Tonight I sit here trying to sleep, yet again without you next to me. This evening my memory is filled with your funeral. I do not know how your mum, dad, sister and I made it through that day. I do not know how we did it. It is all a blur and yet I can remember a lot of the day in explicit detail. I know how I was feeling at each part. I know how much it hurt. That pain is still very real. When I think back to a specific part of the day I feel the pain and gut-wrenching sadness I felt at the point on the day. The only way I can describe it is when a familiar smell takes you to a time in the past and you remember everything about that time. Except it isn't a smell that takes me back. My memory is doing that all on its own this evening. I mainly remember sitting on the front pew, looking at your coffin. I remember walking in behind you and the faces I saw. I remember feeling sick at this point. I remember looking at your photo trying so desperately hard not to cry and break. Just thinking, this cannot be it. This is not happening. Just breathe. This cannot be real. But it was real. It is real. And it hurts.I was thinking of all the things that needed to be arranged for the funeral. I have no idea how I did it. Luke and I wanted to take 18 months to plan our wedding, so that we could have everything just right (and because Luke wanted 18 months). But still...in 18 months we spread out the planning. But for Luke's funeral it was planned within 2 weeks. If someone told us we had to plan a wedding in two weeks, Luke would have gotten the sweats and I would have gotten excited and then we would have panicked that there was no way we were going to get everything done. But someone how a funeral can be planned within this time.
A wedding is easy to plan because there are two of you and you can discuss what each of you like. You can bounce off ideas and you know that the wedding will be what you both love. But a funeral you have to make the decisions on your own. You can never be certain if they will like what you are doing. You can never be 100% sure that you are doing what they want. That is hard. It is the most important thing you can do for them now that they are gone and you are left to do it without them. You are left to do life without them.
I have tried many things to ease this pain. I have tried to be busy. I have tried to sleep through it. I have tried to sit it out. I have tried to be drunk and forget in every way possible. I have tried to be positive. I have tried to go out with friends and keep living. I have tried.
But the problem with these coping mechanisms is that time will bring a new moment straight after and in that moment is the pain all over again. There is no permanent fix to the pain or the loss. Time is everlasting and time just keeps coming. I can try to keep busy but I can't be busy 24/7 for the rest of my life. I can try to sleep through it but I can't do that for every second of every minute for the rest of my life. I can make plans and go out to pass time but what does that do really? It just delays the pain that is there constantly. It doesn't remove the feeling, it doesn't replace the feeling. It just delays it. I would like to say to wake me up when it is all over, but this will never be over. This will never be done. Luke is gone forever and so I will feel his loss forever.
I am learning that it does not matter where I am or what I am doing. Luke is who I'm thinking of. Luke and the loss of Luke is always there. There is no rest. All I can hope for is to become stronger each day so that I am better at handling these feelings. I can only hope that as each day passes I will be better at knowing how to adapt and cope with the situations that arise, because at the moment I am not doing so well. I am not being particularly strong at the moment.
I look at Luke's photo and I think back to being stood outside the crematorium waiting to go inside. How did it come to this? How did it come to Luke being gone? I am back outside the crem listening to the music; trying to blank out what is happening. Just counting and breathing. Just breathing...in and out. I remember having to tell myself to breathe. It's as though my normal auto pilot was busy doing other things and had forgotten to instruct my body to breathe. This is not happening. I see the plane fly over and hear the command for the gunfire. I hear the shots ring out and then suddenly there is a jolt that runs through my entire body. If it could be a visual jolt, I would imagine it would be like standing in a room of a thousand mirrors and having all of them smash and shatter at once down to the floor, catching you with the shards of glass as it does it.
Shattered...that's how I feel. That's how I am in every way.
This is not happening. This life is not our life. Our life is as husband and wife. Our life is planning the garden and hot tub. Our life is going away together. Our life is laughter and fun and love and silliness. Our life is not this life. It is not this way. God has got it wrong. He has definitely gotten it wrong this time. Our life is together as one. Not apart. It is suppose to be love not pain. It is suppose to be laughter not tears. It is suppose to be closeness and fulfilling, not distance and emptiness. It is suppose to be US not me.
I know I say this a lot but Luke really was my soul mate and my everything. He really was perfect. He really was the reason I laughed so much and smiled so brightly. He really was amazing and I really was so lucky to have been chosen by him. I miss him every second of everyday and this has not gotten any easier to live with. I am not use to this. Time is not healing.
I love you Perryman. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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