I woke up a little after 5 this morning and didn’t go back to sleep. I did go back to bed. I spent time in bed thinking of Ambrose and meditating in my way. Emptying my mind of thoughts and focusing on bodily sensation.
Now that Ambrose isn’t around, I need to be the one to take care of gear when the trip is done. He would usually be the one airing out the gear that we didn’t typically wash (the down stuff) and cleaning up the tent. I put the tent out to dry and started a load of laundry before work.
The work day was mostly taken up with email catch ups, troubleshooting, and meetings. Overall, a fairly productive day.
I had eaten my last breakfast sandwich for breakfast, so I needed to go to the grocery store after work. I decided to go ahead and get dinner from Hugo’s taco truck, if it was in town. The grocery store was way more crowded than I’ve ever seen it before, but I got in and out in good order. They were out of my standard 8 pack of croissants with egg, cheese, and sausage, so I decided to try the biscuit variety for a change of pace. They only had a 4 pack of those, so I’ll need to shop again this weekend.
Then I crossed the street and went to the truck. I wanted a burrito, but they were out, so I decided on three tacos instead. One carne asada, one chicken, and one pork, with hot sauce. I had stopped by the truck once or twice since Ambrose died, but either Hugo hadn’t recognized me or it hadn’t occurred to him to ask after my husband. This time, he chatted, asking about my weekend. I told him I went backpacking, and he asked if my husband had done with me.
I told him no. I told him Ambrose had died almost a year ago.
He looked stricken. I teared up a bit, but didn’t make a scene. He talked about how he had been thinking of Ambrose recently, because he had a friend who looked a bit like him, who had just updated his profile picture on Facebook. The conversation was awkward, but necessary. He wished for god to help me with my pain. I got my tacos and went home.
And I cried. I think it was partly the shock of it. That someone could not know. That I had to tell someone today. Maybe on top of having just gotten back from the trip to Our Lakes. I cried and I yelled and am crying still thinking about it. But it’s something that I’m going to have to do. Tell people that I’m a widow. This is my new normal. And it hurts.
I’ve started writing about my experience of his death. It feels important. It feels like something that I should do, because I want to create something that will help other people understand how I experienced it. How I could have lived through what I lived through and then lived through that not knowing what I knew before. It will make sense when I write it all down.
I also have to write up my trip. It really was a good trip. With a certain symmetry to the trips that we’d taken to that area before, when I was a baby-backpacker and he was very out of shape. I mean, I wasn’t in great shape either, but I had never been in the kind of shape he used to be in.
I did breathing today for my Move U exercises. I had plans to do more, but they went out the wayside after my crying. I needed calm and focus, not strength work. But I hope to do the strength work again tomorrow. I’ll probably restart week 6. I want to build back up to real pushups with good form. And get real dips!