Void

I have to say the next couple of years weren’t pretty. First and foremost I apologize to my children for not being completely there. I was full of self-pity and self-indulgence. I apologize to those I wronged and forgive those who wronged me. “Strange Days had found me.”
Immediately after returning from the hospital I started packing up the house. I knew I could not afford to live there on my income. Jeff’s parents offered to let the boys and I stay there and so I moved to Southern VA the next day. Things were moving so fast. January 19th was the funeral and I would have crawled in there with him if I could. It seemed easier than facing what laid ahead.
Losing my mother was difficult but we knew it was coming and she was so ill it was almost a relief. This was different. Jeff was young, he had just turned 30 and it blind-sided me. I had gone from being an extension of my parents to being an extension of Jeff. The void was huge. I had no identity. My children were the only thing that kept me from falling completely off the map. My friends and family were all very supportive but it didn’t fill the void.
I would run around all day doing this or that trying never to stop because if I stopped I’d have to think and if I thought, I cried. I saved the crying for night because sleep was elusive at first. Then one night I had a dream I was standing in the river with Jeff and he was smiling at me and kept telling me everything was going to be all right. It was a great comfort to me.
After having quit cigarettes for 5 years I started again. I also started drinking; they call it self-medicating. I lost 30 pounds and stopped menstruating. I went to church a lot. God had to have a reason for doing this to my children and me and I intended to find out why. I never did find out why I just learned to accept what had happened.
I started looking to fill the love lost. I looked in all the wrong places. Two months after Jeff died I started having an affair with a married man. I so badly wanted someone that I settled for anyone. The experience left me in a lump on the floor crying less than a year later. But I wasn’t done with poor choices in men. There was drugie guy and church guy, who ironed his jeans. The guy that opened my eyes happened to be dating me and two other women at the same time. I told him I was done when I found out and he wanted to know what the problem was. And like divine intervention out of my mouth came “Why should I settle for a slice of pie when I can have the whole thing?”
I did slowly start to get it together. I felt it was important to honor Jeff in some way with the insurance money. So I bought a decent used car, purchased an acre of land and a brand new doublewide trailer. I enrolled at the local community college in the fall of 1992 and absolutely loved it. Dad and Pat would come to visit me whenever they could.
The summer of “93 I went back to NVA for a visit. It was fun and comfortable; I could be me. I think that was the first time Pat mentioned Garett. HE”S MARRIED…end of discussion.
The fall of ’93 Garett called me a couple of times. He was going to go back to school in Richmond and he and his wife were splitting up. HMMMM.