A Journey Home...

Sonya and I in Orlando Jan 2010... might have been one of the best "photo days" we ever had...
I have a lot of great memories from that day...many photos, many smiles...

It has been a year since I have said anything here.  A type of "radio silence" for the past 12 months. As I begin this this morning, I am on a flight to Colorado.  A flight I have wanted to take, and a visit I have felt I needed to make.  This trip is not the usual trip home to see friends or family.  I am sure I will get to see family and I am sure there will be laughs and memories shared.  Talk of the future and what is currently happening in all our lives are sure to be a part of this visit.  However, for me, this trip is about a visit I haven't made since Christmas and one that I have felt I need...

You see, Sonya's gravesite is in my hometown.  When you are in a profession that causes you to move to differently locations, sometimes across the state, across the country or even across oceans, you sort of continue to call you hometown, well "home." And when you have to choose a location for a gravesite for someone that is precious to you, you choose the only place that you know you will return to from time to time...I still remember having to make that choice...it was something Sonya and talked about, but never made a decision about...she seemed comfortable that I would make the decision on the location that was best for me...after all, from her perspective, she wouldn't be all that concerned about where her gravesite was.  So I chose my hometown...

Now, after the funeral, there are so many things you have to work through, finances to get in order, business relationships to tie up, accounts to close, and even now, a friend or two to inform, who doesn't know that she is home with the Lord.

And then there is the headstone to choose... For me, that was not a choice I was able to face for

months after Sonya went home.  On the one hand, it is just a marker, one that in all reality, few people will ever see, and fewer still will attach any meaning to.  But still, it took me months to even be able to begin to look.  And for me, just as I felt Sonya was a remarkable person in life, with her own sense of style and who took care of the way she presented herself (a trait I greatly appreciated), I felt that the headstone should somehow reflect that character...So even once I began looking, it took me a few more months to find the stone that I felt was appropriate, that somehow reflected her personality... And once it was chosen, it took a few more months for it to be cut, engraved, shipped and then had it to wait for the ground to thaw to be placed... (yeah, I didn't know the process would take so long either.)

Thank you to Forrest McLaren for this picture.
And to my family for the amazing flowers for
Sonya's birthday this past year.

So, for the past few months, I have wanted to make a trip, to visit her gravesite and see the headstone.  To see it finished. And as I looked for a weekend that didn't have some sort of obligation, this weekend is the one that was available... So today, on the second anniversary of her home going...Lord willing, I will visit her graveside and see her headstone for the first time.  I will place flowers at her "finished" graveside for the first time...

I am sure my visit will include some tears, probably a lot of them... And I will stand there (maybe sit, kneel, who knows...) and pray.  I will share my heart yet again with my maker...I will again lift up the questions. I will again say thank you for the amazing blessing of having been able to share my life with Sonya for the time I did.  And again share the void in my heart that I hope He will choose to fill again...  And I will share my thoughts with Sonya as well, share them, as if she is there... of course, deep inside I know she isn't there, she is home... but still, I will open my heart and share with her about this past two years... about the progress I have made, some of the good times I have had.  About some of the new people I have met and new friends I have made...  And about how deeply I still miss her...How she was so unique to me and how much I wish she was still here...  And somewhere in all of that, how proud I am her for the way she faced life and how she faced her own death...with dignity and class, and always concerned more about those she loved than herself... And how thankful I am for her, that she is home - perfectly safe and secure in the presence of our Lord and Savior.

Many people of asked why I have been silent and why haven't written anything here this past year. And the truth is this past year it's been about me and my journey, about me moving forward in picking up pieces. My path has included people who have been significant in some fashion or another to me, but whom I've never felt it fair to talk about their story publicly or how our stories where intermingled.  And so, I have remained silent.

I have faced the challenge of feeling like I should be further along and be more ready to "face life again," like I am somehow failing to grasp hold of life and opportunities that are around me...and then at other times being reminded that I lost my wife...I lost my other half and that we were made to be one. And now, I have no choice but to be just me again. It has been comforting at times to know that moving forward takes time, significant time. It requires me to allow healing to take place and that in most cases, healing comes over time and it doesn't happen overnight. Knowing that allows me to see that my progress really hasn't been all that slow (it has just felt like it).  At the same time knowing it takes time is also discouraging. It means that there may still be time ahead of me that is required before I can be "whole-ish" again, before I can take whatever the next step in life might be, time before my heart can experience openness, without reservation, to something new.  And it has required me to accept that I might not ever be whole again... as a friend recently shared with me, that another widower had shared... That I may walk through life with a "limp" and that's ok...Jacob walked through life with a limp... a limp that was reminder of his struggle in his relationship with God... a struggle that yes resulted in a limp that remained with him, but it also resulted in Jacob being blessed by God. So maybe in some cases, a "limp" is not such a bad thing...

Cabo San Lucas in 2010

Being in the Maryland this past 14 months is been hard. It has meant I am living among people that never knew Sonya, or who I was with her.  All they know is a man who is somewhat broken. It has been difficult to sit in church and hear a message that triggers reminders of what we used to be an no longer are. I used to be part of a duo, a duo that had been joined to be one and I am no longer a part of that.

It has meant, I have needed to share life with people who are not aware of who Sonya was was in my life or how she's influenced and shaped me, how I am, in part, a product of our marriage, of her love, her kindness and the product of her reflection and outpouring of God's love. In fact there are many who I attend church with the don't know the story at all some who don't even know I was once married. I'm sure there are some that wonder what's wrong with this guy he's 40 years old and he is single...I wonder why...

So how am I doing?... I am doing well.  Can't say I am "back to normal," but then again, maybe I am...Maybe I have arrived or am getting closer to the "new normal"...

While I still have my moments or even hours that are still filled with sorrow and times when the void is so much more poignant, they don't seem to last quite as long.  And as time has passed it seems the memories that come favor the great times we had as opposed to images of her suffering... those still come from time to time, and usually wake me up from sleep and make getting back to bed hard... like being a little kid with nightmares in some ways... But, even this morning I woke to dream of her, and this one was pleasant and joyful.

As I look forward, I suspect I will never forget...but I fell like just maybe, finally, I believe there is light in this new normal... it might not be the life I had hoped for, and yes I am still forced to live without Sonya by my side... but maybe, just maybe, there is a chance that I can again begin to enjoy life.  Life as just me...and then who knows...

In preparing for this blog entry today, I took the opportunity to search through Sonya's photos album on her laptop...and was so pleasantly surprised by all of the "couples selfies" she had taken over the course of our lives together... not only are the reminders of our time together, but a vivid reminder of what she cherished in life...and I am happy to have been among them...

I love you all.  Your continued prayers are still needed and appreciated.

In Christ,
Simon

The Passage of Time

His heart which was once full of love for the partner God placed in is life

Now finds itself with a hole that has not been filled and a love whose focus is now out of reach

Looking forward to the future inevitably means letting go of the past

And in his case, the past was awesome and the future so undefined

His mind full of memories; some he can not shake and others he would never want to

He must now learn to hide away many of those memories to allow a new space to be available

His road has been filled with support, but lonely all the same

Glad to not walk it alone, but crushed to walk it all

"Help Lord Jesus" are sometimes the only words he can muster.

A year.  The passage of time is unstoppable, and time has done what it always has - continued to move in the only direction it knows.  And like it or not, I am on that train.  Today is a marker, a beacon to remember the amazing time Sonya and I shared together.  It is also a milestone, in some ways a day I thought would never come.  I mean I knew it would eventually come, but it seemed so far away.  A year without Sonya.

Believe me when I share, a world without her, or at least my world without her, is one I prayed and hoped I would never have to see.  But, such is the course of life that God has allowed to be my course.  Why - I haven't got a clue.  Do I still ask - you bet! Do I expect an answer - no, not really.  At least not in the hear and now.

This past year has also be full of firsts without Sonya.  Of rediscovering who I am without her. Maybe not all that surprising, I am much the same man without her as I was with her.  But there is indeed a part of me missing.  A part of me I loved and had the opportunity to share life with and to take care of and spoil and be spoiled by.  I not only miss her, I miss the part of me that got to express itself toward her.

Over that past year my walk with the Lord has definitely been challenged.  The only answers I have to why He allowed her to go home that make any sense require me to acknowledge that God sees things on an eternal scale.  And that this earth is not our final destination.  If you consider that we are just pilgrims passing through this life, with an eternal destination in our future, well then things might make a bit more sense.  In fact, there is even comfort in knowing that Sonya had trusted her eternal destination to the grace and mercy of God through the gift of salvation that was provided through Jesus' death on the cross.  There is comfort in knowing she is full of joy today, without pain or sorrow and that she is in the presence of our Lord.  Does that bring comfort, yes.  Does it fill the void...not in the least.

And while her path has taken her home, mine is to continue to move forward on this earth.  And to move forward, means you have to know where you are headed (and I am still working that out). Moving forward means change.  And my year has seen a lot of it.

I have had three roommates over the past year.  My family has seen to it that I have not had to live alone.  A sacrifice on their part that can not ever repay.  Each of them so very different from Sonya and from each other.  I have had to learn to live with each of them, to establish routines, boundaries and fellowship. And then to adapt to change again as they have traded places and I have gotten a new roommate.

I have had to change some of habits, or least put them on the shelf for the time being. A lot of realizations about my own habits.  Some of the moments of enlightenment have been rather amusing and some, almost embarrassing. But so many of those realization have been about the habits I had toward Sonya.

I have changed locations -  I moved cross country in July.  The move meant leaving behind the only place Sonya and I had ever lived together.  It meant moving out of the house that had become our home.  It meant leaving behind almost all of the people who had been there through the first 9 months and those people who had been such a large part of our lives together as a couple. It also meant moving to new location that Sonya and I had talked about for a few years. And making that transition without her was hard.  In fact, I think the move caused me to take a number of steps backward as it forced me to face so many of the physical items that triggered memories.

Memories are both wonderful and at the same time painful.  As one might imagine, seeing your spouse in pain and not being able to do anything about it and knowing its probably not going to get any easier, is an emotionally traumatic experience.  And with deep emotion comes memories that are seared into you being.  And so there are memories that have run through my heart and mind that I can not shake and wish I didn't have.  At the same time deep emotion also accompanies other experiences that were wonderful and memories that I would hate to ever lose.  I hear all the time - "Choose to hang focus on those positive memories and resist the bad ones." And to some extent that is good advice, but you can not escape the rough memories, they come, sometimes triggered by things you can't see coming or have no way to avoid.

Just a couple of weeks ago, while shopping for staples of all things.  I am standing at the checkout counter and the clerk asks for my "club member" number.  After figuring out which phone number it was attached to, the clerk confirmed the name on the account..."Sonya"... I am not even sure I understand why just hearing her name at that moment triggered such a reaction...I managed to hold it together long enough to get out of the store.  But that sort-of rocked my world for a the next couple of hours...Didn't see that one coming. And while those moments are becoming less frequent - they still pop up now and then.

Along with the move, my walking path changed.  Yup still take long walks to think through the many thoughts that run through my mind.  Often times, I spend that walk in prayer sharing questions, the decisions that I need to make, and for which my sounding board has gone home.

How am I doing?  I think I am doing well all thing considered.  God has been faithful over this past year and given His character, I suspect he will continue to be faithful.  He has provided comfort.  Does that mean I have moved beyond the grief - no not at all.  At times, although not as often any more, it still feels like that morning when her brother woke me up and said "Sonya is with Jesus..." Not actually sure if he said anything after that...but those are words I will never forget.

Is it getting easier? Yes... Is it easy yet...No!

Thank you all so very much for your prayers so me over this past year.  I still need them.  Pray for:

• Courage to move forward and take steps without Sonya, we were such a great team and I miss my team mate.
• Wisdom in the decisions that will come my way
• Understanding of what my calling is now
• Strength to be an encouragement to others
• The ability to let go enough to make room and not so much as to forget

I love you all,

In Christ
~Simon