Any and Everything

Let’s talk about Robert. I haven’t really in years. I talk about him so formally now. I can still remember the little details. Like the scar on his abdomen from a surgery he had when he was a baby. Little things like that.

I don’t think he and I had a bad relationship. We were young very young I was 18 and he was 21 when we got married. We had no idea what we were doing. I knew I loved him. That I knew and I really did. It took me many years to get beyond his passing.

I am asked if I saw any signs and I did not see signs that he was suicidal. Not once. Trust me I have racked my brain throughout the years with the “would haves, could haves, and should haves” I am over all of that because the reality is that I couldn’t have done anything. This was out of my control.

I was at my mom’s for dinner the night he did it. He called and begged me to come home that instant. He demanded me come home. My mom wouldn’t let me. She kept telling me she had a bad feeling. I suppose mother’s intuition is really a thing. After he frantically called me screaming into the phone that he was going to kill himself. That was the first time he ever did that so I called the police to go and check on him. I honestly thought that it would show him how serious these sorts of threats were. I had no idea that these were solid threats. I did all I could. I took every step anyone would. I couldn’t make it to him right then because my mom lived a town over. So I did the next best thing.

I still remember the officer telling me that it would be best if I come there. My mom drove me and they broke the news to me there. I got to see his body which I know was not the intention of the officers but that image is seared into my brain. That is how I remember Robert sometimes and I hate it. It is the worst image ever.

I don’t know how long I sat in that spot after they told me but it was for quite a while. I was never the same again. I mean I feel some normalcy… but it is new normal. I didn’t feel anything for years. I pretended. I even fooled myself into thinking that I was ok when I wasn’t. I needed to process Robert dying. It was so sudden and out of the blue. I wasn’t even okay when I met Josh. I should have taken some time for myself. But there we have the conundrum of the fact that I have never truly been single. I needed to figure me out. But at 18 that isn’t realistic. At 18 I was trying to figure out who I am not who I was. That changed with the pull of a trigger. We were married for almost a year. It is just pages in my thick book but it is a turning point. When he died, I died. Well the person I was forming into. Much like now, I am having to rediscover myself. This time I have a basic foundation of who I am. I didn’t have that at 18. No 18 year old would.

I will touch back on this randomly throughout my blogging but I am trying to talk about what is on my mind and Robert popped in there this morning and I felt like sharing about him for a bit.