More reminders

The other day I came home and thought, "Why is this house such a mess? Why hasn't Rebecca bothered to clean it?" I can't believe that it has been almost 2 years and the thought of wondering where Rebecca is at (not realizing that she is dead) still come into my mind.

Today I was doing some home maintenance and I needed to borrow a tool from my neighbor. We ended up engaging in a long conversation and they were recalling that this month will be the 2 year anniversary of Rebecca’s passing. I think they were just trying to comfort me by telling me that they think I do a great job with my kids. “They always looks so well put together, hair combed, cloths aren’t wrinkled, etc.” Inside I just laughed. While I think for the most part I do alright on presenting ourselves well, inside most days my heart just aches and selfishly I wish that I had passed and Rebecca lived because she would be doing much better than me.

Anyhow, as my conversation evolved with my neighbors they were telling me about a widower who was so inept after his wife died that he couldn’t even run the washing machine. All his food comes from restaurants and he does zero cooking—don’t I wish I could afford that! They were laughing as they told me how on one occasion he forgot to close the rear door on his SUV and drove out of the garage breaking the door off his SUV Mercedes. Then on another occasion he totally forgot to open the garage door and backed right into it. While for my non-widowed friends these are probably very amusing stories, I couldn’t help but recall my own stories. I remember returning back to work shortly after Rebecca passed. On a few occasions I would be driving toward one city and end up somewhere totally wrong. I would drive for 15 minutes and think I had been on the road for 3 or 4 hours. I would have to make note of the time I left one UPS facility. It wasn’t uncommon for me to completely miss an exit and not even notice it for 30 minutes.

Then of course how could I forget the biggest wreck of them all. The time I flipped a UPS semi-trailer right into a power pole in downtown LA. I don’t remember what I told my supervisor but I do remember the fact was that I was just so angry cause I had driven by the correct street about 5x. I was so mad at myself cause no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t remember what I was doing. I could remember for brief moments but then my thoughts would just wonder and I would quickly forget where I was at and what I was doing. I got mad (at myself) because I just drove by the correct street…again. So I decided to make a quick u-turn before I got lost again. Well, you don’t make ‘quick u-turns’ with a 70,000lb truck. I flipped that trailer and it went right into a power pole (it had 15 lines running across it, I made sure to count after everything was settled). It was the next day that I told me supervisor that I just couldn’t do the job anymore. I’m just so thankful that nobody got killed or hurt but I just knew I couldn’t do that job any longer.

Widow-brain. It’s something that my non-widowed friends don’t understand. I’ve heard that divorced people can feel it to a degree but where I was mentally was just off the charts. I’m so grateful for people who would put notes on my front door reminding me of things I had to do that day because I was just so completely lost and confused.