Several of my “widdas“ are acknowledging significant dates this month, and others are writing about the loss of their loves. I won’t say celebrate, because who wants to celebrate a death-aversary, a cancer-versary,  or something like that? But I do know that I celebrate each of them and many more, all steel magnolias who have helped me through the last 3 years.

This past Monday was February 20th. Yea, the 20th. One more month until “THE 20th” .

3 years ago, February 20th, Gregory was alive. 28 days later, he was dead.

3 years. Who would ever know that in these almost 36 months I would emerge as a different person, a different Kim.

Not so hard about things, more laid back. Getting used to being by myself.

Closer to forgiving myself for signing the papers that pulled the plug. Telling him goodbye. Admitting to myself in the hospital room, alone at 2am while machines beeped around me that he was really already gone. He was being kept alive by Alabama Power.  There was no life in his eyes, no movement, no warmth. I realized as I was putting lotion on his feet, that I was holding the toes of a dead man. I didn’t cry. Then. I didn’t scream. Then. I just knew. Right then. I sat down on the edge of his bed, put clean socks on his lifeless feet, and knew.

And now I’ve known for almost three years. The pain will never go away. It ebbs and flows, but it’s always there.

I have an inch and a half scar right above my left kneecap. When I was 13, I fell through a plate glass window and required plastic surgery, a blood transfusion and 186 stitches in my legs and face. For years, the scar was an angry red blob. It felt strange to touch it, and though it didn’t hurt, I’d jerk my fingers away like it was hot if they got too near. I’d never let anyone touch it. As time went on, the scar faded, but it’s still there. I found that eventually I could touch it and it was just another part of my body and the reminders of what I have been through in my life. Gregory would lay his fingers across it as he draped his hand on my knee, and it tingled then, not with pain or annoyance, but with the warmth of love and contentment.

That scar will always be with me, the same as the pain of losing Gregory will be. Like the marks on my skin, each day I get more and more used to it. I don’t always think about it, but it’s always there, forever a part of who I am.

“Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far.” – The GooGoo Dolls