Signs.

Embracing the unknown is a thrilling possibility. However, that embrace cannot take place when I'm still asking the universe why my Bill had to leave.

There is no right way to grieve. My days are roller coasters, starting with morning group humor from my incredible co-workers and typically ending with me eating my feelings and sleeping fitfully, waking confused from dreams that had me convinced that my new reality was the illusion.

I'm writing about it only because these are the accounts I seek out now to find commonalities and feel, even for a moment, less alone. And writing is my only solace.

Yesterday, I had a great start. I crossed major tasks off my list. I ate reasonable foods (not cookies and chocolate). 

And then I went to my house to pack. 

The upstairs is in reasonable shape, so I went down to the basement storage area. 

First it was the suitcase of little Vegas souvenirs. 

Then it was the box pushed way to the back of the top shelf. When I got a grip on it and tugged, the entire side of it fell away and two things slid out.

One was my wedding guest book. The other was the engraved cake server: 

Jennifer and Bill, September 18, 2010

I gave up on packing and found the ice cream, but the seeds of grief had already been planted. 

So then I found myself at the cemetery. I looked through my car for something to sit on, and while sifting through a baf of miscellany, found his 2013 union book. And it was while idly flipping through it that I found his latest message. 

I remember visiting him and writing "Best wife ever here" - I did not realize he wrote "very much so" the next day. I have been finding notes throughout the house as I've been packing, and had thought I discovered them all. Sitting there at the cemetery with this unexpected bonus was almost too much.

And then a hummingbird buzzed by and stayed over my head for a few extra seconds, and I knew these were his signs. Subtlety was never Bill's strong suit.

I laid there next to him, headphones in, listening to our music like we had countless times by the pond, and lost the final shreds of self control. Because it's NOT FAIR. It's not fair that he's not here to drive us crazy and tell the same stories over and over again and grill the perfect steak and spill his drinks all over the carpet and tell me how amazing I am, then in the next breath, how crazy.

NO.

The title for this post is the predominant word in my head. I think it hundreds of times a day, or thousands. However many times it is when a word is at the forefront of your thoughts for most of your waking hours.

But not all of them. Because there's another word chasing it, determined to obtain the lead, and that word is "WHY."

One week ago, at approximately 9:40 p.m., my world as I've known it for the past 23 years came to a black and empty end. It just stopped turning for me. And while I watch the worlds of people all around me continue to spin, mine continues to stay in suspended animation, frozen with uncertainty about a future that would involve it revolving again.

Bill is gone.

It was always him. He was always my focal point and my best friend. He was also the person who made me feel the craziest, the person who shook up everything I had come to believe in my formative years and made me question who I was and where I was going. He was the one who taught me how to believe in myself. He was the one who made me strong.

When people tell me now how strong I am, I thank him, because without him as my teacher for so many years, I wouldn't be able to survive this.

He carried me through so much. He loved me through cancer in a way that made me feel invincible. He taught me to be self-reliant because his job kept him away so much. He told me more times than I could begin to count that his big shoulders could carry anything, and to unload my worries on them and take his hand.


I feel that I can't even process basic decisions. I can't react to situations accordingly, something that was effortless for me before. I often realize that I've been staring into space, and can't remember how long I've been doing it.

I feel like I'm comprised of a void. I feel like the most vital part of me is dead. I feel like letting myself slip below the surface because then everything wouldn't be so damn hard.

He was barely 40. He spent his 40th birthday in Washington state, asking me to come visit. We hadn't been getting along; in fact, we divorced in late March. The divorce couldn't stop our friendship, though. We still talked almost every day.

He wanted me to visit, and I said no. I said no for many reasons: how would it look? What would my family think? I have two jobs. I have After Prom. I have Hume After Prom. I have the Male Handsome Pageant. Reason after reason that it wouldn't be a good idea. Instead, I had gifts delivered to him every day of his birthday week.

But he didn't want gifts. He wanted his friend.

And I failed him.

I am so angry with myself for that. I squandered my time with him in his last year, although I thought I was doing it for the right reasons. I wanted him to face his health issues. I wanted him to take care of himself. I wanted him to stop the path he was on and listen to me, because I totally knew what I was talking about, after all. If only the whole world could listen to me, there would probably be no war and stuff.

Don't we always feel that we know what is best in a given situation, particularly one involving someone else? I certainly did.

And when he wouldn't listen, I thought that losing me would surely make him face the reality of what his life had become.

It did not work. And now, with the crystal clarity that hindsight so kindly provides, I face what will be my newest demon for the rest of my life: could I have prolonged his life, salvaged his health, by staying by his side every day? If I had been there the night of the accident instead of trying to make him realize that he was on the wrong path and arguing that point with him the whole day and evening of June 3, he wouldn't have gotten in that truck. He would have stayed home.

And he would have had at least a little more time. Not a lot. But a little.

These are the rambly thoughts that speed through my head every day. I made it through the hell of watching my lifetime best friend die. I honored my promise of making sure he had the funeral he wanted. And then the last vestiges of shock wore off and I turned into the person I am now, comprised of wild grief, tears, and nerve endings, alternating with the most horrible kind of numb.

There are other things to face without him. We had just put our house under contract three days before the accident, and now I find myself staring blankly at the life we built within its walls. Every vantage point is a memory. The bed is as if he just got out of it. I can't bear the thought of it being taken apart and removed. The Jello I brought him home before he went into the hospital to help soothe his stomach in the refrigerator. The ice cream that he never got to eat in the freezer.

My last shift at the movie theater, he brought dinner in for the staff, and the top layer of our wedding cake in for me. Surprisingly, it was still good almost five years later. He posted a picture of the feast on Facebook, labeled "Moma's dinner."
He had just gotten out of the hospital earlier that day, weak and beaten down, and still he brought the food to me. He apologized that his visits to the theater had decreased so dramatically the last two years.

He would die exactly two weeks later. And I didn't know.

I have not been able to return to my job at the theater since. I can't bring myself to go back. That is how I want to remember the end. That is how I want to leave it.

I also can't spend another night in the house.

All of this means that I am forced to look ahead and make still more life-altering decisions in a body that finds it difficult to even move. I had planned to leave Nevada, and that is what I am still doing. But that entails so much. A new job. New surroundings. New life.

And for the first time since I was a teenager, my background noise, my focal point, my center...will not be Bill.

I'm. So. Lost.

I want to cry the tears that come from your very core, that make you howl at the injustice and fight your demons with every wounded exhalation. People who see me, who know what happened, are mainly in one of two camps: they don't know what to say or they tell me I am strong.

Here is what you say, those who don't know (and I used to be one of you): this sucks.

Because it absolutely does. The acknowledgment of the vast unfairness of life's twists and turns is almost a relief to those who have born the brunt of the ax of loss.

He is gone. My world has not started to spin again, not even remotely. I want to apologize to those who have anchored themselves to me in order to shore me up: I am not worthy of your devotion right now. Because I am no longer me.

I am made of grief and anger and so, so much regret. Disbelief and rage and void. Stringing words together to uphold my end of a conversation is too hard. Deciding what vestiges of my life to keep and which to give away as I struggle to empty a house is hard. Staring at a tiny plaque in Moore Cemetery reading that Bill Shepherd, Jr. was 40 years, 2 months, and 1 day old is incomprehensibly hard. Those big shoulders were supposed to be able to withstand any burden.

How can he be gone?

So forgive me if it seems that I can't look you in the eye, or if I take way too long to answer a question or even if I ask you to repeat it. While I may be strong, and while I do feel his strength within me, imagining a world that doesn't have him in it still feels like an insurmountable task.

Countdown: 40, F&@$ing Seriously?

So I have this milestone-ish birthday coming up in less than two months, and although I don’t feel any differently approaching this age than I’ve really felt approaching ANY age, the parade of high school friends who have preceded me to it in the last year kind of provide an ever-present reminder that it’s coming.

Most recently, it was my fellow NHSer, Angela. She celebrated the entire month leading up to her birthday with little daily treats, which she photographed and posted. While I really, really love that idea, I’m driven in a different direction – one of fitness goals that are in line with my last 18 months of deep denial that I’m aging.

Although I refuse to participate in any kind of 5K, half marathon, marathon, whatever, I do have two specific goals for 40:

1. I will walk 100,000 steps in 24 hours.
2. I will be able to do a headstand without the assistance of a wall.

That’s pretty much it. From a list standpoint, there are only two items, which seems incredibly easy. From a practical standpoint, it’s ridiculous.

One hundred thousand steps is, like, 38 miles.

A headstand is, like, a headstand.

Since getting my Fitbit for Christmas last year, the closest I have come to 100,000 steps was 25,000 in Boca Raton. It involved, surprisingly, a lot of walking. And I’m talking about doing four TIMES that much walking in one day. It’s nuts.

The closest I’ve come to a headstand is up against the wall after Fit Club one day with plenty of help from my sister, Shannon. Additionally, I’m doing ever-lengthening daily sessions of Crow Pose in order to lie to myself that it is in any way preparing me for a successful headstand.

I do go to Fit Club, and I do participate fully. However, I may be sabotaging myself a little with my internal dialogue.

Case in point: last night we did 21 Day Fix Extreme Lower Body followed by some type of Extreme Ab Rippin’ and a’Shreddin’ or something. Forty minutes total. What’s 40 minutes in a human life?

Hours after we started, I looked at the time remaining.

We had only been going for four and a half minutes. FOUR AND A HALF MINUTES. What the actual hell? I’m not a math type, but I’m pretty sure that’s just over 10 percent of the total class time.

That isn’t even the worst part. The instructors for these classes are on some kind of drug that acts as a simultaneous mood booster and sweat suppressant and enables them to be stupid happy and beautiful at the same time. And they talk. Cheerfully and relentlessly.

For everything they say, I have a mental counter, and this is where I struggle. If I devoted all my energy to the physical, I’d be in far better shape than I am. But instead, it goes a little something like this:

Instructor: “Post YOUR pictures of 600 consecutive squats with weights! Hashtag 21 Day Fix!”

Me: “Hashtag Piss Off Hashtag Nice Bra Hashtag I HATE YOU.”

Other Instructor: “Oh, come on, Jen! You can get deeper than that!”

Me: “My fist will show you deeper than that.”

Instructor: “If you want the results, this is when you have to push! You won’t get anywhere if you don’t push harder!”

Me: “Shit, that’s actually a good point.”

And that’s what it comes down to. I’ve alternated between lots of exercise and none exercise from my teenage years to now, but my body prefers to go hard. I like all-weekend tennis tournaments. I like Insanity Max.

I just have to convince my mind of it. Also, last night when I went to my friend’s after the workout and ate the frosting off half a box of cupcakes, I realized that it was not only the mindful, but also the mindless behavior on which I need to focus.

So, to recap:

1. 100,000
2. Headstand
3. Complete revamp of mental bitchiness and sabotage
4. Less than 60 days to goal date

Super easy.

Hashtag whatever.