Hard

Friends.  These can't be easy posts to read or respond to. I hope you know I have no expectation that you will do either. These memories have been swimming in my head and heart for the past year and I promised myself I'd get them recorded - at least in part. Many of the parts/ pictures/memories can't and shouldn't be shared. But these few are therapeutic for me to put down and I hope they will someday help our children be able to piece the story together.

I love you all and appreciate your many supportive words and comments. I wish I could respond to each one!! And I hope you know that you don't need to say anything at all. I truly love you and appreciate your patience as I work through this little memorial series.

I've mentioned that there was joy on the day Wes died. 
There was. 
And it was real. 
And I have more to say about it.

But it goes without saying that there was an overwhelming amount of hard as well. 
What was hardest?????
Hard to say.

The seconds following Wes's death, after everyone left his room but Spencer and Lucy and I, were h a r d.  I had to grope for a chair because I couldn't even stand up, let alone speak to the two little faces that were suddenly looking at just me for...everything.

Taking off Wes's watch and wedding ring was hard.  The necessity of removing them had never before occurred to me and the gentle recommendation to do so was like a knife in my already bleeding heart.  Watch and ring are both here in a ceramic bowl beside me as I type.

Hard doesn't sufficiently describe the eternal evening I spent wading through our old photo files looking for an obituary picture.  Where was my judgement when I decided that would be a good thing to do???

Sigh. 

Those and all the other hard things aside, I think the most difficult moment of the day was when the mortuary folks came to take his body.

Because "take"  was just how it felt.  The men were kind and respectful and their coming was a necessity.  But their presence and their task took my pain to a height previously unknown. 
   

Those moments did much to increase my understanding of Mary's anguish outside the garden tomb.

"Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."

I wouldn't let the mortuary men cover Wes with the velvety, royal blue blanket they had brought for that purpose.  It would have made the already dreadful moment completely unbearable.  So I sent Wes's tiger blanket to the mortuary.  (And I still can't decide whether he was completely relieved by my intervention -that blue blanket was utterly dismal- or whether he was beside himself at my ridiculousness.  I think, in the end, he was probably just grateful my dad was there.  To enfold me in a strong embrace as the complete reality of separation started to sink in. )