a year of lasts

I heard someone on a podcast say that an ice breaker question she likes to ask when meeting people is, “if you could relive any year of your life, which would you choose?” and it made me think about what my own answer to that question would be.

Immediately, I knew it would be the last year of Pete’s life. But not because it was the last year; that part seems either a strange coincidence or fate - it was, simply, our best year together. It was the best year of my life.

I couldn’t have known that would be our last year together. But it is so, so comforting knowing that even if I’d had known, little would have changed. 

In January of 2021, I saw a Facebook post that one of my internet friends had lost her husband very suddenly. She had a 4 year old daughter at the time. We’d never met, but her photos and updates about her family were a staple in my newsfeed, and reading those words gutted me. I’d never experienced that level of gut-wrenching sympathy for a technical stranger before. The idea of Pete just being gone overnight, the thought of having to tell Axl that his dad was never coming back… I played through what it might be like to be in her shoes and it cracked something in me. I became absolutely terrified that my family would be broken overnight like that.

I recently found journal entries of mine from that month, and they are filled with anxieties about death and loss. I was so happy with the life Pete and I had built together. I loved my job, my family, myself (for the first time in 32 years), and I was doing a great job carving out time for all my art and music and writing. It felt so much like that was it, like I’d finally crossed all the boxes I was “supposed” to in life. I’d leveled up. For the first time, my brain wasn’t spending all its energy telling me I should probably just die. Every part of me wanted to live. And I loved that feeling. The thought of it being taken from me royally f*cked me up.

I thought about everything I would regret if he or I died today. I wondered if he knew how much I loved him. I wondered why despite the fact I’m so full of flowery prose about how much he has changed my life and how much his love is the best thing that ever happened to me, I’d never really told him. I thought about how much we had left to do together in this life, how much I wanted to accomplish with him. I dug down and reconnected with the 20-year-old me who laid eyes on him and never wanted to be apart from him ever again. I remembered the absolute desperation I had to love him. I didn’t even care if he loved me, not for a long time. I was just that transfixed by him. And here I was, over a decade later, married to him, owning a home and a car with him, raising his child. I’d gotten everything I ever wanted in life and I was finally acknowledging that and letting it sink in.

While simultaneously spending every second imaging what it would be like if he dropped dead.

The only thing that snapped me out of my endless anxiety that winter was telling myself over and over that I’d never be able to control something like that, that the only way to take control of the situation was to make sure I was living every day to its fullest, living every moment like it could be our last. So I started to give that a shot.

I began by buying Pete an early Valentine’s Day card, and filling every square inch of it with a love letter to him. I told him how much he changed my life; that he had given me a love I never, ever thought I’d have. I embarrassingly admitted that I sometimes would randomly burst into tears in the middle of the day if I thought too much about how much I loved him. I told him what an exceptional husband and father he was. I told him I was proud to be his wife. I told him I would choose him again and again and again, every single time.

I couldn’t be around when he read it, so when I gave it to him I told him to read it in private because it was cheesy. I found it delicately tucked away with his keepsakes after he died. We never talked about it, because that just wasn’t us, but from then on out, our hugs were tighter and our “i love yous” more liberal. Things just took on a different energy. A good one. We were taking care of each other and reconnecting and falling back in love with each other.

And then a few weeks later in February, I started feeling really off. My heart was always racing. I was used to anxiety, but this was something else. It went on for weeks, like an endless panic attack that ebbed and flowed, that couldn’t be stopped with deep breathing or hot baths or sleep. I’d never experienced anything like it, so I began to take note of my symptoms so I would have something to refer to when I made a doctor’s appointment. As I was trying to find the words to describe the feeling I was having, I settled on It feels like my heart is pumping extra blood.

Oh.

Wait.

I immediately flew up the stairs to pee on a pregnancy test. My racing heart was now hammering against my chest. No way, I thought. 

No, seriously. No way.

2 pink lines. Positive.

If I’d thought what I was experiencing before was panic, this was a whole level beyond that. This was oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!!!!!

We’d always planned on having 2 kids, but I always said I refused to “try” for my second. “Trying” for Axl was stressful and anxiety-ridden and I hated tracking everything and peeing on ovulation strips and the entire rigamarole. I said if I was going to get pregnant a second time, it had to just happen when and if it was going to happen. And Axl was nearly 4. I figured if it hadn’t happened by now, it probably wasn’t meant to happen at all. I’d actually begun warming up to the idea of being one-and-done and was contemplating talking to Pete about potentially making that permanent.

And here I was, on a snowy February afternoon, discovering I was pregnant. I know it sounds dumb, because I know how babies are made, but I was just completely shocked. Having a baby was nowhere on my radar. I was in such a sweet spot with life and motherhood and marriage. Things were so calm and peaceful and predictable and I was really loving that. But now I was pregnant, and I had no idea that in less than a year Pete would be dead.

Though I did get used to the idea of being a mom of two and was excited for Ford’s arrival, I was pretty miserable about being pregnant. I thought my second time through it would be all about the cherishing of every moment. But I felt sick, fat, and gross for most of it. And because my very first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage, I knew all too well about every statistic and all the odds, and growing something in my body I knew could quite easily die in there or die on his way out was not good for my already-morbid thoughts and anxieties.

Despite that, we had a really great year. Axl started preschool. We threw him a 4th birthday party, and so many people we love came. Friends and family from multiple chapters of life and locations. My mom started visiting regularly that summer; she helped us prep the nursery and built a strong bond with Axl. We bought a new car, after Pete did weeks of research on the best/safest/most practical vehicle. I had Baby Ford in October, and my mom and grandparents came to town to help. Pete and I had the most wonderful labor experience (never knew why anyone would ever say that), which I joked was our first date in years, and it would end up being our last. But it was memorable and special. He cared for us tirelessly after I had the baby; stocking the snacks next to the chair where I nursed all night, keeping water bottles full and cold for me on all 3 floors of our house, washing and prepping the bottles for me every night. Running to Target for newborn hats, Home Depot for a mini fridge to stash the bottles overnight (which he washed and prepped every single night without fail for me). We spent Thanksgiving just the 4 of us, getting to watch the parade together while Pete cooked all our favorite foods. We stayed in our jammies all day. Christmas was so special to me that someday I’ll write a whole post about it, and it sounds crazy but I remember feeling something deep down in my bones that I couldn’t pinpoint. I took extra photos and videos (though none of us all together…). I savored every last second. We stretched gift opening for hours. We snuggled our boys. I didn’t know it would be our last, but it was so good that I worried something was coming. I was afraid there was a reason I was being given this picture-perfect end cap to my year.

As it turns out, there was.

16 days later, Pete would die.

His last week alive, we couldn’t find someone to pick Axl up from his two days of preschool. Since we only had one car, Pete had to stay home from work on those days. He wasn’t normally home during the week, but I got 2 extra days with him. That Friday, there was a huge snowstorm and he couldn’t go to work then either. He got to use his snowblower, shovel the driveway, and play outside in the snow with Axl. 3 of his very favorite things. That weekend, he went into work both days to make up for the previous week, but he also made a list and shopped for all our groceries in there somewhere too. And Monday morning I spoke to him for the last time without realizing it, and just after that I never saw him alive again. We’d only just started 2022. It was a harsh ending to the best year of my life, and an appropriate start to what would soon become my worst.

But I know it’s just a bad year, not a bad life. And the irony of the absolute best year of my life being followed by the worst isn’t lost on me. The entwining of lightness and dark, of ying and yang, has never been more prevalent in my life. It’s almost its own religion to me now; a wave that I have accepted I’ll be riding the rest of my life. A wave we all will. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d spent the years before Pete died building a metaphorical ship. I was becoming a whole person, I was healing old wounds, I was growing into myself. I’d built quite a reliable shelter. I was protecting myself. I think that’s why I am able to weather this storm of grief and loss and heartache. The best any of us can do is make sure we’re always working on our metaphorical ships; keep them strong, keep up with repairs, take care of our shelters. When the waves come, as they will, let them rock you and not wreck you.

Sometimes it feels like this is all just the price I paid for the happily ever after. Not in a pessimistic way; I don’t believe all good comes crashing down, or that happiness is unattainable, or that I will always lose things I love. This has all taught me that things don't happen to us. They happen for us. Everything in my last year with Pete taught me that. I can either see it as something gargantuan that was taken from me, or I can see it as a priceless experience that was given to me, the gift of one last special year on earth. I can only hope Pete died feeling the same way: loved. Fulfilled. Happy.