Don't Sweat The Small Stuff

For all that I joke, for all that I am able to see the funny side of most things, for all that I am able to poke fun at myself and others, I harbour a constant deep, deep sadness. Nowadays a permanent dull ache, it occasionally rears up and hits me when I least expect it. Hard.

While looking on Facebook earlier today, I felt like I had been body slammed. A friend mentioned within her status that she is celebrating her twenty eighth wedding anniversary. A sharp bolt of envy ripped through me, and I felt an enormous sense of unfairness. I feel, no, that’s wrong, I have been cheated of what should have been.

It was all I could do to offer some sort of congratulations – in fact, I couldn’t even write words, I just put two kisses - I felt it would have been churlish not to acknowledge the event.

Significant Other’s death has affected me in all sorts of ways.

From the day he was diagnosed, I witnessed Significant Other’s rapid deterioration. I was not ‘just’ his wife, I became his carer, his nurse, his voice, his protector.

After being told my husband had only months to live - a diagnosis that came out of the blue; after living with for months (amongst everything else) a daily fear due to impending spinal cord compression, which would have paralysed him from the chest down and hastened his death; after seeing him suffer multiple pulmonary emboli due to chemotherapy and nearly dying two months after diagnosis; after seeing him going into shock in front of me - with his blood pressure so low it got nurses running; after being told the disease had spread to his brain; after having to go along with, and reason through with him, his sometimes bizarre hallucinations so as not to agitate him; after having to discuss Do Not Resuscitate orders with doctors; after holding him as he breathed his last; after somehow pulling and holding myself together for his funeral, now, with the exception of something unpleasant happening to people I care about, I am almost unshockable.

He had a very laid back attitude, and I didn’t. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” was often heard when I started stressing about things I thought were important. Now, I totally ‘get’ what he meant - it’s not worth it, it’s really not important. In the grand scheme of things, priorities really do get put into perspective. My priorities are my family and other people I care about. That’s it.

I don’t make any long term plans for anything now, nothing further than perhaps for the following week. I refuse to. I had plans covering the next twenty or more years, but they were cremated last year. For the most part, I live day-to-day. Whether that will change given time, I have no idea.

It irritates the hell out of me now when I hear friends moaning about their other halves for something trivial, and saying they wish they were on their own. I know they’re only letting off steam, and yes, like them I have been guilty of the same thing, we’ve all done it from time to time. But now I always think and have once or twice commented on the fact that they don’t appreciate just how lucky they are, and do they really think they’d be better off alone? Can they truly comprehend what they’re wishing for? If nothing else, use my situation as an example and think - be very careful what you wish for.

Although I mourn what I don’t have anymore, I am very appreciative and grateful for what I do have.

And I don’t sweat the small stuff.