Five Months, One Thousand Little Good-Byes

Today marks five months since Kevin passed away.  I've been riding an emotional roller-coaster all day, and it's only lunch time.

One of the most unexpected things about grief for me has been the sheer number of times I feel like I am saying good-bye to Kevin.  Every time I part with something of his, it's a little good-bye.  Every time I change something in our room, it's another good-bye.  It's like I have to keep letting go tiny little bit by tiny little bit, and sometimes it's just excruciating.

Sometimes I can't do it at all.  Over the weekend, I finally straightened up the vanity in our bathroom.  All the things he'd left scattered around it were exactly as he'd left them, and so I got a little basket and put his watch, bracelet, lighter, Nike+ Fuel band, etc., all in this basket and put it over to the side of the vanity.  It doesn't sound like much, but it felt like a really big deal.  I tried to put his empty Mountain Dew can in the recycle bin, but I couldn't do it, so it's still sitting there next to the sink.

And that's one of the other unexpected things: how crazy and random-seeming are the things I can and can't do so far.  I can sleep on his side of the bed, but I can't sit in his chair.  I can wear his hats and sunglasses when I run, but I can't pick his jeans up off the closet floor or even empty his jeans pockets yet. 

I changed my Facebook profile picture today.  I'd left it as this picture taken of Kevin and me on our anniversary last year, but earlier this week I felt like it might be time to change it.  I don't miss him any less.  I still feel married, still call him my husband and call myself Kevin's wife.  But it's starting to feel more real that he's gone and not coming back, and it felt like time to change my profile picture to one of just me and not us together.  And that felt like another good-bye.  I had to think about it for a couple of days, and even ask some people if they thought it would be okay. 

Then shortly after I changed it, I saw that Pittsboro Golf Course had named their Thursday scramble the Kevin Hazel Scramble, and created a recurring Facebook Event for it.  I knew they were going to do it, and they'd actually posted this back in July, but I didn't see it until today.  I probably wasn't ready.  I just sat at my desk and bawled for probably 10 minutes.  (I know, I shouldn't be Facebooking at work, right?)  It was yet another good-bye, yet it also made me happy to see him remembered that way by his favorite place.