4 Years

It's been four years today since Brian died.  Thankfully, the details of that horrible day have softened a little bit in my mind.  If I choose to go back and remember it, it's pretty sharp and still cuts me to the core, but time has helped me add some distance and I no longer have flashbacks, nightmares, or persistent thoughts about the horrors that unfolded before my eyes and upon my life that awful day.

In a way, it doesn't sound like a long time.  Four years really isn't that long in the scheme of things - not to a normal person with a normal, happy life.  When life is good, time goes quickly.  It is true that "time flies when you're having fun."  But when you're a grieving widow who's reeling with shock, hurting beyond belief, dreading upcoming holidays and occasions, and who is fearful and unsure about the near and far future, every day seems to drag on for an eternity.  While the past couple years have gone by relatively quickly, the first year felt closer to a decade in time than one year.  It's only lately that I've started to feel capable and ready to plan far in the future again.  I don't know that I've planned anything for more than six months in the future since Brian died -- and that one thing I did plan that far in advance was my wedding.  I'm still not the future-planner I once was.  I'm too leery of unexpected change, too timid to dare to presume that I (or anyone else) will still be alive and well that far ahead.

Yet so much has happened.  I moved, I changed jobs, I picked up another (!) cat, I moved again, I bought a condo, I went to Europe, I had a breakdown and went back to therapy, I bounced back, I struggled to fit in, I made amazing friends, I ran a couple more half-marathons, I irreparably injured my ankle on a Mexican waterside (thus insuring I won't be doing any more full 26.2-milers), I traveled to Mexico three times, I went to Bonnaroo twice, I have made mistakes, I met a few celebrities, I took up golfing, and my online diary of grief has been viewed over 100,000 times.  I literally could not have imagined any of this four years ago.  At that point, all I knew was I was lost, I was shocked, I was devastated, and I knew life would never be the same again.

Yet, on that day, I also knew that life would go on.  I remember distinctly thinking, "I'm still breathing. I'm going to keep breathing.  I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.  I don't know what to do with this, but I know my life is going on."  And from there, I just had to take it hour by hour, then day by day, and week by week, and finally - month by month.  I'm finally able to think ahead and to dare to dream about what will happen years from now, what life will look like when I'm middle-aged, when I'm old.  It's something a lot of people take for granted, this ability to dream and plan for a future.  It's the thing that has taken the longest to build back up in my life.  Some combination of fear and the cold reality of possibilities has kept me from daring to think long-term and to build toward an uncertain future.

Brian was quite a planner.  Not only did we always have a packed social calendar, but he was diligent about his professional and personal goals.  He had a target income he wanted to hit by 40, and a position within his company.  We started seeing a financial planner before I had even finished my schooling with the idea to set our long-term goals and take the steps needed to achieve them.  I was like that to a lesser extent, but loved the structure of this way of thinking and happily participated in these discussions and plans, and we started socking away money into our IRAs and 401(k)s.  Once he died, I was like a sailboat in a windless sea, drifting about deflated and without direction.  I literally wrote about how I moved to Austin because "that's where the wind took me."

Today, in Brian's honor, I resolve to get back to my forward-thinking, future-planning ways.  I know that life is uncertain.  I also know that the things I want in life aren't going to happen if I don't plan for them.  If I don't dare to dream it, I won't achieve it.  It's time to start dreaming, goal-setting, and forward-thinking again.  I've let the wind take me where I needed to be, and I'm ready to use this place in life as my new launching pad.  It's time to draw up a road map to the future I want.  It's time to dream big again.