45 Minutes

At first, I never thought that I would stop crying.  The grief was overwhelming, and anything could trigger it.

My dad had washed my towels, and S brought them to me.  They were rough and scratchy.  I sat on the bathroom floor and began to cry. That’s not how they were supposed to feel.  Mike did the laundry for most of our marriage, and this was one more reminder that he was never coming back.

Tears came without warning and did not discriminate about when they would appear: at the grocery store, driving, or at the bank.  Simple things could start the crying: a song, a photo, something on TV that Mike and I would watch together.  

The scary thing about the depth of these emotions is that they felt like they would last forever.  When I would start crying, I would think that I would never stop.  How could I  keep going when I felt so heartbroken?

In time, I began to see a pattern in my crying.  The tears would last for about 45 minutes.  I might start again 5 minutes later, but there would be a break. There was some solace in knowing this: that there was a beginning and end. 

The grief can still hit like a tsunami nine years later, though not as often.  It always starts with a tightness that gets stuck in my chest.  I have a playlist of sad songs that usually does the job of releasing the pressure.  Music has always been what taps into my feelings.  I’ll never like these episodes, but this is the price that I pay for loving Mike.