Settling In
Settling in, that’s what my therapist called it as I sat on the phone with her last Tuesday and cried telling her how much I just simply miss Jason how sad I have been the last couple weeks. The fact that he’s gone has really just hit me in a different way lately. I simply just miss him. I wish I could talk to him. Nothing more, nothing less. I just really miss him and I wish he was here. People move on people keep going. The initial shock of Jason’s death has worn off and that leaves me at home alone. Things are more quiet. People slowly stop texting or calling to check in. People who promised they were going to come visit, haven’t. Except one.
People have started going back to their normal. Their routine. Sure they miss Jason, but they don’t miss him in their day to day in the way that I do. I often reflect back to just a few days after Jason’s funeral, when everyone left. Most of them, they get to go back to their homes, their families remain intact. The people living in their household didn’t change. Even Jason’s parents, his brother. He’s gone to them, but is he really? They didn’t see him daily. They rarely interacted with him for more than 10 mins a week, at best. I don’t need to go down that rabbit hole, but you know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. Point is. I am here. I am relearning everything. Because nothing, not a single thing in my life is the same without Jason. From the moments I wake up until the moments I go to sleep. Even those hours while I am asleep, it is all different. It is brutal. I am re-learning to live alone. Something I thought I had left behind for good when I met Jason and he moved in. Even before he officially moved in really. There is obviously his absence on a deeper, emotional, intimate level that I feel I have given a lot of space to in a lot of my writing. I feel I have talked very little about the logistical, practical side of loss and the heavy weight that also carries. The logistics of death of a spouse are brutal. I probably could write many posts on that, and I hope to one day. I want to focus on the practical side of Jason’s absence as it relates to me and settling in at home, and my day to day life.
Like I said, I really am re-learning a new life. Alone. I am learning what it is like to be the only person here to do things. The only person who gets Nora out in the morning. The only person who is here to unload the dishwasher. I was doing a lot when Jason was really sick, but he was still contributing greatly when he would feel up for it, until July, honestly. But in that time then, I was back and forth between my parents, the hospital. It was hectic, there was no time to be sitting at home. Before all that, I was doing a lot, but I wasn’t doing it all. And there is a massive difference in knowing you have someone at home that has your back, and now being all alone, with it all.
I am re-learning to cook and grocery shop for one person. Cooking for and with Jason was one of my favorite life activities. We loved to plan dinners and eat together. I enjoyed thinking of him at the grocery store. I’d review the weekly ad with him in mind. I would know when he needed more deodorant or what other non grocery items we might have been out of that he needed. I walked past all the Men’s deodorant yesterday and my heart sank. Thinking of Jason and what he needed in the smallest way when I was out at any store was apart of my love language to him, as it was his to me. Now, I have no one to buy for. No one else to think of. And it isn’t just that it’s no one, it’s not Jason, because he’s dead.
Jason was so intertwined in my every second of my every day. Living without him now, is really hard. It is really cruel and it is really unfair. I hate it. I hate everything about it. The way I miss his presence when I am with friends that were ours. The way I can feel the emptiness in the room when I am at my parents and he is missing. The obvious way the house feels so empty, dark, quiet without him here. The way I miss picking up my phone and seeing a text or call from him. I long to text or call or talk to him when something mundane happens during my day. When Nora does something so cute, I want to snap a photo and text it to him, like I would when he would be at work. I want to talk to him about the show I am watching. The shows we loved on food network, and HGTV, all which have new seasons coming as sports season comes to a close. The way I wish he was here to talk about the family football pick league. He joined after we got engaged in 2023 and he almost won his first year. It connected him closer with my Dad, I am sure about that. The way I think about how in February of 2025, right after the Super Bowl, my parents re-did their TV mantel set up. He was SO stoked on it, my dad got a much bigger TV, and he said watching the Super Bowl next year will be awesome. Now he isn’t here to experience that with us. It is not big milestones, the month by month anniversaries of his death come and go, they sting a lot. But it is all those simple, mundane, moments that make up my entire life with him, that my body screams for his presence. I don’t just want Jason for the big things, I want him for all the seconds that make up the life we planned to live. My heart shatters every second of every day, because I feel his absence in everything I do.
