LogFAQs > #978037409

January 1st 2024 Facebook Post

And so ends the most difficult year of my life.

2023 was the year my life ended and an entirely different life began. I started 2023 as a husband, a partner, a caregiver, and best friend to a wonderful woman who was dying a horrible, slow, painful, unfair death. I balanced all of these things while knowing we were seeking to use MAID to end her suffering. Balancing the rational side of me that knew my best friend and partner did not deserve to live such a horrible existence while the emotional side of me wanted just one more year, one more month, one more holiday.

That balancing act all ended on July 17th 2023 at 5:31pm. That life ended at that precise moment and I started a new life. When I started that new life I began to journal how I was feeling, what I was struggling with, my proudest moments in the experience and my shame. It is a record of grief and what grief looks like. I thought to share a little piece of what grief can look like from what I journaled on Christmas Day. A week ago.

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"Its scary, its sad, its confusing, its devastating. Its been a long time since Ive been both this happy and this soul-crushingly sad all in the same day. Its nights like this that I just dont know how I can handle all this, how this doesnt just defeat me everyday. Its times like this I understand why my family and friends all tell me how proud they are of me, how shocked they are at how positive I am, how Im not like... this, more often.

Its nights like tonight that I harbour the slightest bit of resentment, the slightest bit of entitlement, the slightest bit of anger. I didnt want you to leave me alone for even the small stuff Lindsay, much less Christmas Day. The greedy part of me resents that you left me alone, you left me behind. You brought me the greatest joys Ive ever felt and then you took them away before it was time.

I know thats not true. I know you did everything you could. I know Im being petty, selfish, entitled. Im hurt to spend the first Christmas alone since the day I met you. And I feel so much shame for how I feel. You could have given me 10 more Christmas Days and I would have wanted one more. I wanted us to grow old together and it scares and infuriates me that we didnt get that chance. But that isnt the fault of you or I. So I will rage and cry to an unfair world tonight and start tomorrow fresh."
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It felt appropriate on January 1st 2024 to share that experience. I'm not looking for validation or anything like that. I know I shouldn't feel shame in my feelings at all. I don't beat myself up for having those feelings nor the momentary shame in those feelings from time to time. It's all part of the grief process and it will be a part of me forever.

What I am really starting to understand, and I think I will appreciate more and more throughout 2024, is that I am privileged to have ever had someone in my life that meant this much to me. And what's more, to surround myself with more people who make me feel like that in 2024.

It's my first New Year as a brand new human being. It's my first New Year as a widow, as a widow looking for the next great adventure in another person, and as a widow eager to share that experience with the world.