"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while..."
A small foray into RL thoughts of love, loss and hope.
Click if you wish to read. Feel free to ignore it if you don't.
[Who knew The Princess Bride could be so prophetic?]
Or the "All I Ever Needed to Know about Life, I learned from The Princess Bride" Post:
For those of you who chose to read this post and were not already aware, I lost my husband of 16 years to cancer a little over 13 months ago. We didn't discover he was sick until he was already stage 4 and it was a rather brutal 7 months to the day from diagnosis to passing. For most of that time, I was his caretaker.
Before Don got sick, we definitely were not the perfect couple. We didn't still hold hands all the time or go out on date nights. We were tired; we were cranky: two parents both working full time jobs who had very little time to be just us. That led to a lot of misunderstandings and hurt, as I'm sure you can imagine. I just wanted to say that here, up front, because I wanted you to know we weren't all sickly sweet and adorable; we were a real couple with real life issues. Still, underneath it all...I really loved him. And I know he felt the same.
After Don got sick, we made a pact very early on: I forgave him for everything he'd done to hurt me and he forgave me for all I had done...because all that stuff we used to fight about? Stupid. Petty. Meaningless in comparison. And so, it allowed us to approach the impending fight for his life as a team...and together we were formidable. Painful as it was to go through, I would never want to give that time back, because we both learned so much from it.
A week before Don died, we had one day that we sat and just talked for hours. It was an amazing gift, because by then the cancer had spread to his brain and he'd just spent a week before that not himself at all (this is an understatement). But in the way that often seems to happen with the terminally ill, he was just miraculously better. Among the many things we discussed, I asked him if he would, once he got to the other side, let me know he was okay. I asked him to make it something big, obvious (because I can be rather oblivious at times), so I would know it was him. He said he would try.
Two and a half days after his passing, I was thinking about him and about this packet of letters I have of his. We originally met over the internet; he in Michigan, me in Massachusetts, and we sent each other letters over the period of about five months (along with incessant emails and phone calls, but I digress). They were sweet and precious and I saved every single one of them. Well, I was thinking about them, knowing I had them in the house somewhere, but I had misplaced them some time ago. I was thinking about how much of a comfort it would have been right then to have them...to read his words and feel closer to him. And, with that thought in mind, I reached into my closet to get something that my brother in law had asked me for. I picked up the box and moved it, set it down. When I turned back, there was the old Priority Mail envelope that I had stored all his letters in. Not hidden, not just sticking out by a corner but right out in the open where the box I'd removed had just been.
I laughed and cried all at once, knowing, of course, that this was his sign.
This hasn't been the only time I've gotten signs since Don's passing. I've had many, many of them... a few other big ones, but many of them just small "that makes me smile" moments.
Most of the time, my signs come in the form of songs on the radio. During our courtship, we used to make song CDs for each other with songs that meant stuff to us, etc. It didn't really surprise me when I started getting signs in this way.
So this evening, I am sitting in my car getting ready to drive home from work. I've been bouncing around on LJ, reading and thinking. A friend of mine was having a rough day today, wondering if she was slipping back into being depressed and anxious again. And I know a few of my other friends here have fought similar issues of their own. It got me to thinking that... yeah, that really could be me, too...and I was feeling pretty alone.
I turn on the radio. The song "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger is playing. Bob Seger is one of my husband's very favorites musicians (they were both from Michigan), and that particular song is on a mix CD of "Don Songs" I made that reminded me of him but didn't make me sad.
When the song is over, I channel surf (I am a notorious channel surfer and surf through my ten fave channels constantly). The next channel on my list starts playing "Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann... which also happens to be on that same mix CD.
After that, I channel surf and I catch the song "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel. (the town we live in is Salisbury, pronounced the same). As the last lines of the song play "You can keep my things, they've come to take me home...", I pass a car on the highway; the car has a Michigan license plate (NOT commonly seen here in Massachusetts).
Every single song that played the whole ride home was the same.
And the song that started playing when I pulled into my driveweay? "Hollywood Nights". Yes, again...on a different station.
Don literally serenaded me all the way home tonight. I smiled a lot, cried a little, and didn't once feel alone.
Love never dies.
*watery smile*
Click if you wish to read. Feel free to ignore it if you don't.
[Who knew The Princess Bride could be so prophetic?]
Or the "All I Ever Needed to Know about Life, I learned from The Princess Bride" Post:
For those of you who chose to read this post and were not already aware, I lost my husband of 16 years to cancer a little over 13 months ago. We didn't discover he was sick until he was already stage 4 and it was a rather brutal 7 months to the day from diagnosis to passing. For most of that time, I was his caretaker.
Before Don got sick, we definitely were not the perfect couple. We didn't still hold hands all the time or go out on date nights. We were tired; we were cranky: two parents both working full time jobs who had very little time to be just us. That led to a lot of misunderstandings and hurt, as I'm sure you can imagine. I just wanted to say that here, up front, because I wanted you to know we weren't all sickly sweet and adorable; we were a real couple with real life issues. Still, underneath it all...I really loved him. And I know he felt the same.
After Don got sick, we made a pact very early on: I forgave him for everything he'd done to hurt me and he forgave me for all I had done...because all that stuff we used to fight about? Stupid. Petty. Meaningless in comparison. And so, it allowed us to approach the impending fight for his life as a team...and together we were formidable. Painful as it was to go through, I would never want to give that time back, because we both learned so much from it.
A week before Don died, we had one day that we sat and just talked for hours. It was an amazing gift, because by then the cancer had spread to his brain and he'd just spent a week before that not himself at all (this is an understatement). But in the way that often seems to happen with the terminally ill, he was just miraculously better. Among the many things we discussed, I asked him if he would, once he got to the other side, let me know he was okay. I asked him to make it something big, obvious (because I can be rather oblivious at times), so I would know it was him. He said he would try.
Two and a half days after his passing, I was thinking about him and about this packet of letters I have of his. We originally met over the internet; he in Michigan, me in Massachusetts, and we sent each other letters over the period of about five months (along with incessant emails and phone calls, but I digress). They were sweet and precious and I saved every single one of them. Well, I was thinking about them, knowing I had them in the house somewhere, but I had misplaced them some time ago. I was thinking about how much of a comfort it would have been right then to have them...to read his words and feel closer to him. And, with that thought in mind, I reached into my closet to get something that my brother in law had asked me for. I picked up the box and moved it, set it down. When I turned back, there was the old Priority Mail envelope that I had stored all his letters in. Not hidden, not just sticking out by a corner but right out in the open where the box I'd removed had just been.
I laughed and cried all at once, knowing, of course, that this was his sign.
This hasn't been the only time I've gotten signs since Don's passing. I've had many, many of them... a few other big ones, but many of them just small "that makes me smile" moments.
Most of the time, my signs come in the form of songs on the radio. During our courtship, we used to make song CDs for each other with songs that meant stuff to us, etc. It didn't really surprise me when I started getting signs in this way.
So this evening, I am sitting in my car getting ready to drive home from work. I've been bouncing around on LJ, reading and thinking. A friend of mine was having a rough day today, wondering if she was slipping back into being depressed and anxious again. And I know a few of my other friends here have fought similar issues of their own. It got me to thinking that... yeah, that really could be me, too...and I was feeling pretty alone.
I turn on the radio. The song "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger is playing. Bob Seger is one of my husband's very favorites musicians (they were both from Michigan), and that particular song is on a mix CD of "Don Songs" I made that reminded me of him but didn't make me sad.
When the song is over, I channel surf (I am a notorious channel surfer and surf through my ten fave channels constantly). The next channel on my list starts playing "Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann... which also happens to be on that same mix CD.
After that, I channel surf and I catch the song "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel. (the town we live in is Salisbury, pronounced the same). As the last lines of the song play "You can keep my things, they've come to take me home...", I pass a car on the highway; the car has a Michigan license plate (NOT commonly seen here in Massachusetts).
Every single song that played the whole ride home was the same.
And the song that started playing when I pulled into my driveweay? "Hollywood Nights". Yes, again...on a different station.
Don literally serenaded me all the way home tonight. I smiled a lot, cried a little, and didn't once feel alone.
Love never dies.
*watery smile*