Keep Trying, It Will Be Worth It

The lake yesterday. 
Joseph Brant Hospital where I spent the hardest 6 weeks of my life is far right.

It's been a month plus one week since my stepdad died.  Gary was the sweetest man I've ever known and I'm not just saying that.  Every message from friends, every story people shared through his Caring Bridge Site that I kept updated proved to me what I already knew in my heart, he was exceptional.  

He had a surgery to remove organs effected by a rare and aggressive bladder cancer on April 30th and it was an absolute disaster.  He just wanted more time.  He wanted to go out saying he had tried everything.  He wanted to live.  He wanted to love us some more.

On May 23rd we were told that he would die within days or short weeks.  

He died on June 11th.  

Those 6 weeks from the day of his surgery until the early morning he died were some of the hardest of my life.  I would wake up each day and walk the dog, not far from home mind you in case I got an urgent call to get to the hospital quickly so I would circle my house looking at the Spring flowers, blooming in spite of it all.  I was searching for reasons or sense or logic in our predicament in every bloom.  I would return to the house, round up my 3 littles and drop them to their different schools.  After I held the 45 minutes of drop offs together without crying or losing my patience, I would go to the business that I co-own with my mother and put out any fires that required my input and then head to the hospital.  My mom had not worked a regular schedule since her hip replacement last June so to say the year was a bit of a roller coaster would be putting it lightly but our team at work really pulled it off and I will be forever grateful to them for allowing us to sit beside Gary to the end of his life. 

The drive from my business to Joseph Brant Hospital is around 20-25 minutes and I would spend my time in the car feeling lost and scared, sometimes sobbing and sometimes dead inside.  I would listen to podcasts (Terrible, Thanks for Asking pulled me through most days helping me feel less alone and less crazy for struggling with the reality of being alive so much).  I would listen to the hum of the highway under my tires and I would scream at the universe for being such a breathtakingly beautiful fucking nightmare.  

Getting on the same on ramp now feels like I live on another planet.  I can feel the fear in my body triggered even now as I wind onto the highway but the world is a different place without Gary in it.  My chest tightens and my muscles react.  It's an indescribable strangeness now, heading that way without him as my destination.  

After living every day of those 6 weeks the same, spending countless hours at his bedside, staring into the eyes of my mother, sisters and stepsisters with the same undeniable terror and powerlessness it's like I can't imagine we did that and that we won't do that ever again in the same way.  At the time it felt like the most meaningful work I've ever done.  It felt like the only pursuit I've ever been 100% sure of even though the path was filled with thorns and rocks and unexpected turns.

I am mourning the loss of that limbo time where we all worked together and clung to each other and Gary was still here.  That time where the daily tasks and goals were clear: see Gary and my mom through this time; do it with grace.  Be love.  There was beauty in that work.  There was comfort in being together in the eye of the storm.  

Every day I would stare at the lake as I came off the highway and then when I got out of my car to walk into the hospital foyer and then from Gary's various hospital rooms which all had a full view of the lake.  It rained a lot and the lake was dark and moody most days in agreement with my own emotional state.  It was rough and angry some days and calm and grey others.  Very rarely was it blue and sparkling the way it's been since he's been gone.  What the fuck?

I would message my sweet friend and she would ask me daily "What does the lake say?" and I would mostly say it agreed: everything is darkness and crashing doom.  

My desire to write since his death is only hampered by how insufficient words seem when trying to write about losing him.  I have this deep feeling that my job is to try to find words that describe how beautiful and tragic being alive is.  How as we are pulled under with loss and failures, we can still rise and see the stunning light of the sky at dawn.  How babies will always smell delightfully like hope.  How when you meet your lover after a long absence your heart sings.  How dipping into a cool lake and feeling your limbs propel you is like magic.  Being alive is magic even when everything feels broken.

I will always look to the lake for guidance after it saw me through those 6 weeks.  It's inspired everything I've written so far and the new name of this blog.  

We've been on our own as a couple this week with our kids away and we ended up at the lake before dinner last night.  I took the photo above and the lake said to me "keep trying, it will be worth it" and so I keep trying to describe how I got to here and where I'm going.  It feels fruitless but also every time I write I feel ever so incrementally closer to figuring it out and so here's my attempt for today to describe what's in my heart.  A tangle of love and fear and disappointment.  Looking forward and back but trying to be here now, open to what's to come.  Nothing is ok but it's alright because I'm still here and being alive is a terrible, beautiful, magic thing.  

I really miss him.  I miss him from before the surgery and from before he got sick.  I miss his hugs and our chats and I miss seeing how happy my mom and him were together.  I miss the future that had him in it.  I miss knowing everything was ok, that I belonged and that I mattered.  He taught me that.  That I belonged.  That I was lovable just the way I was.  That my feelings were cherished, that my ideas were valuable, that I was a beautiful human he was happy to know.  

He never wavered and he was deeply kind.  

I miss him more than any words could ever describe but I'll keep trying.  I'll keep trying to be love like he was.  To appreciate the magic and to keep my heart open.