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Writer's pictureGrace Rice

Hard Times

It's already March! One month away from losing Mike 2 years ago. Time is truly marching on but these are hard times indeed. When Mike was sick I held out a great hope that time would heal his body. That in time he would be in remission from the cancer. That in time he would be back to himself, free of cancer and traveling through the deep bucket list of places we planned to visit both domestic and international. I believed time was on our side. I truly believed that.


As my husband grew more ill and I witnessed his slow demise I began to dread time. I was made to face the truth that time was not on our side. I came to the hard realization that Mike wasn't going to be healed from the ravaging, aggressive spread of the cancer to his vital organs. I knew that the vibrant, happy, loving, gentle man that completed my life was never going to get back to his old self. I had to face "time" in a different way. Time held the promise of my dreams being fulfilled. Time held the hope of accomplishing one more significant milestone. Time held the vision of how we would grow old together and enjoy the grands and great grands surely to come from our 4 boys. Time held the immense accumulation of many new happy memories. Time would allow our love to grow deeper and stronger.


These are hard times. As time marches on into this new month of March and it gets closer to the 2nd anniversary of Mike's death, it's very hard to face time! When you grieve someone you loved so deeply, so completely and so unconditionally, time is not on your side anymore. Time is a painfully slow churning, burning reminder that those things you hoped and planned for your future with the one you loved are never going to happen. There won't be any more accomplishments. No more dreams fulfilled. No more vision of growing old together and enjoying the family as they expand and grow with you. No more new memories. No more chances to fall deeper in love and strengthen the already impermeable bond you had. These are the harsh realities of how time changes and it makes time "hard".


This month of March holds several family birthday's that Mike won't be here to celebrate. So those times will be hard for me. We did everything together. Now each celebration is a hash slap in the face reality that he's not here and he won't be here ever again. Right now, I'm still in a place where I dread time and the thought of moving ahead in time doesn't really excite me because Mike won't be there with me. I'm so lonely for him and everything I do, everything I think or talk about ends up shifting my focus to the fact that I'm alone, without him! I have this gigantic void in my life now and there's only one way to close it, but that will never be. So, I find my motivation now in living on the memories and hanging on to every conversation we had in those last weeks and days. I even pray that the Lord will let me dream about him so I can see his face once again or hear his voice or feel his touch. It's worked a couple of times and as soon as I woke I rushed to write down the dream on paper so I can reflect back on it when I'm feeling so lonely and down. I still have his last call home from the rehab saved on the home answering machine and I play it often just to hear him say one more time "I love you". Yes, these times are very hard, but I still have the love of my husband deep in my heart and the memories of "us" deeply embedded in my mind and available for "replay" every time I need a boost to keep my standing, putting one foot in front of the other. It's going to take a lot of time, a very very long time before tears turn to joy and my broken heart mends. In this meanwhile though, times are hard!

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