Sometimes I Wonder If It Was All Just A Dream

Lately, I keep thinking about exactly where I was five years ago, to the day. I'm sitting at Brian's deathbed. The cancer has made him look almost unrecognizable. I don't know it at the time, but my life is about to completely unravel.

Holy moly.

Now, an unbelievable five years later, I often find myself wondering if any of it was real. It feels like a dream. Not just his horrific disease & death - but sometimes, our entire life too.

You see, in ways, it's as if it all happened yesterday. It still feels so present for me, so all-encompassing. And somehow at the exact same time, it's as if it never even did. 

This is a heartbreaking part of the traumatic grief experience. Because, of course, our life was so very real. Our love, our relationship. We had plans, like everyone else! And while I look around and see other people's relationships progressing & moving forward - it feels like ours was forced to be frozen in time. 

As if losing our person wasn't hard enough, the "Was it all just a dream?" phenomenon is unfairness on top of unfairness. So, why does this happen? 

It is completely disorienting to lose the person your life was built with and around and in tandem with. Enter the intense shock in early grief. Everything is shrouded in a layer of fog.

Every single moment of every single day your brain is in disbelief. Attempting to locate your person in space and time - and coming up confused over & over again.

The closer you were to the person who died, the more this happens.

With a spouse, it is 24/7, whether awake or asleep.

So in early grief, there is a strong feeling of "This can't be real". 

As time goes on, this shifts.

We build a new life, even if we do so kicking & screaming. No matter what we do, time happens. Things change, we meet new people, we make hard decisions, we survive. And survival means we build something new. It’s inevitable.

And then, the kicker - our old life feels even further away. More unfairness on top of unfairness. 

Grief is a disruptor. It changes us. As we learn to wrap ourselves around it, we grow in depth. It's unavoidable. As time moves forward and as we make these changes, these questions may continue to plague us - Did it really even happen? Was the love as strong as I remember? Was it all just in my head?

This is normal after profound loss. Without our person here to mirror the love back to us in the physical, it's easy for our silly human brains to play tricks on us. 

As I look towards the five year anniversary of Brian’s death - just a few days away - this is what is on my mind.

I’ve come so far. I’ve done so much & made so many changes. My life is almost unrecognizable from when he was here.

And although that was what I needed to do - and every step of the way my decisions were made by me following my intuition - it’s also still so incredibly hard.

I miss our old life. Many days I can’t believe it all actually happened. The ease of it. The things I used to think were hard. The things I 100% took for granted.

All of it.

How about you? Have you felt this way too?