Living the nightmare

I wanted to be with her all the time, because when I was with her,
I couldn't imagine her gone. She was always so full of life.

When we learned that Sandy's cancer had returned, I was devastated and in shock. Despite my desire to believe that everything would be okay, that we'd beat the odds, I sometimes found myself imagining life after she'd died. As I walked to the library, I'd imagine for a moment that a year or two later, she wouldn't be there when I returned. The experience was something like slipping the One Ring on in the Lord of the Rings: everything would swirl around me and go dark. My sense was that if she died, the world would stop. I felt an intense pain in my chest, felt terribly, horribly alone, and saw a void. And then I'd recover my optimism, remind myself of whatever plan was in place at the moment, and resolve to keep her alive and to help her regain her health. But those dark moments haunted me.

After she died, I learned that much of what I'd imagined was true. I felt an intense pain in my chest, felt terribly, horribly alone, and could not envision a future. But what's happened since is better, I suppose, than I imagined, in that the world hasn't stopped and I've continued to function. And what's happened since is also worse, far worse, than I imagined, in that the world hasn't stopped and I'm still here, without her.