I've used the phrase "It's so hard," too many times, but I can't describe any better how I feel the majority of my days now. After sharing another cliche with Emily last night (something like I didn't know how hard it was going to be), she said, "I didn't either. If I had, I would never have gotten out of bed the first morning."
You can hear things over and over, like how it takes time and how much of a struggle it is to get over losing someone,but until it happens, you can really never know. I wake up every day and have to get used to it again. Every day. Several times a day.
There are periods when I think I'm going to be okay. Time with the girls is just pure joy, and I do enjoy that. I'm enjoying getting myself organized to take over the running of my life by myself. I can lose myself for a bit in a book or movie. But when my mind is free to think, I just can't go places where it hurts so badly. So most memories and things will have to come later when I've healed a little bit.
But I did think about some things that made me smile this morning. The way Mike loved to pretend he disliked my sewing hobby. He didn't really. He embarrassed me constantly by bragging on something I had done or making a big deal over a simple thing I had made.
But he never tired of exaggerating how much stuff I had in my sewing room. How many pairs of scissors I had. How he didn't even have a drawer in the bedroom to call his own because of being filled with fabric (not true! but it made a good story).
When we were showing the house last year and having a moving sale, he would offer someone all my fabric for $20 or a good bargain on my new sewing machine. He would tell anyone who would listen that I had close to a million dollars invested in my hobby. He loved it though that he could provide me that joy. It hurts my heart that he never felt like he could spend the money on a hobby for himself (or that's what he said anyway), but he would take me to a fabric shop and insist on buying me whatever I wanted.
My first visit to a sewing shop here in WA, we walked in, and he told the first salesperson that I wanted the most expensive machine they had, maybe 3 of them. I had gone in for some new bobbins! With that conversation and after they had shown him a long-arm quilting machine, he had them wrapped around his little finger. He embellished his tales even more by saying he had to hire a whole Penski truck to move my sewing room up here. What a way he had with engaging strangers in a fun conversation - at my expense, true - but still so much fun.
For months now, he hasn't felt very well, but he insisted on driving me places, even if it was just sitting in the car waiting for me. This summer we went to a nice fabric shop in Bellevue, Pacific Fabrics, and he just spent so much time walking around with me and looking at things. There was a map on display with push pins where you could mark your home state. He took great pride in staking out Alabama - the only pin in that state! He insisted on my getting the kit for a quilt (yet another project!) that I admired. Then when I got started on it and was cutting out and measuring and making the blocks, he was in constant admiration from his chair in the living room. I know he really didn't care most of the time, but it made me feel good for him to examine a block and pretend to look for flaws and insist I do it over.
Wow. That was hard. So hard. Thinking about that.
I think of the jokes we've all heard about husbands and their wives' sewing obsessions.
I wish I could hear just one more complaint about my sewing room. I wish I could use a pair of scissors without thinking about how he lamented that there were 25 pairs of scissors in the house, and none of them were ones he could use.
I wish I could go into my sewing room and not feel a wave of sadness that won't go away.
One day I will, I know. I keep telling myself that.
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