Day 25

Three weeks.

A little more than three weeks ago, I was a very happy wife.  Being a wife, being Storm's wife, was my whole world, and that life is gone to me now.  It was my identity.  It's who I was; Mrs. Storm Treasure.  I was proud of my wife-ing.  I was content in my life.  I felt like my life was full of richness and beauty, and my husband and I had plans of buying a home and creating a wonderful future for ourselves.  We were going to plant my roses all around the house.  Literally, he promised me a rose garden.   My life was so great, I was always looking forward.  Now...I'm just living...breathing...trying to get through this day. 

These are the shards of my life.  Well, really, it's a glass vase full of glass chunks.  As a final parting gift before he took his life, my husband broke my desk, which had a tempered glass top.  The pieces were scattered around my room for four days until I got back into my house.  My daughter and I had to sweep them up.  It took a long time.  We swept and swept.  We shook out clothes and rugs and tried to capture every piece of glass.  As I picked them up with Elizabeth, I told her that they were the shards of my life.  She agreed it was an interesting metaphor.

A week later, I decided to keep them.  I could never repair them.  No matter how much glue I used, no matter how I were to try, I could never glue this back together again.  I could never fix this.  Just like my life.  It's just like my life.

Just like my painful memories, I am still finding these shards.  Sometimes they lodge in my foot, or I see them glittering in the light reflecting on the floor.  Sometimes I find them in drawers and they fall out of clothes.  It often seems to be when I am thinking a new thought, or hurting a new hurt.  Each time I drop it in the jar: another shard of my life.  Eventually I will have gathered all of the shards of my life together.  Then what?

I would like to buy a glass rose to put inside, and an engraving of Storm's name, and dates.  I would also like to figure a lid for it.  I haven't gotten that far yet.  One of these days, when I have survived this hurt, and I am not so intensely hurt and angry, I hope to be able to look at it and feel...something new inside.  Right now....right now I'm as broken inside as the shards in this vase.

Shards of my Life