41/2 Year's to Prepare? NOT!!!

Writing to you today is not easy.  My heart yearns for Matt.  I miss our lives, our hopes and dreams. People say that I am strong.  Sometimes, yes.  Sometimes I feel like a brittle leave that has fallen from a tree that has experienced a brutal freeze.  Today, the brutal freeze is wreaking havoc in every inch of my body.  I write this to be forthright and honest.  Not always inspirational, just the plain truth.  If you have been in my shoes in one way or another, you will know what I mean.

This is what brings me to what I want to convey.  Loss and grief can not be compared.  Everyone experiences it in so many unique ways.  Your shoes and my shoes are very different.  Your pain belongs to you and is the worst, as is mine.  Lately, a few people have said to me, " at least you had time to prepare for Matt's death."  "So much better that way than suddenly." Is it? or Is it not?  There isn't an answer to this.    I have just finished attending two grief counseling groups.  Sitting there, you share and listen.  I prefer to listen. I heard sorrow from both the prolonged illness and the sudden death.  I would never say that our experience was worse or better.  There is no worse or better.  It is all so tragic.

For Matt and I, we never lived one day with cancer as he was going to die.  We fought with vengeance.  We chose joy in the pain and always believed there would be one more treatment.  To fight the battle 100% we could not give the evil cancer a chance to think it would win and take Matt's life.  Even throughout Matt's last three months of life during hospice, we attacked each day with, WOW, we can do this for a very long time.  Just the other day I took the dogs for a walk where I used to push Matt in his wheel chair.  It was in October.  The leaves were falling and we would see how many leaves we could crunch. Matt thought that if I practiced real hard, I could enter a contest of going up and down the curbs.  Not a very easy thing to do, without tipping.  There was never a time that we thought we were experiencing Matt's passing.  We were living our lives.  Laughing, eating, doing yard work, loving on our dogs and being around the people we loved.

So what happened the day Matt took his last breath? Cancer won a battle it didn't know it was winning until the very end.  The very night before Matt passed, he opened his eyes, reached out his hand to me and said "I love you." We cried and held on to each other until he dosed off.  When, the mortuary took Matt away, I felt like I HAD BEEN HIT BY A FREIGHT TRAIN. I always believed there would be one more day.