“I don’t know what to say, Megan. I know a bunch of ‘I’m so sorry’s’ aren’t going to make it better, but I’m glad that you were able to get out—make a better life out of a bad start. Did he . . . um, did he regret it? Not following his football dreams?” I can tell she doesn’t mean this in a nosy way, but just to better understand what Jack and I had.
“Never. Jack wasn’t built in a way to ever regret the path his life took. He believed that everything happens for a reason. Although, I’m not sure he would feel the same way now seeing as he died jumping on that new path he dug for his life.”
“You miss him,” she states without any doubts in her tone.
She would understand, as a wife of an ex-marine she knows what it feels like to live without someone, even though her husband came home, you still feel that emptiness when they’re gone. The physical void, as well as the cold hard fear that they may never make it back.
And Jack . . . he never made it back.
“Every day.”
And I do. Not just because the physical loneliness, but losing him—someone that I had had by my side every day since I was in preschool—was one hell of a hit to take mentally too.
She nods, reaches her hand over the table separating the love seat from the couch and takes my hand. She doesn’t speak, just gives me a gentle squeeze and looks back at the television. I’m sure neither one of us are even watching the reality show rerun that’s playing on the screen. I’m lost in my thoughts and I’m sure she is too.
It’s hard to believe just how much my life has changed in the course of six years. I went from being a single teenager without much care to what happened in my future, to married with a newborn in what felt like seconds. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change having Molly in my life for a second, but losing Jack has changed me. At first I struggled with the will to live, sinking into a depression so deep that I’m shocked I made it out. Molly helped with that. She was my will to live. But even now, after all of these years, I still have days that I sink right back into that dark place. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve never had to be alone, aside from him. Now it’s like I’ve had to learn how to not only live without him, but to live essentially alone.
For the last three years I’ve been in some sort of limbo. I’ve come so far from where I was when he first died. Instead of thinking I would never have good days, now I know the bad days come few and far between. His birthday, our wedding anniversary and the date he died are still, and probably always will be, dark days. Moving forward, one foot in front of the other, in the process of moving on. Even though the thought of ‘moving on’ is still, to this day, laughable. To move on, I would need something to move toward, and it’s really hard to focus on the beauty in life when you’re stuck living a haunted one with the memory of someone who has been dead for years. Back in the shadows. All those moments that once brought a smile to my face and gave my heart a reason to beat a little quicker, gone. I was reminded, while Dani and Cohen completed that fairy tale for the record books that is their love, how beautiful life can be and as I watched them dance on their wedding night, I found myself wanting that. Craving for a love that deep that I physically ached for it.
And for one night I let myself forget the weights that have held me down.
For one night I lived in the now. I allowed myself to open up and feel all of those things that I have always been convinced I would never have.
For one night I felt the promise of more and it scared the crap out of me with the power of those emotions.
Those are the moments that all feel like lead in my gut now. The ones that make it hard for me to push myself past drowning when I dwell on them too long.
Before Jack died we had created a beautiful life. It was a life that held so much promise.
I was, after we were married and left our old lives behind, a phoenix being reborn from the ashes we had left from all the burning pain of our old lives.
All that fire and all that pain, washing away memories we never wanted to have again.
We had been married for two years before he died. It took us a while in that time, to find our way. To feel that promise of a beautiful life. And in that two years I held something beautiful in the palms of my hands. I felt alive.
Reborn.
I didn’t live in the shadows around me, meekly praying that no one would notice me.
We were alive and gloriously happy.
I believed with my whole heart that every hardship I ever felt served a purpose because it brought me a happiness that was out of this world perfect.
Until it was gone.