My 3rd Birthday

Last week was my 3rd birthday without Grant.  I can’t believe I’ve now had 3 birthday’s without him.  I had to go back and count to make sure that’s right.  It’s only been 2 years.  2 years completed, which means we’re in the 3rd’s for everything. 
They say the first year is the hardest.  I disagree.   The second was harder for me.  Now it’s the third and what do I have to say about it?  It’s not one lick easier.  The first year is full of shock, survival and just gaining new bearings.  The Second year is full of stabilizing and realizing.  I’ve done this once, now this is not the first time. 

The third, it’s a realization of what is.  There’s no going back, not that there was before, but it’s starting to set in that the reality is what it is, not just as a coping tool.   The shock has worn off, the reality has set in and now, it’s figuring out how to do the new reality as reality instead of coping.

It’s no longer not believing or feeling like “how could this be?”  It becomes this way and I’m establishing the actual new normal, not trying to find the new normal anymore.  So on my 3rd birthday without him, I went to Mexico.  This year I wanted to get away, so I did. 

When I got there, it was the new reality that when I travel, I travel alone now.  I haven’t done that for 2 years. This was supposed to be fun and it was, just in a new way.  It was a picture of my reality that my person, the one I always took with me, is not with me.  I already knew that.

As I was sitting on the plane on my birthday, the pilot came on the intercom.  He announced the weather, the altitude, the airspeed and the projected time to destination.  He did it in the, “pilot’s voice.”  They seem to all have a similar intonation.  It was just exactly the way Grant used to say it when he was flying. 

I married a pilot. He used to announce where we were going in that pilot voice.  Sometimes it would be while we were driving somewhere as a family.  Sometimes we’d be on the plane together, going somewhere. Together. He’d sometimes make the announcement before the pilot would.

 He’d say it just exactly like what the pilot would say.   So when I heard that intonation again, I realized that was a voice I was missing.  I hadn’t realized I was missing it and it’d been gone so long. I think that partly why it was such a shock.

The shock of hearing it again, looking at the stranger sitting next to me and remembering that I was indeed alone.  I was traveling alone. I was on my birthday alone.  And hearing that voice echoed the loss of what I once had. I began to sob. 

Right there on the plane next to the stranger, the tears came. My body shook. It was all I could do to just sit and listen and remember. And I did.  I didn’t really care if anyone saw me.  I was in a moment and I took it. I felt it and then let myself feel it all. 

I realized that this was what is and it wasn’t what I had before, but it is what I have and that is okay. That’s when I realized for what felt like the first time, again, that I missed him.  That’s when I realized that this was the third time I’d celebrated my birthday without him and there would be many more birthdays without him.