47 Days Later.

One step forward, two steps back.

47 days.

47 of the longest days of my life.

I keep writing here, keep blogging- it feels like I keep saying the same thing.

This hurts. I miss Tony. My life truly, truly sucks at the moment.

But I feel like I can't quite... this pain, this stifling, all consuming, dementing pain. It's too awful to capture in words, on a screen, out loud.

Just too huge. There are no words, in the English language at least, to describe this.

The finality of it.

How someone can be there, one minute, filling up space, making noise, living life.. making the world turn.

And then... just... not.

Four and a half years, Tony and I were together for. After six weeks together, we bought a bought a house. After three months, we were living in it. Two months after that, I was pregnant.

And then we were engaged.. then pregnant again... then married.

And then he died.

We laughed about it, often, how quickly it all happened, how we just knew it was meant to be. It was tough sometimes, especially with a squalling newborn and two people who really didn't know each other that well, but we made it.

Time and time again. We made it. We worked through problems and stayed together. Because, deep down, that was what we both knew.

That we were in love. that, to each other, we felt like family, even before we were married. That were in it for the long haul. there would be no divorce here. We would work things out.

And we were looking forward to the rest of our lives together.

We were looking forward to, one day,w hen our kids were a bit older, having a proper honeymoon. We were planning on a few holidays, a new house, to watch our kids grow up.

Not a whole lot to ask for. Simple dreams.

Why are they so fucking difficult now, when it was so simple? When we had all we wanted. Each other. Kids. Happy, normal little life.

It hurts, and I feel cheated. That what I wanted was so simple, that I was easily pleased. That it was taken away so horribly, so violently.

This really is as bad as it seems.

My head struggles to wrap itself around the fact that Tony, who seemed so immortal to me, who was the strength of this family.... that he's gone. That the trials and tribulations of raising two children under four years old fall to me, and only to me, for the rest of their lives.

That I'll never talk to him again. That I'll never see him again. That his body, his physical presence, doesn't even exist anymore. It's ash. Trying to imagine that transformation, of skin and tattoo and solid reliability to flakes of white and grey ash, with pieces of pearly green scattered through... it feels like my mind may turn inside out, from the weight of that concept.

I was so secure in my life. I was so happy, so confident that we were blessed, that we would always be happy.

Maybe that is why my mind is finding it so difficult to do this final shift, to let go of the tiny subconscious strings of memory in the back of my mind that keep tricking me into thinking I will talk to him again soon.

I don't trust my own mind anymore.

I don't know who I am.

I read drafts of blog posts from Before, and remember sitting every afternoon in my sunny kitchen, waiting for Tony to return home from work, loving our simple little laugh and relishing in finding the humour in it.

I read those posts... she's gone, the Lori that wrote them. The Lori who's head was a place of jellybeans and sunshine and fairies and all that good crap, she's been exploded, left as the core of herself.

Some days, the reality of this just... it feels like it's frying my mind.

Some days, I wonder if I'm going insane too.

***

The old Lori, she was terrified of flying.

Tony was always badgering me to fly. I always said no.

I promised him, in the ICU, that if he came out of this, we'd fly. We'd go whereever he wanted.

And now... I'm flying anyway, without him. Part of me thinks he'd be so proud of me. Another part thinks, maybe, he's just pissed, because it took him dieing for me to fly- I couldn't do it for him when he was alive.

Oddly- or maybe not so much- I'm not afraid of flying, right now. If the plane starting going down, if the oxygen masks fell from the roof... the relief would be palpable. Thank God. It's over. Bring it on. I won't have to wake up tomorrow morning and do this again.

And I may just get to see my Man again, too.

Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars... I could really use a wish right now.