On Wanting Him Back

Today I got a Christmas package in the mail addressed to Mrs. Stuart Du Pen.

Sigh.

This is my third Christmas without my husband. It was not the fact that my own mother was always addressed as Mrs. James Thomas (1921-2007), or many of my generation (1958 - ?) spent at least half their life being identified as someone’s Mrs. before we burned out bras. Instead, as I look at the label, I say out loud, “I want you back.”

And then I stand there and cry. As I cry the thinker part of my brain says —

I would take him back right now even in the condition he was in.

Okay okay. Hold on. Then the broken heart part of my brain says —

What? No, you would not want him to be alive in the severe stage of Alzheimer’s.

Thinker: No I do want him back. I can take really good care of him and he would still be here with me

Broken Heart: You miss him. He would not want to be back alive in that condition. This is grief.

Thinker: I don’t care. I do want him back. I do. I do. I do. Leave me alone.

Broken Heart: Go sit your ass down and right about it.

Sigh. The schizophrenia around advocating for someone you adore to die the way he wanted (at home, in the bed next to me), and not wanting them to die at all. And hey, you weren’t informed ahead of time how empty and meaningless life without them would feel. Not all the time, not even most of the time, but sometimes the loss is so so so agonizing, it feels unsurvivable.

It isn’t. But it feels that way. Breathe. Just breathe through it.

Broken Heart: His love accompanies every breath.

And I’m crying again

.

Share