Birthdays

Well, March has been an odd month for me. It is my birth month and I am now over 40! Yikes! Pat's birthday was also this month. Our birthdays are actually exactly seven days apart. I am one week older. Something Pat incessantly would tease me about for those seven days before he 'caught up' with me, the 'older' woman. :)

Because of this, we have celebrated our birthdays together since we were nineteen years old, always picking the weekend in between to do one cake for both of us. Even when Pat was deployed we would figure some way to celebrate together. This year for the first time I had to celebrate only my birthday. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, although I had a terrible cold. We really did not make a big deal out of my birthday this year. It was so nice to receive so many well wishes and some surprise gifts in the mail. It made the day a little easier to bear. Even when Pat's birthday rolled around a week later, we kept it pretty low key. We got snow cones and did a little work around the house. Reminiscing a bit with the kids and trying to find reasons to smile. Overall, it was okay.

Grief is a funny thing, it isn't at all what I thought it would be. I had assumed that in the beginning, soon after Pat died, it would be the worst and then as time went by it would fade and get better, but grief doesn't work that way at all. It comes and goes, sometimes wistful and sometimes overwhelming. In the beginning it was almost a little easier with so many people around, meals coming in, plans to make and things to do. Now almost ten months later, it's just me and the kids and life is going on but ours is forever changed. I thought naively that as the grief ebbed away, life would go back to normal, even a 'new normal' , but there are still days when I wake up and forget for just a second that Pat is gone. I still catch myself thinking of something I want to tell him and am perplexed to realize that I can't. It is puzzling and frustrating. Of course I KNOW he is gone but all the pieces don't always fit together in a way to make it real to me 100% of the time. Those few split seconds before it dawns on me catch me off guard and sometimes the grief of those first new days last June come back all over again. I expect to feel sad and miss Pat more around the important days, the holidays, the birthdays..etc. The average days though can be just as hard, but thankfully not always.

Other times I can go an entire day now and not feel sad. I try to focus on being grateful and blessed and in my heart I am. On those days there is just no room for sadness. But when your heart has been broken by the death of someone you love, even putting all the parts back together leaves a crack or two for the grief to wriggle its way in when you least expect it. That will always be with me. Sometimes I feel impatient to be 'healed' but at the same time I know that embracing all my emotions of loss are better than trying to rush the process. Pat is helping me to remember that. I recently was cleaning out my closet and came across a CD labeled "Songs For Tam from Pat". I had never seen it before. I'm assuming because of the context in which I found the CD, Pat must have made it for me to send home from an Iraq deployment but never did. Now, this is odd because in our 20+ years together, Pat NEVER ever made me a mix tape although I made them for him every so often. We did not even officially have a 'song' since we eloped and never had to dance to any at a wedding. There were not a lot of songs on the CD, a few that I expected like "Best Friend" by Weezer and "True Love Ways" by Erasure. The song that struck me the most and really resonated was "Just Wait" by Blues Traveler. It was exactly the message I needed to hear from Pat during our birthday month and so poignant. I love getting little signs and am always amazed at how certain things are orchestrated in life. I was looking online for a video or live performance of this Blues Traveler song but it was not a popular one and all I could find were some rather lame covers on YouTube. Instead of posting my Glass Half Full this time, I will post the lyrics.
Thanks Pat! I love and miss you every day, thanks for the reminder!

Just Wait


If ever you are feeling like you're tired
And all your uphill struggles leave you headed downhill
If you realize your wildest dreams can hurt you
And your appetite for pain has drinken its fill

I ask of you a very simple question
Did you think for one minute that you were alone
And is your suffering a privilege you share only
Or did you think that everybody else was completely at home

Just wait
Just wait
Just wait
And it will come

If you think I'm giving up on you you're crazy
And if you think I don't love you well then you're just wrong
In time you might take to feeling better
Time is the beauty the road be it long

I know that now you feel no consolation
But maybe if I told you and informed you out loud
I say this without fear of hesitation
I can honestly tell you that you make me proud

Just wait
Just wait
Just wait
And it will come
Just wait
Just wait
Just wait
And it will come

If anything I might have said now has helped you
If anything I might have just said helps you just carry on
Your rise uphill may no longer seem a struggle
And you appetite for pain may all but be gone

I hope for you and cannot stop at hoping
Until that smile has once again returned to you face
There's no such thing as a failure who keeps trying
Coasting to the bottom is the only disgrace

Just wait
Just wait
Just wait
And it will come
Just wait
Just wait
Just wait
And it will come
Just wait
Just wait
Just wait
And it will come