No one told me

 No one told me how deeply loss & grief would change everything.

Through all the years of loss & grief, our moments and often days would change – as we went through the initial loss, and the time of family & friends, as we said that final good-bye.

We would mourn their death, and our loss, missing their presence in our lives – as our lives returned to “normal”.

But no one told me that losing my best friend, my soulmate, my lover, my husband, would tear through every part of who I was, pulling everything I believed about love and laughter, about loss and life, and about faith, into shreds.

Then, burning it down to nothing more than a pile of ashes.

No one told me that this would have me questioning those things I never considered to doubt

– down to the smallest pieces of my own identity.

No one ever said it out loud – Grief changes everything.

E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

This grief has changed how I think.

How I move through my days and nights, through my life, through this world.

How I do, or don’t, connect with others.

This grief has changed what I care about, and what no longer matters.

It has changed what I can and will tolerate, and what I will NOT.

It has pulled me closer to those who get it, who understand.

And it has pushed me away from those who really do not understand, or those who refuse to even try from their limited perspective.

Grief has grown some relationships quieter and caused others to fade away completely.

Grief causes even the ordinary moments of life to feel different.

I now see everything through the lens of what I have lost.

Not through rose-colored glasses, not with a Pollyanna or Scarlett outlook.

I wish someone had told me, assured me, and reassured me, that these changes do not mean I have failed

– in love, in laughter, in life.

As a woman, as a Mother and Grandmother, as the wife I was, or as the widow I am.

These changes mean one thing.

I have been changed.

Changed by the love of a good and honorable man.

Changed by the loss of a good and honorable man.

Changed by loss and grief in ways that I can’t un-do the changes.

I am not who I was before Rick and I married.

I am not who I was during all those years of being married.

I am not who I was before Rick died.

Never again will I be who I was.

The old adage – “Truth hurts” – is never more true than in this.

But while “truth hurts”

– it is also proof that I loved, that I was loved, and that love leaves a mark deep enough to change one forever, and a day.

I love you, Ricky Lee McCoy.

To infinity and beyond! (Ha! I said it first this time 😉)

I miss you, as much as I love you.

Always and forever,

Your Megan Lee.