afterwards

Well the siyum was very appropriate. Aa spoke and we all got through it. Yes there were things that were hard for him to say and hard for me to hear but he spoke clearly and with dignity. His dad would have been proud. I was proud of him. I don't know if it would have been easier if I would have seen it before because I think it was the delivery as much as the words.
I said to him on the way home last night that I had to read the speech afterwards because despite having heard all the words that he said there was a point at which I wasn't following the the content. I also told him some of how I'm feeling and what it's been like for me. I don't know how much of that he knew before but at least I told him something. I hope he understood that I wasn't trying to dump my pain on him but that it was simply the depth of my lose and the impact his father had on my life. Grieving is a very lonely process, I hope he knows he's not alone.
I was talking to his sister last night about how close I was to buying a ticket to go over for the shiva. The unspoken comment behind it was that if I had it was as much for my sake as my husbands. The counter to that is that before he left he told me he wanted me here with the kids. I'm never going to know if I did the right thing.

It's a good thing that life and halacha pushes us along because I have seen recently how it would be easy to get stuck in a rut and not deal with the world.We've passed the shloshim and things will now move on to the next level. The next 11 months of things to face together.