thinking

I have another post brewing, but it is going to take a bit and possibly be v. long so in the meantime I will ramble on.  I'm a muller.  I think about things for a long time, chew on it and the thoughts roll around in my head for awhile.  In January I had come aross a blog that was devastating to read.  It's a guy, Matt Logelin, whose wife died 24 hours after giving birth to their premature baby.  Suddenly widowed and a single dad to a premature baby.  I still cannot fathom what that would be like.  I read his blog a bit and then on January 18th I bought the book, Two Kisses for Maddy from Amazon.   I always read the end of the book first, and since I had been reading his blog I knew how the story would go pretty much anyways.  For some reason, I couldn't finish this book.

Last summer I had a moment when I thought, "what would happen if Scott died?"  In my head I went through the process of - okay well I'd have to take care of the dogs, go through all the stuff, and then was like "snap out of it!!!" and made myself stop thinking of that.  I didn't want to even entertain the possibility.  Because that would never happen anyway and I didn't want to even put it out there.

And now.  Now I'm thinking - was God trying to prepare me?  Reading that blog is heartwrenching at best.  From reading it I've come across links to other widows.  In a way it's good for me to find them so early in this process to know that I'm not alone and that other people understand this pain.  Not that I thought I was the only person to lose a spouse, but it's a different pain.  When my Grandpa died I felt pain, and regrets and sorrow - but not like this.  He had been 85 and sick for awhile.  Scott was 37 and it was a shock.

Tonight I stopped at the post office on the way home to get stamps so I could get my mother's day cards out.  The guy in front of me sort of looked familiar, but I've worked in lots of doctor's offices so a lot of people look familiar to me.  As he was walking by he stopped and said I looked familiar too - was I married to Scott?  And then it's the panic of does he know already, am I going to have to say it?  Or what if I just act like nothing if he doesn't bring it up do I have to?  So here I am stuttering over myself and I ask if he had heard what happened and he had.  Then the questions start.  Were we still together?  What happened?  How are you?  Do you need anything?  I didn't say v. much and he left.  It was my turn at the counter.  And I fell apart.  Complete meltdown at the counter.  I couldn't get air, gasping, crying and my throat was closed off so couldn't get words out either.  The lady was v. nice and gave me a kleenex.  I got one word out - stamps.  Because for craps sake I had to get those cards out!.  Lame.  I eventually regained some semblance of composure and walked myself out to my car where I could have a whole body heaving sob.

I know that these things are going to happen.  I know it will not always be like this.  All I can say is boo to grief.  Boo to death.