Bride would have been 36,266,400 minutes old today - Happy Burfday Beautiful

Today would have been Sandy’s 69^th burfday, and she has been gone 8 days, or 11,520 minutes.  They are the longest 11,520 minutes I have ever worked my way through.  They also have been the worst 11,520 minutes of my whole life.  I have been surrounded by, supported and loved by chosen and actual family since about 15 hours after she passed, and that has been a blessing and I will never be able to truly express my gratitude for being present for me, for those who have been already and to those who are still slated to come share space with me as I work through this.

This is going to be a string of consciousness blog, because that is all I have in me right now.  I am eight days into this and am still absolutely numb, unable to even begin to figure out how to begin processing this.  I am pretty sure I am still in shock or maybe stuck between that and denial.  Or maybe someplace else that is not identified on a stages of grief chart.  My brain is absolutely torturing me about it.  The engineer part of my brain is overanalyzing and overrevving on what I know about the grieving process.  Intellectually I know what this journey is supposed to be.  I know it will be hard, I know it will have ups and downs and all the other things we all know will happen.  The emotional part of my brain is over there going fuck you with both middle fingers up, unwilling to start.  Maybe trying to protect me or shit maybe to just torture me I don’t know and I can’t even tell.

I know I have to move forward, one step at a time and one day at time.  I feel in some ways I have used all the folks who have come to distract me from the reality that one part of me knows exists while the other that refuses to even acknowledge it happened.  Someone asked me if I felt angry, I don’t but I know that is one of the upcoming stages.  If my journey takes that path anyway.  I am not angry, I am not really feeling anything yet.  Don’t get me wrong, I have cried and I am profoundly sad my life partner in crime is gone, but I have not yet started feeling it.  I guess that can be normal.  I seem sometimes fixated on what normal is and then i remember, Bride and I were about as far from normal as we could get so this journey will most likely not follow the manual, but in the end I don’t really know.

I am reminded of a song from back in the 90’s about going through hell, the chorus was “If you're goin' through hell keep on going.  Don't slow down, if you're scared don't show it.  You might get out before the devil even knows you're there.”  That could have easily been Sandy’s mantra in life, I watched her keep moving forward through adversity and challenging parts of her life over and over again.  She always got back up and kept moving forward, getting out of it before the Devil even knew she was there.  In light of that, I decided to write down three steps I could take that would move me forward for each day, trying not to show how scared I am.  So each morning I wake up, before anything else I write down three steps I am going to take today.  Not tomorrow, or the day after, just today.  They have been as simple as picking someone up at the airport to making calls to let folks know.

Intellectually I know that this is most likely reinforcing my denial and putting off the inevitable work ahead.  And my emotional side does not care.  This is what my gut is telling me to do.  So, I am, as I have for my whole life, trusting what my gut is telling me to do.  Right or wrong I am not going to deviate from the thing that has guided me through my whole life, regardless of what the experts say about dealing with grief.  This will be a journey that I am not in control of and on top of that, I am an unwilling participant on this bit of the journey.  The ride cares little about any of that, it marches on.  I do know that accepting the path the universe has put me on has always been easier than trying to fight with universe about it.  So here I am, on my new path, no idea where I am headed, no idea how fast or slow I will go or even the route I am going to take.  I know nothing more than the three steps I am taking today. I only know I am going to keep moving and that I will eventually get out of the absolute hell I find myself in.