Life Is A 3 Act Play

Life is a three act play: You’re born. You live. And then you die.

That is the natural arc of existence in the biological world and it is inevitable.  We will all lose someone at some point as that is a fundamental part of humanity and have a limited period of time that we are gifted to participate in this incredible universe that we only get to see a tiny slice of in our journey through it.

Some never make it long past birth. Others don’t make it as far through life as those who remain would like, or live lives harder than they should be for any one of a million and one reasons. A very few manage lives that are just long enough to feel right to them or those around them. But it’s the people who don’t get a full chance at a long life that we feel most conflicted about.

That is where grief, that fully normal human sense of loss and confusion that accompanies people leaving us comes from. This is particularly so when we feel that person was been cheated through no fault of their own to a shorter time here and with us, than we think should be fair. Grief is particularly difficult to navigate in these circumstances.

And it is that grief which can manifest itself so completely and thoroughly that it takes your breath away, smothering out all other percepts. And when the all cosuming nature of grief starts to subside, it still creeps upon you at moments you least expect, completely occupying our very being.

The first four months after the loss of my wife and best friend of 32 years simply did not feel real. Everyone told me about grief. I read about grief from an academic sense. But her loss simply did not feel real during those first months. I fully expected her to walk through the door or call or text me asking if I needed anything from the store. I took cat pictures, or something I saw that tickled me that I wanted to share with her, realizing only after a moment that she would not be on the receiving end of that communication.

After those first four months, the feeling changed as reality started to set in, and I started to feel panic attacks as the logistics of dealing with a spouses death began to manifest themselves. There were other inescapable items that reinforced reality like the medical bills that started rolling in. The texts, emails, phone calls, letters from well wishers reaching out in support. The friends coming into town in support. The planning of memorials. 32 years of photographs. Her ashes which include the stainless steel implant earned from a collarbone broken during a running fall.

All of that was inescapable to my brain that wanted to refuse reality. A brain that wanted to reject reality and substitute something less painful, something less unjust. Yet Hilari visits me in my dreams, and I still talk with her in conversations that are mostly private, lest people question my sanity. Sometimes I hear her in my mind, as loud as if she were standing next to me, guiding me, particularly in moments when anger at the world unmasks itself.

Regardless, I take these visitations as gifts though they may be figments of my grief and a manifested desire for this not to be real.