There are moments when it takes my breath away when I realize how much grief and loss have demanded of me, and how much is continued to be asked of me. I look backwards four and half years and am amazed that I am still standing. I've proclaimed mightily how hard I've worked to recover, and it is true. It has taken everything that I have to get this far but unfortunately the damage from the loss is more than emotional, but incredibly physical as well, something I was not expecting. The last year and a half I've had to deal with aFib (brought on by the stress of the loss), and a surgery to treat the aFib. I had made the commitment to stay in our home and to update it last fall, which I did. But then I developed a late onset rare complication from that surgery. Two and half months to get a diagnosis (the physicians in the practice had never seen this complication in my type of surgery). I was pretty ill. I kept soldiering on, doing the best I could to work and live life, but there was nothing left in the tank. I missed the holidays with my family. The treatment is long and the pace of improvement has been glacial. Two months into treatment and I was feeling like it would never ever get better. My doctor reminded me that it was a long treatment and improvement would be slow, but after being ill for four months, it felt like it would never get better. I kept hoping that one day I would wake up and feel better, a lot better. But it didn't happen.
And then, last week, I had a long busy week. I did my best to parse my energy to get through a 60 hour work week, which a month before would not have been possible. I realized I felt better, I had more stamina. And although I was worn out after that long week, I wasn't debilitated. I could breath better. I'm not fully recovered, and that will probably take a lot more time. I didn't realize how ill I was until I started to feel a little more like myself. I also acknowledged that I have just passed through the most difficult weeks of the year for me, the anniversary of Tom's death followed closely by my birthday--both accompanied by a lovely cold. There is a heaviness to those days, and it was a difficult anniversary this year. In the last month I finally turned off Tom's cell phone and his car has been rehomed with our nephew. Two emotional steps. I feel like I've cleared the decks, that I'm ready to move forward in an entirely different way. I no longer want to talk about how far I've come (no promises there, though), I want to live how far I've come--and how far I may go.
As I was driving home on Friday night and the thought occurred to me, actually it was a sense of knowing, that the very best of my life is yet to come. It is an awesome feeling, knowing. The person that I want to most share this with, who would be happiest for me, is Tom. There is no doubt that he is beaming and saying "that's my girl."
