By Sheri LeClair Banitt
He has been gone 32 days. I am still in disbelief with smatterings of reality mixed in. I can function, I feel happiness and appreciation for the people and blessings around me. And I feel sadness and loss. I am sad for what could have been, I feel afraid of the loss I feel today and the anticipation of many more losses to come.
We had our first date on July 2, 1978. It was a blind date, and we went to the local fair. Since then, we spent every July 4th together and the last 30 of them were in our current house. A parade goes by, so we have family and friends over to watch it then come back to the house to spend the afternoon eating and visiting. This year, the parade went by, the friends and family came, we spent the afternoon eating and visiting, and I hosted alone. It was good. We all missed him, and we all enjoyed the tradition.
As every widow soon learns, the key to moving forward is to live in the moment. It’s good to visit the past, but you cannot dwell there. Yesterday I went shopping and I bought the crunchy peanut butter and the Raisin Bran. I can see there will be many more “me” things in the future. Those things make me smile because I know how hard we worked to get to the “we” of collaboration over the years. We did it. We worked together when it was our time and it worked. Now it is my time, and I will find a way to make it work.