Unambiguously

I started mourning…. I was going to say right away, well, that’s not true. The first losses kicked me in the gut. They perplexed me. I was angry. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.

I started mourning as I got used to the loss. Losses, that’s the right word; they are incremental; each loss a little deeper, a little more refined. Stealing a little more of him from us, from him and me.

As I began to get my footing; to understand what was required of me. That’s when the mourning really began.

That’s when I knew my loss and felt his, too.

In the beginning, I was just so caught up in the ‘to do,’ and the ‘how to,’ the practical that made Burt’s diagnosis my own.

In the beginning, I had to learn how to take care of myself and him.

They refer to anticipatory loss, but it really isn’t. It happens in real time and every day as this disease progresses. They call it ambiguous grief, but there is little ambiguity in it. It happens in real time, and it’s with us every day, too.

I started mourning after the beginning.