Some moments are so big there is a distinct before and after. March 19, 2023, is one of those. The magnitude of Brian’s untimely death is still so unfathomable, impossible, that I can’t physically or mentally comprehend it. When the coroner called me and spewed medical terminology before boiling it down to, “He had a bad heart,” it felt like he was talking about someone else. When I later learned he likely had the aptly named widowmaker heart attack, it again felt surreal. They simply could not be talking about Brian, my Brian, with a heart so big, so pure, so whole.

The past year has been a numb blur. I’m learning how to put on a fake smile, say “I’m fine!” or even “Good!” in a bald-faced lie. The jury is out on whether I will ever be “okay” again. I suspect not; others tell me to give it time.

Grief is like the ocean, it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.

Vicki Harrison

The darkness that has grabbed hold of my being is smothering. There’s a terrible irony that exists when I realize I could get through this if Brian was by my side. If he was by my side, there wouldn’t be “this” to get through.

The Loss of a Co-parent and a Father

The past year has been a well of hurt as people who promised they’d be there for our children haven’t shown up. Empty promises could fill most of my house.

Instead, there has been unexpected beauty in what has filled my house. Friends with whom we spent far too little time have visited and checked in. I truly look forward to nurturing these rekindled relationships. Nothing penetrates my grief-induced numbness to warm me more than seeing Landon reach for a friend’s hand to hold on a hiking trail. Nothing makes me sadder than seeing the hand Landon is holding is not Brian’s. Seeing Brian’s peers play with Landon and Bryce has been one of the ultimate gifts of the past year.

I recently realized there is no other person on Earth with whom to truly share the weight of parenting. There’s no person who truly understands the awesome task it is to raise these boys and who carries that equally. There is no person who will rejoice in the same capacity at their milestones, and laugh in the same way at their antics.

When you lose someone, you don’t lose them all at once, and their dying doesn’t stop with their death. You lose them a thousand times in a thousand ways. You say a thousand goodbyes. You hold a thousand funerals.

Sara Seager, The Smallest Light in the Universe

Children are meant to have two parents. That they don’t is a tragedy of epic proportions, the ramifications of which will last their lifetimes.

Landon recently asked me if Bryce will remember Daddy. I explained no, and how Landon and I can help Bryce know Brian by sharing stories. A few days later, I was talking to Bryce about Daddy and Bryce pointed to Brian’s portrait hanging in the living room and said, “Dada” clear as day. Heartbreaking. Heart singing.

(Learn more about children’s grief from my post last November about Children’s Grief Awareness Day.)

The Loss of My Person

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of being a widow. Brian was a remarkably intuitive individual and often knew what I needed before I even did. I had a rather difficult pregnancy with Bryce and shortly after he was born, Brian asked me, “What if Bryce was the baby you always needed and just didn’t know you needed?” (He is.) Whether it was the small stuff, like setting Vitamin D on my desk in the dark days of winter, or the big things, like our family makeup, Brian knew what I needed.

Nana told me years ago she thought “widow” was such an ugly word. I agreed without really appreciating what she meant. It’s an ugly word, yes, but what it represents is even uglier.

Our shared history belongs only to me now. Our shared life belongs only to me. Our hopeful future is gone. I see older couples walking down the street holding hands. Sharing a quiet meal together. Simply existing in each other’s company in the kind of easy comfort that is built only after sharing a lifetime–navigating all of its trials, celebrating all of its triumphs–together.

Brian and I agreed you cannot have a succcessful relationship if you’re not first content with who you are as an individual and comfortable in your skin. Brian did not “complete me” and I certainly didn’t “complete him.” We were both complete when we met. But through our relationship, our souls and hearts entwined. Our two complete selves became one. Brian did not complete me, but his death has indisputably left me incomplete.

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

People who have walked this path generally agree Year Two is even harder. This sentiment seemed unbelievable for a long time, but I’m beginning to agree. Whereas Year One is numb shock and complete survival, Year Two is the beginning of catching a faraway glimpse of a scary, unwelcome landscape that’s the rest of my life.

Reality begins to set in. Most people have long since resumed their daily lives, perhaps with sadness and grief in fleeting moments, but very few have it wrapped around their throats, clawing at their backs, tripping your once-steady feet. Brian’s death is in the past for most everyone else. For us, Brian’s death is every day.

The Loss of Home

A part of me died on March 19. There is no going back to who I was before. “Back to normal” will never come, because it cannot exist. I have a homesickness that has nothing to do with our Fombell house. Homesickness for our family as it was on March 18, 2023. Homesickness for the safety and security of Brian’s love. Homesickness for the life we had that we sometimes thought was so boring, but that I now realize was our refuge.

As far as I can see, grief will never truly end. It may become softer over time, more gentle, and some days will feel sharp. But grief will last as long as love does–forever. It’s simply the way the absence of your loved one manifests in your heart. A deep longing, accompanied by the deepest love. Some days, the heavy fog may return, and the next day, it may recede, once again. It’s all an ebb and a flow, a constant dance of sorrow and joy, pain and sweet love.

Scribbles & Crumbs

My faith, already shaky before Brian’s death, is badly damaged–perhaps beyond repair. A friend shared the following post with me after Brian died, which includes some enlightening and sobering statistics about widows and church. Frankly, I’m surprised many of those figures aren’t higher.

My energy is nonexistent at a time when it needs to be at its highest. I run on a tank fueled by cortisol and the unsettling knowledge that I shoulder responsibility for these two little lives. I’m exhausted when I go to bed each night and somehow more tired when I wake up. It is an unsustainable, cyclical nightmare.

Time passes differently. I looked at my clock at 11:59 p.m. on March 19, 2023, and knew in a minute I’d be in the first day of forever where Brian didn’t exist. As the calendar flipped from December 31, 2023, to January 1, 2024, I mourned being in a year in which Brian has never existed. And this year as I turn 40, I don’t dread it with the stereotypical “over the hill” mindset people love to pretend to hate. I dread being older than Brian ever was. Time simultaneously drags on far too long and goes by far too fast. Yet the days without Brian only accumulate.

We will never move on. Through what feels like superhuman, gargantuan effort, we may move forward. Nora McInery explains the difference so well in this four-minute excerpt.

No one knows what the future brings, me least of all. Most days I have very little hope for my own future happiness, but every day I fight forward for Landon and Bryce’s future. Every day we try to live with the memory and presence of Brian’s love and legacy.