I think that most of us go through life not sure of who we are. It is hard finding your authentic self and being true to it. But here I find myself ~ given this hard gift you have blessed me with. This opportunity for all the labels, all the things I and others identify me AS pulled away, and what is left behind is authentically, truly, totally WHO I am! It is scary and uncharted territory ~ this search for self. As humans we think we are what we do, what we have, what roles we play. For years if someone asked about who I was I am sure the fact that I taught rough inner city special education would be the first thing out of their mouth. I played the part of teacher. It is gone from my life. What is left is me! I must admit I am really finding out who ME really is for the first time.
I thought that who I was came simply from the fact that I did a great job at my choice of career, that I WAS the person who was this great wife of the ultimate nerd. I thought my actions as your wife made up who I was. This is not true. Most of us spend our entire lives wanting MORE, fighting for the promotion, climbing the ladder, jealous of another, creating more clutter, visualizing bigger and better toys and items. It is as if these THINGS we own justify who and what we are. How inappropriate of a thought that actually is.
Your death tore off of me all the labels and identifiers I always associated with my concept of SELF. My endless dream of becoming a mother and sharing parenthood with the most amazing man I knew instantly disappeared. This concept of a role I saw myself in my whole life (since childhood) vanished in a blink of an eye and the end beep of a machine. The label of being a good and supportive wife, this thing I was so completely proud of ~ well poof it was dismissed into the universe as well. For so many years WHO I thought I was closely related to being part of this duo. When your lungs no longer took in air, when your incredible mind ceased to create thought~ in that second I became lost. I could not even fathom the thought of returning to the classroom at this horrible point in my life. And so this image I painted of myself as this strong unbreakable teacher was taken off my soul, like a winter jacket hung up in the spring~ I hung up who most saw me as. What was left in that hospital room was the shell (the body) that held the greatest spirit I ever knew (YOU), and the shell of a woman I was unsure of.
You might have been the only person I have met thus far that was authentically YOU. Never did you introduce yourself as what you did for a living or what you dreamed of doing for a living. Age did not hold hostage your choice to be true to yourself and play with toys until your last days. Where you came from never created a picture for others to pain you in. You were 100% YOU!!!! Trick, you had this astonishing ability to be aware of yourself and true to it. I have always admired that.
SO now no longer a teacher, a wife, a want –to be- parent, no longer much of anything ~ I find my EVERYTHING. I see WHO I really am when I look in the mirror. I understand my opinions because they now are formed from deep within me. My ego is in check and I am aware of it. The ego can no long control how I feel about others or myself. What a hard but amazing present I received from you. You forced me (due to your death) to sit in silence and HEAR my spirit ~ listen to it, and acknowledge it. I hope for my friends, for family, hell, for the whole world to be able to see and hear their authentic self prior to the loss of everything ~ the loss of their loved one. I hope that when I get ready to join you in heaven (many, many, many years from now) I will look back and say that from age 35 on I was 100% authentically ME. Missing YOU from the depths of my true self.
Around the world and back again~
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