I’m not sure if it is the one year anniversary date to my husband’s death that is soon approaching that scares me or makes me realize that it really happened.  A year has almost gone by and I can’t quite grasp how.  The weather is getting colder, the leaves are starting to change and I can remember everything that I was doing last year at the same time.  However I can’t remember what I did a month ago, a week ago, or even two days ago.  I feel as if I’m floating through “life.”  I do have a few precious moments but not enough to be happy for long.  

I wonder sometimes how I survived the first few months after my husband died.  I think I just became really busy which was either a coping mechanism or a distraction from the permanent situation.  Now I’m starting to get back to reality…dealing with budgeting, trying to set and make some plans and it just sucks.  I keep realizing that some of the things I did in those early days were to help me get through another day.  Now I also realize that I can’t keep living like that.  Unfortunately the budget gets a little tighter and the rest of the world demands some sort of structure, commitments.  I still feel like I’m floating in a bubble.  I still think I hear my husband’s truck approaching our house.  I still ask myself if “it” really happened.  Just the other night I was trying to think of someone’s name and I caught myself ready to say ” I will have to ask my husband what the name was.”

So I’ve been forced to get back to some sort of normalcy.  I do it for the kids sake but I feel like I’m drowning inside.  I realized I’m alone.  I’m totally alone in this.  Okay I know I have a great family and great friends but I don’t have my husband.  I don’t have the normalcy, the predictability, the security.  Now I’m left looking for that type of life again.  Where does a widow start.  I mean does my match.com site say — I’m a widow with lots of emotional baggage and I have two small children.  Ohhhhhh now that sounds like a tempting first liner.  Not to mention I’ve never dated.  Where does a widower begin to search for something that they already had.  Am I even ready to date? 

This just sucks!!