Happy Endings

A year or more ago...honestly I don't know as time as no real measure now, my sister told me to write my story. I told her it doesn't have an ending yet.

At that point I was 38 years into a life that had been touched by juvenile chronic illness, baby death, parent death, special needs parenting, and trauma. 

I thought what final chapter am I looking for here? Little did I know the most surprising turn of events would happen shortly later and usurp any chance at a happy ending I would ever be able to have. Yep, the police pounding on my door on that beautiful night last spring nailed the coffin shut on a pretty final chapter. 

I felt my heart shivering and head longing to understand how my husband's taking his own life could not be the death of all of us left without him. I often say my husband died and went to heaven and he left me alive in hell. I no longer believe that to be true...most hours. I see life as tragic journey with multiple happy endings along the way.

In the last almost 9 months I have thought a lot about a happy ending. People say it isn't the beginning or the end the counts but the dash between the dates of our life. I don't agree. The beginning counts, the end counts. It all matters. The happy endings throughout the middle are what keep hope afloat however.

I don't know a lot about a lot at the moment. I am in survival mode and likely always will be to some degree.  But happy endings along the way have propelled me to this point and have been instrumental in helping my living children and I not sink. Some of those happy things are more like sentences to the book of life: Teddy meeting his buddy Mickey Mouse or getting a perfectly timed text from a friend. Seeing Henry play a perfect baseball game. Hearing Amelie sing like an angel from the backseat of the van. Some feel more like paragraphs like the alarm going off Dustin's phone in the moments I need him the most or seeing a rainbow at the exact time and date of the month anniversary of his death. Then there are the chapters, like finding love again in the least expected of places. These are all happy endings. Big and small. They are important and essential in human survival on this crummy earth. 

Nope, I no longer expect some grand final happy ending, at least not on this side of eternity.
Those whom I love died. 

Those whom I love will die. 

I will die. 

All of it is awful. 

Death is awful always. 

My deeper understanding of life's fragility increased the happy endings I experience and by default has made more joy in the journey.

The end...for now.