That’s Pretty Good

I just read something that essentially said, with all the therapy I’ve been getting, I’m not learning how to handle the trauma, pain, anxiety, or depression I’ve been through, rather, I’m healing to enjoy and love all the good things that come my way, to allow happiness to resonate in my soul again. I felt that.

On the one hand, there is no way the experience of Kevin’s accident is ever going to fully fade into memory; there will always be a trigger I don’t anticipate. Or a memory. A sound. A feeling. Tonight for instance, I watched a movie in which a husband lost his wife: the scene showed the husband crying and trying to curl into the wall of the hospital where he was waiting with family and I was transported to November 19, 2022, when I tried to curl into the hospital walls myself…when I was so scared and so overwhelmed that curling into anything else for comfort was all I could think to do at the time. Just to stop thinking, to stop feeling. I’ll never forget that moment, the one where my comfort was fighting for his life and I had no one else to tell me it was going to be alright, to offer that comfort, and tell me it was going to be ok.

That comfort did come, eventually, in a coworker I was familiar with but didn’t know well. As soon as she opened her arms to hug me, I fell apart and allowed the grief to take me, knowing someone was there to help piece me back together, to help me navigate this terrifying situation, and to tell me it would be ok, even when we weren’t sure it would be.

But I digress. The last few years of therapy have been exceptionally helpful in helping me manage those triggers and emotions, so while watching that scene did bring up extreme emotions and memory for me, I was also able to let slip the tears that managed to break through, remind myself that what occurred in the scene was not the outcome we had, and that Kevin was fine. We are fine.

But then I think about the second part of what I had read…that I’m healing to accept happiness in again and that made so much sense. You see, when Kevin had his accident, and even though he’s fine now and I did not lose the love of my life, there was a period of time that I grieved his absence, and our future, not knowing then what would happen or that he would survive. Honestly, the trauma to his heart…I didn’t know if he’d make it; I’d been told to bring the kids, to prepare for the worst, to call our family. So yeah, I grieved a future we had planned, even if only for a few hours: trips we wanted to take, golf excursions, Florida for a wedding, our children’s graduations-our eldest child graduated from high school 7 months after Kevin’s accident-and so many other plans. I felt like I lost it all, all our future memories, even if they hadn’t happened yet…gone.

The first year following the accident was exceptionally difficult: the wedding anniversary I thought I’d face alone, Father’s Day, my birthday, graduation, a wedding, a visit to my grandmother. I honestly thought it was all lost to me and so reaching each of those milestones, while amazing in their own rights, were bittersweet to me. They were tinged with memories of what we almost lost and a sense of relief that Kevin and made it this far. The first anniversary of Keivn’s accident brought on its own set of anxiety inducing memories and emotions for me. But we made it.

And with therapy, I was able to face that I was afraid to fully embrace those times because they were almost stolen from me once. I was afraid of facing that I had almost lost them; afraid to believe that they did happen, that Kevin was here and celebrating with me. It took some time, but I’ve gotten better at being present in those moments now, in letting myself feel the joy and happiness that radiates in them.

We just dropped our son off at college a few weeks ago and it was bittersweet for all the right reasons. Kevin and I, we only ever wanted to give our kids every opportunity we could, to allow them to be children for as long as they could, knowing what it was like to have to grow up early, and not wanting that for them. We wanted to keep them free from the burden of being an adult before their time.

So dropping off our son at school, leaving our baby behind, in a place he worked so hard to get to, knowing that we had given him every tool we could to help him be successful; knowing that he had reached the first step of his dream, and knowing that Kevin and I could do that for him, that was pretty amazing. So, while I was crying for a whole different reason, I was also so incredibly happy, and that is pretty good.