She knew what I knew

Mama Kat offered some great prompts for her writer's workshop this week but when I saw number 5, I knew without a doubt it was the one I had to write...

5.) That one time you met your online friend in real life (was it everything you thought it would be?)

For those of you who may just be stopping by my blog for the first time, I was a young widow.  At the end of 2003, my first husband was killed in an accident.  My boys were ages 4 and 5 months at the time.  My 4 year old witnessed the accident. 

I was devastated and often felt alienated because I felt that no one around me really understood what it was like, what I was going through. 

Although I knew it was wrong, I had a hard time being happy for other couples who were celebrating milestone anniversaries and well, just being happy. 

I couldn't participate in menial conversations, especially if someone was complaining about something her husband did or didn't do.  I was angry. A lot.  And I let God know it. 

Then I found youngwidow.com, an online forum and support group, and I felt at home.  These women and some men too, knew what I knew.  It was like we all belonged to this secret club that none of us really wanted to join but there we were, all the same. 

The first one I met in person was Jenn.  She had lost her husband 6 months before I did when her son was 10 months old.  She lived about an hour away so we met for lunch one day. 

Just sitting across the table from her brought such a feeling of comfort to me.  I felt somehow at peace just to be in the presence of someone who really "got it". 

She knew what I knew and although we did talk about our grief, it didn't own us.  She didn't look at me with those sad eyes full of pity the way everyone else did.  It felt good to be me again. 

Then there was Kari.  She was a few states away, in Oklahoma, but when I first read her story I wanted to climb into the computer screen and hug her tight.  Her story was so close to mine, it gave me chills. 

She also had two boys.  Her oldest who was 2 at the time, also witnessed his dad's accident and she had an infant who was born after the accident. 

We spent hours typing to each other for weeks and months. Countless times I sat at my computer screen with tears streaming down my face as I read her words because I could have written them myself and sometimes did. We understood each other's pain so well because it was also our own. 

She knew what I knew. 

Michele came along almost one year after I was widowed.  She lived fairly close, about 35 minutes away, and I felt an immediate connection to her. 

She had just lost her husband in an accident a couple of weeks before Christmas and here I was coming up on the one year anniversary of losing mine. Her son was 2 at the time and her daughter, just a few weeks old.  I knew I had to reach out to her because I was learning to live with the same harsh reality she had just been dealt. 

I knew what she knew.

 I first met her in person, along with Jenn and 2 or 3 other young widows from the site when we all had lunch together in February of 2005. 

I continued to keep in touch with all three of them, mostly via email, and we all decided to plan a trip together where I would finally get to meet Kari face to face. 

So in June of 2005, Jenn, Michele and I hopped on a plane and headed south where we would meet up with Kari before boarding a cruise ship and setting sail for the Caribbean. 

I was so excited, yet a little nervous too, about finally meeting her face to face.  I had been pouring out my soul to her  for months, just as she had to me so how would it be when we finally met in person? 

Would the connection we had online be there in person or would it be awkward?  Would we feel like we had known each other forever or would we be like strangers? 

I felt silly for even having those thoughts once we met because of course we knew each other.  How could we not? 

We sat. We talked. We ate.  We laughed. We swam with dolphins. and stingrays. We cried.  We danced.  

We escaped the grief, the young widow title, the single parent title and the sheer exhaustion of it all. 

For five glorious days, the four of us escaped into a world where we were comforted by the knowing that the person to our right and the person to our left, knew what we knew. 

And sometimes that's the greatest gift God can give us. 








Kari, Me, Michele, Jenn