Mixed Feelings

Some days feel so “normal.”  We are so busy getting through our day, especially during the week with school and work.  Then reality hits.  Scott isn’t coming home.  No sweet or normal texts throughout the day when I’m at work or in the evening when he was at work.  No normal, ordinary conversations snatched at break times or while driving.  No wake up kisses when he would get home after working second shift.  No warm body to warm my cold feet on at night.  When reality hits, it is accompanied by a sick feeling in the stomach – you know the feeling when something bad is happening and there isn’t anything you can do about it.  I remember in the days after Scott’s death, the nausea and loss of appetite.  That same sick feeling still hits from time to time. 

Now when reality hits, most times it feels like sadness and of being unsettled.  I think the unsettled feeling comes from a hesitancy to really want to plan for the future and a sense of not really knowing what I want the future to look like.  For so many years I had a picture in my mind of the  future growing old with Scott, enjoying watching Jaelyn grow up, playing with our grandchildren together.  It is hard to dream for the future when I know what I want is no longer possible.  Although we are moving forward, it is with mixed feelings.  Every major decision is accompanied by mixed feelings, a feeling of moving away from Scott and our dreams and “excitement” for some changes.  Any sense of excitement for future plans brings a sense or tinge of guilt with it.  I know that we don’t have any reason to feel guilty, but it doesn’t feel right to have any sense of happiness without Scott.  I feel confident in the decisions that we are making for the future, mainly because I have made sure that I am talking through these decisions with people that I love and trust to be honest with me.  Yet there is a deep sadness that Scott isn’t here to enjoy some of these changes that we were working toward.  Without a doubt, I would give up any of these changes in order to have Scott back with us.   I wonder if every death and grieving brings such mixed feelings.  I know when my brother died, there were mixed feelings – grief and a sense of relief that he was no longer in pain, which then brought guilt for feeling that sense of relief.   Maybe it is just a difference in the mixed feelings depending on the relationship and the situation.  From my own experiences I think that grieving also requires facing our regrets for things in the past, things unsaid, things undone.  Grieving is so complex.