It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about my grief journey. It’s been six years and three months since Bryan has been gone. It feels as if that were another life, another version of me. It’s been a while since I’ve just sat quietly, thinking about him. I miss him. He made my life beautiful for a short time and I’m forever grateful to him for that.
It’s been hard to slowly let go of the things that connect him to me. Some things I’ll always keep, but there are other things that take up space – physically, mentally, and emotionally. I feel it’s time to let another one go. Well, it’s actually two things I’m letting go of.
Bryan had season tickets for the Memphis Tigers Football games since about 1979. He attended with his grandfather, witnessed the epic UT game with Peyton Manning, sat in stands that had fewer fans than at a child’s t-ball game, witnessed the amazing turnaround when suddenly, Memphis football became good, then great. When you sit in the same spot for years, you get to know your seatmates almost like you do family. We only saw them for a few months out of the entire year, once a week for home games, where we would cheer, scream, sing the songs, flex our muscles for the stadium cameras, laugh at the kiss cam (Bryan and I never did get a chance to be on it), and dance to the chicken song.
After Bryan died, I kept the season tickets, taking friends and enjoying the games, and the connection to him I felt every time I went. Going to the football games helped me keep my sanity and it helped me to heal just a little bit more.
Then one year they started renovating the stadium. The seats that Bryan and I had sat in were suddenly physically gone as they ripped out a large portion of the stadium. The UofM Athletic Department allowed us old-timers to pick new seats and I choose a couple a little further down and with permanent seat backs. But the spell was broken. I was sitting with strangers who didn’t seem to be nearly as excited about being at the game as Bryan and me always had been. I didn’t go back after that last game and when the time came this year to renew the tickets, I did a thing I swore I would never do.
I didn’t renew them.
It just simply wasn’t the same without him and my heart couldn’t handle the new reality of where I was sitting. These new seats weren’t our seats. They weren’t the seats that Bryan actually sat in, where his spirit lingered. It’s like leaving your hometown and coming back years later and discovering all your favorite places have been torn down only to be replaced by big homogenized, generic storefronts.
Now, I’m facing the second large hurdle. My golf clubs. And all the golf paraphernalia Bryan left behind. Bryan was as passionate about golf as he was about the Memphis Tigers. We played at the local courses, he gave me pointers, cheered me on, and was a wonderful and patient coach. One Christmas, he gave me my first golf bag that (of course) had a Memphis Tigers theme. We would ride the golf cart, take our hot dog break halfway through the course, and then hit the course again for the back nine.
Then suddenly my golf partner was gone and the golf clubs were gently placed in a corner. I got them out a couple of times to go swing at Putt-Putt, but I faced the same dilemma. It wasn’t the same. The spell had been broken.
I’ve been telling myself that I’m going to take proper golfing lessons, but in reality, I don’t want to go without him. And none of my friends golf at that level so I’m looking at finding a new loving home for my golf clubs, the gazillion golf balls, and the rest of the golf stuff that will never get used.
Six years later, I’m still grieving. I guess it’s something that never quite goes away, but each day I get a little better. I still would like to think he checks in on me from time to time to make sure I’m doing okay. I wish I had some sage advice to pass on at this stage of being a widow, but to be honest, I don’t really have much tonight. Death is ugly, raw, and permanent. And not a single one of us makes it out of this place alive. All we can do is honor the memory of the ones who have left before us and make the world a better place for the ones that are left behind. ❤️
#UntilItsDone
My Mosaic Life 
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