Hard Habit to Break

It’s been a while since a set of song lyrics resonated with where I am at the moment and how I am feeling.

Wednesday teatime I had the radio on and Simon Mayo was playing songs related to the theme of lent and giving up.  I voted for KC and the Sunshine Band, which he played but he never read out my name.

Then he played Hard Habit to Break by Chicago.

I guess I thought you'd be here forever
Another illusion I chose to create
You don't know what you got until it's gone
And I found out just a little too late

I was acting as if you were lucky to have me
Doing you a favour I hardly knew you were there
But then you were gone and it all was wrong
Had no idea how much I cared

Now being without you
Takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it
But I don't want to

Being without you
Is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier
It's the hardest thing to take
I'm addicted to you baby
You're a hard habit to break

I remember hearing this song as a teenager, I have the 45 in my record collection so I knew all the words to sing along, but never have those words of loss meant so much or cut so deep.

Life is still so hard and my loss is not always getting easier to bear.

I don’t want to be here on my own.

Andrew still is my reference point, what would he think, say or do. Detaching my own identity is painful. You can read all about my hair dilemmas over on re-ravelling.

Did I find out too late what Andrew meant to me? Did I really not love him or care enough for him when he was here? These days I usually manage to push the pointless guilt away but hearing these lyrics makes me stop and wonder afresh.

And then someone posted this on their Facebook Page.

People say you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
Truth is, you knew what you had, you just never thought you'd lose it.

Maybe that’s a much better way of phrasing it.

A habit is a custom, a routine, an addiction, a dependency.

In a lot of ways Andrew is still here in the two sons he left behind, each of them so similar to their dad, sometimes it is scary how alike they are. Yet they are both so different from each other! 

I don’t need to learn to live WITHOUT Andrew but how to live WITH our sons and our memories. It’s easy to get caught up in my own world of grief; the boys appear to be so self-sufficient. Sometimes I feel there is still a mountain to climb.

And I am churning up the water again as I start to piece together a manuscript to turn “unravelling-edges” into a book.

It’s going to be an interesting few months as I sift through those recollections and sort them into some kind of cohesive order – I may end up back here at unravelling more often as I pick at loose threads remembering those very difficult and painful early days.

Perhaps it will serve as a reminder of how far I have travelled and I can gradually change my habits to suit my new season.