Day Two

I used that for lack of a better title. I'm bleary minded this morning and yet there is so much I want to write about...and no way to put it.

I hate mornings. I hate waking James up from his sleepy warm nest and making him get dressed, feeding him and making him walk off into the cold to school. Actually, I drive him, but I still have to watch him walk that lonely walk from the car to the school. Of course, I am projecting a lot of my own feelings toward school and its social situations onto him and he probably doesn't feel the same way about it, but I can't help myself. I just want to wrap him up and put him away so that the world doesn't get to him or anything bad befall him. Although, really, the worst already has.

I had nightmares all last night. From images of my husband...to him being the subject of a message board where horrible things were being written about him, about us. I know this stems from a search through Myspace and some of the comments that were left on my daughter's friends' sites. I am torturing myself.

Because, with each realization that he is not coming back comes the realization of how much I needed Leonard for my life to be right. I am frightened. Of not seeing him again. Of the wholeness of the emptiness here in this house without him. Of having to deal with everything on my own. It is lonely. I can't be so unlucky as to have my worst fear realized. And I wake up and it has been. It still is.

I started this this morning and then had to go off to work. I do work, sporadically, still. But it is becoming too much to handle for right now. The house I went to was a brick ranch, much like ours. They are a newly engaged couple in the process of remodeling. They are sanding the floors and repainting. They painted their living room the exact same shade as ours and looking at it, and the floors, brought back a flood of memories. Leonard and I, believe it or not, had so much fun doing the living room. We had so many plans for this house. And I have let our sweet little house go. I raked leaves yesterday and it was so hard to be out in the yard...his backyard, his garage...the places he worked, and puttered. I can't seem to look at anything anymore without thinking of him.

I had joined a message board for young widows (grrr...I hate that word) a few weeks after. Reading the messages would bring me down because they would all say things like,"Two months is the worst", or "4 months is hell" and I think How can it possibly get any worse?. So I stopped reading. Last week, at our Sandcastles group, a woman was saying,"The second year was way worse than the first..." and it frightens me.

What I am afraid of is how weak I really am. How easily I can shout at people (grandma, dad, well meaning friends). How quickly gut wrenching sobs can come and pleading with him to come back to me.

I look at the leaves that are falling, and I don't want them to fall. They grew when he was still here. His boots are where he left them, inside the door of the bedroom, and I yelled at the dog for knocking one over. His cat walks through the house, sobbing for him. Literally caterwauling all day long. And it is just me. The kids are doing really good. James has his stumbles, but much less than I thought. Nicole scares me because I wonder when it will hit her... and life goes on.

I am sorry for being so low so often. I feel guilty for not making progress. For not being able to reassure everyone that everything is "okay". I don't know what okay is. Or will be. Working from the fear angle, I am afraid that this is what it will always be.