personal growth – Running Forward…My Way

Why I don’t play the “what if” game (4-minute read)

Published on January 23, 2020 by kerrymckim2 Comments

My husband, Bryon passed away in 2016.

His illness had come as a shock. His body went into shock and he almost died at the beginning but he survived.

He did have an uphill battle ahead of him. He spent 5 months in the ICU fighting for his life.

I knew death was a potential outcome but I really thought he was going to make it through. But it didn’t work out that way.

After Bryon died, my mind tried to make sense of what had just happened.

I was trying to figure out what my “new normal” was.

As I was trying to figure out my new life, I kept comparing it to my old life. My old life was the only point of reference I knew.

And every time I would have to make any sort of decision, I would imagine what Bryon would think of the situation. After all, we spent almost every day together for the past 8 years and he wasn’t only my spouse. He was my best friend. We talked about everything.

Bryon was on my mind a lot.

While one is never free of grief, the emotions usually ease up over time. Some say time heals all wounds. I don’t discount that theory but I think that the easing of emotions over time can be attributed to the fact that you begin to get used to them being gone.

But in those early days, I was wondering what the *bleep* had just happened to my life.

I found myself wondering what if Bryon were still alive. What would he say? What would he do? What would our life be like?

I would watch our TV shows and wonder what he’d think of the plotline. Or how hard he’d laugh at one of the jokes.

As the Election of 2016 unfolded, I wondered what he would have thought of it all.

In the beginning, it was easy to bridge the gap from “new life” to “old life”. I was in our house with our daughter (who was still a toddler) and our cat and I was among all our belongings. Our friends were around. I was essentially living our life…without him.

It was very easy to slip back into the past, even if it was only in my mind.

But over time, things began to change.

My daughter got older. Even though my role as a mother changed when I went from co-parent to solo parent, my role as a mother changed as I observed my toddler turning into a pre-schooler.

I started to give away and donate items of his that I didn’t need or want. Though this was a lengthy process as Bryon saved everything and there was a lot of sentiment attached to his possessions.

I got a new job where I could work from home. If he was still alive, I couldn’t work from home. He sometimes worked from home and he joked that we couldn’t both work from home.

Many friends drifted away. I also learned that many of “our friends” were really just his friends and those friendships crumbled.

Over time, my home stopped feeling like home. I began to feel as alien in New York then as I did when I moved there in 2009.

I realized “our life” no longer existed and that I was fooling myself thinking I could reconstruct a life out of the remnants of “our old life”.

I changed. I grew. I am not the same person I was.

My life has been a revolving door of change.

Change has been the only constant.

I had to grieve the life I once knew.

But now my life path has meandered. It is a lot harder to think “If Bryon was here…” because if Bryon were alive, I wouldn’t be where I was.

I know Bryon is always with me in that esoteric kind of way but I am very removed from the life we had.

I can’t wonder “what if” anymore.

The only thing wondering “what if” will accomplish is denying me happiness in my current life.

I can’t move forward if I am constantly looking back.

It doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate our memories.

It doesn’t mean that I can’t cry when I miss him or that I can’t laugh when I think of a funny memory.

It doesn’t mean that I have to stop loving him.

I know that wherever Bryon is, he would want me to be happy.

After everything I have been through, the least I can do is let myself be happy.

Good Vibrations Gratitude Friday #28

Published on July 20, 2018July 20, 2018 by kerrymckim1 Comment

Today is Friday! You survived the week!

Do you know what this means? It’s time for some Good Vibrations Gratitude!

Here are 5 things that I am grateful for this week.

Friday means Chinese Food for lunch.
It’s my own weird tradition. I must do it a lot because they know me at my local restaurant. I used to be a strictly sweet and sour chicken combo person. But I decided I needed to try new things so now I am strictly a pork lo mein and egg roll person.
Movie Date
My daughter went on a movie date with the boy she says she is going to marry.Since she is only 3 and her “fiance” is only 4, the date was chaperoned by the moms. Kind of like the Duggars except the kids are allowed to hold hands and they are allowed to hug to. Not that weird, awkward side hugging that the Duggars do.

Annnnnd…I think I just totally outed myself as someone who watches the Duggars. Oh well.

Moving on-

I am not going to lie. Part of the reason I get the large popcorn is because the picture always makes me laugh. We never finish it. She usually spills it on the floor. Along with the M&M’s.

What can I say? I am a sucker.

We saw Incredibles 2. My daughter refused to nap beforehand. She had trouble focusing on this movie. I think she was more excited about the idea of the movie than the actual movie. Oh well.
The staff at the movie theater who have to clean up after my kid.
Most of us probably take for granted clean movie theaters. So thank you!!!
Taco Tuesday with friends
A time to catch up with dear friends. and eat yummy tacos.No pics. I am sorry. What can I say? I suck this week.
Personal Growth
I value any time I get to read and write. I am working on self love and feeding my soul.I saw on Facebook that my friend Roda at Growing Self Blog had bought The Untethered Soul. That book has been sitting on my nightstand for a really long time. (My “to read” pile is ridiculous). So I decided that now would be the right time to start it.

I mean, if all the cool kids are doing it…

I decided to start it because Roda bought it. And should and of the subject matter come up in her blog, I wanted to be prepared. I didn’t want to feel like the blog reader equivalent of Elle Woods on her first day of law school.

The book reminds me of The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle where you only need to read a little at a time because the information is a lot of digest. A lot of “Wow” moments. The good news is that the chapters in The Untethered Soul are short so you can read a chapter a day if that is your speed. (It’s mine!)

What are you grateful for this week?

Death dreams, healing and the light at the end of the tunnel

Published on January 18, 2018January 18, 2018 by kerrymckim7 Comments

The other night I had a dream.

I was sitting in a hospital room with Bryon and he was dying.

The emotions were the same. The disbelief. The shock. The desperation.
Interestingly enough, the people I called to be there were the same people that were with me through real life crisis.

Sounds familiar, eh?

But unlike my life, the room wasn’t very clinical. It was dark and gloomy like an attic but the sun was shining in through the window. And instead of his death lasting 5 months, it only lasted however long a dream lasts.

Why was I dreaming about Bryon’s death? I mean, watching it happen in real life is plenty enough. What purpose does this serve? Is my mind trying to tell me something?
I am not good at analyzing my dreams. I don’t have a psychology degree. I have a dream journal but getting my daughter ready for school and myself to the gym takes priority over dream analysis.

Once I processed the emotions of Bryon’s “second death”, it dawned on me that this dream wasn’t about Bryon’s death. It wasn’t even about physical death.

It was about my death.

I know you are probably thinking “But Kerry, you aren’t dead.”

And you are right. I am not dead.

Let me explain.

I am currently on a “grief journey.” No, I am not going on a trip. At least, no where exotic. A grief journey denotes the indeterminate amount of time a griever takes to process a loss and heal. At least heal enough that is considered acceptable because anyone who has profound loss can tell you- you never completely heal.

While it is safe to say that I have probably felt every emotion during the grief- journey, sadness, anger, and disbelief are among the top performers. To deal with these emotions, I preferred actively mourning, crying and keeping myself busy to keep my mind off of my grief. These coping mechanisms were not always equally distributed.

As time goes on, I started to see glimmers of hope in the midst of my sadness. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

I began to envision my life in the future. A life that wasn’t so sad.

A life with actual happiness.

Those first infrequent glimmers were a shock to my grieving self. The glimmers took me by surprise and stirred up the emotions that were attached to my grief. I began to feel guilty for even having glimmers of hope and happiness.

Sure, Bryon (wherever he is) wants me to be happy. But that is not the issue.

It is me that is reluctant to be happy.

I felt that every glimmer of happiness meant that I was slowly forgetting Bryon. Even though I desperately want to feel whole again, I am afraid to move forward. Because every step forward is a step away from the life I had with Bryon.

Over time, I began to adjust to the juxtaposition of hope vs grief. My glimmers of hope began to peacefully co-exist with my sadness. Grief of confusing, y’all. It even has me writing with Southern expressions when I am a New England girl.

Regardless about how I felt about grief and hope, time has another plan. Time will move me forward whether I like it or not so I can either fight the current or swim with it. These painful steps are necessary in the healing process.

While I agonize over every stop forward I take, I am oblivious to the fact that I have already traveled many proverbial miles already. Many miles of that “grief journey”.

The morning Bryon died part of me died as well.

The part of me was innocent and naive to the magnitude of loss.

The part of me that believed that God was a loving God.

The part of me that believed that the American healthcare system cared for it’s patients over money and guidelines.

The part of me that was a doormat and didn’t need to stand up to people because Bryon did it for me.

The part of me that dreamed of raising a family with Bryon and spending my old age with him.

But I survived. I might be broken but I am still here.

Through this grief journey, I have probably died many times. And in a way, you can say I have experienced a rebirth.

A new me.

The new me knows all too well that our time on Earth is limited so we need to make the best of it.

The new me knows that we need to let people into our lives but we need to be choosy as to who we keep around.

The new me who knows not to take things at face value and ask questions.

The new me who won’t be a doormat.

The new me is braver and takes life a little less seriously. Ferris Bueller was onto something there…

And with every step forward I take, I experience a death with each step. But I also experience a rebirth in every step.

And it will be like this until I experience an energy shift. An energy shift where the time I feel hopeful and happy is more than the time I feel sad. A time where I can look back at our memories and feel warm and happy and not overcome by sadness. A time when I feel like my grief isn’t defining me.

And though I understand why I was dreaming out death, I just hope my subconscious knows that I am good and don’t need to relive that experience even if it isn’t real.

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