5 Month Anniversary

Today is the 5 month anniversary of G's death. I'm sitting at the table facing "his chair", the one he sat in that last morning as we chatted and I drank coffee and he drank orange juice.

In some ways, December 19th feels even longer ago than 5 months. These have been the longest 5 months of my life. I still struggle to keep track of what day it is. I often can't even remember what season it is. I have to pause and try to orient myself to where we are in the year before I can even begin to remember if its t-shirts or sweatshirt weather.

There are other ways in which I cannot believe it has been 5 months. 5 months! We are coming up on 1/2 of a year! How has he been gone for so long? How is he gone at all?

I've been thinking about the day he died again and I still cannot wrap my mind around his death. I knew he wasn't doing well but I could've never imagined the end would come so soon. How did he go from playing LEGOs with our son the night before (admittedly only because of narcotic pain killers, anti-nausea medicine, and a whole lot of will power to get to the table and have some special moments with P) to gone - dead- in just over 24 hours?

I've been forcing myself to write and say dead since he died. Not passed away. Only occasionally gone home to Heaven. Its one way that I try to make myself face reality. Yes, he is alive with Christ - more alive than he was ever on this earth. But for us, he is gone. He isn't coming home. We don't get him back in this life. Saying dead communicates that and makes me face that when I want to hang out to him and pretend he isn't gone.

I hate how he suffered at the end. It was terrifying to watch him not be able to breathe. To hear him say that he was suffocating. To helplessly sit by, having no way to help, not understand what was happening or why. To hear the "death rattle" that I didn't know at the time was called that but knew that he was choking on his own spit and there was nothing I could do but sit and hold him and tell him of my love and Jesus' love.

One of these days I need to sit down and write out the whole story of the day he died but its so hard to face it. So hard to relive it.

Death is an enemy. It wasn't meant to be this way. I hate death. God hates death. And death will one day be destroyed.