Once in my early twenties, I saw a photo set on the internet of a bride in a wedding dress. At first glance it was a typical, happy bride on her wedding day. But there was no groom. And she held a triangularly-folded flag. Her husband-to-be had died in active duty and this brave woman was honoring him by holding his burial flag and wearing the dress he never got to marry her in.

I remember feeling deeply moved. This was so heartbreaking and powerful. It was beautiful and it made me uncomfortable. It drew me in and pushed me away. Having never lost someone close to me, I didn’t understand grief and my natural instinct was studying her in curiosity and then averting my gaze, as if somehow coming too close to her grief would curse me.

In spite of my mixed admiration and awkwardness, this woman stood out as a hero to me. While nothing about her story resonated with me personally at the time, somehow she stayed with me. I wondered who she was and how she could go on. I couldn’t fathom how she survived each day and what her life might look like now.

Little did I know, almost a decade later I would fall completely and madly in love. And then, not long before our wedding day, I would follow in this woman’s footsteps, navigating the trail she blazed. I would survive the unthinkable. My life, my future, my deepest connection – my very identity and essence of self – forever and drastically changed in an instant.

This woman, whose name I don’t know and whose pictures I can’t find again, goes before me. Her tragedy wasn’t contagious as part of me had feared. No one has that kind of power. Rather, she is my grief ancestor. A warrior goddess I draw strength from. I look to her and many like her.

I too, wore my wedding dress. I stood in a mountain meadow that Caleb and I loved and considered for our wedding location. I wore the flower crown I chose because Caleb said I looked “angelic” with flowers in my hair. I softly ran my fingers over the lace Caleb would have loved on me but never got to see. I held his picture. I courageously took photos while drowning in a tidal wave of conflicting emotions – anguish, sadness, disbelief, love, pride, resolve, even happiness.

At Caleb’s funeral, I stood before the audience that should have been sitting in front of our wedding altar – not a podium and an urn. I wrote and shared stories that highlighted what made Caleb the incredible man he was: his character, how he healed me and the difference he made in the world. I altered my wedding vows and solemnly promised myself to Caleb just as I would have done under different circumstances. This is what I said:

“Caleb – I never got a chance to publicly declare my wedding vows to you. But today I will declare these vows to you. Caleb, I vow to keep my love for you alive every single day. I vow to spread your story throughout the earth wherever I go. I vow to be an extension of your life and to live for both of us – to do the things that you never got to do, to finish the work you began, to love the people you loved and to care for them, to embody your values. Caleb, I vow to honor you by rebuilding my life. I vow that wherever I go, people will know your name and they will know how much you radically changed my life. Caleb, I vow to be your legacy.”

Widowhood is a heart-stabbing, gut-wrenching pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone. We are coming up on one year since Caleb’s passing. My sweet, strong, protective, handsome Caleb. The love of my life.

It is because of Caleb that Sacred Unraveling even exists. He is the one who encouraged me that my writing was worth reading.

Caleb saved my life. When we met, I was just coming out of a messy divorce. I thought I was unlovable and I truly wanted to die. Caleb showed me what true love is, long before it was romantic. One particularly dark day when the urges to end my life were almost overwhelming, Caleb took me for a walk along the boardwalk at the downtown waterfront where he told me stories and spoon fed me chocolate ice cream. He pointed out boats and the sparkling waves and complained about the noisy seagulls. Boy, he hated those seagulls. Caleb kept me alive that day.

When Caleb expressed interest in a romantic relationship, I was terrified. All my walls were still up and I was afraid of getting hurt again. He said he wanted to “be a team, and be that one person for each other who you always know has your back.” Risking my heart to love again was worth it one thousand times over. Caleb fiercely protected my heart and gently healed it, and he definitely always had my back. Loving someone with PTSD is challenging, because every day you have to contend with trauma you didn’t cause. It can be complicated and messy and confusing and painful. Caleb was patient through my insecurities and my meltdowns and my lashing out as a lifetime of trauma bubbled to the surface and together we wrestled it to the ground, piece by piece. Finally I was safe enough to begin examining the broken parts of me and building something new with them. Caleb would hold me for hours, stroking my face and hair as I cried and asked him over and over again if he would always love me and never leave me. Caleb promised to love me for the rest of my life. I am still alive, and I still have his love.

I believe Caleb is alive too. His body isn’t anymore, but he is. I feel him. He has visited me multiple times through intensely powerful mystical encounters that the church stubbornly refuses to acknowledge can happen sometimes. When Caleb walked the earth with me, strangers would stop us somewhat regularly to tell us they could feel our love radiating from across the street, or that the sight of us brought them joy, or that they saw a kind of deep happiness in us that was rare. “Hold onto that forever”, they said. I always suspected something was different about us. There was a magic between us that seemed foreign to most averagely happy couples. I believe his visits after death prove that even more. We belong to each other. We are eternally one.

At Caleb’s funeral, I altered our wedding vows that I would have declared to him just a few months later at a little meadow in the mountains, surrounded by our family and closest friends. But that day, standing on a stage for a reason I never imagined, I vowed to keep my love alive for him every day, to honor him and share his story. I vowed that wherever I go, people will know his name. I vowed to carry on his work, love the people he loved, and be his legacy.

I’ll be sharing bits of Caleb’s story here at Sacred Unraveling. Loving Caleb was the epitome of finding sacredness. Being loved by Caleb was a beautiful unraveling of pain and knitting it into something holy. Our union might not mirror what the church would have prescribed for us, but it is where I found divinity.

The New Year isn’t always a happy time.

I don’t want to leave behind the last year that I held you in. I don’t want to live in a year that you never got to. I don’t want a New Year’s Eve without my first New Year’s kiss. A year without any of you in it seems so bleak. It should be a ridiculous impossibility.

I hate the marching of time, pushing me forward, forward, never letting me go back. Taking me further and further from the last moment I saw your face. I despise how linear and one-dimensional it is, trapping me as an exile. Time, that ruthless dictator, dragging me into unfamiliar territory.

My only comfort is feeling your presence and knowing we are connected by a bond stronger than death. Soulmates, you told me – not Bodymates or Earthmates or 2021mates. We are one across all the dimensions and planes of existence.

I can embrace the future knowing that you live through me, you are with me, we are still in love. I can navigate beyond anywhere I have been before, knowing I now have a spirit guardian fiercely protecting me as you always have. Your love reverberates across every atom in the universe, always reaching me.

That incessant, tyrannical time train that takes me further from our last embrace, will also eventually take me to you once again.

Grieving around the holidays can be especially tough. There are so many little (and big) reminders that your person is not here. However you choose to make it through this holiday season, do what works for YOU, no one else. Don’t force yourself to celebrate in a way that you think others expect from you. Celebrate (or don’t) in ways that help you survive and stay as healthy as possible this holiday season.

If you choose to celebrate and are looking for ways to honor your person, here are a few ideas below. (But don’t pressure yourself to plan anything specific to honor them if its too hard. Your person would want you to get through this season however is best for you. They don’t doubt your love for them, so you have nothing to prove.)

• Tell stories about your person around the holiday table
• Hang an ornament or light a candle in their honor
• Serve your person’s favorite food
• Set up a shrine – a framed photo and candle perhaps, and if it feels right, you can set little gifts for them there
• Engage family members by each bringing a favorite photo or memory, or perhaps items for a memorabilia table
• Incorporate gifts your person has given you in the past – wear the sweater they gifted you, use the plates you shared, etc
• Plan out time to watch their favorite movie or read from a book they enjoyed, play their favorite game
• Take a walk alone to get away from the hustle bustle and spend some time thinking of them or talking to them

For me, I’m putting up a Christmas Tree this year, because Caleb and I always wanted to have one, and never did, the few Christmases we had together. I gave away the turkey we were supposed to eat to a family who will be feeding themselves and their twelve foster dogs with it. Caleb LOVED dogs and would be so happy to help out in this way. I’ll probably be spending time with his family at some point over this holiday season; continuing to be part of Caleb’s family is a way that I honor him and continue to live out the commitment he and I made to each other. Maybe I’ll try to make Caleb’s famous mashed potatoes with his secret ingredient – or maybe I’ll save that for another year if I’m not feeling up for it.

Finding ways to honor your person can be as unique as they were. There is no right or wrong way, as long as you don’t pressure or guilt yourself to do something that you aren’t ready for or just doesn’t feel right. Give yourself grace and patience this holiday season!

Let’s talk secondary losses.

Often in the wake of great loss and the overwhelming grief that follows, we experience waves of “secondary” losses.

I use the term secondary, because often these subsequent losses pale in comparison to the first loss that served as a catalyst, but are nonetheless still losses that must be grieved, and they add to the emotional turmoil and mental strain a mourner is already struggling through.

For example, in the aftermath of Caleb’s death, the strain of intense grief wrecked havoc on a few of my close friendships that had previously been safe harbors for me. In the chaotic storm of loss, I ran to find solace in those friendships, only to find more turbulence. Ultimately I lost one close friend of mine and Caleb’s permanently, leading to more grief, disappointment, a sense of betrayal, and now even a little bit more of the life I had previously shared with Caleb slipping out of my grasp. If given a chance to choose, I would hands down rather have lost a hundred friendships to betrayal than lose Caleb to death, but one loss seeming less than the other does not take away from it truly being a loss. Losing that friendship was infuriating and unfair and it pushed me to my brink during a time where I felt I had nothing more to give.

With my pre-existing PTSD diagnosis, the grief took an even bigger toll on my body and mind to where I could not maintain the delicately balanced mental and physical health I had struggled for years to obtain. I was tossed years backward into mental discombobulation, with a brain that was now changed and unfamiliar; the way forward was different than before and had to be learned again from ground zero. I had to grieve the loss of my hard-earned mental clarity and resulting physical health all over again, in ways I never expected to. And while I would rather have Caleb than all the health in the world, this was still an extremely challenging loss to grapple with.

The secondary losses didn’t end with me, but rippled through my community, disrupting the stability of most in my life. Someone very close to Caleb and me lost her marriage in the midst of grieving his death, as the weight of the grief cracked the already rickety support beams of her relationship. This person shared that she believed her marriage would have ended at some point anyway and the predictable loss of her marriage was far less traumatic than losing Caleb, but it was one more building block of her crumbling life thrown into disarray at a time where she felt vulnerable and at her limit.

Difficult decisions associated with a death at times put stress on extended family relationships, leading to arguments, unease and feelings of isolation.

Secondary losses are common, if not unavoidable after severe loss and grief, and being aware of that can help us know that we are not crazy, or weak or unable to “handle things well”.

When supporting a grieving loved one, being aware that their visible struggles might only be the tip of the iceberg can help us grow in empathy and patience.