“I’m still working on it,” I admitted. “I understand why I need to do it, but sometimes it feels like the pain of moving on will be just as bad as the day I learned he died.”
“Grief is a complex emotion. Like we discussed before, it’s usually never a linear process for people. What matters is that you’re taking the time to work through the emotions as they come. You’re going to have highs and lows, and it’s all about riding the waves of them as they come.”
I nodded my head, glancing at my clasped hands resting on top of my hat. “See, I get that. But I barely survived losing him. That pain… It’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to have to face it again.”
“You know you don’t have to do it alone, right?” Melissa’s words were kind, but there was a gently teasing lilt to her smile when I looked up at her.
“No, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who can work through these feelings. They’re mine, after all.” I huffed out an amused sound, deciding to tease her right back.
She gave a delicate chuckle but nodded her head. “You got methere. You have to do the work, but you don’t need to be alone when you do it. You have what sounded like a wonderful support system on the farm with your family, your employees, and your new partner.”
Partner.
Jackson felt like so much more than that, but the word still made something warm blossom inside me. “I know that. It’s hard for me to lean on some of them though. There’s a part of me that’s guilty I’ve let this go on for three years instead of getting help right away. My family and friends encouraged me to, but…”
“You weren’t ready.”
Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I nodded as I fought back against the emotion surging up my throat. “I don’t know I ever would have been if I hadn’t met Jackson. He’s made life feel livable again, and the future doesn’t feel like this place I’ll have to endure. It’s somewhere I want to go if he’ll be there with me.”
Melissa tilted her head, that signature smile on her lips. “That’s sweet. Was Jackson the one who convinced you to seek help for your grief?”
“Sort of,” I hedged. “He requested I do it after we’d had an argument over Raleigh.”
“Raleigh? Your late husband?”
“Yeah…” Rubbing at the back of my head, I sighed. “Maybe argument isn’t the right word? Disagreement?”
“I would say those are essentially the same thing,” Melissa said gently, but she quickly followed it up with, “Do you mind me asking what it was about Raleigh you two fought over?”
I shifted a little uncomfortably in my seat. “I, uh… had a dream about Raleigh when Jackson was in bed with me.”
“Oh. What kind of dream was it?”
“Raleigh… He told me I needed to let go of him.” I ran a hand over my jaw as I tried to work through the lingering sensations that still plagued me from that night. “Jackson had been pushing me to stay over, but I hadn’t felt comfortable because it was the bed Raleigh and I shared. But he really wanted it, so I let him, and that night I dreamed of Raleigh. I kind of freaked out on Jackson when I woke up after. It’d all just felt so real, though. I can still remember every detail of it like I’d really been there with him.”
Melissa made a humming sound, and when I glanced at her, she was jotting something down on her notepad. She gave me a reassuring smile when she looked up. “Can we take a moment to talk about why letting Jackson sleep in your bed felt so uncomfortable?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “I mean, wouldn’t it be uncomfortable for anyone to sleep in a bed where their boyfriend’s late husband slept?”
“Maybe.” Melissa bobbed her head. “But that wasn’t the problem for Jackson, was it?”
“No,” I conceded, glancing back down at my hands.
“So, what was it about the bed that made you so reluctant to let Jackson in it?”
It took me a moment to answer as I let myself really consider the question. “It belonged to Raleigh and me. It was one of the first things we bought when we got married, so no one other than he and I had ever slept on that mattress. Letting Jackson in it was, in a way, a form of letting Raleigh go. Because it wasn’tourbed anymore. It was my bed.”
“What an insightful response.” Melissa’s eyes somehow softened further around the corners as she looked at me. “I wonder if maybe for Jackson, it wasn’t just about staying over itself that was the issue, but rather what being allowed to share that space with you meant.”
Our session lasted another twenty minutes after that, and I couldn’t deny feeling a little lighter standing up from the chair than I did when I first walked in. Just as I was about to leave Melissa’s office, she placed a hand on my arm to stop me.
“I wanted to ask you something before you left,” she started, and I nodded to let her know to continue. “You mentioned that you felt the dream you had of Raleigh that night was more real than any other one you’d had before. Does that mean you’d dreamed of him before then?”
I nodded again.
“How do you feel about the dreams?”
Glancing down at the ground, I wondered if I should admit the truth before deciding there was no point in keeping it from her. She was my therapist, after all. “They were really hard for me. I developed insomnia trying to avoid dreaming of him because all it did was make me miss him more and made the pain of losing him feel so close to the surface.”
