We Have Opened Pandora's Box
Below: Same picture, color-adjusted with paint.net:
As I slowly crawled through my work e-mail archive from 2005-2006, I realized it was a snapshot of my life back then. Theresa was alive and well, working at the Abbey B. Lane mental hospital as a Licensed Practical Nurse.
There was all the emails. The photos I had on CD-ROM. I thought they were lost forever. Why would I burn the email to a disc? And then keep it for 14 years? I think it was me transitioning from an old laptop, to a new one.
Somehow between many apartment moves the CD-ROMs came with me. I dumped them in an old Sobeys bag and there they sat, for years, untouched.
But a problem surfaced. It sharpened my memory of Theresa when she was alive back then. The painful realization that she is dead, came rearing back every day. I had to stop obsessing over these old work emails. It was so easy to dip back into them and waste time re-reading meaningless messages from co-workers from 14 years ago.
It's insanity. And then with the COVID-19 Pandemic unleashed upon the world, you get news organizations like CNN putting on the newly widowed on TV, who are visibly upset and crying.Who does not cry about that??
As I saw the ICU floors and heard the beeps and sounds of the ventilator machines, I knew those very well. Theresa was in the ICU for about 8-9 times before she past away - due to repeated pneumonia.
I don't want to think about my last moments with her. These terrible scenes, stored in my memory, are terrible to relive about. I distract myself with games and the rare twitch stream, but those days are few and far between. I have to be in a good head space to do that.
And now stuck, endlessly trying to resolve this. I wont' go back into those e-mails for a long time now. Those 2006 pictures are safe in my cloud now. I made a promise to myself not to look at them until this pandemic is over.
At 6 months I was almost set to re-enter the dating scene. Now, it's a cluster fuck due to COVID-19 and personal safety. I'll likely make an account later this month, but for what point? I still work out 6 days a week, mostly on my Airdyne bicycle. But for what? I still have my beloved cat Kitty and my mother who lives in another province 1400 km away.
I gave up counting how many times I prayed God to kill me dead. But it was a selfish request. I was ashamed I asked for it, but then again, not. Fantasies of people busting through my apartment door like a S.W.A.T. team, with flash grenades, they blast through my bedroom door and one yells" Yes. He is the one. Take him" and they blast me to pieces with their automatic rifles.
I received a small bonus at work. My first thought was "I would give everything I owned, every cent, my clothes, even my life" to bring her back. But it cannot be.
And so, I sit, thinking and remembering about her and how much I miss her dearly.
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