I saw a post on Facebook the other day from someone celebrating 19 years of marriage. My first thought was, Wow. That's a long time. And then it hit me. We would have been celebrating 19 years this year, too.

It's funny how grief math sneaks up on you like that. This year will be my fifth wedding anniversary without James. And anniversaries are one of those times when I start to get a little weird. My mind wanders off into the life that could have been.

The Life We Were Supposed to Have

If James were still here, Braxton and I would be living an entirely different life. We would be the family we worked so hard to become. That's probably the part my mind gets stuck on the most. We finally got there.

After everything it took to become a family, Braxton's adoption was finalized just days before James died. We had spent so much time working toward the life we wanted, and then almost as soon as we officially had it, everything changed.

Instead, I got yeeted into an entirely different reality. And here's the strange part: It's not necessarily a bad reality.

I've built a life here. I've learned how to carry responsibilities I never expected to carry alone. I've figured things out. I've made mistakes. I've fixed things. I've screwed other things up. I've laughed. I've had fun. I've raised our son. I've become a person I don't think either of us could have imagined back then.

I buckled up and took responsibility for the life sitting in front of me. But it wasn't the plan. Then again, is anything ever really in the plan? lol

Five Years of Becoming Someone Else

I'm writing this sitting in the gym lounge, waiting for the massage chair. Which somehow feels like the perfect place to contemplate the alternate realities of my existence.

There was a version of me who couldn't have imagined this woman. She goes to the gym. She raises our son. She makes all the decisions. She takes care of the house. She starts projects she probably shouldn't. She fixes things. She figures shit out because there isn't really another option. She has routines and opinions and stories and an entire life that James has never seen.

That's one of the strangest things about losing your spouse: Eventually, you become someone they never knew.

Not because you stopped loving them. Not because you wanted to leave that version of yourself behind. Time just keeps moving, and apparently it takes you with it whether you signed the permission slip or not.

Sometimes I wonder what James would think of me now. He'd recognize some things immediately. There are probably things that would make him say, What the hell are you doing? And there are entire pieces of my life he'd need me to sit down and explain. Sometimes that realization still knocks the wind out of me.

I Don't Hate This Life

That's important. Because when people talk about life after losing a spouse, I think there's sometimes this assumption that there are only two possible endings. You're devastated forever. Or you "move on."

Real life is much stranger than that. I like parts of this life. Sometimes I even love it. I've experienced things I never would have experienced otherwise. I've learned things about myself I never would have needed to learn. I've become fiercely independent. I've built a life that belongs to me. There is joy here. There is laughter here. There are people I love here.

There are ordinary mornings and ridiculous side quests and things I'm still excited to see.

This is a life worth living.

But if someone offered me the chance to go back? I'd go. Hell, I'd probably start running. I'd give almost anything to go back to being James's wife and never know this version of the world existed at all. And I don't think those two things contradict each other.

The Life You Never Wanted Becomes Your Life

Maybe that's one of the stranger parts of grief that nobody really prepares you for. Eventually, the life you never wanted becomes your regular life. You learn the roads. You unpack your things. You figure out where everything goes. You learn how to function there. Eventually, you may even become happy there.

And then something completely ordinary happens. You see a Facebook post. You hear a song. You find an old picture. An anniversary shows up on the calendar. And suddenly you're standing at the window looking into another life. The one you thought you'd be living.

That's what wedding anniversaries after losing your spouse feel like for me now. They're not necessarily days when I fall completely apart. They're more like little doorways. For a while, I let myself wonder. What would our house look like now? What would we be worried about? What stupid thing would we be arguing about? What would James think about the person Braxton is becoming? What would we be doing for our anniversary? Would 19 years have felt like a long time to us? Or would it have felt like it went by in five minutes? I'll never know.

And maybe that's what hurts most about the life that could have been. There isn't an ending. It just keeps existing somewhere in your imagination.

19 Years

Five anniversaries without you. Nineteen years since we got married. Those numbers don't seem like they should belong to the same story. But somehow they do. I don't spend every day wishing for the life we were supposed to have anymore. I live here now. I've made a home here.

I've found happiness here. I've learned that accepting the life you have doesn't mean you have to stop loving the life you lost. Both can be true.

I can love the life I've built and still wish I never had to build it without you.

So, on our anniversary, I'll probably let myself get a little weird. I'll visit that other life for a while. The one where you're still here. The one where I'm still your wife. The one where 19 years doesn't sound like a long time at all. And then I'll come back to this one. 🖤

Last weekend, on impulse, I changed my Facebook profile picture to a photo from 2011. It's me, James, and Josh Thompson. I captioned it: "Throwback to 2011 when life meant something else."

I didn't think particularly hard about that sentence when I wrote it. It just kind of came out. I've been thinking about it ever since. Because I don't mean that life meant something then and doesn't mean anything now. I mean that everything meant something else.

Looking Back at Who We Used to Be

This picture is almost 15 years old. Fifteen years. That's such a weird amount of time because I can look at the woman in that picture and know exactly what it felt like to be her. But at the same time, I know things about her life that she couldn't possibly imagine.

Braxton wasn't even born yet. That's the one that really gets me. There isn't even a tiny baby Braxton somewhere in the world while we're standing there taking this picture. He isn't part of our story yet. We have no idea that someday we'll become parents. We don't know what it will take to get there. We don't know how hard we'll fight for that little family or how much it will eventually mean to us. We're just... there.

James is alive. I'm his wife. We're at the world-famous Dusty Armadillo in Rootstown, Ohio. I'm probably far more concerned about meeting Josh Thompson than contemplating the fragile nature of human existence. As one does.

We don't know what's coming. And I think that's what gets me about old photographs now. I know how the story goes. They don't.

Even the People in the Picture Became Someone Else

I've also been thinking about Josh Thompson lately, which is probably why I impulsively dug this picture out in the first place. There was a period of my life when I was a gigantic Josh Thompson fan. We even tweeted back and forth quite a bit, because apparently there was once a time when Twitter was mostly people casually yelling thoughts at each other instead of whatever it eventually became.

He still follows one of my ancient Instagram accounts, which feels like finding an archaeological artifact from another civilization. Now, all these years later, I occasionally come across his name somewhere completely different: in songwriting credits. One of my most-played songs lately is Jordan Davis's "Turn This Truck Around," which Josh co-wrote. And there's something strangely full-circle about that.

The guy standing in the middle of this picture went on living his life. His career changed. His work changed. He became a version of himself that the woman standing beside him didn't know yet. And so did I.

Sometimes I wonder what someone who knew me only during that tiny snapshot of my life would think if they stumbled across me now. Would they recognize me? Not physically. Obviously I'm still working with roughly the same face. I mean me.

The woman who owns the house. Raises her son. Goes to township meetings. Gardens. Fixes things. Writes a blog. Goes down completely unnecessary internet rabbit holes. Has strong opinions about old houses and thrift stores. Somehow keeps acquiring side quests. Would 2011 me recognize her? I'm not sure.

The Strange Thing About Becoming Someone New

Maybe that's one of the strangest things about getting older. We tend to think of ourselves as one continuous person. And technically, sure.

But I look at old pictures sometimes and see entire versions of myself. There was the me before James got sick. The me who was his wife.

The me before Braxton. The me who became a mother. The me who became a widow. And then there is whoever I am now. None of those women were fake versions of me. None of them disappeared completely.

They just knew different things. They wanted different things. They worried about different things. Life meant something else to them.

And maybe that's why nostalgia can feel so strange. Sometimes I don't necessarily want to go back. I just want to visit the person I was before I knew what happened next.

The Things We Couldn't Know Yet

When I look at that picture now, there are so many things I want to tell us. There are also things I absolutely wouldn't. Because what would be the point? Would knowing what was coming have made those years better? Or would it have stolen something from them?

There is a certain freedom in not knowing. The two people standing in that picture don't know that Braxton exists. They don't know that someday they'll become his parents. They don't know how much they'll love him.

They don't know that their time together has an ending. They don't know that one of them will eventually have to keep going without the other. They're just standing in a back lot of a honky-tonk, taking a picture with a country singer. And maybe that's enough.

Old Pictures Know Things We Don't

That's what photographs do. They freeze a moment without preserving any of the knowledge that comes afterward. The picture doesn't know what happens next. It doesn't know which ordinary days will eventually become precious. It doesn't know which people will still be here 15 years later. It doesn't know who we'll become.

We bring all of that with us when we look back.

Maybe that's why the exact same photograph can mean something completely different as the years pass. In 2011, this was a cool picture of us with Josh Thompson. Today, I look at it and see an entire world.

I see my husband. I see the woman I used to be. I see two future parents who don't even know their son exists yet. I see a musician whose work will somehow wander back into my life almost 15 years later. And I see three people standing there with absolutely no idea who they're going to become.

When Life Meant Something Else

The picture hasn't changed. We have. Or, in James's case, I have.

Maybe that's why old pictures can hit so hard. They preserve one second exactly as it was while everyone inside them keeps moving through time. Looking at that picture now, I know things the woman standing there couldn't possibly know. I know where some of those roads lead. I know which people stay. I know which people can't. I know she'll survive things she doesn't yet have language for. And I know she'll eventually build a life she'd barely recognize from where she's standing.

But I don't look at her and think her life meant more. And I don't look at myself now and think it means less. It just means something different.

Life didn't mean more then. It just meant something else.

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Lake Erie in 2019

And knowing that now changes the pictures somehow.

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I Was a Different Person Then

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