Routines

Today is the official beginning of the rest of my life. I went back to work today. My patient, my guy, my little man isn't awake yet. I have been ruminating this week. Digesting all of the stuff that has happened in the last few months to me, to my family and of course to Bruce. The finality is sinking into my being. The weight of this feeling is heavy and forboding. I am feeling a bit like Bruce's breathing must have felt, heavy and hard. The biggest thinking I have been doing is on the routines I had before Bruce's illness. Our lives seemed just like yours. Normal everyday routines that seem quite boring at times. These little exected happenings are not part of my life anymore. The mornings were filled with routines. How we woke up, what we would say to one another, who got out of bed first, who got the paper, how we sat and didn't talk to one another until the paper and first cup of coffee was read. How he would go outside to have his one cigarette, how the door sounded when he went out and came back in. The way, he would cough when he was done shaving and showering and come upstairs. The way he helped make the bed each morning. Our brief conversations we would have before leaving the house about our day, when we would see one another again. If I were leaving before him, how he would be in bed and how I would lean over and give him a kiss and tuck the covers all around him. Garbage day and bagging up the garbage together. OK, you get the idea. You have the same routines in your home. Now take all of them away and feel the void; the quietness, the absence of a life. That is the forlorness of missing my guy.
Trying to be me is what I am working on. Yet, part of me was a wife. Now I am not that. It will get figured out in due time. I will just keep pounding away at these keys until it all begins to make some sort of sense.
So, I am going to begin by forming a few new routines. I have begun to talk more to myself and to talk, caressing it as if it were his head and having this conversation with him. Telling him how much I love him, will love him forever, etc. When I see something that inspires me, I am noticing it and commenting on it. Thanking Bruce for his part he is playing. This morning it was an awesome sunrise. It was a beautiful coral pink color that spread into the eastern sky. Little white puffs of clouds polka-dotted the sky. Bruce must have had his hand in creating this just for me with God's help of course!
Am I depressed? Maybe, Am I lonely? Yes, Do I sleep well? Yes, Will I be O.K? Yes - Is this all normal? perhaps... Do I look forward to tomorrow? You bet!
And in that new day, if by my writing down my deepest soulful thoughts, I have helped another woman or man deal with the loss of the love of their life. Then...this rambling was worth it. deb