Saturday
Today I sit here listening to Jay and Tiernan playing. Jay is laughing loudly as he plays with Matt’s brother. When we were going to go to the playground he asked if Uncle Brian could come. He is missing his uncle. We are all missing someone this weekend. Two years of him missing new memories.
We took a walk this morning around the campground. It is beautiful here. As I walked around with Matt’s parents, I realized I was ahead of everyone lost in my mind. Missing Matt. I have been working so hard on staying in the moment. Not letting the sadness overwhelm me. Today as I walked, I realized that my heart still longs for Matt as my brain tries to convince it that it is time to move on. Two years and I am not sure how to do that.
As my grief kicked up this week my widow brain came back for a visit. Sign that my grief was back. That my brain was trying to shut out the pain that comes with missing him. It makes me feel so lost and stupid at times. People that do not know what that first year was like probably don’t know what to think when I am choosing the wrong words.
Two years. It has been two years and although I am better, I still have those days that are a battle. A battle to stay in the moment and not wish for my past. Not to miss the person that made me sane.
Last night I laughed and enjoyed myself last year missing him while doing that turned into my having a meltdown and bawling my eyes out. This year I acknowledged that my heart was missing but stayed in the moment.
Sunday
As much as I am healing my heart is still broken. Tonight, I am trying to write how I am feeling about him being gone for two years but I am just all over the place. Tears are flowing. I was trying to hold on to the good times from my weekend away with his family.
Time and memories have a way of sneaking up when you are least expecting them to. Arriving home, I found my dad moving the sheep pen in the back and I went for a walk to meet him. And that was all it took for me to take a walk down memory lane two years ago.
Thinking about how lost I was in the months after. I have pictures of us moving the fence back there after Matt died. That started everything that brought me to tears tonight. I can’t remember so much of that first year. I was on autopilot just trying to survive. Two years into my grief journey, I am not struggling to survive just to miss these landmines.
We went to feed the sheep at my grandma’s house and all I could think about was that after my dad picked me up from work standing in the driveway. I was texting people. Calling people. Trying not to feel. My mom took me to the hospital. Trying to make sense of everything. Sobbing. Feeling like his mom hated me and blamed me, knowing two years later that is not the case.
Fighting off the sadness was not just a today thing it started yesterday when I was camping. I tried to stay ahead of it. I tried to stay in the moment but tonight the pain of it all is raw. Tomorrow will be a new day and I am hoping that I will be okay.
I would do anything to hear his voice, to hug him. To have another chance to love him and figure out how to make it work. But tonight I have my memories of our short time together.
About Laurel Snook
Laurel became a young widow on October 2, 2020, her husband Matt had a heart attack he was only 37. Matt was a juvenile diabetic and they always knew he would die young but she never thought that she could be a widow at 32. Navigating grief with anxiety, regrets and guilt have been a struggle for Laurel. They had gotten into a fight days before he died and they had talked about divorce. One of the things that helped her the most is finding other widows who understood the pain she was feeling. In February she decided to start writing her story. Self-care is something else she started to do daily and art has become her outlet to get what she is feeling out which she shares on her Instagram. Being a young widow comes with its own challenges but we are not alone in this journey.
You can find her on Instagram @HealingPorcupine or her personal blog link- Healingporcupine.com.