My biggest fear in life since Daniel’s death has been relapse. I’ve held onto the memory of me gazing, horrified at the walls of my rock bottom. That feeling of complete desperation that rocked me and then inevitably, helped in getting me clean. For I know If I allow myself to forget, I will relapse and I KNOW if I do that, I will surely die.
When you finally grasp how short life is every moment brings the thought “I’m really happy I just got to experience that.” I’m learning that missing Dan doesn’t mean I have to live miserably. While yes, this hole I’ve been in is in the very depths of darkness, I’m starting to notice it also has little patches of light shining through it. That the darkness implies nothing sinister, only that liberation takes place in hidden places and ways.
I’ve wept my own weight in teardrops. I’ve mourned loud enough that I thought at times I would cry him back to life or he’d hear me wherever he is and finally come home. I have spent my days in a symphony of my own tears, gut wrenching weeps let out into floorboards, bed-frames and shower walls and then smiled as I emerged, like nothing had happened. I have felt empty over and over, not realizing the beauty being made out of the marrow of my wounded bones. Yearning to be put back together. Yet life still continued on without Dan, teaching me that not all endings are happy. Though maybe in Dan passing the torch to me, somehow it makes the ending happy after all because, life continues on without him.
Regardless of the sorrow, the sleepless nights, this unimaginable pain of outliving him. Pain that has stripped me bare at the soul level. His loss changing me entirely, irreversibly. Teaching me that strength and courage comes from experiencing searing loss where you can’t imagine carrying on another day. Teaching me that the deepest joys in life are felt by those who also have felt the deepest of pain.
If there was a way to know that the last time for something was the last time, would you change it? The last time you step in the doorway of the home you grew up in. The last time you kissed your childhood sweetheart. The last time you picked your child up and rocked them. The last time you ever seen someone you love. We are living those last times right now. So why aren’t we living in these moments a little longer? Cherishing them a little more?
It’s in the realization that it will never come again, that makes this life so sweet. Death does not have the final say. Life arises from the ashes of our destruction and that is when, redemption rushes in like a flood and the realization and gratefulness hits. Gratefulness at having known our loved one for a moment, rather than never at all. Having seen and held their face, having spoken their name. Of you being theirs and them being yours. What a beautiful thing realization is. 
Cheers to your love tonight and all the lovers across the globe: dead and alive. Tonight they are all so beautiful.
