loss

He’s Really Gone

Posted on by Racheal

He’s gone.

Duh, right?

It’s been almost nine months.

Nine months of not hearing him come down the stairs.

Nine months of him not falling asleep on the sofa on a Saturday morning.

Nine months of me watching kid-inappropriate TV by myself.

Nine months of crying and yelling and laughing and weeping.

You’d think this would not just now be sinking in.

It’s hitting me like an anvil.

I think it started the last time I visited this blog.  I got to thinking that I should change the photo of the blog to a more recent one of Trey.  This one is over a year old.  That’s when it hit me that there will be no new recent pictures.  I mean, we have more recent pictures than this one, but all we have is all we will have.  At some point the most recent picture of him, one taken on my birthday two days before his death, will be ten years old.  There will be no new photographs, no new jokes, no new experiences.

There will be no new memories with him.

At night I get in bed alone, and that is how it will continue to be.  I still sleep mainly on my own side.  The dog has taken over his pillow, a fact that would both amuse and annoy him.

I wake up with kids in my bed, but no husband.  That is how it will continue to be.

This is not the first holiday season without him.  This is the first of many holiday seasons without him.  Of ALL the holiday seasons without him.

I asked my mom for gift ideas for dad, and awaited the traditional responding question of what she should get for Trey.  Half the day went by before I realized that I was expecting that question, and that it would never be asked again.

His gone-ness is overpowering, is washing me away.

I sit at the dinner table, looking at the three of us.  (Okay, I admit it.  I sit on the sofa, looking at the three of us eating dinner with our plates on our laps.)  It’s the three of us.  It will be the three of us, until the kids grow up and start lives of their own.

I see advertisements for concerts and live shows to which we will never go.

I get groupon ads for couples’ getaways and think, “Well, I guess I’m never doing that.”  We will never go to a romantic resort together.  Never take a cruise.  Never visit New York.  Never visit the real Stonehenge.  I may do some of these things on my own, but so many of them are contingent upon being a couple.  The part of my life where I am part of a couple is over.  I didn’t see it coming.  It’s done.  He’s gone.

I Sobbed Through Gardians of the Galaxy vol 2

Posted on by Racheal

“It starts May fifth.”

I have been hearing this from my boys for months now.  May 5th.  The opening of GOTG 2.  It was big news in our house.

The movie is rated PG-13, and my kids are both seven.  I realize it is a grown-up movie and my kids are kids.  I therefore refused to bring them opening weekend.  My kids and I are a hurricane blasting through wherever we go.  I try to be respectful where I can, however, and one thing I can do is keep the littles out of the theater when it is filled with fans who went out of their way to see it opening weekend.

The movie has been open for a week now, today is Friday, and the kids have the day off school.

So we went.

And I wept.

If you have not seen this movie, I will not spoil anything but will say that some of the themes in the movie are a bit on-the-nose.  (You will remember from the first movie that he grew up without a dad and that his mom died when he was young.)  This, however, isn’t why the movie wrecked me.  I have found that spouses/dads dying in movies does not evoke a huge emotional response from me.  You would think that watching someone lose her husband or father would bring back my own memories and situation.  It doesn’t.  The truth is that losing him is so big — so fucking huge — it just has absolutely nothing to do with whatever is happening to a character in a movie.  I could watch movies depicting parents and spouses dying all day long and it would not affect me.

20170512_124607 (1)THIS movie, though.  This one.  Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2.  This movie wrecked me.

This movie — the one we had been planning to see as a family.

The one that is rated PG-13 but I can’t say no to the kids because Trey would have brought them.

The one for which Trey taught my kids to remember the opening date.

The one that has Kurt Russel.  Kurt fucking Russell why did Kurt Motherfucking Russel make it into this movie?  Trey had an unhealthy obsession with Mr. Russel.  Do you have any idea how many times I’ve seen Overboard?  We’re not talking about Escape from New York or Big Trouble in Little China.  Every time Overboard comes on, we’re watching it.  This is true of the other movies as well, but they don’t come on as much.  Trey loved Kurt Russel.  On his birthday this year I requested that friends and family post pictures of Kurt on Trey’s Facebook wall.  Two months before he died.

Our family of four is now a family of three.  Plans we made will never be fulfilled.  We will not attend graduation together, or give girlfriends a hard time.  We will never make the holiday Leavenworth trip a family tradition.

We will not see Guardians of the Galaxy 3.

My weeping began during the previews.  Today previews were featured for the new Star Wars movie, Wonder Woman and Thor.  All movies we knew were coming and we were planning to see.

Together.

The four of us.

Then the movie starts, and it is so amazing and he would have loved it.  The kids are loving it and would have loved sharing it with him.  And then Kurt Fucking Russel appears onscreen.

It was all over for me.

I laughed at the movie, and cheered and loved it.  Through it all, though, I wept for all the dumb little plans we made that we will never fulfill.