The last thing I want to do is write right now. Write about this.
Yet as I was sitting in bed journaling and reading your Word, I couldn't continue to quiet that voice telling me to get up, get out the computer, and write.
Tomorrow is two years. Two years living without my best friend. That one person in the world that totally gets you, has been a constant in your life for 17 plus years, someone you never imagined having to live without.
It's also no coincidence that it's nearly been two years since I've actively posted on social media. It was Kate's death and a number of things. A number of things I've been wrestling with about social media for some time now. Kate dying was just another catalyst in needing to pull away.
To be honest with you, I've been dreading this month, this day.
There aren't days that go by without thinking about or missing her, but just as her mom so perfectly captured, there is something about knowing this day is approaching that has filled me with dread. Anxiety. Sadness. Questions. Pain.
It's not as if I miss her more in September or the days surrounding her death, it's just that this month, this day, make all I wish I could ignore painstakingly real.
Like Susan said so beautifully, I will never get "over it."
I will never forget that dreadful day and some of the words my husband said to me as I was still reeling from the news, "This is something we're going to be grieving for the rest of our lives."
The shock and the reality and the pain were more than I could bear.
I will never forget being so excited as I was getting ready for an appointment I had been wanting for most of the time we've been in California. While we moved to California for Ben to attend Fuller, before that time I had dreamed about going to Fuller and doing their counseling program before I was on staff with the campus church I worked at before we moved here, but we felt led out here for him to pursue more training and equipping in the field of international development, and exploring graduate school options for myself was something I always saw coming at some point later.
I'd wrestled with it for a while, if the things I really wanted to do would really require me to enter such a rigorous program as Fuller's Marriage and Family Therapy program, though everyone I knew in that program or others within the Fuller School of Psychology, absolutely loved it and were thriving.
I was scheduled to meet with the man everyone told me I needed to talk with if I was even remotely interested in the program, and our meeting got rescheduled/put off the first time we were supposed to meet, and now finally, the day was here.
I was enjoying the process of getting ready and was on cloud nine.
I didn't even hear Ben's phone ring amidst the music and dance party happening in the bathroom as I was getting ready.
I will never forget Ben calling to me from above the music.
What is it? Can it wait, I asked him when he asked if I could come into the living room, and then the unimaginable happened.
He looked like a ghost. All of the color was gone from his skin. I remember trying to read his expression before hearing anything he had to say, as he said I'm going to need to sit down for this.
Now even more desperate to read what was going on, I asked frantically, what happened? Who is it? Did someone get in an accident.
And I don't even remember how it came out. I just remember the tears in his eyes and the impact of all he was saying. And him warning me that it was really bad.
Ryan just called me. It's Kate.
What, what happened? Did she get in an accident? Is she okay?
She died this morning.
WHAT, I remember screaming, WHAT? No, no, no. And I just kept shaking my head in disbelief as the tears were running down my face and everything within me was searching for how this could be true and that this must be some sort of mistake. I remember telling him over and over, "I don't believe you."
I will never forget that feeling, those moments where it felt like I was living in an alternate universe. One of those moments that I've unfortunately experienced through other tramatuic events where all of a sudden time is standing still. The world around you is still moving and you wonder how people are going about their days, how it looks seemingly "normal" out there.
She died in her sleep, he was explaining. Ryan said he found her this morning, but it was too late.
At this everything within me just collapsed. I remember crying, heading to the bathroom and just collapsing to the floor, a million thoughts racing in my head in those moments, everything from, we were just texting to the text I almost sent her this morning asking if she'd watched the finale of So You Think You Could Dance yet so we could debrief/share our critiques/opinions as we always do, to but she was going to be the first person I was going to call if I got pregnant, she's supposed be to Aunt Kate to my kids, to the fact that she never got to visit me here in California, and have our girls weekend, complete with SYTYCD, as we'd been planning and hoping to do, to what am I going to do without her. Oh my gosh, Ryan. The kids. Kate's mom and dad. Their families. All things that still make my heart ache. And the thoughts didn't stop coming.
As the news slowly settled within my soul that this was real and not a nightmare. Though I was living in a nightmare.
We left the house and went for a walk. Ryan had told Ben I could call him.
We went to the Rose Bowl where we loved going on walks, and I will never forget the few feet I kept circling as I had one of the worst phone conversations yet, talking with to a barely coherent, hysterical Ryan.
As he choked through telling me, and when I heard his voice on the phone, not even knowing what to say, sorry didn't feel even close to enough, though I kept repeating it, and he said five words for the rest of my life I will never forget, words that sent a chill down my spine and settled deep within my soul as I asked, as I'm sure everyone he spoke to that day and in the wretched days to come, what happened?
"She just never woke up."
Those words just kept repeating, kept reverberating in my soul as everything within me was just still in shock and disbelief.
I didn't even want to imagine the days to come. That day, that week, flying home, being at the funeral, it all was a blur. The most surreal I've ever experienced. A part of me kept expecting to get a call from her or a text.
They call it stages of grief, and I hated anyone that made it seem like they were so simple. There is no rhyme or reason, you don't just go through the stages and you're done, you constantly revisit them.
Anger. Denial. Shock. Sadness. And others I'm too tired to remember right now, they're never done. They're never over.
As her mom so perfectly said it as well, it's not like the pain gets easier. You just get more used to it. But the loss, her absence, all that was once in your life yet now a gaping hole remains with her being gone, it never goes away. Yet you learn and get more used to living with this dreadful companion.
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I will have to finish this later. But I just needed to start somewhere. I just needed to post. Even though she was the only one still following/reading this blog, eventually I hope to write again and share more publicly.
This season is about stepping out of my comfort zone and I know that writing is going to be a part of that journey. So for tonight, I just needed to be obedient. To sit down and write even though what prevents me from doing it all the time is not having the words to say. There's nothing worse than staring at a blank computer screen and not having any words to fill it. Or to not be able to express all that you are feeling. But tonight was a start. And I want to do it for Kate, who was one of my biggest cheerleaders and championed my heart and the things that made it come alive (like writing once did), more than anyone. And I want to do it for the sake of my heart. Because it's good to let it out. I've experienced healing, yet this will be a wound that will never go away, yet one that will just experience various stages of healing.
And so Kate, on this dreadful anniversary, of what I still cannot believe has really been two years, I do this for you. I will never stop missing you or recover from the parts of me that felt like they died with you. I will never stop loving you or be grateful that I got to experience a friendship like ours. Can't wait to be with you again in heaven.
