Possibilities

 July 2, 2022

"I'm not well, but I remember what it was like to be normal, so I do an impression of that."

Ricky Gervais - Afterlife

One of my kids and I had lunch yesterday - just the two of us. They said, "People keep telling me how resilient we are - how proud they are of our family. But like - what the hell are we supposed to do? We have to keep living."

Yeah - what they said.

I have made either the decision/ life-altering mistake of binge watching Afterlife with Ricky Gervais - the story of Tony, who works for a small town paper and loses his wife to cancer. 

He alternates between sarcasm and trying to up lift the people around him. The only thing keeping him from suicide is wondering who will be left to feed the dog and who will visit his dad in the care center. 

He sees his wife everywhere - every day.

Same Tony. Same.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be me - the show is fairly accurate - aside from visiting the cemetery part (apparently, unlike TV, it takes about 16 months to get an actual gravestone installed).

I see his face - hear his voice - feel his hand in mine - not in a supernatural way - just in vivid, blinding memories that block out everything around me. 

Yet,

It is possible to love what you have AND miss what you've lost.

We've been trying to stay curious about the world, and move forward in life. We are not leaving him behind - we are not getting over it. We are carrying him with us. We road tripped to a Billy Joel concert because he loved adventure - and we love him. We notice dragonflies because he noticed everything. We invite new people into our world because he sure did and he's not here to do it for us anymore. We are trying new things because he wanted that for us, and we will not disappoint him. He wanted our lives to be an adventure - even when he was in bed - he'd ask us to go out and come back and tell him what we saw.

So we will keep looking, keep loving, keep living - and someday, we will tell him all about it.