It’s time to be brutally honest and up front with all of you. Proceed with caution.
Before I write this confession, I must also confess that there’s no way that I believe I am alone in this. And that is why I decided to write about it.

I have wanted to die.
No shock there, right? We’ve all felt that desire. But for me, there have been more than just a few times when that desire was all-consuming. One of those times was when the boys and I were on our cruise this past summer.
We had, for the first time, a balcony room, which was nice, but which was also something very, very difficult for me to face every day.
Every day.
It’s a dang good thing they had that sign hanging up there …… since I, as a first-born and mostly a rule-follower, followed that rule.

As you can obviously tell, I have not died. And that all-consuming thought of it has passed (thank God for good meds and good doctors). I still do not mind the idea of dying and I wonder if I ever will again. I have no fear of death, nor of anything really. I have faced the worst and have survived.
So far.
I think I’ve been mostly shocked that I didn’t die of a broken heart. Maybe my children are surprised by that, too.
But again, I’m still here.
In spite of those days when all I wanted was for the world to stop. For peace and quiet and blackness to overtake me. I wasn’t looking beyond that …. not to seeing Jim, not to heaven, not to anything except for the pain to stop. I was tired. Heck, I was beyond exhaustion and could not see anything different in the future. I couldn’t see a future. I couldn’t see beyond the pain of each moment.
Even on a cruise ship.
And I couldn’t really talk about it with anyone …. not on the ship anyway. I was supposed to be in the “happiest place on earth” …. not trying to determine how difficult it would be to climb over a railing.

But ….. this, as do many of the thoughts, the pains, the blacknesses …… passed.
And I confess that I’m glad it has passed. It’s certainly not what Jim would have wanted. I wouldn’t have wanted that for him had he been the one left behind.
And if it hadn’t passed, I would have missed the experience of things going from deep, inky blackness to a lighter shade of grey.
I like grey.
I would’ve missed my son’s football games, my daughter’s college graduation, 6 special birthdays, time with my children.
But most importantly, I would have missed the love, compassion and caring that friends, family and complete strangers have poured out on me.
I would have missed the warmth that those people brought to my heart.
I would have missed the healing that is going on inside of my heart.
And I would have missed the opportunities to say, “Hang in there. I get it. It’s hard. But it will pass.”

So here’s to warmth, and hope and faith and love.
And here’s to a future, whatever it may hold.
And to all things passing …. one way or another.