Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.

The Wizard of Oz

Lions, tigers or bears, sooner or later, grief touches everyone. And when it does, nothing looks or feels the same, not even your simple nightly routine. You turn off the lights, lock the doors and head upstairs. Simple. Been there, done that more nights than I can count. It’s repeated nightly in every household around the globe. Yet these days, even simple routines — suck. Every nuance screams I’m in a different world now – a world of one. My life made a major detour to the flip side of Oz.

It’s hard not to remember, as I climb the stairs, not only how I found my husband lying there just months ago, but how this home once rang with voices. The only thing ringing now are my ears from the buzzing lack of sound. Like the train tracks I had to draw when I was learning perspective, endless nights just like this, stretch ahead of me. But, when you think about it, don’t most things come down to that – perspective.

As annoying, unfair and ridiculous as it might seem, this yellow brick road of grief is also a grueling growing experience. You can either choose the best seat at your pity party — or endure the crappy quiet, waiting for what the universe wants to tell or show you. You can choose to hate every minute of life without your spouse — yet still try, with one foot struggling in front of the other, to live as your love would have wanted you to.

I’ll never prefer dinner for one, being backseat baggage or a talk-to-myself solo without a plus one. I’m also too much the mover and shaker to be mired forever on these railroad tracks of grief. I already had the house dropped on me. I can never click my red heels (if I had them) and go back to my husband again. Ever. But I can, despite how much I hate what that terrible tornado left behind, slowly pick up the pieces of me each day. And as I do, I can try to remember Glinda’s advice. ‘You’ve always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself.”