July 20, 2011
Hi Bry,
I’m still totally in shock. I just can’t believe that you’re gone. I’m still thinking you will walk through the door at any minute. I miss your smile and your phone calls and your sense of humor. Isaiah asked me today if I ate food before his Daddy died. Yeah, honey, I used to. Now I look at food and it has NO interest and I just can’t eat. At this rate, I might not have to join Weight Watchers after all.
Isaiah is cute, but he was WHINY today. I turned the air on and I’m glad I did because it is HOT here. I’m hoping that’s why he was so whiny. Or it could be due to the fact that he ate crap all day long. I just wasn’t on the ball with that one today. I bought him a mocha while Mike was at the dentist getting her teeth drilled today. I’m not sure why she doesn’t listen to me and just do what she’s supposed to do. That girl has to learn everything the hard way. She got 4 fillings done today and she has 5 more to go. Those will get filled next week Tuesday. I don’t feel that bad for her because she doesn’t like to listen to me. What kid just decides not to brush their teeth?
I had to do some yard work because the yard looked AWFUL and you would have hated it. Now I have to figure out what normal people do with their yard clippings. I had to get some gloves out of the front closet and I saw your jean coat hanging up and it made me sad all over again. I’m wondering what I’ll do when I see other things of yours. Oh, and I stupidly played a song that we were singing when we were on vacation. It just made me sad.
At this point, I’m wondering how long this will seem unreal to me. Will getting your death certificate make it real? Will time make it seem real? Right now, it all just seems awful. We were supposed to be going out for our anniversary this weekend. How can you be gone? How can I live with the fact that I will never hear your voice again or see you smile at me? The thought is unfathomable to me. I just can’t wrap my brain around it.
Dad referred to me as a widow to someone else and I didn’t like it at all. I’m not a widow; I’m your wife. I always liked being your wife and I liked it when you introduced you as your wife. Sometimes you would jokingly refer to me as ‘the other half’ and I liked that, too. I think we made a good team. Widows aren’t teams. It hurts to even WRITE that word. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think something like this would happen. I finally changed my name at the social security office, too. It would have hurt WAYY too much to have anything come with just Karyn Nardin written on it. It was about time for me to change it.
Some days I wake up and I’m right back to when I was woken up out of a deep sleep when I was told you were gone. How could you be gone? I had just talked to you the day before. Thursday you were here and then Friday you’re gone? That just isn’t right. I think I’m still in shock. I barely function and if it wasn’t for Isaiah; I doubt I would even get out of bed.
I go through the motions, but I’m not really there. I’m barely there. I’m just a shell of my former self. I can barely knit and my brain is just gone. A few days ago I went to make myself some coffee and I put the water through and I had forgotten to put the coffee grounds in. Then I thought I had forgotten to put the water through and I did it again! Today I filled the pot up with water and then forgot to pour it in. I’m so afraid I’m going to forget something that I wrote out 4 or 5 bills early and mailed them out today. My brain is just in a fog and I like I’m in an awful dream and I just can’t wake up from it. If I wake up from it, will you be back with me again?
Right now, I can’t even knit. I’m lucky if I manage to knit a few rows a day. And I’m wondering why I’m even bothering to watch Law & Order because I can’t concentrate on what I’m watching and then half of the show goes by and I realize I’m not even sure what I saw. I think I’m going to rewatch them all at some point because heck if I know what I saw. I just sit and don’t feel much of anything. It’s like nothing matters at all anymore.
I guess I really should tell everyone about our first date. You already know about it, but you can read along anyway. First of all, you were a single’s ad. That totally pissed your evil ex-wife off and she called it several times. This was back before the big days of the internet (I didn’t even have a computer back then!) so it was in our paper. I happened to have a copy that was older and I called a few up. You happened to call me back and we talked twice or three times and then we met. I was hoping you weren’t going to be huge or nasty looking because I liked your voice on the phone. I loved how you said, “Hello.” You always thought I was funny when I said that to you, but I always thought you had a very sexy voice.
Anyway, we planned to meet for coffee at Arnies. I only found out later on that you didn’t drink coffee. You weren’t bad looking, but honestly I wouldn’t have picked you out in a group of people because I always went for the Pierce Bronson look; guys with really dark eyes and dark hair and your eyes were light brown and you had light brown hair. You had me go first to the table and you told me later it was so you could check my butt out! Actually, statements like that weren’t typical of you because you were always very polite and pretty shy. You asked me if I had eaten dinner yet and when I said ‘no’ you asked if I wanted dinner. I didn’t want you to feel obligated to pay for it since we had just met and I said so to you. You told me that you wanted to pay for dinner and I was very impressed.
I kind of knew I was in trouble when you kept looking at me the way Mark looks at Jenn. For those who don’t know; Mark is my younger brother and Jenn is his wife. My daughter, Tiffany, and I noticed early on that he was always staring at her and looking into her eyes. You kept looking at me like that all through dinner. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about you and I definitely didn’t want to get hooked if we didn’t have the same things in common so we talked about that during dinner. I told you that I didn’t want to get emotionally attached to someone before I got to know if we had the same things in common with each other.
You told me later that you didn’t want to scare me off so you tread lightly in that area. That is mostly why you took 5 dates before you finally kissed me! I made you really nervous and you actually came over once and told me your hand was shaking and it was! While that didn’t impress me at all; I thought it was pretty sweet and it showed that you had a lot of respect for me. I liked that about you. And you impressed me SO much when you fixed the brakes on my car. I was a single parent with three little kids and I was so worried about my van because I needed to get to work. You told me not to worry and you couldn’t figure out why I was crying in the kitchen. I bought the brake parts and you fixed it and I was totally hooked on you after that! Of course, I was pretty hooked on you before that, but that REALLY cemented me to you.
I’ve always thought that Mark and Jenn’s wedding was good luck for me and us. I caught the bouquet at their wedding in May and I met you the first Friday in December the same year. We got engaged the end of February 1999 and we were married July 24, 1999. We just knew that we were right for each other and we didn’t want to live without each other. Neither one of us believed in just living with each other so getting married was the logical next step. I know I didn’t want to live without you by my side. You told me later on that you never would have just lived with you and that it wouldn’t have been right. I loved that about you; you were an honorable man.
And now, here I am, alone again after 12 years together. Honestly, they were the best 12 years of my entire life. I remember when we were first married I would say something to you about something and then I would remember that I hadn’t known you at the time! I just seemed like I knew you forever. I couldn’t believe that I was lucky enough to find someone as wonderful as you. I remember how incredibly happy I was when we had been married for 10 years because it was 10 mostly good years. No marriage is without its trials, but most of our first 10 years together was good. We had lots of fun and I knew if I was down; that you were there for me. You would say, “Karyn, don’t listen to them; they’re wrong” and I knew you were in my corner and you were mine and I was happy.
I used to tell you all the time how I was glad we were a team. You would do something disgusting and I would call you a pig and you would laugh. I loved how we laughed together. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating that I love how you ‘got’ me. You didn’t cut me down when I was upset about things and you were right in the corner with me helping me out. When we were at my brother and SIL’s house on vacation we were in a bedroom that walked through into the bathroom and there were two fuzzy, white robes hanging on the door from a hook. I said, “Do you think Jenn would notice if I took one?” and you laughed and said, “Maybe it’s complimentary” and then you said, “Maybe it’s like a hotel and it will show up on our bill.” I LOVED how we laughed about things like that together. It made life with you so much fun.
I just saw an interview done with Patrick Swazye’s widow and she said she thought she was prepared for her husband’s death since he had been sick, but she really wasn’t prepared when it happened. She said her sadness at the loss of her spouse was on a cellular level and I could SO relate to that. She said when the grief takes over it’s like her body isn’t her own and I can relate to that, too. The sadness I feel at your loss is deeper than anything that I’ve ever experienced before in my life and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get through it.
Well, since I’m depressing myself; I’m going to close now.
Love forever, your wife, Karyn
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