I wrote “The Gift,” a tribute to my late husband, Bo, in April 2005, which was just 8 months after I lost him. Bo was an avid hunter and outdoorsman. The tribute was my thank you to him for teaching me all that he did and for sharing his life with me, and for leaving me, with what I consider to be a gift. I was fortunate enough to have the article published here on the WomenHunters website, as well as in Woods n Water Magazine, the International Becoming an Outdoors Woman Newsletter, and in a Texas publication called Maximum Outdoors. It’s a piece I am very proud of, and honestly, one that I don’t remember writing. I don’t have too much recall from those first, very dark, early months after Bo was killed, yet somehow this special piece of writing came from within and also resulted in me doing some writing – mostly articles about hunting, some about grief, and some a combination.
I was recently reviewing my original version of “The Gift” and because it had been so long since I had read and thought about my words, it hadn’t occurred to me how much things had progressed for me personally, until I read my own words and until I really allowed myself to get lost in my own words.
The last paragraph of the original is as follows: “I do not know what my future now holds without Bo by my side. I do not know how hunting and the outdoors will fit into my life without Bo. I do I hope that as time passes, the pain will subside some, and I can find peace in the woods again, with Bo in my heart.”
Bo has been gone four years now. I guess we never really know what the future holds, but my feeling has always been if you know who you are taking the ride with, the rest is just details. So, as for the future…I continue to live one day at a time, and to try and figure out how to be peaceful in the now. To only worry about today. So in some ways, things don’t change, yet our understanding and outlook does, or can, if we allow it to. I love him and miss him more each day.
Reading my words, it was not that first sentence about the future that truly struck me, because I am not sure that I will ever have a clear answer or liking for why things happen like they do, especially something tragic that is not our choice. It was the second sentence that really stopped me in my tracks. I was unsure of how hunting and the outdoors would fit into my life without Bo. Thankfully, for lack of a better word, shock numbs us, and our bodies and minds can’t possibly go back and relive the sheer terror of the beginning grief. As grief-stricken and sick as I was with my loss, and while I know why I wrote the words that I did, it’s hard for me to imagine now, my life without hunting and the outdoors.
Wouldn’t that be the greatest injustice of all? Not stepping back outside, not even sticking one toe in to see how the water feels? What could be worse than that, other than the original loss? Depriving yourself of the one thing you learned to love, which in turn was also part of the bond. Yes, I am talking about nature, and the woods, and wildlife, and those wonderful family times and all the memories that we create in the outdoors, no matter how painful or sad or lonely it feels.
In the beginning, the only way I knew how to be close to Bo, in the outdoors, was by going to Perry, running his dogs, being with his dad, wearing his hunting clothes, visiting our spots….and while those things remain, and I pray they always will, a whole new world opened up as well. Andrea’s world; the part of the gift where Bo left me off and I have to take it and run with it….and make new memories. It’s not even just where he left me off, but more where I had to begin, alone.
