Love, grief, and remarriage

By the time I next write to you, I will have remarried. Marriage is complex, the idea that I'm binding my life to another, and I'm finding the closer we get to the date, the more complicated it becomes.

The man I'm marrying is wonderful. He is smart, funny, kind, and has room for me to love Kevin just as much as I love him. He loves me powerfully and wholly as I am, broken and healed and human. I am so lucky to spend my life with him.

And yet.

And yet I flinch when people get too excited for my wedding, even when they have the best of intentions. I flinch more when they say things like I knew you would get over it or worse, I knew you would get over Kevin.

And yet.

And yet I am excited about marrying my new love who deserves to be called more than the new love. I am excited about marrying my love. I've taken to referring to Kevin as my late husband and the man I am about to marry as my living husband. Some people get it. Some don't.

And yet.

And yet, I never expected to be anyone's wife but Kevin's. When he died, I never expected to be in another relationship, never thought I would want to or could find someone who matched me as well. I am having dreams about betrayal, hurt, loss, and other delightful topics. It is hard to hold both the joy and the sorrow.

And yet.

And yet, I know Kevin would want me to be happy. He told me so, quite clearly, in those last tender days. I know he understood that my heart is happiest when it is loving and that to deny my own nature would kill me, as surely as the cancer was killing him.

And yet.

And yet, these dreams are breaking my heart at the time when it is also at its fullest. I finally cried a few days ago and it felt the same as in those early days after his death, bereft and with nothing left but tears that burned my cheeks.

And yet.

And yet here I am. Stepping forward even though it hurts like hell. Acknowledging that pain even as I am happy and stunned that someone is able to love me so well. Risking relationship even though I am afraid of the same tearing loss. Wearing both rings, to hold both loves. Honoring and celebrating all of the love, all of the time. Recognizing that I would not be who I am if I had not broken so completely, over and over again, then been reforged.

I could not be in this place if I had not found myself along the way. Who I am now is so very different from who I was, yet this me is still able to love and be loved. This me is still able to grieve and yearn and recognize that my body and my life are big enough to hold the past, present, and even believe there might be a future.

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