Recently I went away to the mountains for a few nights – this was my first overnight trip away from the house since Sara died. I knew I needed to give myself space to grieve for the 2nd anniversary of her death; I’ve been so focused on the new life that’s growing within me that I haven’t been connecting as much to my grief for Sara – not on a deep, soul level at least. I instinctually knew that getting away from the house would make it easier to make that connection. That said, I didn’t anticipate just how much it would really hit me.
On Sunday the 31st, I was at the start of what would be about 4.5 hours of driving through the mountains – out and back. I was staying in the Poudre Canyon area near Rustic and drove West, through a big expanse of forest hit hard by the Cameron Peak fire a year ago. I knew about this and was expecting to see the many, many, many burned trees – but something about seeing the evidence of the utter devastation just grabbed my heart and caused tears and powerful grief to come bubbling up. I related to the forest that I was driving through at a visceral level. In 2019 my life was forcibly rearranged and scarred by forces I had no control over, happenings that took the lives of my first child and of my wife. I will never be the same, no matter how much I continue to grow and evolve. The tears came and went during the drive and by the time Shifu and I made it back after about 6 hours all together, I was exhausted.
The other overwhelming grief that bubbled up on the trip was grief over the loss of Sara as my adventure partner. We were great travel companions on the 4 trips we went on during our time together, but our adventures went beyond travel – we looked at all sorts of aspects of life as adventures, and I always felt lucky to have her by my side. My wedding vows were focused on our adventures together:
Sara – Today I vow to you, my best friend, to be your adventure partner for life. Whether these adventures take place at home, or out in the world; whether they are all joy, or are times of challenges or adversity. In our adventures, I vow to support you with trust, patience and kindness, and with love that may be passionate, playful or sweet, but always sincere. I vow to always honor the beautiful soul you are. I vow to support our continued growth and evolution both as individuals and as a couple. Most of all, I vow to live in truth with you – beautiful truth, messy truth, painful truth, loving truth, and the rest of the rainbow of truth that will surround us as we go through life together. I love you.
-My wedding vows to Sara, 11/18/2016
I can never have new adventures with Sara. We only had 3 more years after I said those vows, which just feels so incredibly unfair and still makes me angry and sad.
My heart hurts. I haven’t felt levels of grief like this in some time, and I’m trying to be compassionate and gentle with myself as I simultaneously hold this deep, deep sadness over what I’ve lost while also holding the anticipation of having a living baby in another 6 months. Two years out, it feels so much more real now that Sara’s really gone, and the thought of her being gone for the rest of my life is just too much most days. This is so incredibly hard and I feel like most days I’m still just barely holding on trying to navigate being a functional adult while continuing to process these feelings and experiences. It doesn’t feel like it’s gotten easier yet – I don’t know that “easier” is really the goal, but perhaps hope that these grief experiences will over time be less surprising and will snuggle into my life as it continues to grow and evolve with the grief.