The Acceptance of Accepting

There are nights when I put my head down on my pillow, close my eyes, and wonder if tomorrow morning will be the morning I wake up and Jason will be here, next to me, and this nightmare that I am living will be just that, a nightmare I can wake up from.

There, of course, is a part of me that knows very well this is real. But still, even almost 7 months later, there are very really parts of me that feel and think “this can’t be real, is this really happening?”

Accepting this version of reality is really hard.

Accepting that Jason is not coming back, ever, is even harder.

There are some moments when I think back to that dreaded day, the hellish weeks leading up to him dying and I think, how the f*ck did we get here?

Humans, by nature, are linear thinkers. If we are told a reason to something happening, our mind is able to comprehend the “why”. But what about tragedy, trauma, when there is no why.

Of course, to those who sit outside of my world, the “why” may feel logical.

He had cancer.

Yes, but, why. Why did this happen. Why him. How did we get here.

It is those types of unanswered questions that make accepting that he is gone that much harder. I find myself searching to understand, put logic to parts and pieces of this.

But I don’t think I will ever understand, because no one will ever be able to tell me the why I am searching for.

So when it comes to accepting, accepting is hard.

What’s even harder than accepting? Accepting that I’ve accepted that he is really gone.

Accepting that I’ve accepted I don’t miss the very sick, dying version, of him, or those weeks leading up to his death.

Accepting that I’ve accepted (more like starting to accept) that we lost a lot of good time in what should’ve been the most joyous season of our lives, because of cancer.

Accepting, coming to terms with those facts is daunting. Sometimes it makes it feel like I am letting go of Jason.

I try to remind myself that it isn’t letting go of Jason, it is letting go of the pain and the trauma to make spaces for the good, the things I want to remember.

What’s really hard about that is just about half of our time we got together included cancer. It included a lot of hard moments that are painful and traumatic. There were glimpses of good sprinkled in, joy, beautiful moments together. But the more I start to process it all, the more I realize how painful it was, the adrenaline I was running on, especially the last few months of his life.

That realization often makes me feel even further away from Jason, and accepting that reality is very hard.

Sometimes the more I think about it, the more angry I get. I start to realize how much cancer really did take, even on the “good” days.

I think about the statement that I see used a lot, “grief and joy can coexist”.

I realize that I was living that reality, long before Jason was dead.