This is a Really Real Widow Post.

I’ve been dealing with a near constant flare of my fibromyalgia.  Some days my hips are so sore that sitting up becomes too painful.  The anti-inflammatory I’m prescribed isn’t strong enough to handle the pain on days like that and it becomes a matter of finding comfortable ways to exist.  Sometimes that means getting out and moving, sometimes that’s too painful, as well, and sometimes that isn’t possible due to other reasons. and This past week I was fighting a cold so bad that exercise and even walking wasn’t really an option.

So I went to bed at 8 in the evening to lay down, and turned on the TV, a rarity for me.

I feel defeated on days like that.  Like I’m not strong enough to push through, when I can’t even sit upright any longer because I just hurt too much.  When it’s too hard to hide the pain.

Turning on the TV I flipped through Netflix and Amazon quickly, not seeing anything, because I don’t really watch TV.  So I headed to the TED talks channel.

Some people binge watch Netflix.  I binge TED talks.

For some reason this time when the familiar sound of the opening sequence started up I instantly remembered the days just after Parker passed away.

The intense emotions returned.

I felt that hole in the pit of my being.

After she died, for hours and days and weeks when I couldn’t sleep I laid there and watched TED talks on so many subjects.

Things that didn’t even matter to me, but just the sound of a voice in the background, not being alone in the room for the 20 minutes they were talking.  The continued drone of a monologue.

And then a pause, followed by the soothing sound of the opening sequence, and another one would start.

Science and business and mathematics and psychology.

Talks about grief and dying and living.

Hours upon hours of people talking about things they were passionate about.

Hours that the sound of their voices made me a little less alone.

Hours that I couldn’t retain a single thing I heard because my brain was too busy coming to terms with the fact that I was laying in the same bed Parker had died in days, weeks, a month before.

I’ve had times where I’ve watched TED talks since then and it hasn’t bothered me.  Maybe it was because I was already in pain, albeit physical, maybe because I felt defeated by it, maybe I just needed a trip down that particular memory lane.  For whatever reason, this particular viewing, I once again didn’t retain much of that first talk.

I was too busy remembering what it was like to have my world shatter.

Grief moments don’t happen as often anymore.  And when they do, mostly, I recover quickly and go about my day, but sometimes I can still be transported back in time.

I still miss her.