I took a few more baby steps this week.
The first was that I erased a love note that’s been scrawled in soap on my bathroom mirror since the first week of Jack’s death.
My lovely, aching sister-in-law Tina wrote it the first time she entered our home without Jack. Feeling the massive hole he left, she drew a big heart, and entered the sentiment “No words” underneath it. She was right—–for that time, we had no words, or few words. We were just absorbing the shock of an otherwise healthy man walking into a hospital under his own steam, only to die less than 12 hours later. Erasing her words on my mirror meant leaving a specific, life-changing period of time, and moving ahead five and a half months, to right now, when I could erase that mirror with a kiss and look to what a new day might bring.
The other baby step I took was to acknowledge that I am no longer a married person, and to that end, I took off my rings. I surprised myself in doing so, but it came over me last week that wearing my rings signified that I am married while the truth is I am not. And though I feel married, I feel very much married, the truth of the matter is that I am not married. And even if I marry again, it will not be to my Jack. So as a step of acceptance and acknowledgement, I took my rings off. I started out by shifting them to my right hand, but after a day abandoned that, and took them off altogether.
I’m not even sure why I am telling you all of this, except maybe just to illustrate that there are no set time frames for doing anything. So if you, or someone in grief that you know, choose to take certain steps toward the future, you should give yourself some slack and know that it is ALL normal. There is no one “right” way, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.
The tan line has receded, but I still feel undressed without those rings there. I guess, like lots of things, it will take time.