Like a good vintage wine, last weeks blog, Malbec, requires a second harvest.  Over the last seven days, I have changed my mind about a few things and, now, I am offering up another tasting – this tasting is paired with hindsight. 

 

 

A week ago, I shared my ritual of holding out my hands, searching and reaching for him.  In my own words I said, “it is awkward because I do not know where to place my fingers.  I clumsily grasp at the air around me.  Then, I just drop my hands to my side because there is nothing for me to hold.  Where he should be, now there is nothing.  So, I stand and ask myself again and again, how could someone so big and bold be gone?  How can Mike be gone – into nothing?  How can he no longer exist?  I don’t have the answers to these big questions. (But, I’m working on it…)“

When I wrote this, I had no way of knowing if I would ever know the answers to these big questions.  I thought maybe it would take me a lifetime to figure out.  I thought Grief would hold me captive for a long, long time before I came to any conclusions.  But, by writing my questions down, I think I sub-consciously set the intention to discover the answers.   At this point, I still have more questions than answers, but I did come to a pretty big realization. One thing I know is that I was wrong…

 

 

 

 

When I implied that Mike has disappeared into “nothing” I was misguided.  I was searching for him with my eyes instead of my heart and Soul.   And, now, looking back, I stand corrected.  

 

What I mistakenly thought was nothing, is in fact the exact opposite.

Maybe it’s not nothing at all.  Maybe it is everything.

Mike is so far beyond nothing, he is now everything.

 

 

Mike was love; and he continues to be LOVE. 

Love is eternal.  Love is not ‘nothing’.  Love is everything.  

 

Mike has not disappeared just because I can not see him.  “The pot of boiling water”  analogy I used last week is flawed.  Yes, “the bubbles pop; and, then, disappear.  The bubbles turn into nothing”,  but Mike has not vanished like the bubbles.  He is not gone just because my eyes can not see him.  It is true, that when I reach for him, my fingers grasp at only the air around me.  But, Mike is still here.  In a crazy way, he is more present than he was in life.  Now, he is more ‘here’ than ever.  And, I mean this completely. 

Changing how I think about his death has changed my outlook on life without him.  Now, I try to consider his death as a beginning of sorts, not simply an ending.  Yes, parts of this new beginning are terrible because it is without choice that I am beginning my life anew.  I find it ironic that death itself has created my re-birth.  Mike died, and I am here – born again.  Because of his death, I know life differently now.  I am changed. Forever altered.  And, recently, I have realized how much he showed me about living –  by dying.

Now, I see only air around me.  I feel only a breeze against me.  And, yes, in honesty, I still want his hands on me instead of the wind vaguely brushing up against me.  And, yes, I continue to feel the emptiness in the room.  I am only human and I crave him physically.  But, in  my heart I know that he is still present in my life.  In my Soul, I know that he is here loving me in every way.  Last week I said that ” he is everywhere, and nowhere all at once”, and in a lot of ways this is correct.  Mike has become so much ‘nothing’, that he has actually become bigger than he was in life.  Now, the man that I love is the air that I breathe.  He is everything and anything I want him to be.  He is love.  And, Love is all we need.

 

With Love (literally),

 

Staci