The first few days ...

A very wise friend, with an incredible beard, told me that part of the grieving process is retelling/rethinking/reliving your traumatic experience over and over and over.
Like when you tell a joke over and over, it becomes less and less funny.
The reason for this is desensitization.
He is an almost-psychologist.
So this information is legit.
I saw the last lingering moments of my handsome husband's life as he went into cardiac arrest on my father's living room floor.
I saw his eyes search for mine when I called his name.
His face went slack and his hand fell heavily over the side of the stretcher.
I didn't think of it as the end.
I thought he would be saved.
That the very kind gentlemen who came on the ambulance would be able to use all this modern technology to save him.
It was in that last few minutes that my life was altered, drastically, forever.
It felt like I was watching the moments tick by in a movie, in a scene that we have seen before.
It was the worst moments of my life. And they were traumatic.
I have thought about that evening in great detail over and over.
So that I was dealing with my loss, instead of trying to escape.
I have brought it to the forefront of my memory just to induce tears, so that I could feel more severely.
And maybe those scathing memories would bring me closer to Scott.
Because they are the last that we shared.
The following days were a blur.
I didn't sleep for the next 36 hours.
I wanted to because then I could escape the hell I had found myself in.
But I felt numb. Just like everyone says in every book or movie ever written.
Numb. Like I was half-awake.
Like this reality was just an awful dream.
I crawled into my dad's bed once I got home from the hospital, so that I wouldn't have to be in my room. The one I shared with Scott.
Friends, dear sweet sisters from my church, filed in crying and hugging and squeezing my hands.
All day I just lay there, sobbing.


^^  A baby in a basket makes any post better ^^

But not the kind of sobbing that happens when your pet dies, or when you hear a really sad story, but the kind that exhausts every muscle and every cell in your body cries out in agony.
You feel physically drained. So bone tired.
And you just don't care about anything: what you look like, what your children are doing, what you have or have not had to eat, what anyone else is thinking, whether or not you are saying or doing the right thing.
It doesn't matter. You have disconnected yourself from everyone, including yourself.
The situation has become too overwhelming to deal with and all you can do is cry.
For days. And it doesn't really make you feel better.
I have had those kind of cries, where you just let it all out and feel cleansed.
This is different. You just turn into a dazed, robotic version of yourself.
I guess it's survival mode.
Our bodies have an instinct about these things and once the numbing sets in and the xanex kicks your butt, you can sleep.
And it's a break, a break from the devestation.
And from the decisions.
There are so many decisions that have to be made when someone so close to you has died.
And they have to be made right away.
But that is another story altogether.
Next time.