137. I Begin Again – Aura Brickler
My new beginning has yet to happen.
My new beginning has yet to happen.
I don’t know much about it, but I know it will come with a bang. I know it will hurt like hell even though I have braced myself for years. Some days it feels like I sit and wait for it, daydreaming about what it will feel like. It can show up like a slow motion video of a head on collision; as a family comes into focus I realize it is ours. Other times it looks like a storm way off in the distance; a disastrous cloud over an Idaho mountain range, while we’re being spared a few last rays of the sun’s light. When it happens I will scream and cry and whisper to myself, “but you had so much time to prepare.”
I will begin again in a suffocating state of mourning. I will smile at others and assure them that I am okay. I will agree that he’s better off not suffering, that he is no longer laboring to find each and every single breath. I will hope with all of my might that there is an afterlife, one that has offered him eternal peace after so much pain. I will begin again wanting more than ever to believe in the narrative of heaven because what else do you tell your young child about where her father goes when his body dies? I will likely tell her that he lives among the stars now, always hovering over her, and when the night sky is the darkest, she’ll see him the most.
I will begin again as someone with a lot of regrets. The idea of living every day as if it is the last fades after 3206 days of trying hard to do so. Cancer has a way of digging in and dragging along. It grabs you by your weaknesses and makes you beg for an ounce of strength. It gnaws at the foundation of your collective hopes and dreams, allowing despair to fill in the cracks. I will begin again and learn how to forgive.
I will begin again as a narrator, telling stories to keep him close to us. Telling tall tales that protect our daughter from the parts of the story that are too painful. I imagine being left in a fog of uncertainty, fear, and confusion. When the fog begins to lift, I will begin again as grateful—for what we had and what, of him, I still have. I will begin each day like I do now, with a cup of coffee. I will begin again as a widow.
– Aura Brickler
