Letters to Jason: All the “It’s”

Originally written October 14, 2025.

October has been hard. That is not to say September wasn’t hard, but I really do feel the days feel harder.

Maybe more lonely? Maybe the further I get away from losing you the point painful this all feels?

It’s forcing acceptance that you are not ever coming back. It’s the change of seasons without you. The darkness of the days. Your birthday. 2 months without you approaches.

It’s a lot all at once.

It’s the world moving forward and feeling helpless and stuck. Anger. Pain. Lonely. 

It’s the fear of losing you, even though you are already gone.

It’s an anger in the way I feel helpless being so disconnected from your parents. They’ve hurt me so damn badly. I am striving to be the bigger person, but I want to say how I feel, even though I know it will get me nowhere.

It’s sadness in that for some reason with them I don’t matter, even though I mattered to you. You were my whole world just like I was yours. The way they are treating me and treating your loss feels like them trying to erase all that. Like I didn’t matter to you and I didn’t exist. Like none of what we had was real, they are only focused on themselves and it feels like this grief has become a competition. It feels like it’s trying to erase 4 beautiful years spent, 4 years with me, in a world where we were each others entire lives. Where we spent every second of every day together, or speaking. Every day we woke up next to each other. For some reason they want that gone, as if you are not already gone. They want to make this about themselves and it can’t be possible that you loved someone more than them. But that’s crazy, because I am your wife. Why in the world do they want to hurt me? Hurt the person that loves you. The person that tried to save you. Who poured themselves into loving you in any and all circumstances. Why is that not valued? Why hurt someone who is already hurting? I don’t understand.

It’s all that and the fact that you are never coming back.

The seconds go by and I grasp to feel close to you. But you are gone.

My heart aches in a million ways and some days it’s hard to want to do anything but cry and find any way to feel close to you.

It’s the “hope you are doing well” comments at work.

It’s the neighbors saying they are sorry for my loss but jumping right back to the next thing, as if they didn’t just puncture a deep deep wound inside of me and my mind is still racing, wanting them for just a second to say something other than glossing over my deep loss of you.

It’s the way that people don’t ask, and when they say how are you they don’t want my real answer.

It’s the way that they say “let me know if you need anything” but don’t actually mean it or don’t understand how giving them a simple task is such an effort for me because I am fighting to survive.

It’s the way that the world moves on, and thinks I should be ok. But how could anyone possibly be ok?

It’s the fact that I am hurting and all I want to do is talk about you and about how I am feeling. But I feel uncomfortable burdening people with what I am feeling. They don’t ask and I don’t know how to keep telling because I fear they don’t want to hear. I don’t know if I should talk about you but I WANT TO.

I want to.

I want to always be talking because you are the only thing that is on my mind, ever.

It’s wearing your big sweaters and sweat pants to feel close to you.

It’s the waking up in the middle of the night and wanting to reach for your hand. Wishing you were next to me. Regretting the times that you were not sleeping next to me in the last year because you didn’t feel well. Regretting not pushing you to because I thought things would get better and we would have more time.

But they didn’t get better. We didn’t get more time.

I wish I had begged you to sleep by me on those nights that you didn’t feel well. Simply to have you next to me because now you are gone and you are never going to be next to me in this bed again.

It’s replaying everything in my mind, hoping I did the right thing or wishing I did something different.

It’s wondering if in your last days I should’ve spent more time holding you close and trying to cuddle, even though it was so hard because of how you were sitting and I was simply drowning in attempting to do everything in my power to take care of you.

It’s all those things I ask myself because if I had know what it was going to feel like to lose you, I would’ve never let go.

It’s hoping that I spent enough time by your side in the hospital, even though the days and nights were exhausting and we were all just doing our best.

It’s hoping that you felt loved. Which I think you did, but it’s hoping that I did enough to show that to you every day, even when the days were really hard.

It’s forever angry that the cancer came back so quickly after we got married and came back so aggressively to take you far too soon.

It’s not understanding why the world would do this to you or to me.

It’s hurting, every second of every day.