Some days I feel as though I’ve lost my already questionable grip on reality.   Even though I know that my husband is gone, I often find myself simply waiting for him to come home.  This isn’t the same feeling as wanting to call him before remembering he’s not there. It’s not that momentary lapse in memory that is apparently all too common in people who are grieving that allows them to believe for just the briefest of moments that their loved one is still there.

This feeling is somewhat different.  It is almost as if I truly believe that if I figure out the “secret”, I can bring him home.  As if he’s trapped in another dimension and I have only to solve the puzzle that will open the portal and bring him back to me.  When people say “he’s still with you”, I imagine an entirely different scenario.

I find myself listening to the hair band station and am able to convince myself that A is riding shotgun with me.  If I don’t look over at his seat, then he is sitting there rocking out to White Lion, Dokken, Tesla, Queensryche, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Ratt or Poison.  If I place a big pillow just so on his side of the bed, I can nearly feel him sleeping next to me.  If I just close my eyes and focus hard enough, I can almost catch the faintest whisper of his unique scent.

While I know this is not the case, that he is not simply caught in an alternate reality waiting for me to drop that last clue into place, try telling that to my subconscious / alter ego.  She has been watching too many Sci-Fi movies with her husband, and too easily believes this entire scenario to be more than simply plausible, but entirely feasible.

Are she and I losing our collective minds?  Or is this simply my own (very warped) way of trying to come to terms with my loss?  Is it absolutely necessary that I come to terms with it?  What would happen if I simply lived out the remainder of my years trying to solve this unsolvable riddle?  Would I eventually lose my mind for real?

And most importantly, would I even care?  If my grip on reality were to slip permanently and for the rest of my life I believed A were still beside me – not in a spiritual way, but honest-to-goodness right beside me –  perhaps I would be OK with that.

The way I see it, I have already lost a large part of myself.  There are some days that I just feel as though it’s too much of a struggle to continue without being a whole person anymore.  A part of my heart is gone.  Would anyone notice if I lost my mind, as well?

All I know is that each new day of this unwanted journey that was foisted on me, while repetitious and relentless, brings a new challenge or a different way of trying to cope with it all.  It’s simultaneously different and exactly the same.

I pray that I can make it through the darkness without losing it altogether.  Or maybe I’ll finally unlock the mystery after all and get back what I’ve lost.  Only time will tell…

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