments of the night of his death, the day before, and the blur of days after. Remembering all that I said, and all that I didn't say.  Telling him I needed him to stay but refusing to tell him I loved him out of the irrational fear that if I said it, it meant I accepted that I was about to lose him.  I remember making the phone calls, hearing the unbelieving exclamations of friends and family on the other end.   Crawling in bed on his side the night we arrived home without him and laying on his pillow so I could smell him.  I've never returned to my side of the bed, I've taken over his side as my own.   Watching over 65 police cars escort the hearse to the graveside service.  Hearing the 21 gun salute and the bag pipes. Countless officers standing at attention to pay respect to my husband.  Feeling so honored that all these people loved, admired, and respected him...yet he chose me to share a life with.  Walking through each memory and moment in my mind in slow motion as if trying to discern some new detail that will make it all make sense.  But it doesn't ever make sense.  I come out of it just as bewildered as the day it happened and literally find myself shaking my head in disbelief. 

I cry more these days while watching the girls.  This is the hardest part of the loss for me.  They are made of his DNA, they look like him, they crinkle their nose like him when they laugh, they are a part of him cell by cell, yet will never know him.  There are no words for this part of the pain.

In the in between space between sleep and a wakefulness is when I dream of him now. It is only in this place that I can hear his laugh and recognize his voice. The familiar tilt of his head and sideways glance he'd give.  These the are the details that I can't remember anymore when I'm fully awake and aware...my consciousness knows better, I think, than to let me know him that intimately while I'm fully cognizant. I am not strong enough...


The in between is so fitting for so much of my life.  In between an old life and new.  In between healing and grieving.  In between being a widow to one man and something special to another.  In between comfort and pain.  In between holding on and letting go.  Staying stuck and moving on.  The only thing that remains the same between the two worlds is the love that is there...

For in love, there is no in between. It just is.