Head in the Clouds

I'm pretty good at keeping my head in the clouds. That may come as a surprise to readers who don't know me personally or those of you who do not see me often. The stuff on this blog is very personal and in general I don't actually talk about it....and in general you would not know what goes through my head most of the time. Unless you read about it here.

I can be smiling from ear to ear on the outside and on the inside feel myself breaking into little bitty tiny pieces. Honestly, you can't trust my smile. Even after a year.

It's not like I am trying to be deceptive, or be something I am not. I just kind of go with the flow. I GO and I DO because the other alternative is to curl up on the floor and take no responsibility for myself or my children. That's not an option for me. You may not be able to assess my true emotions or gauge how I am doing- truthfully- but you can know that I am doing my best and trying to just go. go. do. do. do. do. Not to be deceptive or for any other reason than sometimes in life you just have to go on, in hopes that some day everything will be right again.

So back to my original statement that I am good at keeping my head in the clouds. I said that because I just got back from a week away in which I kept busy and had fun and basically went through the motions of living. Then I came back to my house, which after a week away is a whole project in itself....the laundry needs to be done, everything unpacked, get groceries, the grass needs to be cut, the bills taken care of, on and on. I have a list a mile long of things I am supposed to catch up on. Not to mention I have two kids that need me. But even then, all day today until 2 o'clock I was so busy that I would still consider my head in the clouds.

Then I left the kids with their babysitter and I did an errand that brought me back to this earth. The constant chatter in my head was stopped and there was silence and deep sadness filled every space in me again.

A week and a half ago I sent paperwork to the police department requesting a copy of the case against the owner of the company where the accident took place that killed my husband. Basically the police wanted this woman brought up on charges for obstruction of justice. According to the passenger of the truck that turned in front of Joe, soon after Joe died in the road, the company owner (and passenger's boss) told him and the driver to lie to police about what happened that night. The passenger came forward to the police the next day because he was so sick the night before about originally lying in his statements of what happened. The police had him call his boss and they recorded the phone conversation. In the conversation the passenger said that he received a call from the police asking that he come down for a second interview and that he was wondering if everything was the same as before. She told him that "everything is the same and everyone is to stick to the original story". There are a lot of details that I just basically don't have the heart to go into here, not because they are private but honestly because I just have a hard time with this whole topic. It leaves me feeling so defeated and disgusted and angry because-

The man that I loved died on the pavement in a horrific accident and this undescribably sad event was surrounded not by sorrow and thoughts of the tragedy that occurred, but by people who were thinking about themselves and basically about money. Several people at the scene heard the owner talk about the financial cost of what happened. How can his be?

As the life of this man that I adored slipped away, I was leaving him a message on the answering machine at home, telling him I was running late but I'd be there soon. His children were on a boat ride 3 hours away. Our life was intact. But he was dying. Without us. You may never ponder what it might be like to have a loved one die suddenly, or how that might make you feel, but I can tell you that it is a human reaction to have the people around him respecting the life which is being taken. Because at this sacred moment- when you cannot be there- you desperately want the people who are there to recognize what is happening....to care....to be human. Some people there did care. I know that. Most people there were human and had trouble sleeping for weeks about what they saw. And some people thought about themselves. And how they could get out of trouble. It makes my heart ache at the deepest levels that my husband died under those circumstances.

I took the report from the police station and sat in the parking lot and read it. I read the whole thing and then quickly put it on the seat beside me and put the truck in reverse. Then somethings stopped me, my hand stopped and my head went down and there was silence for a few seconds.....and then I burst into tears. I could not believe what I had just read. The crass nature of that woman makes my skin crawl. How could this person be so blatantly disrespectful to the life of my husband? So blatantly disrespectful to the people who love him? I don't understand.

My husband was a good man. He deserves better.