Crap Counsel

"I know you don't want to hear this right now, but..."

" You have to remember you have two girls to look after..."

"My advice for you is..."

" You will never move on/ get over / bounce back if you don't push through"

"Chin up girl, life goes on..."

How can I "move on", or "get over"? How could I ever "push through", "keep going", or even "bounce back" when this life that goes on is not my life, at least not the life I had. 

This feels like someone else's life. It feels like I was framed and locked up for a crime I didn't commit. No amount of advice can change the fact that my life, as it used be, is over.

Now I am left with the ruins and rubble, the messy and chaotic aftermath of losing the man I love. The man who loved me more than my words can ever describe.

I don't think I can put my chin up and bounce back.

I don't think I want to move on. 

I most definitely don't want to get over.

Few people have the privilege of knowing they are truly and passionately loved. 

Fewer people can say they were loved by someone truly exceptional. 

I am one of those few.

My man was that was larger than life. He was exceptional in so many ways. He was kind, and loving, and generous. He was fun, joyful, silly. He was welcoming and accepting and including of everyone, absolutely everyone, in such a genuine way that is extremely rare and so hard to explain.

He was the best father any woman could choose for her children.

He was broken and wounded in such horrible and deep ways. He was haunted by so many poisoned words spoken over him, he was troubled by a past that left him scarred for life. But even in the tragedy, he chose the way of forgiveness and the path of humility. And he chose to rise above it by clinging in to God. He chose to do better, to be better and to extend love to those whom he knew so well were broken like him.

And that is what, in my eyes, made him a most exceptional man. My man. My friend. My husband, the father of my children. He put a ring on my finger and I took his name.

So quite frankly, I don't want to hear advices, or to push through. Neither do I need to be reminded that I have two girls - everyday I looked into my children's faces I see my extraordinary man in them. 

My chin is down, and so is my mood and that will probably be the case for quite sometime. So if there is something that I clearly don't want to hear right now, its best to remain unsaid. For my tolerance is also down while sensitivity is extended high.

I don't need to fake, I don't want to fake. I will not fake.

What I will do, what I am trying to do with all the authenticity and honestly I can muster is to live my grief, however it may demand to be lived and however long it's demands may persist.

For I am discovering that grief is demanding, it doesn't wait and doesn't go away. So I am choosing to embrace my grief so that I won't live the rest of my life grieving.

And although I may never bounce back or get over it, I may in times to come bounce forward and learn to carry it with more grace and acceptance than I am able to do now.

That is my hope.