You Were Bigger Than The Whole Sky

My sleep schedule, or lack thereof, is trash. I used to get 8 hours of sleep, and now I’m lucky if I get 5. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to teach 12th-grade students who have had senioritis since their freshman year and are five weeks from graduation while running on five hours of sleep consistently, but it is not for the weak. So my typical morning now looks like waking up between 2 and 3 in the morning, working on homework or lesson plans or household chores, working out, and then getting ready for work. Another part of my morning is spending time looking at the stars. I like to pull one of my patio chairs out from the covered area to the furthest edge of the concrete, turn off the patio lights, and look at the stars. If my life were a movie, this scene would be in it.

If you’ve never been to my house, you won’t know this, but I live in the semi-country. Actually, I don’t know that I would even call it semi-country. I live in a suburb, but it’s a small suburb a few miles from the highway, and there’s not a lot of noise. Right now, I hear coyotes and the wind… and that’s it. I also hear Lucy, my lab, snoring in the seat next to me since she won’t let me out of her sight. But back to the stars – they are glorious here. The entire sky is lit up, and you can see everything. I wish pictures could do it justice.

There is something special about looking at the stars when someone you love is up there. It’s also where I feel closest to Coleman. I don’t know what it is about being outside, but early on – like the day he died early on- when everyone was at my house, often if they couldn’t find me, I was sitting on the patio. I remember telling someone – probably my mom- that it was where I felt closest to him, like I could reach up and touch him—not confined in a home with a roof between us. It felt like I could feel him in the sunshine or the breeze. It is also where the crisis counselor at my school told me to go when I would have panic attacks. During one of my first panic attacks, she was actually at my house, and I ran to my bedroom. And after the fact, she told me I should go outside when possible because the fresh air helps. She also taught me about grounding, which has helped tremendously. Grounding is this therapy technique to use during panic attacks to help bring yourself back to reality. When you’re grounding, you’re looking for three of each of the senses, so you’re trying to focus on three things that you hear, three things that you see, three things that you smell, and so on. I know you might be thinking that sounds like some hippie-dippy bullshit, but it works. I swear! So, the patio became a safe place for me. It’s where I sit and talk to my friends or family on the phone. It’s where I do grad school homework and lesson plans, read, or, like right now, write.

I’ve always liked looking at the stars, even in high school, because it always reminded me how big the world is. This brought me comfort because I always thought to myself (especially when my little teenage heart was broken) that surely, with a world this big, I would find someone to love me. Fast forward to college, and I would spend many nights sitting out on the patio, looking at the stars and hoping my person was out there, but I hoped he was in College Station, Texas because I was convinced I had to marry an Aggie. Looking back on that, it makes me laugh now because as much crap as everyone gives A&M for being a cult – I see it. I mean, I’ll still be a full-on member of that cult, but I see it now. Anyway, then we get to my first apartment/single years as an adult, and I would sit out on the patio looking at the stars and wonder why everyone else had what I so desperately wanted and what was wrong with me that I didn’t have it. While everyone else was getting married, having kids, and settling down, I was on dozens of first dates that never turned into second dates.

Then I met Coleman, and my world changed. I was no longer sitting out looking at the stars alone – I had my person. Through the years and on all the different patios we lived at, we would sit and talk about our future, talk about things we wanted to do with the house, dream about what our future kids and grandkids would look like, and that whole time I was looking at the stars with a new admiration. In a world this big, I found someone who loves me exactly as I am. All my corny jokes, my awful dance moves, my sarcasm, my windows down insisting we belt Taylor Swift, my attempts and (failures) at cooking, my ability to never back into a parking spot straight, even though I have a camera with sensors that tell me how to do it, my stressed out manic brain the night before a holiday when I was rearranging the house before our families came over the next day. Through all of it, I was still his person.

One of the last “real” conversations I had with Coleman was a few days before his passing. In the six months before he passed, we had been making lifestyle changes, working out, and getting healthy. He was losing weight faster than me (ugh, men 🙄), and I was talking to Lucy, our lab. I said, “Lucy, what are we going to do when daddy gets all skinny and buff and leaves us for a supermodel?” he stopped, looked me dead in the eyes, and said I was it for him and there would never be anyone else. He said I loved him even when he didn’t love himself, and he would spend the rest of his life making up for that and loving me back. I remember crying because it was such a special moment, but now remembering that memory makes me smile because he spent the rest of his life loving me. I just had no idea when he was saying that the rest of his life was days and not decades.

So, as I sit here, I am thankful that in a world this big, I found Coleman Joseph Stafford and got to spend six years with him. This is not the life I would have ever chosen for myself, and there are times when I can’t believe how far I have come, but as I look at the stars, I am reminded that I am still here and still have a beautiful future ahead of me, and that is reason enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other.