Is it Really Better to Love and Lose, than to Never Love at All?

Two days ago was my 30th wedding anniversary - not with my husband today, but with my first husband, Lou.

To answer that question… yes. It is in fact quite strange sometimes, to figure out the balance between the love for a man who is no longer here, and the man who walks beside me as I am today.

One knew me as I was. Before I sort of mutated into who I am today - against my will at times.

One loves the current version of me, just as I am.

One man got the young, naive, immature version of me. The wife who relied on him for her own strength, who shaped her identity around being his wife, and whose vision of happiness was solely dependent on him always being there.

She loved fully, freely. She trusted everything would be okay simply because he told her so. She had only just begun figuring out who she was, when he was taken from her.

One man got the older, somewhat wiser and much stronger version of me- but also the jaded, less trusting, less willing to count on him always being there and who needs time alone version. She’s also the woman who understands how it can all be taken away in the span of one heartbeat. She is more centered, less impacted by trivial upsets, more focused on being present now than wondering what comes next.

One man’s death convinced her she would have been better off never having him at all, than having to endure him being ripped away.

One man’s love reminded her what a gift love is, and how her loss is precisely what prepared her to love more.

I practically ran down the aisle to marry Lou, 30 years ago this week.

During our first dance, we laughed and talked about how we’d spend our anniversaries.

He cracked a joke about our 10th anniversary- how I’d stay home to take care of all our kids, and he’d be out with friends.

And then we resumed dreaming of all the trips we’d take together.

But he wasn’t completely wrong.

We only had 9 anniversaries together. And we did take a beautiful trip that year.

I will never forget the inexplicable sense of dread I had as we returned from that trip. There was one moment, as we navigated the madness of a metro airport - he was just in front of me on the escalator. Each feeling of ascent from the darker level into the sterile harshness of the main level felt like we were exiting the safety and peace of our time together, crashing into a world of noise and chaos. I don’t know how to describe the feeling I had as I looked up at him, as that glare of light framed him above me - but I felt a fear I could not explain away. As if he was ascending somewhere without me, and I was about to be left in that dark underground. I told myself to stop being such an idiot.

That was in March of 2005.

Three months later, he was killed.

On our 10th anniversary I was indeed home with all of our kids while he was away- but not just on a trip. He was in a place I can’t even imagine, surrounded by beauty I hope to experience myself, when my time here is done.

Our wedding anniversary always cut a little harder each year. It was the one day that was ours and no one else felt the way I always will.

The pain was so much more than I was prepared for. How can one ever prepare for it, really. I think it’s kind of like the pain of giving birth. I remember being so surprised that level of pain was considered so normal. But once I figured it out, I learned how to breathe through it and it wasn’t so scary anymore.

Except the pain of grief was not something I could figure out. It made all the other pain I’d experienced- childbirth, broken bones, kidney and gall stones, a life threatening medical condition- seem like a skinned knee.

The cruelty cut the deepest: Why, I wondered, would I be granted something so beautiful, only to have it taken away? One moment I was sure the pain itself would kill me, too. The next I was terrified it wouldn’t. I spent years in that spiral, masking it with bad decisions and an almost manic need to have some version of fun - anything to distract me from my grief.

It took years for me finally face it all. To figure out how to breathe through it. To make it less scary. To learn how to be responsible for my own happiness. And to realize that all the pain was, in fact, worth the love. I wrote about those lessons in my third book, What Not to Wear to a Murder Trial (and other tips tragedy taught me).

I’m so grateful for the life and love I have now. I do everything I can to soak it up every day, to make sure that neither of us regrets a thing when one of us ultimately loses the other. Sometimes that means battling the fear of that pain, not allowing its inevitability loom over me like a dark cloud.

I’m grateful for the life and love I had with Lou.

I’m grateful for the love I have now.

One does not negate the other.

I would choose it all again. Every time.