Grief, the holidays, and travel

It's 4:30 in the morning the day before Thanksgiving and I have been awake for an hour already. I have been trying to figure out for the past week what is wrong with me. I can't seem to smile. It's as if my face is made of stone. It reminds me of a time 4 years ago.

For a couple of months after my husband passed away in 2011 I could not crack a smile. I see pictures of myself from those days afterwards and I see the attempt to move my face and what is commonly known as a smile. But it just couldn't happen. It seemed physically impossible.

It has been several years since my husband died. It has gotten easier to live on a daily basis. I do think of him everyday but I do not cry anymore. Unless it's Thanksgiving.

I learned after the first year that the holidays are extremely difficult. The first year I thoroughly expected to be terribly upset, but I was really just still numb from the loss. The second year was horrible. That is when people have forgotten your loss and you find out that you are truly alone. I was angry. I was angry at everyone who had their husband or wife still with them. It wasn't fair. I sunk into a depression that lasted until January.

I spoke about this with my doctor and she suggested that next year I plan well ahead of time to keep myself busy. Maybe the planning of a vacation would help me not to forget, but just to have something else to focus on. So I did this. It did work to a certain extent but it didn't take away the pain.

It has been 4 years. This is my fourth Thanksgiving without my husband. I have a boyfriend. I have been seeing him for over year. Last year Thanksgiving was much easier because I had someone else to focus on. But our relationship was very new and I could not reveal to him the pain that I felt. But this year I still feel the pain, and I think I'm going to have to talk about it.

I did as my doctor suggested. Months ago I started planning to go to the mountains in Georgia for Thanksgiving weekend. There is a trail race and there will be lots of like-minded people there. My sister is coming along. I have saved up money from every paycheck for this little adventure. I have been focused.

But about a week ago I noticed that my face stopped moving. I can't crack a smile. For the past 3 days I've only been able to get about four hours of sleep per night. Despite keeping myself tremendously busy with grocery shopping, baking, packing, general planning for our camping trip, I still feel the loss tremendously.

I think it is the surprise that I am grieving still, at least around the holidays, that just bowls me over. How could I be feeling this way after so many years? Shouldn't I just be "over it"?

That's really silly of me to think. One does not get "over" a  marriage of 17 years. I guess it's the fact that I was doing so well up to this point and then I feel like I'm hit in the face with my loss.

I seemed to have lost sight of the reason I planned this little vacation to begin with. I guess I cannot divert my grief and hope that it will go away. I need to accept the fact that it will always be with me, and it will be with me even moreso this time of year. Attempting to forget by keeping myself busy doesn't exactly work. It's not the keeping myself busy part that isn't working. It's the forgetting part. I need to stop trying to forget. In fact maybe I need to start remembering. Maybe I need to make this a time of year that I actually focus on him. His birthday was November 29th, so that makes this time of year even worse.

So maybe next year I will do things a little differently. I will still plan on going somewhere, but I will go with him and not away from him. Maybe I will show him something new.

Running Vacation?

It's November and it's time to start thinking about next year's vacation. I think that I want my vacation to revolve around trail running. But where to go?

I have looked at several websites that offer running vacations. There are a few that really interest me. One is in Iceland and it covers approximately 70 miles in 5 or 6 days. You sleep each night in a hut in a sleeping bag and all the food is covered. Sherpas of some sort carry your luggage from one place to the next so all you have to do is run.

There's  a similar vacation in Italy in the Dolomites. I looked at this one and it scares the living heebie jeebies out of me simply because it's in some seriously mountainous terrain. It looks beautiful, but I don't know if I can handle the heights.

There was another one in Iceland that was actually a staged race that covers about 60 miles in 5 days. You stay at hotels each night and the food is covered, but it's a race. Do I really want to race?

Then I thought about doing a staged race over three days in the Rockies in August of next year. Its called the Trans Rockies and they have a 6 day version and a 3 day version. I would not even attempt the six-day version and to be honest the 3 day version seems pretty intense as well. It covers about 60 miles in 3 days which is 20 miles per day. That's a lot and since I come from Florida, which is totally flat, this would be super-extra-mighty challenging.

And finally I thought about designing my own running vacation going somewhere in the Smoky Mountains, maybe traveling from one trail to another and staying in my camper each night. Maybe I could find a race along the way, but the whole vacation wouldn't be about a race. It would just be about running in pretty places.

So I have a little bit of time to decide, but the staged races tend to fill up very quickly so I would have to say yay or nay to those soon. What to do?