People don't realize this, but I drive by my husband's funeral home on a daily basis. That is to say, I drive by the funeral home that took care of my husband after he died. He's not buried there. He was cremated so that his ashes could be taken to another location. ("I don't want to spend eternity in Texas." were his words to me.) Regardless, everytime I drive by the funeral home, I can't help but to think of him. (Sidenote: I don't purposely drive by the funeral home. It just happens to be located in the same area as my home and job. But I digress.) Many times, I'll be riding with friends, in their cars, as we drive by the funeral home. They don't ever notice the funeral home, nor do they know my history with that particular funeral home. (Most of my friends, here in Texas, did not know me while he was still alive.) So they usually go on, blabbing or whining about some insignificant matter in life (like how their boyfriend refuses to use a coaster) while I reflect on the life and times of my husband and his fight with cancer.

I used to talk about my husband's life and death quite a bit. I think that it helped me get through some rough times. But everyone always focused on the death part, whereas I always wanted to focus on the life part. I always wanted people to learn what I learned from him and his fight. I wanted people to realize that life is too short to just watch it go by. I wanted people to reach for their goals, dreams, and aspirations rather than just wish for them. I wanted people to...well...stop whining about the lack of coaster use by their boyfriends. Are water rings on the coffee table really that tragic?

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. He would have been 28. Yesterday was also the day the my mother-in-law was released from the hospital. She just had a round of chemotherapy, as well as a stem cell transplant. Yes, folks, she has cancer. She's still too sick and too immunosupressed to take any visitors, so I had to settle for calling her, rather than seeing her in person. I wanted to let her know that I was thinking about her, thinking about him, thinking about life. She was too weak to talk for long. Not to mention that the chemo stripped away all of the skin on the inside of her mouth and throat, leaving it raw and painful. Yet she still managed to get on the phone to tell me that she was gonna bake us a cake (as soon as she got better) so that we could celebrate the fact that we can still eat cake. Can you believe that? She looks and feels like she just got ran over by a semi-truck (twice) but she hasn't forgotten what her son, my husband, taught us most of all: Cake is yummy. Eat it any chance that you get. Eat it first so that you'll always have room for it. Enjoy it.

So yeah, I'm a widow. My husband died and that sucked. But cake has never tasted as good as it does now.

Labels: Widowness