“Sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones we were never prepared to say.”
Grief had consumed me and become my constant companion.
I was given the information for the visitation and funeral services. He would be laid to rest in his family plot. I still could not comprehend the weight of his loss. I reread our messages, listened to his voicemails, and studied the little doodles he had left on my papers.
How could this happen?
Traumatic events like this do not happen to people like us. Those are things you see in movies, not in real life.
I fought against reality.
My closest friend offered to drive me to his visitation. I told her, “No, I’m not going.”
She looked at me and said firmly, “You are going. You will forever regret it if you don’t say goodbye.”
I was still deep in denial, and facing it would make everything real. I was not ready to say goodbye—goodbye to the love of my life, my soulmate, and the future we had dreamed about. This chapter of our lives should not have been ending.
But she was right.
Eventually, I would have to face it.
I was afraid. His parents had no idea we had been in a relationship—well, his dad probably suspected. I would have to face them. I had only met his mom a few times, but I had been around his dad almost daily.
The visitation was scheduled for the evening of February 13th.
My beautiful nine-year-old daughter had written his parents a heartfelt note in a sympathy card for me to give them. My friend drove me and another friend to the funeral home. The car ride was eerily quiet. I clutched the card tightly the entire way.
When we finally parked, panic rushed over me.“I can’t do this,” I whispered. Then louder, the words burst out of me.
“No… I can’t go in.”
The visitation was somber and quiet. Familiar faces moved through the room, offering condolences to his family. I waited my turn, wringing my hands, the air heavy with sorrow.
When the moment came, I offered my condolences to his parents and handed the card to his mother—the one my beautiful nine-year-old daughter had written for them.
Then I walked toward his casket to say goodbye.
The casket was closed because of the accident that had taken his life. I rested my hand on the smooth, cold, dark wood. A spray of beautiful red carnations lay across the top.
There was no peaceful goodbye. No sense of closure.
Just a vast, sorrow-filled hole opening inside my heart.
And my grief had only just started.
Ebbs & Flows 