No Word

February 2, 2017
I can't find the word.  It is not grief, bereft or despair.  I thought I couldn't write until I found the word but perhaps writing will help me find it.

Chris died this January.  A declarative sentence.  He died.  Very simple. And yet so conflicted a sentence when you are talking about your loved partner of 50 years.  He died in a hospital, suddenly, unexpectedly.  I remember thinking that my stomach hurt as if someone had kicked me over and over those first few days.  Then it subsided into a dull ache.

I have to be calm.  I have to be strong and sensible.  But I am having trouble processing.

Our two daughters and three grandchildren need to understand that I do believe that this is part of life and that there is joy in the journey.  There is joy. It startles, but there is joy.   I contemplate our life together in heaven in the future and it seems so beautiful.  I can think of that future, but I am having trouble figuring out next week.

I am listening to Joan Didion's book "The Year of Living Magically".  She talks about the unreality of her husband's death by this sentence "You sit down to dinner and your whole life changes."  Perfect.

I am actually living one minute to the next.  I am in the moment.  It is awful.  I cannot imagine why self help people want us to do it.  My life has always been the next exciting, new or interesting thing I was going to experience.  Chris and I did so much together and learned that by just going with the promptings of the Holy Ghost we could have so much joy, fun and love together and have an interesting life.  Now I don't even know how to address the future except for a celestial one.