As the days pass I find myself drifting between moving forward and looking back. The sadness I have been feeling without truly knowing what life has ahead for me at times seems to much. I try to keep my thoughts to uplifting and motivating but my emotions seem to be getting the best of me at times.
Here over the summer I was planning my new life while watching my friends life coming to an end and as heartbreaking it was there was a familiarity I was seeking in now wanting to begin my life like I did many years ago when my father died and I felt I was being gifted my husband while losing my Father.
The similarity in timing was also eerily similar in the fact that as when my father died I had just got married in the month of August and my Father fell ill in October ( Greg started his visits to the hospital for overnight stays in Oct) Now years later I once again was considering a new life but also coming to terms with the fact that my best friend would not be sharing it with me. The same I felt as my father was dying knowing how lucky I was to have him walk me down the isle but now was loosing him. Greg had been there through the rough times and now had saw my dream come true of getting a house and moving my mother in and hopefully having a wonderful life but his time was short to enjoy it before his battle began.
The next few months would be touch and go on both ends as I was watching my friend slowly die I was watching the dream of this new life becoming shattered to the point of no return. By Thanksgiving it was obvious I was going to be losing both. My past and my future were dying before my eyes and I was helpless to do anything about either. The dreams of what could be were coming to a close and the depression of the choices made were at times unbearable emotionally. I did what I always do, held on to Faith.
I held on to the "One day at a time", Keep healthy, take care of yourself the rest will fall into place.
Over December it was all I could do to get out of bed and put on a smile for my son and mom. Knowing with the weather in Maine the chances of me seeing Greg or just getting out were slim to none and now having no one but myself again left little chance of seeing him unless the weather broke. This was not a easy winter those early months with state wide power outages and blistering cold weather. They also were starting to medicate him and talking to him on the phone was getting hard. My heart was breaking and my virus was not staying dormant so even on the days I could drive to see him I had a breakout and couldn't be around him anyways with both of us in a weakened immune state. Those were some of the most depressing days.
You know how pissed a person can get when you cant do the things you want when you want and are helpless to do anything about it and when you cant let it out it just eats you up inside.
The emotions were pulling me in so many directions with the disappointment in myself that I had once again allowed my co dependent nature to over ride my common sense and that my lovely but damaged brain had naively once again fallen for a men who I thought was stronger emotionally then he turned out to be and that here I had basically kept myself alive through some of the toughest years of my life while fighting this rare disease and developed wellness strategies that anyone could use but my best friend didn't, allowing his old patterns and habits to keep getting in the way of his healing.
You know how frustrating that is.... How heartbreaking??
that the two loves in my life both were unable to take what I was freely giving and use it to save their lives or at least enhance it in ways we could never of imagined.
That I could see it like a train wreak coming down the tracks but the driver wouldn't heed my warnings or pleases....
I live with those thoughts everyday knowing that spiritually it all happened for a reason and physically some people cant change even if not changing will someday kill them or hurt the people they love. That really I am only responsible for myself and anyone outside myself capable of making a decision its their choice and I need to learn to mind my own business but how does one with a heart my size do that????
Boundaries you say??? Boundaries are only as good as you keep them. Plus I always am open to second chances and letting let live but the helplessness of watching the people you love slowing killing themselves has become even to much for this Earth Angel.
Things started to take a stranger twist as the anniversary of my Father death was nearing so was Greg's death. I had even asked my mom if my memory was right and she agreed. I said I wasn't sure if I could take it if he died on the same day. I prayed and was able to see Greg the day he went to hospice and I had promised I would come see him and I knew in my heart he had waited to talk to me about going and when I told him I thought it was best he go later after the visit I got the call he had decided to go that night and was moved there within hours. I came home and cried like I had never cried trying to process all that had happened over the summer and now winter and how things were not at all as I had hoped they would be.
Greg should of been kicking ass and getting better and I should of been building the foundations of a new purposeful life but what I was doing was once again picking up the shattered piece of my life.
Greg did not die the same day my father, he died one day later just a short time after I visited him in Hospice and told him it was okay to go. That everyone was going to be okay the same way I told my father those same words so many years before. I still now can not contain my tears just thinking about it.
In a few days it will have been a month since I saw my best friend for the last time not that we even spoke words between us but I knew he knew I was there. In this month that has followed I have been struggling to move forward while others times feeling stuck in my head. Repeating things over at times, reliving them and wishing some how I could change them or maybe even seeing were I never could of. There is something about the cycle of life that can not be denied. My Fathers death being so similar in timing and how both those men while not perfect where always there for me and how I keep giving up my dreams for others that would never do the same for me. Its making a new cocktail versions of emotions and insight that I guess only grief and mourning can give. Either way I think I have gotten the lesson this time on many levels.
I still am struggling to find my way home from this and that's okay.
I know it takes me a bit more to move through the process and there is no expiration on grief as there in none on Love. It is the reality of things I am learning to except now.
The one man who checked on me everyday and that I could depend on over these past years to be there no matter what, someone who was extended family to my son ( and never missed one band concert and made sure I didn't miss a one!), who drove me when I couldn't, was my listening ear and had a open heart, the brother I could call out and he would do the same is gone.
The future I was trying to create through the Love of another is done.
It's time to move on, time to pave a new road from scratch and work to keep what I so courageously have kept fighting for and gained. I know Greg would want that but more then that I do.
I have a dream, that one day I will be able to get back to speaking and sharing what having this medical affliction and disease has done to my life but also all that I have learned from it.
To get off assistants and be able to make a living being of service to others while share my life and gifts, talents and time.
To be that writer from Maine who lives in the woods and loves life..
Hey wait that is me!! LOL
Okay, I just need a fined tuned version of myself in the healthiest state possible and then I will be on my way but the dream is alive and I am always working towards it even if the only step I take today is writing this.
If I have learned one thing over the years its. My body may fight against me but as long as I have Faith everything will be fine.
That in those moment everything seems to much I say these words quietly to myself..
"This to shall pass"
picture by Della McGee
and then I know everything is going to be alright......
