It’s time for another installment in my series of “uns”
Today, let’s talk about Unfinished:
Since my husband died very unexpectedly, I have had to deal with many unfinished tasks, but there’s also the fact that I am living an unfinished life and feeling like an unfinished person.
Recently, I finished a major unfinished task. Just a week before the 2 year anniversary, it was completed, finished, done. Yesterday, I once again encountered another unfinished task, this one, extremely minor, but it affirms the effect of how one loss can impact a multitude of situations. So, I grabbed my planner and made another to do list. Like I don’t already have a million other.
I’m struck by how much weight he shouldered and how well he handled it – I missed it, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the details. That, apparently, was his job. That thought gives me pause, and I start to doubt myself. I don’t believe it is good to dwell on that thought, it will just drag me further down into dark pit of grief that I am trying to climb my way out of. I often question myself –
“Is this how he’d do this?”
However, that is also another rabbit hole into grief. If I take a deep breath and still myself for the expected emotional tide, inevitably, my rational mind returns the answer to that question. Yes, it is how he’d do it. I spent over a decade with this man, we did everything together – we were bonded together, first in friendship and then in marriage – I often question my own mind, is it me up there or him? The answer, quite simply, is both. In marriage we had, we had become one soul, one mind, with two bodies. Which leads me to the another interpretation of Unfinished: the unfinished life.
I continue in this life, piecing together what is left, but this is not the life I started out with. The truth is there is no satisfying end for my planned life. The day we said our vows to each other was the start of a new life, a new journey or trajectory for both of us. With his passing, I have reached the dead end. That planned life cannot be finished, and I have had to stake out a new path, but I’m not in the right mind to plan anything. What I’ve had to do is create a detour and every step comes with the frustration of not knowing where I’m actually going. It’s also one step further from my life with him.
Each step also takes me further away from the self I recognize, it’s almost cliche to say this, but after you suffer the loss of a spouse, you will never be the same. It’s very true. Yes, parts of me are still the same person I was before he passed, but it’s just parts. The full, complete person I was…well she’s missing. The changes I’ve endured and that missing part of me has left me unfinished.
In the end, he left many things unfinished, he left our life unfinished and that has caused me to be unfinished.
Time to update my to do list, again.