Waiting For Me

Lying in bed every morning, trying to talk myself into getting up and showering. It’s not that hard. Throw back the comfy cover, spin around, swing your legs over the edge. The only thing standing between me and a cascade of warm, soothing water is the flash flood of tears heading my way before my feet can hit the ground. And it always comes. It never disappoints.

How long will I grieve? It lasts as long as it lasts, one book says.

I have a friend who, after losing her husband, spent a year feeling numb. And then she started to cry. Everyone grieves differently, I’m told. Yesterday I read that grieving is necessary in order to heal, but it’s a painful route to healing, if you ask me. I can see why some people avoid it like the plague—the two have a lot in common, grief and the plague.

I’m sorry if this is hard to read, all this thinking out loud on your dime. I’d really rather be writing funny stories about my crazy adventures with Rob and our family, but most of those came to a screaming halt two months ago. And the tears . . . they’re always there waiting, just below the surface, in case fatigue or a photo or a sweet memory give them opportunity. Something as simple as re-reading a kind note or trying to find my white Tahoe—which may have been lost today outside Target in a sea of parked cars in ninety degree temps—can make me crumble faster than a bag of Doritos. Rob used to pick me up at the entrance. Park me in the shade. Open my door for me. Hand me the keys so I could turn on the air conditioning while he loaded all my purchases in the back.

There I go again—dripping tears on my laptop.

Katy and Dan have loaned me their master bedroom for the last two and a half months, ever since I got out of the hospital. It’s time to give it back, so now I’m moving into a large guest space they created last fall when they thought Rob and I would be visiting regularly from Heber. It’s really pretty, has lots of room and privacy, and today we brought some of my furniture out of storage to help make it feel more familiar. That’s another thing I read—the familiarity of having my things around me can help with healing

Rob and I used to love watching the movie, The Quiet Man, with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara every St. Patrick’s Day. We missed it this year. . . Moving on. After Wayne’s character relocates to Ireland, he marries an Irish woman, but his culture shock threatens the marriage of the newlyweds. O’Hara’s character is controlled by a hateful older brother who won’t let her have the furniture left to her by their mother. Sobbing, she tries to explain the sense of security her belongings give her, finally making it as simple as possible for her confused new husband: “I want my things about me!”

Okay, that was a lot of explanation for a really short quote. But I used to make fun of that scene. Now I understand. When we rolled up the door to one of my storage units this afternoon to search for a chair and bookshelf and some lamps, the mere sight of my husband’s dresser in the entrance made me break down right there in the middle of Public Storage. It’s a beautiful piece of furniture and it’s the only piece of our bedroom set I kept. Because it makes me think of him.

There’s comfort in having my things, our things, about me. It’s a bittersweet kind of comfort because it’s all I have left of Roby that’s tangible. We’ll grab his dresser another time, but when we brought the other items here and set them in place, a little bit of peace came along for the ride.

Katy put a small dresser in the room for me with a tv set attached to the wall above. There’s a bit of a tangle of electric cords below it that will be hidden in the wall eventually, but for now she propped up a canvas with a pretty scene she painted on it to cover the wires. In her picture, puffy white clouds float against a serene, blue sky, the  remnants of a summer storm. It’s very realistic. All the depth and dimension she added with a clever use of grays makes it look practically 3D. I thought it needed a little something more, though, since I’ll be seeing it everyday when I watch tv in my new room.

“I’m going to cut out a tiny little picture of Rob and paste him up there in the clouds,” I announced. She gave me the look her dad used to give me. I’m still going to do it. It makes me laugh and I think it makes Katy laugh, too. On the inside—the same way her dad used to laugh at my jokes. I do laugh still. It’s a relief when I do.

Still, there are tears every morning. A shower to wash them away. Slow, steady progress making the necessary changes needed to go forward from here. Always, the grief is there, like an unwelcome visitor. Sometimes amusement chases it into the shadows. Maybe the day will come when grief will stay there instead of sneaking back out once the laughter dies down. I don’t know. I’ve never been here before. Katy and I always tell people the same thing when we describe how we’re trying to cope:

“We don’t know what we’re doing.” 

We’re just winging it. Doing the best we can. Trying to find our way back to normal. Knowing it will never be the same again. We're missing Rob. Hanging on. Laughing when we can, crying when we can't. I'm catching on to how this works. Every single morning. While I throw back the covers, spin around, and swing my feet over the edge of the bed, I know the flash flood of tears will cover me again. They always do. They never disappoint.

Grief waits for me there, just outside the shadows. For as long as it lasts.