I was singing today, holding the guitar I don't know how to play, strumming the strings and I started singing a certain song that reminded me of my hubby and how he died. I burst into tears halfway through the song.
It actually felt good to cry and have the freedom to do it. I didn't have to shush myself because I would make someone else cry or I'd suddenly have someone trying to comfort/silence me.
I just kept thinking about how he won't be coming home ever again. He's not at work. He's not at training. Nothing about this holiday is normal at all despite how "normal" it feels. I spent many Christmas and Boxing Days without him while he was working. We always had "shift worker holidays" - moved to fit his schedule. Last year was his first of three Christmases off before he went into a 4 year cycle of working Christmas Day. He would have been on his weekend off this year.
Last year for Christmas, he worked a midnight shift on Christmas Eve, he didn't get home until 230 in the morning but my sister was here with me. We sat out on the deck enjoying some wine in unseasonably mild weather. We prepared a big breakfast and waited until he woke up to open gifts. Like I said, I was annoyed because he came down, sat around on his computer for a bit and then said, "Oh, do we have any wrapping paper? I guess I should wrap your present." Up until that point, there wasn't a present under the tree for me from him. This was Christmas morning! I was upset. I had grumbled at him to just not bother but he went up and did it anyway. I was a b*tch to him on Christmas Day but the look on his face when he opened the gift I got him was enough to make me smile again.
I loved him. I tried to give him everything he wanted. I just wasn't the greatest with hiding my disappointment in him and his failing behavior.
He was working day shift on New Year's Eve. He walked in at 1145 and I said to him as he walked in the door, "You're home just in time to toast the New Year!" So he just took off his boots and came right in, opened the champagne and we toasted and kissed one another at midnight. I remember him smiling at me and kissing me and saying, "I hope this year is better for us."
This year wasn't better. It was the worst year imaginable. How can you lose all hope so quickly? I mean, he was expressing hope for a future just the very day before he went into crisis. How can it just disappear so quickly? How come he couldn't snap out of it? How come he couldn't hold on for me? I held on for his sake so many damned times because I didn't want him to hurt and I knew he wouldn't understand if I died. How did he think I would understand this? How did he think I was going to be okay with his dying so violently?
On the day he died, I know it was around 6 pm when we were heading up the highway to my sister's house. It was at least 1030 or 11am when I got to the scene of his death. My sister said it was after 2pm when she got to the scene. My brother and sister-in-law had only been there for what seemed to me like maybe about 10 minutes. So I was alone and screaming on that scene for at least two hours or more in subzero temperatures with just a thin jacket on and damp hair under a baseball cap. I wasn't dressed for extended time in the cold. No one made any attempt to cover me with a blanket. Not only was I in shock, I was hypothermic.
When I was brought to my house, I was sat on the couch. It wasn't until someone said, "She's in shock" that anyone got me a blanket and thought to start warming me. Apparently my feet were blocks of ice. I only had running shoes on. All I really remember is the vine detail I had painted on the walls near the ceiling at each corner. Everything sounded like it was slowed down and I felt like I was moving through molasses. I felt like I wasn't me. I felt like I was trapped in a little corner in the back of my skull looking out eyes that were foreign to me and hearing a voice that sounded like it was echoing. In those hours after he died, I was not me. In the first few days after he died, I was not me. In the first few months of this year, I was hardly me.
My cousin has been on facebook several times since her son's death, in fact, replied to a message I sent her just an hour after I sent it, so she was checking messages in those first few hours after finding out he'd died. I guess, it must be different for the parents, especially when the person is an adult. His girlfriend/spouse/mother of his kids was on facebook proclaiming her shock, asking why, saying she didn't understand and wondering why he'd leave them...because you denied him access to his kids on Christmas Eve? Because he was probably sorry that he f'd up and was being charged with domestic assault against her? Because he was missing his babies and was feeling alone and abandoned? Having alcohol on board wouldn't have helped his ability to re-connect to reason.
The night before my hubby died, I'd offered him a drink after our dinner. I figured it would help him relax. He refused it and said that he shouldn't have one because alcohol was a depressant and he didn't want to be more sad than he was. I'd rolled my eyes behind his back because I was just tired of his not trying to get out of his "funk". You had to understand that sometimes my hubby was the type of guy who would keep going on and on about something if he hurt himself, like a splinter in his finger, I'd hear about it for days. Yet, when I spent more than a few hours focused on an injury, I'd get ignored and shut out. My husband was a large 2 year old. It makes me wonder exactly what happened to him as a kid.
Uggh. How did he end up putting a shotgun to his side and pulling the trigger? My sister said that she thought that when she saw him in his casket he looked like he had winced when he died, "his face looked like he was in pain." That's not what I remembered and I spent a full 20 years with this man, not just a few time a year for a few days at a time. I'd seen him asleep. I'd seen his face relaxed, it always looked slightly pained, like he was angry. I used to look at him and study his face when he was doing something. There were times I used to ask him if he was upset about something, he'd look at me surprised and say no, then ask why I thought that - his relaxed face just always looked angry. His mouth was always slightly down-turned so he looked like he could just smirk at you but sometimes he was actually angry when he looked like that. He had a face that was really hard to read. The person I saw in that casket had that almost smirk on his face, like he could just smile and start giggling at me because this was a cruel joke. His neck was in an odd angle anyway so his chin was down slightly and his face looked a little fatter. His eyes made it look like he was asleep. To me, he looked fine. I even examined him for marks or bruising on his face. I spent a good 5 minutes alone with him in the viewing room. I kept wishing he would just get up, just sit up and tell me enough was enough, he'd pushed the joke too far.
No one knew him like I did. No one knew this man because he never let anyone know him, just me.
Uggh, it hurts like hell now. I need to take a break.
