I've Dreaded Moments Like This Since My Husband Was Killed.

My heart is bursting with happiness and breaking with sorrow at the same time this month.

You’d think I’d be “good” at this by now. After all, it’s been a little more than 20 years since I had to find the words to explain to my four little boys that daddy would never come home.

Four separate conversations, doing my best to explain something my own head and heart rejected at every level, with four little boys who were the center of their dad’s life.

My oldest was just six. My youngest was a few months away from his second birthday. Then we had a 5 year old, and my son Sean, whose birthday is the same as his dad’s and his dad’s dad, and was just one month away from turning four.

The levels of comprehension are so different at each age. Within hours of my world collapsing, while I was still trying to process the news myself, I had to figure out how to communicate that to each of them.

There was no grace period between the funeral and the first cruel event after: Fathers Day was within weeks. It was baptism by fire, so to speak. Within weeks of learning my husband was dead- that he had in fact been murdered by another soldier in Iraq - I had to figure out how to shepherd my boys through Fathers Day while all of our hearts were still under siege.

Next was Sean’s fourth birthday. I had to somehow give him the happiest fourth birthday party, while navigating the momentous pain of not being able to wish Lou a Happy Birthday, too - ever again.

The moments have not ceased since then: birthdays, holidays, graduations, parent teacher conferences, report cards, awards, trouble, puberty, drivers licenses, broken bones, smashed cars, first loves and heartbreaks, pets dying, proms, teenage angst, school projects, and leaving home to start their new lives…. all of it. I’ve had to develop unique coats of armor to get through each moment four times over.

Each experience helped harden me for the next, until finally no one suspected my smile masked such debilitating pain.

Even when I finally began to piece my own life and heart and soul back together, there is no circumventing the reality of loss and pain when it comes to the “He should be here” moments - like next week.

Next week- on October 18th, my one of our sons will marry the love of his life. This is the son who shares his dad’s birthday. He has his dad’s eyes, and his sense of humor, and the same immeasurable love of life. He and his bride remind me so much of me and Lou in our youth - how much I depended on Lou to keep me centered and learn self-confidence, and how much he leaned on me to have his back at all times.

I don’t even have to close my eyes to remember being on our back deck, having one of the very brief, and very few ‘What if” conversations we had before Lou deployed. I can see Lou in his white Yankees t-shirt, his dark blue gym shorts and his ever present Sambas, leaning on the rail while turning his face into the sun. I can hear him admit his greatest fear- that if something did happen, he’d miss out on the kids’ lives and they wouldn’t even remember him, or how hard he worked for them or how much he loved them.

Next week, he will miss seeing his son get married.

And that… sucks.

Yes yes.. I know he “is here in spirit” and that “He is watching from heaven,” and whatever else people will feel compelled to say to me.

And yes, I believe that.

But you’ll have to excuse me for as moment, when I wish he was actually here.

The truth is, I am sick and tired of “getting through” moments that should be nothing but beautiful. I am exhausted from the struggle of feeling guilty for wanting Lou here, even as I have a new, profound, and strong love standing beside me now. As if by missing Lou I am betraying my husband now. And I am really just over seeing the empty space by my sons’s sides, where their dad should be.

Judge away, if you’d like. But anyone who tries to convince me that they don’t feel the same, no matter how much faith they have and how much they have put their lives together, is lying.

Even Christ himself hit his knees and begged God to spare him from pain, before marching bravely towards it.

That pain, in the end, was worth it, as it lead to so much beauty.

So, too, will this pain.

I share this with you for two reasons:

One is selfish - I really needed the ugly cry I got as I wrote this. I feel better now. Thank you.

The other, and why I am sending this instead of deleting it - is because I know someone who needs to know they are not alone in their grief will read this. Or someone who may not have understood why another is not “over it” yet.

The greatest gift you can give yourself in grief, is grace. Even when grace is not shown to you.

If you are grieving someone you love, know that you don’t need permission to acknowledge that grief. Know that you are not wrong, or weak, or that admitting that pain does not mean you don’t understand your faith and love your life today.

There is no “end date” to missing someone you love. Stop letting anyone convince you otherwise. Two things can be true at once: You can feel pain from missing someone and you can love your life as it is today. In fact, there is exquisite beauty to be found in that pocket, in between.