Have you ever ….
Stared at your dead husband’s picture, the same one that’s been sitting on your nightstand every single day for over 5 years, and suddenly, for no real reason whatsoever, you don’t seem to recognize his face as his face?
Have you ever ….
Gone into the closet where you keep a few of his things, still, and taken out a specific t-shirt that always had a faint smell of him on it – only to find that the smell is no longer there, and it has faded away into nothing?
Have you ever ….
Watched your wedding video, the same one that you couldnt bear to watch for years because it was so painful seeing him move and talk and laugh, only to discover that this time, you are listening with extra intensity, because your husband’s voice, no longer sounds like your husband?
Do you ever feel like he (or she) is disappearing, little by little?
Do you ever wonder if your marriage, your love, your everything, was something you just imagined?
Does your husband or wife or partner, ever feel like a stranger to you?
In picture form. Or in video. Or in voice.
And does that scare the shit out of you, as much as it scares me?
I dont want my husband to disappear. And as much and as often as I work so hard to make sure that he stays relevant and alive in every way possible and to the universe, he still seems to become something of a stranger to ME, sometimes, in those quiet reflective moments. Those moments when you want nothing more than to FEEL that feeling again – to feel what it felt like to be loved by him. To be held by him. To be cherished by him and kept safe by him. When you want that and you need that, and yet, the sound of his voice in recording feels like sand. And his picture feels shallow to your eyes. His smell and his scent, once so strong, has become vague and generic and dull. And the only thing you want, besides having him somehow come back to life, is for everything to feel familiar again. For everything to feel close again.
But it doesnt.
It just doesnt.
And you sit and you stare and you make friends with,
the Stranger.
Trying like hell,
to make him familiar again.
He will be.
But it’s fleeting.
Sometimes you look at that picture,
and it’s like the face is one you can’t even recognize.
And then other times,
you see that same photo,
the one that looked not like your husband just a day ago,
and the alive-ness and realness and missing of him that happens from seeing his eyes,
and the way they jump out of the frame in their blue-ness,
is so palpable,
it’s almost shocking.
It sends shivers up your spine.
Because for that few seconds,
in the silence of the air,
it feels as if,
he might be here again.
Or maybe he never left.
I don’t know.
I can’t figure it out.
I wish I could.
And I wish,
that the feeling of him being
A stranger,
would leave forever.
If I can’t have my husband back,
can I at least have the FEELING of my husband back?
Please?