6 Months Without Cassidy
6 months…half a year. I genuinely don't understand how that is possible.
So much has happened in the last six months, and somehow I also feel like absolutely nothing has happened. I've gone back to work, gone out with friends, played pickleball, celebrated birthdays, made new memories…I've done things I'm proud of and have had a few really good days.
Life has happened…and yet, somewhere underneath all of it, I still feel like I'm standing in the same place I was 6 months ago, trying to understand how the world can possibly keep moving without Cassidy in it.
That's the strangest part of grief lately. The world just...keeps going. Morning comes whether I want it to or not, people go to work, summer came, plans get made, concerts happen, people complain about their spouses, vacations get booked, dogs need to be fed, laundry still needs to be done…the list truly goes on and on.
The calendar keeps flipping pages like nothing happened, but something DID happen. My entire life changed and 6 months later, I think the thing I am struggling with the most is just how fucking lonely it is.
I've talked about loneliness before, but I don't think I understood yet just how deep it could go. I've always been good at being alone. I actually like being alone. I like doing my own thing. Cassidy and I never needed to be attached at the hip… We had our own friends, our own interests, our own plans. I could spend an entire day by myself and be completely content.
But this isn't being alone…this is being without him and those are two completely different things.
I go to bed alone, wake up alone. I'm in our house alone. There is no one on the other side of the bed, no one walking into the room while I'm getting ready, no one sitting on the couch while I wander around doing whatever random thing I've decided needs to be done at 10 p.m.
There's no one to say goodnight to, no one to say good morning to and there is something about those two moments…the very beginning and very end of the day, that makes the absence feel especially cruel. Because no matter how full I make the hours in between, I still come home to a life that is missing him.
I can have an incredible night with friends. I can laugh and genuinely mean it. I can feel happy, not fake happy, but actually happy and then I drive home, I unlock the door, and he's still not there.
Sometimes I think that's one of the hardest things for people to understand about grief. Happiness and devastation aren't opposites anymore. They coexist. I can be having a wonderful time and still wish Cassidy were there. I can laugh and miss him. I can feel excited about something happening in my life and simultaneously feel heartbroken that I can't tell him about it. I can be surrounded by people I love and still feel unbelievably lonely.
Both things can be true. I've spent 6 months learning how many things can be true at the same time.
I’m doing okay but I’m not okay.
I’m continuing to building a life but I desperately want my old one back.
I’m grateful for what I have but I’m furious about what I lost.
I’m proud of myself but I’m exhausted from having to be proud of myself.
I’m moving forward and some days I have absolutely no idea how.
Maybe that's what 6 months feels like. It's long enough for the shock to wear off just enough that the permanence starts becoming clearer. Cassidy isn't on a trip…He's not in Houston, not in the hospital, not at an appointment.
He's not coming home and I hate writing that.
There are still moments when my brain refuses to understand it. Moments when I walk through our house and can almost feel the version of our life that existed here before. I can picture him on the couch, I know where he'd be standing in the kitchen, I know what side of the bed he'd be on, I know exactly what I'd tell him about my day.
Our life still exists everywhere around me, he's just not physically in it anymore and I don't know how you're supposed to make sense of that. People talk about "moving forward" after someone dies, and I still don't know what that means. Forward to where? I didn't choose a new direction, I didn't decide I wanted a different life. The road I was on just ended, and somehow I'm supposed to build another one from where it stopped.
So that's what I'm trying to do.Some days I'm better at it than others. I'm trying to say yes to things, I'm trying to let people love me. I'm trying to laugh without immediately feeling guilty about it. I'm trying to make plans further than a week in advance. I'm trying to figure out who I am when I'm not someone's wife and not someone's caregiver.
I'm trying to build a life that I actually want to be in, even though it isn't the life I wanted, and maybe that's the work right now. Not moving on, not getting over it, not finding some beautiful meaning in losing my husband at 36, because I still think that fucking sucks and I would give back every profound lesson grief has taught me if I could have him here instead. Just learning how to live alongside the fact that he isn't.
6 months ago, I held Cassidy as he left this world. 6 months later, I'm still here. There are days when that feels like an accomplishment in itself.
I don't know what the next 6 months will look like. I don't know who I'll be when a year comes around. I don't know if this loneliness ever becomes something different or if I just become better at carrying it.
I know I will keep living, for him.
I know I will keep laughing, for him.
I know I will keep finding pieces of myself again, for him.
And I know that every version of the life I build from here will have Cassidy woven into it.
Because 6 months later, there is one thing that hasn't become quieter or smaller or easier to carry.
I miss him, I miss my husband, my best friend, the person who made being alone feel like a choice because I knew I never really was. And more than anything, I miss going to bed knowing that when I woke up, he would still be there.
6 months. So much has happened yet nothing has happened. The world keeps moving and somehow, I'm learning how to move with it.
I just really fucking wish he was moving with me.
