Just Joshin' You 3

You hear people say "it's time to move on" a lot when it comes to "grief victims" as we're called. Like somehow suddenly everyone has a time frame of when they shouldn't be sad anymore. After almost a year of my husband's passing, I heard someone say "You don't move on, you move forward. Your deceased person will never be something you just get over, you'll never be fully healed, but you learn to move forward. They're still, and will always be, a part of your life". And I absolutely love that. There's no straight line with grief. You don't have the starting point then an ending point. You can go days, months, years with feeling "fine" and then have complete break downs. If you haven't been through grief, which I hope you haven't, then you can't understand. And that's fine, I hope you never have to. But please, allow people to grieve their lost loves, any time they want, for the rest of their lives.

In that first year I really struggled with the moving forward concept that I hadn't heard yet and I kept trying the moving on one. I shut off all emotions about my husbands death and just became the strong person everyone else could depend on. Or break down on. Or go to when they were sad. I started dating way too soon and realized quickly stupid that was. But kept trying anyway thinking it would help me "move on" but of course it didn't.

Within that year that "stranger" had become a friend. He would go to events we had, like my husbands birthday dinner, going to his gravesite on his death date, etc. He even took my kids to the "family day" they had at his work like my husband would've done because this now, friend, wanted to show my kids the memorial area they had created for my husband. Things seemed pretty normal (if there was such a thing) during that time in our lives. My kids enjoyed having him around because he would share stories about their father and make them feel connected to their dad still. He was a presence in this now "empty" area of our lives. Not a replacement by any means, just a presence.

After awhile he started "making things" for my kids, and even for me. Like hearts made out of resin. Painted pictures for them to hang in their rooms. He made a night light with their dads face on it. Stuff like seemed super sweet but also came off a little weird. Occasionally he would make passes at me and I'd tell him I didn't see him that way and it was weird for me because he was my husbands friend and we would just move on from that conversation. I didn't think much of it at first, but it kept happening like he wasn't getting the hint at all and thought someday it was just going to change. He would even make comments in front of our friends about how I would always "shoot him down". Until his birthday... when everything changed. And I was never able to see him as a "friend" again.

He had reached out to me telling me the upcoming weekend was his and another one of our friends' birthdays and they were getting a big group together to go out to dinner. He told me he would watch the kids that Saturday because I had to work and didn't have a sitter, and we would all just leave after I got home and got ready. Once I got home he told me to get super dolled up, everyone was going to be dressed up. As I was getting ready he also informed me it was going to be "kid free". I instantly got frustrated because you can't expect to find a babysitter for three kids in an hour! He saw my frustration and told me not to worry about it, we'd bring the kids and it would be fine. I was somehow lucky (or so I thought) that a friend of mine came through and started driving to my house to watch the kids. As we left and started driving downtown, I started texting our friends- asking who was coming, what their ETA was, etc. But I didn't get any responses from the other birthday boy, or his wife. And the other people I texted had no idea what I was even talking about.... suddenly the car ride was feeling a bit weird. Once we got to the restaurant we went in to get our table buzzer and waited outside for our table. When the buzzer went off, we stepped inside, handed it to the hostess and she responded "table for 2 right over here". I immediately looked at him, looked at her and exclaimed "umm, no, I'm sorry but we're a big party". And he responded with "we're actually not, go ahead ma'am" then under his breathe to me said "just get to the table and I'll explain". That should've been my first sign to run...