The Expired Future

Grieving the life you never got to live

Today would have been my late husband’s birthday.

I didn’t need reminding. It’s not a day I will forget.

But his previous pharmacy texted me a greeting. Confusing my number as his and no longer aware that it’s been over three years since he picked up a prescription.

In grief, those are the hardest moments.

The expired future.

The things you thought you would do together. Have together. Share together. The moments you thought you would celebrate, together.

A date. An event. A calendar notification.

One more thing to grieve.

Caught in the moment. 2017. The year we took the whole family on a Greece vacation to celebrate his milestone birthday.

But the expired future doesn’t only come from losing a person.

Yesterday I was on a coaching call with a young man. Successful by every external measure. An impressive title with a reputable company. Financially secure. A beautiful home. But underneath that “American Dream” hides an unhappy 33 year old who quietly admitted he hates his job, doesn’t love the city he lives in, and recently ended things with a remarkable woman he loves deeply but felt uncertain about family and forever.

“I’ve been going through a really dark period,” he said.

I asked him why he called it dark.

He paused.

“I guess it’s grief.”

“Yes. I have been grieving.”

He is grieving.

Not a person. Not a relationship.

Himself.

Another expired future.

The man he would have been without a broken childhood. The man he would have become if he hadn’t been abused as a child.

A version of himself he will never know.

One that was taken from him.

One he was robbed of by another.

That grief has no funeral. No casserole train. No anniversary card.

But it is grief.

Not just his.

We all have those parts of ourselves.

The choices we made. The different adventures we chose. The ones we look back at and wonder about.

We should give ourselves permission to grieve those too.

Grief doesn’t need a doomsday label. “Dark” makes it sound oppressive.

Grief doesn’t need a modifier.

The expired future is grief.

We should have permission to sit in it. Learn from it. Let the emotions run their course without labeling them.

I am not an expert in anything.

No license. No degree. No permission to prescribe.

I just know grief. I know it in my bones. I know it in my heart. I know it in my mind when it spins wildly out of control and lands me in tears greater than any tissue box can absorb.

And I don’t know many people who don’t know it.

I know people who have experienced loss and try to run from it. I was one of them. I ran ten marathons through sweat and tears. The grief I ran from then is not the same grief I know now.

I cry for George and the life we shared.

I grieve the friends I lost who didn’t understand how I could move forward and remarry. The family who, in the midst of the celebration, were still living in the wake of the first and unable to meet me where I was at.

There are losses inside the loss.

A college basketball coach said something to me not long after George died. I’ve come back to it more times than I can count.

Forward is a direction.

Not healing. Not closure. Not moving on.

Just forward.

And as I told that young man yesterday:

Grief isn’t something that has an ending. There is no fixing.

And two things can be true.

You can still be grieving one thing and learn to love, have, and hold another.

He’s slowly realizing this for himself now.

George’s nickname was Messy. In fact, that’s all I called him or sometimes just The Mess.

I’m learning to live both with and without The Mess in my life.

Forward is a direction.

I’m still walking it.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. Whatever your expired future is, you’re allowed to sit in it today.

P.P.S. Each week, I write about the patterns we don’t see until we name them. Motherhood. Marriage. Grief. The roles we keep playing.

I send two pieces a week. Tuesday and Sunday. This week Tuesday arrived early. I like to think of it as a HBD to The Mess.