This Casting Crowns song was a very good description of my wife’s and my marriage.  I know it is not for everyone, but it was perfect for our marriage and perfectly represents our ups and downs over a sometimes tough and turbulent 34 years.  We, as a couple, were “broken together.”  It took us many years (and a lot of marriage counseling) to see the broken parts and how the other could fill that void in each other’s lives, but we eventually learned how to do that together. 
     But now that she is gone, I still find myself broken but no longer “together.” And obviously (as we have all experienced), this grief journey – and life in general sometimes – is much harder traveling by myself than when we were together. As a couple, we made each other so much stronger. When one of us was weak, the other could help lift the other.  Two people together who are each broken can fill in those broken places for each other.  But when you lose your spouse, you’re still broken, but now you have these gaping and jagged pieces that she once filled but were suddenly ripped from you, and then we have to learn how to heal on our own.
      This is why I waited so long to write this. I probably started this more than a year ago, but something told me to wait because I really wanted to have a good outcome to this story, not one that was depressing and the same old result I had had dozens of previous times. And that was what I could do to finally move past being “broken alone.”
     First, let me say I am not completely healed and make no claim to be.  The month of September (9/27/2024) marked the third year since my wife’s death.  The beginning of this year was initially just five months of me drowning myself in alcohol and feeling sorry for myself.  I had already notified my company that I would retire in September, but I had no plan – or hope – for my future.  The few women I had met and tried to have relationships with were complete and utter failures, which just made the drinking and feeling sorry for myself worse.  Until in early July, when I realized that before I could ever hope to have another relationship with another woman, I had to be comfortable having a relationship with – and by – myself.  My thought process was that by learning to live alone, I would not be so worried about a relationship ending if I knew I could return to being alone again if it ended.  This was part of my problem with the women I had been meeting. I was so needy because, behind it all, there was a fear of returning to an empty house and an empty life without my late wife.  
     So, beginning in July (after quitting drinking and stopping feeling sorry for myself), I devised a plan to travel alone to places I had always wanted to visit after my retirement.  I wanted to mark the 3^rd Anniversary of my wife’s death by doing something completely different and just being alone in a completely different state (this year, I was both in Arizona and New Mexico) rather than sitting at home alone and marking it by being sad, or worse, not even honoring her at all.  I even posted a GNF post about what was happening in my life.  And I must be honest.  It was one of the hardest things I have ever done.  I almost quit a couple of times, truth be told, but I hung on and fulfilled the promise I made to myself in July.  And in those 17 days I drove over 6,600 miles (almost 400 miles a day) through Southwest Texas, almost all of New Mexico and then Northern Arizona.  I made new memories for myself and proved for now that I could be by myself in a strange place and have fun doing it.
     I am still not ready to meet another woman.  It’s not that I don’t eventually want a Chapter 2 or even a traveling companion, but I am learning to enjoy my new life alone.  Frankly, I have become a bit selfish and am not ready to share or relinquish any part of my new life.  I don’t have to ask someone for their blessing to do something. If I want to purchase something, I can just go buy it and don’t have someone at home asking me, “Why did you buy that?”  I can make plans for myself and get in my car whenever and wherever I want to, and I can drive in silence or listen to a favorite podcast or song without being interrupted by someone.   And I can plan for my daughter and granddaughter’s future inheritance from me like my wife and I always planned for.  I have even joked to my family that if by some miracle my wife were ever to return, I would have to tell her there have been changes she would have to follow.
     I know this sounds selfish, and I guess it probably is, but Grief Share talks about a “New Normal.” For now, this is my new normal.  While I may not be completely healed from my wife’s death three years ago, I am moving forward with my life on my own terms.  And I am good at that.