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Nighttime is the worst. The cats or nature insist I get up more than once or twice each night. And each time I wake up, the dawning realization of this new way of being smacks me in the face. He’s not here. I sobbed and sobbed last night. These thunder showers come quickly, are intense, and leave me so tired. Grief is exhausting. This heartache is mixed with the most confusing swirl of emotions–a demand for life and living. I want to taste food and dance and sing and connect with friends and loved ones and see the beauty of nature and create and basically shake the ever living tar out of this life because he did. I think maybe it’s a very human reaction to witnessing death.

This morning, Lori and I took turns listening to music from our youth. I danced and laughed. House of Pain, Joshua Kadison, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Pebbles, Sophie B. Hawkins, Mr. Big, Boyz2Men, Lauryn Hill, and so many others. I remembered things long forgotten. What a gift. I’ve also been encouraged to listen to music I’ve never heard before and it’s breathtaking and haunting. I’ve played Sara Bareilles “You Matter To Me” a couple of times at least.

Bryan, Mary, and I used to spend evenings taking turns playing songs we loved, sharing with each other, finding overlap in our tastes. The past few days has been a revisiting of that for me, for which I’m so grateful. It’s easy to find moments of joy every single day. It’s also easy to be shattered that I can’t share those with him.

One thing is for certain, tragedy doesn’t make a person either a saint or a martyr. We all go through heartache and tragedy. That’s the human experience. That process doesn’t ascribe any particular goodness. I am very human. It was my honor and privilege to walk beside Bryan in our very best of times and those most recent, worst of times. And while this has changed me, my perceptions, the way I prefer to cling to gratitude, and joy, and humor like life rafts even more than ever before, it doesn’t mean I’m necessarily better. Sadder? Sure. Deeper empathy for others experiencing grief? Absolutely. But I still say more curse-y words in traffic than appropriate or healthy. I still make snap judgments and not always with kindness. I still have a temper and get hangry. We’re all works in progress and I’m not exempt.

It is good to laugh. We laughed a lot yesterday, a couple of times were jeopardy-of-an-accident laughs, and it felt really good. I don’t want to paint a picture that there wasn’t laughter during the past several months, because there absolutely was. Exchanged memes, terrible jokes (my favorite), pet videos, comedian clips, Bryan and my communication foibles were all part of the survival kit.

But now in this next phase of things, laughter is even more critical. Mary has a saying she’s stated and I’ve borrowed a lot: “Are you okay? No, but I’m funny.” She and I have often coped with a special humor that we’ve honed together since she was 15. Appropriate? Not really. Dark? A little. Guaranteed to crack us up when we need it most? Absolutely. Craig, my big brother, is also incredibly funny. He’s a great story-teller and shared many funny anecdotes. We also watched a lot of stand-up specials while he was here, a thing we’ve done since my teenage years. He and I still quote some of our favorites from long ago–“I can’t eat cheese…” Lori, my bestie, can find the humor any time, any where and then make references to it periodically to bring us back to that exact moment. It’s a tremendous gift. We heard some live music in town yesterday, young college-aged fellas, some on instruments, and one singer, very earnest. As we turned the corner off of Main Street, we heard a rendition of “Isn’t She Lovely” that I’m not sure my words could adequately describe. Let’s just say, every time I got a sad, far-off look in my eye, she’d replicate what we heard and have me in stitches all over again.

There is still joy in this world. There are still moments of laughter. I catch myself so wanting to share those with my person and tell him all the funny things so I can hear him laugh too. I suspect that will always be a part of my life going forward. Bryan often described how he wished he could ask and share things with his parents. I feel that too with mine and my oldest brother, Todd, and now Bryan. This is how we keep our loved ones alive in our hearts, I suppose, imagining them in on the jokes we so desperately wish we could share in person.

In this tiny little corner of this tiny blue dot, I find it remarkable how necessary it has been to create visual shifts. I bought a new shower curtain and bathroom rug, a new tablecloth. Today I got a haircut. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything drastic. Orlando is protective and kind, so just a nice trim and refresh. These are modest and superficial changes, but the impact on my heart and mind are pretty intense. These are the pleasant versions of the story. The less-than-pleasant versions are returning the seldom-used, tags-still-on walker back to Norco or packaging up the Optune device that was described as the best FDA approved post-radiation therapy available for glioglastoma patients. It also took up a lot of real estate in our home and emotional and mental energy. Did it even help? I start down those paths and find them incredibly unproductive, but the act of taking the boxes to the UPS store and shipping them back felt right.

I look inside kitchen cabinets where I had just shoved items, no time to organize or plan. Unpacking and sorting those seems much more manageable than some of the other tasks ahead of me. The fridge needs another culling. Can you hear the beginnings of shoulding on myself? All in due time, right? “Baby steps, Bob.”

My bestie arrived from Fort Wayne this evening. We have a whole week. I’m so glad she’s here. I’m glad for the company and the calm.

I’ve likened my marriage to Bryan as “summer camp” on many occasions and I think it deserves a little context. My parents split when I was in third grade and proceeded to have a really messy, contentious, painful divorce. Summer camp was a place where I could fully escape that and just be Becci. I got to navigate that week-long other world around a lake in Idaho in the summer with my best friends. I learned how to waterski. I learned that I had things to offer too. I could French braid hair and make my cabinmates laugh. Summer camp was an emotional oasis, a life raft of joy for a kid pretty mired in anxiety and sorrow. Those strong memories of pure joy have been anchor points and a measuring stick.

Being with Bryan was joyful for me like that, a place where I could be fully Becci without passive aggression, or insecurity, or walking on eggshells. I remember early in our courtship, I didn’t want to get into heavy debates with Bryan. I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t want to risk this wonderful new thing with contention, anger, and potential loss. I never learned what fighting fairly looked like. One day, Bryan and I were on a bike ride and we had a spat. He barked at me and I hollered back, “Don’t you yell at me!” The rest of the ride home was a little frosty, but when we got back to the house, he was smiling ear to ear. Confused, I asked what he was smiling about. He was relieved and delighted that we could air out our grievances because we hadn’t done that yet and for him, push back, debate, and fair arguments were as essential as air. I think I called him a weirdo, but I also learned that he was safe and disagreement wouldn’t push him away. Quite the contrary.

In recent days, something crystalized for me. Self-confidence is a gift to others. Bryan’s self-assuredness made him safe, not just for me, but for many to be fully themselves around him because he knew who he was. Kyle Martz told me he never felt like he needed to edit himself around Bryan. You don’t have to dance on eggshells with someone who knows who they are. I know Bryan wasn’t just like this to me because he was a confidant and mentor to many, some known to me and probably many more unknown.