Knowing

The toxicology and autopsy reports are finally done, so the report about Michael's death is now complete and finished. A chapter in this horrific book is now complete and closed. I'm not going to do any big reveals here. What is in those reports is for my eyes and those of a few close family members who want to see it.
What I will say is that I now know what happened to my husband. For me, the not knowing was far worse. What happened to him in the accident wasn't pretty. But now I know. I know what happened to his body, and I do find a small bit of comfort from it. What I had made up in my head wasn't pretty, either, so this way it's now accurate. But I know two things after reading everything in the reports
1. He died instantly, there was no suffering. For that I am grateful.
2. His injuries were not survivable.
We've had people ask us things like 'was he wearing a helmet' (believe me, people ask some of the most asinine things when things like this happen. Like they have no filter at all. I know it's curiosity but still - does it really matter now? Come on.) And no, he was not. It was rare that he did, and CT has no helmet law so it was perfectly in his right to not wear one. So back off. But even so, if you want to be critical, here's a newsflash - it would not have made a difference. His injuries would have occurred just about the same. He still would have died in that accident even if he was wearing a helmet. There isn't much that could have prevented his death given the injuries he sustained, I suspect.
I was a bit upset at first because the authorities tried to prevent me from seeing the autopsy report - they thought that I didn't need to see it or read how graphic it was. They weren't going to give it to me and were going to make me go through FOIA to get a copy. As I have said before, I'm not a piece of glass. I am not so fragile that when I see a description of someones injuries I will break in two and not be able to be repaired. I'm a 38 year old grown person who can make her own decisions and who, quite frankly, knows a lot better than anyone else what 'is best' for me given this situation. And what is right for me is certainly not right for anyone else - but let me be the judge of what is right for me. I have known from the beginning that I wanted to see that report. I gave it time - almost 2 months - to dwell over it and make the final decision as to whether or not I really did want to see it. I think that's enough time to really weigh the pros and cons. What I can't do now is erase the (now more accurate) image from my head of what happened. But you know what? I had the same problem before, it just wasn't an accurate image. Which to me is in many ways much worse. Your head will create all sorts of horrors when you don't know what really happened.
I won't ever be able to erase the memory of any of this. The images of what he must of looked like. My own visions of how the accident occurred. Hearing the police officer tell me that my husband was dead. Telling my children that their father was dead. I won't forget any piece of that in all my days.
But now I at least know what really happened to him. And I needed that for some sort of closure and acceptance with all of this.
People often ask me now if things are getting better, or easier. The answer is no, not really. If anything they are getting harder. The day to day life without him is more and more mundane and sad. The reality of all of this is finally starting to settle in as the shock and fog lift. Which is must harder. It was not easy getting through the past weeks. But in many ways the shock of it all protected me. It was somewhat easy for me to ignore what happened and go about my day trying to pretend it didn't. I think that's how I've made it through so far, appearing strong to most, but really just deflecting everything. There are only a very few times I've really let myself sit down and think about the fact that Michael is, in fact, dead. Because going there is too hard most of the time. But I think I'm finally starting to really process it all. And that is, actually, much harder than going through life more or less in denial... which is where I have been the past couple of months.