Dating

At Christmas time K.B. and I would watch Love Actually.  If you've seen the movie you know that Liam Neeson's character has recently lost his wife and at the funeral he makes a joke that his wife had asked him to take Claudia Schiffer as his date.  If you've ever watched a movie with K.B. you have probably also had to pause the movie to have a discussion about something the characters were experiencing.  As a result, K.B. and I discussed the topic of dating in the event that one of us should die.  I didn't expect that I would ever actually be in this situation but life has a way of throwing you curve balls every once in a while.  So to people who have said things like, "I'm sure K.B. would want want you to carry on with your life." I can say that she most definitely did want me to have a life should she die before me.  She was very adamant that she did not want me trying to "have a relationship with a ghost" as she put it (that was from our discussion when we watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir).

Nine months after K.B. died I found myself in a situation where I had reconnected with a woman who I have known for almost a decade.  We would meet and have coffee and just talk and it was really great to have someone who I felt comfortable with to talk to.  As time went on we found that we really enjoyed the time that we spent together so I took the plunge and asked her out.  We have been dating for some time now and things are going great!  Well, almost great.

To be clear, the new relationship is great but quite often the reaction of others is less than great.  There are a lot of people who are very supportive and happy for me and I really appreciate that.  There are also a few people who feel... awkward that I have started dating.  I guess I can understand.  It's very romantic to think that because K.B. and I loved each other so much I would never find anyone else and to be honest I wasn't even considering dating.

In my grief support group people would say things like "when your spouse dies part of you dies too."  I understood the obvious meaning of that statement but it wasn't until recently that I realized how much of your old life "dies".  People will come into your life and people will drift out of your life and sometimes it's surprising which people come in and out of your life.  It's a difficult thing to deal with because your friends change quite quickly and even family members can't accept that you are moving on and trying to find happiness again.  Sometimes it's because those who were once close to you are still dealing with their own loss and even though I might be ready to try to move forward, they aren't.  When you're grieving there seems to be a natural tendency to want to keep others sharing that grief in the same place that you are.  When I would feel like other people were dealing with their grief better than I was it kinda made me angry but I just told myself that everyone deals with things in their own way and in their own time.  It's strange how we take more comfort when other people hurt the same way and are progressing through grief at the same pace.  Grief is a lonely place and I've spent some time in some very dark places for many months and I really wouldn't want anyone to have to endure that darkness any longer than necessary.

In the past couple of weeks I've come to realize that it's not just the fact that I am choosing to live my life but I am also not the same person I was when KB was alive and with me.  I've come to understand that letting go and moving on with my life means letting go of a lot of different things in my life.  Some of the changes are part of the natural changes that come about when you're in a new relationship but some of it comes from the different stages of grief that my co-grievers are experiencing.  The threads that tie people together expand as changes occur in our lives and that's just part of the natural progression of things.  Just because they expand and people seem further away, it doesn't mean that it will always be that way.

I've probably said it before but I'll say it again because I think it's something that we all need to consider: I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of not living.  That fear of not allowing myself to be happy and enjoy life to the fullest keeps me moving forward and knowing how much KB loved life I would be disappointing her if I didn't appreciate the good things in life that come my way.