Today, I shall wear purple. For Maddie.

What a beautiful girl, what an amazing love she shares with so many.

Shine on beautiful one, always. The light in your eyes will lead us through.

Xoxo forever.

Please help premature babies and babies and families in the NICU by donating to Friends of Maddie. Thank you.

I didn’t sleep so well these last few days.

My mind, it knows too much.

It keeps me subconsciously alert with what I can only describe as some abstract slideshow of the last days of my “before” life, with images flashing in and out like some weird View-Master  montage.

I’m fully asleep, but I wake up sweaty, discombobulated, thrashing and tangled in the sheets.

The night before last I woke up with my feet brushing the floor, face down on the bed. Just like Gregory was the night I came home, opened the door and saw him sprawled strangely across the couch that was just so wrong, making that weird half-snoring/half-gurgling sound. I see myself trying to wake him up while stifling the panic inside me, because I think I knew it was as horrific as it would turn out to be.

How could I not know? I’d been there so many times. Wearing the badge, being on the other side. Disconnected.

And now? Now it was our time. Connection made.

911.

What is your emergency?

I don’t know what I said, but in the movie of my mind it’s something like “Hi, I’m pretty sure I’m having a nightmare and everything will be ok so just ignore this call cause when I wake up we’ll all be just fine and we will laugh and laugh about this crazy dream.”

The ambulance, the first hospital. Hours later, the ride to the big brain hospital, where they’d fix it all.

Isn’t that what their commercials always say?

And then, the neurosurgeons and their “oh well, too bad for him” indifference. You don’t see those assholes on their billboards.

Not a nightmare.

No such luck there.

Friends, family. In, out of the room. The nurses, the beep beep beeping and hissing of machines. I still hear the rings on the ICU room curtain squeak. Back and forth, open close, open close. I hear them again every time I use my shower curtain, so don’t ask if you come over and there’s a wet towel on the floor outside of my shower and the curtain is missing.

The fact that for two and a half days in the hospital the most vivid memory I have besides my Gregory dying was the exorcist style hurling I did whenever anything besides a small sip of fizzy cola passed my lips.

I remember thinking having a dead husband would be the best diet ever.

That didn’t quite work out like I thought.

I guess something that starts like that never does, does it?

It’s also made me a nasty bitch in terms of the Grief Olympics. I overheard a friend talking about how it would have been he and his partner’s 5th year anniversary this weekend. I actually managed to stop my mouth from blurting out “Oh yea? well here’s an anniversary for ya”,  because why is my pain better or worse than his? Why is his hurt less just because his partner didn’t die but is instead alive and all and thriving? Why am I comparing in my mind instead of comforting my friend in person? Why am I ill because he isn’t spending more time hanging out with me at my lowest point?

Why am I being such a bitch about EVERYTHING within a five mile radius?

I’m like Hurricane Kim.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Is that a question anyone can answer?

Or wants to?

Today I leave for the beach.

I’m taking my brain and my memories and all of the crap that goes with them. I’m hoping the salt air will clear my head and my heart and make this, the start of the third year, the year where I will finally be able to say I’m ok.

I’m hoping it does the same for my smart mouth, but I’ve been to a lot of beaches in my 42 years and so far, no luck.

But I guess I’ll go anyway.

I’ll never lose the love or the memories. But I’m ready to find me again.

Now that I don’t have him, that crazy bitch makes me whole.

“I thought I knew what love was, what did I know? Those days are gone forever, I should just let ‘em go…”

The calendar and I are having one of those “it’s complicated” relationship moments.

I am way too excited for spring. For longer days, sunshine, boat rides.

And then I remember.

I can hardly wait to plant my garden come Good Friday and buy new hibiscus and plants for outside.

And then I remember.

I’ve begun my indoor spring cleaning ritual and I have plans for this and that and paint here and this do-da there and I’m looking at the organization calendar on my fridge to see what’s next.

And then I remember.

I’m buying outdoor stuff for my new patio and pressure washing the Kimabama, and I see an old license plate from his motorcycle.

And then I remember.

I’m going on my college spring break next week and am spending it on the Florida panhandle, one of my favorite places to be.

I remember that I am excited for the first day of spring.

And then I remember that the first day of spring is on March 20th.

3 years to the day that Gregory died.

And then I remember the hospital, the doctors, the faces of my friends and family, the pen the doctor handed me to sign his life away, and it’s like remembering a slow motion movie where you’re thinking oh, that poor helpless thing, must suck to be her.

And then I remember that it did. And it still does, at times.

And then I remember that I didn’t die. That I live.

I remember what it’s like to dip my toes in the Gulf of Mexico, smell the salt air and feel so very alive .

I remember what it’s like to feel like I’m home again, and to laugh with the old men at SandShakers and feel the brain freeze as I gulp down that first Bushwhacker of spring break.

I remember what it’s like to be happy.

And that’s a memory I’ve missed for far too long.

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