When people ask I usually tell them I am okay. And really I am. Sort of holding the line in the middle. There are times when I am great and times when I am not. I have grown accustomed to grief. I have gotten used to it's presence. Because to deny it will only prolong the process. I see it, name it embrace it and keep going. I allow myself moments of teary eyes when struck with a thought or image of Tom. I think of him multiple times a day. I will miss him every day of the rest of my life. In an entirely different way then anyone else. I had gotten to the point of knowing he would be in my life on the peripheral. That we would have contact and see each other and talk but never be truly friends. Only friends in the way of two people who were bound together with a vow but promises were broken and now we had the memories, our love for our son and the knowledge that we would be forever bound in another way. I do not mourn him as my husband because he was not that in my life and I did not carry any romantic feelings for him since we split. I mourn a person who shared twelve years of my life, adventures, firsts, struggles and the miracle of creating Keegan out of love and science. I mourn who he was at 25, 30 and 35. I mourn our history and the fact we will never have a future raising our son. I even mourn the struggles we were sure to have in the future. It was a month yesterday since he died.
Right now it is like walking with a heavy backpack over a river of thin ice. I inch along to where I see the safety of solid ground. And I do not think that I could carry one more thing in this pack. I am petrified of the ice cracking. Every day I get closer to relative safety. But I feel the heavy in my chest. I breathe past it. I breathe. I think about the weeks, months and years ahead. I know I will never be the same. I know that there are so many tasks that lie before me. I try to tackle them in small amounts. I accept the things I can not do anything about. I try to anticipate the things I can control. Sometimes I look around and I can not believe that life has gone on. That for the most part the days are the same as before. But I am not. I need life to go on. I need to get lost in the future and the good things ahead. I wish that for everyone who mourns Tom now. I wish a little peace for his family. I wish peace for him.