What doesn’t make sense to me is how this loss, the death of my husband, the person who knew me more intimately than all others, has turned me into a stranger to even myself. I don’t recognize that woman in the mirror. That hand holding my child. The voice in the video.
I can wrap my head around how it has changed my relationship with others—interacting with people is a foreign affair for which I have no patience—but to now be a stranger to my own self, my own life…
Do you know yesterday, on his birthday, I was actually hyper. I dropped my littlest off at his Grammy and Papa’s house, the other kids were at Nonni’s, and then I took off to run errands. By the time I got back to the house, I felt almost manic at the thought of an afternoon to myself. When texts started to come in from people wishing me comfort for today especially, I had to remind myself why.
Why is everyone so off?
And then I remembered. But I still didn’t feel it.
Today, going through our 24 shelves of books (that’s just upstairs), selecting which are worth packing and which are dispensable, I moved efficiently. Untethered to the man who held those same books at some other time. Ungrounded from the relationship that started in the bookstore from which many of those books originated. I operated systematically and calmly, using the amount of dog eared pages as my guide. At one point I slowed long enough to think, I hope the kids will understand when they’re older, I couldn’t keep them all.
Is this life now? Untethered, ungrounded, unfamiliar? I see other people mourn the man I have buried, but I don’t recognize them. Or him. Or me.
Everyone, a stranger, but me more than all.
a scribble of jo 