I survived 2017. What more can I say?
Tim did not.
It’s true, I feel like half of me died last summer. However, my heart is still beating. Kidneys, lungs, all of it. And tiny humans still need me. There are all the logistics. There is the world that just keeps spinning, 24 hours after another. Relentless.
Some days, the amount of life I have left seems daunting. All of the days and the weeks and the months and the years that I have to live without him. That just simply was not the plan.
I survived Christmas, somehow. Well, with family, with a lot of support. That is how I survived Christmas.
New Year’s brought me great anxiety. Both eager anticipation to get the heck out of 2017… and the realization that with the end of 2017, came the end of the last year Tim ever saw. The last year that ever knew Tim.
My solution? Invite around 30 people to my house to provide distraction. That worked, but then this morning, I felt the deep sadness welling up. The kind of sadness so deep and powerful that the only way to deal with it really would be to cry and sleep all day. That, of course, was not an option, so I was infinitely grateful that I had been invited to my first ever in-person get together of the DC area members of the Hot Young Widows Club. I took the kids and truthfully it was a lifesaver to have something to do, around people who just simply get it. And the power in the girls realizing that all of the other kids there had dead dads too. And meeting a widow my age live and in person for the first time ever. It turned out to be the exact medicine I needed.
My goal for 2018 is to find a balance between the sadness and hope for the future. I want the kids to hear all the stories about their dad, to hear his name, to feel him in their hearts. But I also want to do whatever I can for myself to avoid them living with a sad sack until they go to college. I don’t know how to find that balance, but I have to believe there is always hope, and that I can find it.
Don’t read the last page
But I stay when it’s hard or it’s wrong or we’re making mistakes
I want your midnights
But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s DayHold on to the memories, they will hold on to you
Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you
Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you
And I will hold on to you~T. Swift, New Year’s Day
Gather by Image 
Tim so guided to select you to be the mother of his children – so hard to express what I want to say. Love you to death, and hate that you have to deal with this. I have no doubt Tim would say the same.
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