People keep asking me a question I know comes from a place of love:
“How are you doing?”
I never really know how to answer it.
Today, I think I found the answer.
I was cleaning the bathroom. Nothing special. Just one of those everyday things that has to get done. Music was playing from a playlist, and then Gary Allan’s “No Regrets” came on.
A song that has been on my playlist for at least ten years.
I’ve heard it before. Plenty of times.
But I had never heard it like this.
I stopped.
And I broke.
It is strange how grief works. You can get up. You can take care of the house. You can answer messages. You can laugh with the kids. You can make plans.
You can talk about tomorrow.
You can almost convince yourself that you’re doing okay.
And then a song you’ve heard a hundred times suddenly means something completely different.
It’s okay until it isn’t.
That’s probably the best answer I can give when people ask how I’m doing.
There are stretches when I am okay. Maybe even genuinely okay.
Then there are moments when the reality of Tabby being gone comes crashing back in.
No warning.
No convenient time.
Apparently, sometimes right in the middle of cleaning the bathroom.
Before Tabby’s Celebration of Life, I took off for Cook Forest.
I needed to get away for a little while. I needed the trees, the quiet, the road and some space inside my own head.
I took a photo there that means more to me now than I realized when I took it.
I was trying to make some kind of peace with everything that had happened.
Not because I was ready to say goodbye.
I don’t know that you ever really become ready for that.
I was trying to find enough peace to walk into her Celebration of Life and celebrate her.
To hear the stories.
To see the people she touched.
To remember the laughter, the adventures, the difficult days, the ridiculous side quests, the fights we fought together, and the family we built.
Twenty years of marriage.
Two incredible kids.
A whole lot of life packed into years that somehow now feel both incredibly long and nowhere near long enough.
And that’s why that song got me today.
There are things I wish had been different. There are things I wish we could have fixed. There are conversations I wish we could still have. There are places I wish we could still go.
Of course I wish we had more time.
But loving her?
Building a life with her?
Choosing her?
Having Skyler and Bella together?
Walking through all the comfortable uncomfortableness that somehow became our life?
No regrets.
Maybe grief isn’t something I am going to “get over.”
Maybe it’s something I am learning to carry.
Some days I’ll carry it pretty well.
Other days, Gary Allan will come through the speakers while I’m cleaning the bathroom and absolutely wreck me.
And maybe that’s okay too.
So, for everyone who has lovingly asked me how I’m doing:
I’m moving.
I’m trying.
I’m finding my way into whatever this next chapter is supposed to look like.
And most of the time, I’m okay.
Until I am not.
And through all of it, there is one thing I know for certain.
From the beginning of our story to the end of hers, I loved her.
No regrets.