I never expected to learn things about myself in the absence of my husband. I thought I had a basic grasp of my idiosyncrasies and character flaws. As I have since discovered, I do not. Turns out that I am still very much afraid of the dark and what lurks within it’s depths. It is either the thought, or the truth, that entities lay just beyond my field of vision that causes me immense amounts of fear. I’m kept up late wondering what the energy I am feeling could be. And it’s always things just out of sight.
When my husband was around I never thought of them. They rarely crossed my mind, unless I had some sort of dream or had thought it was a good idea to watch a scary movie before bed. (Y’know the only time it’s appropriate to do so?) If I had had any fear drifting to sleep or waking with panic, he was always there to calm me. Every time. I always felt safe with him there. His presence made me stronger, even when ALS had made him completely immobile. I don’t know why.
There were times, when he had a job out of town, that I got a glimpse of this “Josh.” I would wake up and look right at the open door. (Yeah, I sleep with the door open by the way.) I could sense or feel something watching me. Panic would grip my body as I tried to tell myself that I was alright, there was nothing there. I’d reach out to my husband and text him, even though I knew he was asleep. Just knowing he was there, somewhere, made me braver.
Now, I have nothing. Well… Almost nothing. Yesterday I retrieved his remains from the funeral home and placed them in the bedroom. His ashes now rest on the dresser across from where I sleep. Oh, and a portion in the living room with full view of the TV, just in case.
Tony darkly joked on who had what part of him. I said, he probably had a leg and the blue, tropical themed shorts he was wearing. Maybe an eye too. A finger. God, we’re fucked up.
We are people who find humor in grief. It’s our way of processing all of the ache that comes with loss. We fill it with a mutated sense of “joy.” For us it’s also a way to honor Charlie. He had a darker sense of humor than all of us. He had to, to process all of what had been given to him.
It’s nice “having him home.” Also a little weird, knowing that my husband’s charred remains are just on the opposite side of the room in a rough wood box. As he would have said “it’s creepy.” Partially, but I’m in that weird grief state of mind where I will take anything I can get to be a band-aid for the emotional ache. In grief we do the weirdest things to process it. I’ve been wearing his deodorant, clothes, and sleeping where he passed. That last one would have given him the biggest “ick.” For someone who was so comfortable with his own condition he was sure hung-up on the small details.
“Why are you sleeping there? That is where someone died? That’s creepy,” he would have said.
“It’s not like you’re still there, Charlie,” I would have responded.
I wonder if having his ashes made it even more real… He is really gone.
The Journal of a Jaded Josh 
Beautifully written. I think many people will understand it, dark humour and all. In the past few years my partner’s had 2 different cancers, and the dark humour was very necessary.
Agreed. I think it got us laughing so it took the sting out of the reality of it. And making him laugh was so easy and it made me so happy.
I completely understand your thoughts here. I actually didn’t know I had that thing people would call anxiety until I had to process my mother’s death in 2019. Up until that point, I thought everyone had that deeply uncomfortable uncertain feeling, and I would do my best to I don’t know push past it and move on. It has actually served me really well being able to identify and point to that uneasy feeling and have something I can call it now. I really don’t like comparing your grief losing your husband to my grief losing my Mom. I don’t know how I would function or continue on if Brandon was suddenly not around anymore. But this is the only deep feelings of loss I’ve experienced before as an adult. Oddly I still have the box of my mother’s ashes in my closet which isn’t what she wanted at all. She wanted her remains buried in the pre purchased plot next to her mother. I don’t know it brings me comfort having her around in some form it’s hard to explain or make sense of. It never occurred to me to divide it and keep some of the remains. Maybe I should put a sample in a necklace and call it a day. One of the reasons I’ve resisted getting her ashes interred at the cemetery is because of the shear cost. It’s upwards of $500 but I think it’s a little more than that. I know I need to do it and have the grave stone made so people can visit that want to. I could easily put it off another few years though. I still have some of her affects I need to make decisions on like her DVD’s CD’s and vhs tapes. Some of them I would like to hold onto but when I think of having to physically start going through them. I didn’t mean to ramble on like this, other than to say when I got the news about my Mother’s sudden passing her and I hadn’t spoken in a couple years. And when I drove to where her body was at to collect the Jewelry she was brought in with, the thought crossed my mind that the Riverside County coroners office just wasn’t the place I imagined we would meet at next. I used to get that uneasy feeling at bed time really badly when there were long gaps between when Brandon and I would see each other when he still lived with his parents before we finally had moved in together, something about him just being in the same room even if we weren’t cuddling just his presence would make me feel better. I just got off work and spent some time reading your blog and thinking about it. I’m pretty sleep deprived because of the tight schedule at work today so I’m probably rambling but I wanted to let you know I am thinking about you and we have a guest room if you need a change of scenery.
I think loss is loss. And it all hurts regardless of who it was that was taken from us.
I think death of a beloved one, for those left behind, is the hardest concept for a human to grasp. Their material form has vanished from the cosmos, and yet they continue to exist in the survivor’s soul.
There are times when one catches themself thinking, “I cannot wait to tell them X, or ssk them Y.”. That sense, while it may diminish over time, never fully goes away.
Both your, and Josh’s words are moving, ring deeply true with me. Thank you both for sharing your soul.