Always My Jeff

You’ve got this! You are the strongest woman I know! So proud of you! And on and on and on I can go with the list of phrases I heard spoken to me and about me and that I just couldn’t believe. I got this???? The only thing I got is a life that I didn’t expect and definitely didn’t ask for at all! Me??? Strong??? You haven’t seen me sobbing in the shower, or in my car or yelling at Jeff at the top of my lungs asking him to help me. Proud?? What have I done to make anyone proud?? I certainly do not feel as if I have done anything to make anyone feel a sense of pride but I do appreciate the support.

Memories…..I have TONS!! Mostly great ones. Ones that people tell me would get me through and for the most part, that is true. I can smile thinking of so many things in our life together. I remember meeting Jeff (which was arranged by his Mom!!! She was on a mission!). I remember our first date. I remember our dinner date that turned into our engagement that turned into a surprise 22nd birthday party – lucky for him I said yes or we would have been giving the attendees more of a surprise than they gave me!! Finding out we were going to have a baby, and then again, and yet again. A proud Dad from the first breath Jeffrey took. I always joke about it but I know that wherever he is right now, the people with him are just hoping he will stop bragging about his kids because I’m sure he hasn’t stopped!!! And now on the flip side……I have happy memories that make me cry. Why? Because they were our lasts. Lasts that we didn’t know were our lasts. Our last birthdays together, our last holidays together, our last family vacation, and more and more and more. I go back and forth as to what would have changed if we knew these were going to be our lasts and I am not sure they would have changed at all. All these lasts were great and I know Jeff enjoyed every one of them. I remember thinking, if only we had some time to prepare but then that could mean Jeff would have struggled and I would always take the “harder for me to go on” scenario than to have him go through hell so we would have time to wrap our heads around the potential of losing him.. The photo above was our last Christmas tree together. Of all the photos I could pick, why this one?? Because Jeff LOVED everything about Christmas. He loved the lights, he loved the decorations inside, he loved the shopping because he loved the smiles when those gifts were opened, he loved the music, he loved the traditions, and the list could go on forever. You name it and he loved it!! So I look at this last tree and realize the ornaments document so much about us…..our first Christmas as a couple, our first Christmas as a married couple, our children’s first Christmases, our hockey obsession, our jobs, our hobbies, our lives even before we were US. It always was a beautiful tree. I would love sitting in the room that was entirely lit by the tree lights. I would love that Jeff would take the timers off for the outside lights and the tree lights on Christmas Eve so they would be on the entire night so Santa could see our house. Our NORMALS that became abnormal in one brief moment in time. Lasts that even today make me cry. I don’t cry because of the memory but I do cry because of that one word……..LAST. I think I have come to dislike the lasts because we were supposed to have more firsts!!!

I’ve been thinking about my post from yesterday and I have some ideas. I need to run it by a focus group to see if my thoughts are good ones. If you are or know a widow, please ask them to reach out to me at alwaysmyjeff@yahoo.com.

When this crazy journey began, I was so fortunate to have people around me to help my attempt to be “normal”. Poor Cheryl became my full time babysitter and was such a trooper. You know you have a good friend when they will jump off a wooden platform in insanely hot weather because you want to go zip-lining!!! Anyway……..I tried to go out as often as possible. I think it was the “get back on the horse” mentality. I never turned down an invitation even though I would come up with 100 excuses to not go even while I was traveling to the destination. I often had some sort of meltdown during these outings and would try to do it as quietly as possible but I still felt as if everyone in the room was staring at me. I’m sure they all wondered “what is wrong with her???” I probably would have done the same before this all happened to me. I often wished that an old tradition still held true…….back in the day, black was not vogue but instead a sign of mourning. Widows wore black for a year and that was an immediate signal to people that she was in her mourning period. When I would have my breakdowns, I wished there was a signal that would let people know what I was experiencing. Why I looked “normal” except for the fact that that I randomly started crying at dinner, or on a plane, or in the grocery store, and the list goes on and on and on. I thought about things I could wear or have to let people know but short of having a sign, there didn’t seem to be anything. Maybe that’s something I can think about again. I’m pretty much (yes, 6 years later and I can still be triggered by the smallest thing) past that phase but every second someone is not so maybe I can take some of the weight off of the new members of the club.

I just had a feeling that I needed to get back to the blog so I did. It was painful to revisit “that” day. It was painful to look at so many pictures that were taken “when all was right with the world”. On the flip side, it was painful for me to not blog. Well, I guess I was supposed to get back to the blog because the very next day, I received this FB memory! I believe in signs and I believe EVERYTHING happens for a reason!!!

I guess everything happens for a reason! I start the blog back up and BAM, this memory shows up on my Facebook. Almost six years to the day! I am not going to lie, reliving the past can hurt so much at times but at the same time, it brings so many great memories. We were supposed to make many more memories but that just wasn’t in the cards. Does that upset me? Yes, at times it not only upsets it but it totally pisses me off! We had this all figured out. We had years and years and years planned in advance but again, it just wasn’t in the cards. Sooooooo, here I am, picking up the pieces (even today) and carrying on the best I can. I have come a LONG way and I know that this journey is still not over. For those of you who have traveled this journey longer than I have…thank you for showing me that I can do this and I will survive. For those of you traveling this journey behind me, nothing would make me prouder than for you to see me as that person who lets you know that you can do this and you will survive!!!!

So here it goes…….for those of you that were around for the original blog……welcome back! For those of you who were not……welcome! I apologize to the veterans of the first site since some of this will be what you have already heard and already know.

I’ll try to keep the “information refresher” as brief as possible…..My name is Susan and throughout my 57 years, I have experienced many things that have made me who I am today. Some of these experiences have been amazing and some have been absolutely awful but that’s life, right?? Ups and Downs. Good and Bad. Anyway, here’s my most influential things to date……I was born and lived an amazing childhood. I started in S. Philly and then my parents did the “suburban sprawl” thing and wound up in S. Jersey. Great life, great friends, great times. I truly have a head full of great memories from this time in my life. Did bad things happen?? Of course! I lost my paternal grandfather when I was 9. Besides my Dad, he was by far my biggest cheerleader. When they say “the apple of his eye”, that would be this girl right here!!!! Later in HS, I lost my uncle/godfather. He and my aunt had never been able to have children so I played that part for them. I did the typical kid things for those times….I had neighborhood friends and played outside until the street lights came on. I played soccer for a year and then switched to cheerleading. I swam, and swam, and swam. I loved everything about the Jersey Shore (the one before MTV made people believe that characters were real people). Graduated HS and went on to college to pursue my goal of becoming a teacher. While in college, I met this guy. Well, he was more than just “this guy”, he was THE guy. I met Jeff when I was 21 and a few months later we were engaged on my 22nd birthday. He was everything that I dreamed about but was convinced just did not exist. We were married on 10/14/89 and pregnant by March! That scared us to death but everyone around us seemed to be really excited so we took a breath and decided to enjoy the ride. We were surrounded by loving family and great friends and while we struggled at times like any couple just starting out, we had a great life and it was only going to get better as time went on. We built a house in Delaware. We settled into our careers….yup, I became a teacher and Jeff worked his way up the chain for Coastal and then another one and another one and then Sunoco. Two more kids joined the crew and we became the poster children for life in the burbs. All was moving along as expected. Our kids all were doing well. We went to 100s of school functions, 100s of sporting events, lots of parties, and took some awesome family vacations. All three kids graduated from HS. We were talking about our retirement plans. Every so often, we would go out to dinner, just the two of us, to practice the empty nest thing. The next chapter was in sight until………….1/5/2017. It was a normal day. Jeff came off of his night shift and would jump right in bed since he had to go back that night. Normal conversation and off I went to work. Around noon, I got a text from Evan telling me Jeff was sick. I’m not going to go into details but we got Jeff to the hospital and two strokes later, he was in Lock In Syndrome and we had to either let him go or place him in a nursing home. We decided that he could not “live” like that so on 1/14/2017, we let him go. And here this blog begins. My journey through the most devastating event that I had encountered in my life. Basically, at 3:50 am I lost my life too. My past, my present, and my future crumbled in one last breath. We lost a husband, a father, a friend, an amazing co-worker, and the list goes on and on. That day, I lost me. So began my journey for OUR new normal………………..

As many of you know, I had a blog after Jeff passed away. I gave up the rights to the web address I had purchased for that site because it became rather costly. Looking back, I believe the blog was a good thing not only for me but for the followers as well so here we go again………..