The Road Less Traveled

There’s this woman driving alone on I-40. One hand on the steering wheel, the other reaching for the Kleenex box, she blinks away the tears that flood her eyes, letting them do a freefall down the front of her shirt. She hasn’t driven the interstate by herself until this trip. She hasn’t done a lot of things alone until recently. In the past, driving was a fun distraction. Now it’s a painful necessity.

A few times, the sobs are so deep she has to pull off and find a safe place to weep. Let them rack her body, holding herself in taut sorrow until the grief storm finally slows and she can get back on the road again. She knows it’s dangerous to drive and cry, but most of the time she has no choice. If she pulled off every time another wave of anguish hits, she’d never reach her destination.

She wonders if the parade of truckers who play leapfrog with her notice the agony of this drive. Maybe they see that she’s learning how to travel in sync with them. Maybe they wish she’d find a country road to follow and get out of their way. Or maybe they’re guardian angels in disguise, keeping an eye on the widow on the highway while she crosses the country to mourn at the grave of her husband.

She’s not alone for most of this five-thousand-mile journey. Meeting up in Amarillo, her sister shares the ride, spelling her behind the wheel as they travel through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the length of Florida. But the high desert southwest—west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona—this stretch of interstate she must travel alone. Weeping at the wheel. Remembering all the other times she and her love drove back and forth across the country together. And missing him.

She sees him everywhere. Passing a welcome center in New Mexico, she needs a bathroom but skips this one because he always wandered over to the counter there to chat with the host and examine the map on the wall. He won’t do that anymore. In the rhythmic sounds of Louisiana’s concrete highways, she remembers how they both wished I-10 had better roads. The first “Arrive Alive” billboard makes her suck in her breath as she crosses the Florida state line. Thank God she’s almost there. She can only handle so many memories before she’ll have to pull off the highway again.

She didn’t have to do it this way. She could have flown. Crossed all those states in under eight hours instead of seven days. Viewed the country they used to explore together from the safety of thirty thousand feet instead of eye level the way they preferred to do it. Arrived by supper time the same day, rented a car at the airport, and driven twenty minutes instead of forty hours.

But she knew if she’d done it that way, she’d have never traveled again. Not without him. And she’s been forced into doing everything without him for the rest of her life. Forced to sleep alone. Forced to cry alone. Forced to live alone. Giving up the freedom to go where she wants to, even if it means doing it alone, is unthinkable. He would agree and she knows it.

She has to prove to herself that she can survive what life has demanded of her. It’s the only way she can go on without him.

She must drive through the piney mountains she still hasn’t forgiven. Point out the cypress knees in the Louisiana bayous to her sister the way he pointed them out to his bride forty-four years ago. Navigate the height of the massive bridge the two of them always loved which spans the mighty Mississippi River. Exclaim over the suffocating overreach of kudzu vines in north Florida. Breathe in the salty smell of the Gulf waters in his hometown—their first address together. Drive past the hospital where their children were born. Pull into the driveway of the house he grew up in. Weep in the arms of his mother and sisters in their front yard.

She has to conquer Florida and the sight of her husband in every state she crosses for twenty-two hundred miles or it will conquer her.

In a world where control has been torn away from her like a tornado on a Kansas prairie, she has to control something. So, she chose to control this. The journey to her husband’s grave and memorial. The pathway to the friends and family who will grieve with her. The afternoon at Myakka State Park where the two of them used to chase alligators and thunderstorms—now she’ll watch while her children teach their children about the Florida their Chief loved so much.

Maybe in this age of rapid communication and evaporation of privacy, the truckers on I-40 already know the mission the woman in the silver Tahoe is on, so they surround her like guardian angels. Road warriors who know what loneliness and long hours feel like, they stand in for the husband unable to be there for her right now.

Maybe they are unaware of her broken heart. Maybe they can’t really see inside the cab of the Tahoe in the truckstop. Or maybe they’ve seen it before and are careful as they both follow and lead the way for the woman learning to drive alone.

Guardian angels are always in disguise. Maybe this time they show up as truckers. Her broken heart may never know. It doesn’t need to know.

All she knows is this is one more long road she has to take without him.

Into The Heart Of The Storm

Five months, five days. It’s not enough time to say I’m healing. Healing isn’t even the right word for a grieving heart. “You never get over it,” my widowed mother-in-law whispered in my ear today as she hugged me tight. “You just learn to live with it.”

“I know,” I answered. “It’s a life sentence.” She nodded. She knows. It’s taken nine years for her to learn to live without Rob’s dad. Five months, five days is a drop in a bucket. A very very deep bucket.

How am I then? Everyone, including me, wants to know. I thought I was getting a little bit used to living without Rob every day. Without the smell of his morning coffee. Without his kiss on my lips when I woke up. Without our bantering back and forth and the occasional deep conversation. Without all that. I was getting used to a solitary morning cry followed by a hot shower, a makeup session to hide the damage, and random plans to disguise how alone I feel without him.

I didn’t realize how little I’d accepted his death because we hadn’t yet held his funeral.

Until this morning.

A couple of days ago, after I drove across country with my sister and arrived in Florida, I thought ahead to the return trip. The one I’ll make next week where first I’ll drop Lynette off in Texas and then spend the next two days on my own on I-40. It will be a very different trip when I go back to Arizona - to face an uncertain future trying to discover who I am now.

Today, Saturday, July 24^th, forty or fifty of our friends from Florida and Arizona gathered graveside with my children and the rest of our family and me to say good-bye to Rob.

I thought I had already done that.

I was wrong.

I have only begun to say good-bye to my beloved husband. I can’t do it all at once, it seems. The truth is too much for me to take in. His funeral was months away when we lost him in February. I hadn’t faced his grave in person yet. Last night, after my son and his family arrived from Kentucky, he and my daughter and I stood alone next to the new headstone in the McLeod family plot. The one that shouldn't belong to Rob but has his name engraved on it. Dreading the service the next morning, we held each other in silence, my family, graveside. To lessen the pain of what we'd face today.

Now it’s over. His memorial service is a memory. In four days, I’ll leave Rob behind again, this time in a cemetery twenty-two hundred miles from where I have to live the rest of my life without him.

I hate this.

A vague memory surfaced tonight and I struggled to recognize it and put it in context. Maybe it came up because a good old Florida thunderstorm blew up this evening. Sitting in our room, remembering the day, my sister, Lynette, and I decided to go for a drive along the beach. I needed a distraction. We stopped for ice cream just as the sky crackled and exploded with lightning.

“Wanna chase a rainstorm?” I asked, backing out of our parking space before she could answer the rhetorical question. Following the yellow, red, and purple splotches on my weather app’s radar, we drove into the heart of the storm, rain pelting my Tahoe while the ground beneath us shook from the impact of massive lightning bolts.

“Sir! Sir!” the man’s voice yelled above the sound of the storm. “Let go of him! You’ve got to let him go, sir!” Sea water splashed the faces of two men bobbing in strong breakers stirred up by helicopter blades. But the man with a death grip on his friend can’t release him. It’s his best friend. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He can’t be dead. It’s not possible.

Finally wrenching the lifeless body of Goose from the arms of Maverick, the search and rescue mission concludes with the horrible truth and the rest of the movie focuses on the rescue of a top gun’s fight to survive great loss.

A bolt of lightning brought me back to the present. The painful scene seared my heart in remembrance. As long as the funeral lay before me, I could still hold on to a piece of the life Rob and I have shared. It was nothing to look forward to, but our attention was on Rob this morning as we listened to a summary of his accomplishments and a few anecdotes that brought much needed laughter. Focusing on him kept him alive for all of us. Saying good-bye leaves him to rest in peace in a tree-lined cemetery beside his father and brothers and ancestors.

And I have to go home to Arizona to do the hard work of rebuilding my life without Rob.

I don’t want to let him go.

I thought he was already gone. After all, it’s been five months, five days since he took his last breath. But today. Today I sat on the front row surrounded by my family, silent sobs escaping in all directions. I listened to his friend and fellow firefighter play “Going Home” on his solitary bagpipe. Let the tears fall while the pastor told us Rob is not gone but has simply changed location. Accepted his U.S. flag in thanks for his service in the military. And wept. The widow of Robert L. McLeod III.

It’s official.

“What’s that?” my dear friend from Arizona asked me following the memorial as she saw me fingering a silver chain and its pendant. I held it out for her to see.

“It’s half a heart.”

“Where’s the other half?” she asked.

“I have it on another chain.”

Two halves of a broken heart, each on its own chain, I laid the silver version beside the rocks my grandchildren painted for their Chief and the thistle charm my daughter carefully placed on her father’s grave. And I left. I left my love, I left my heart. I let him go.

I hate this.

You Got This

Albuquerque. I drove there today. Alone. All four hundred twenty miles of it. I’ve never done this before. It’s a familiar route, but only because it’s the main way out of Arizona, and Rob and I have driven it together many times. Today is different, though. Today, it’s the first leg of a trip that will culminate with Rob’s memorial service in his hometown on the gulf coast of Florida. 

Sarasota was a different place when Rob was a boy. Far from being the congested city it is today, it was once full of dense woods and open beaches where he learned to fish and hunt and sail boats. His childhood adventures there rival his fictional favorite, Tarzan. Only Rob really lived in a tropical jungle. He ate fresh (road kill) armadillo. Camped in the piney woods, building campfires where he and his teenage friends roasted whatever wild game they bagged, or canned sardines if the hunting didn’t work out. The boys he grew up with were lifelong friends.

When Rob and I got married, we moved to Sarasota where he began his firefighter career, following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps. He taught me to love and appreciate all the woodsy haunts where he spent his childhood, especially Myakka State Park where it’s practically a guarantee that you can see wild alligators any time you make the drive out there. Gray spanish moss drape massive stands of southern oaks, while dense palmettos overwhelm the undergrowth beneath. You’ve gotta watch where you walk in woods like those.

It’s a whole different kind of wild there. A lot like Rob.

As much as he loved Florida, he also loved the mountains. And the desert. And farmland. Any time we had a few dollars saved up, we hit the road and traveled by car or minivan or SUV to see as much of this amazing America as we could squeeze into two or three and sometimes four weeks. Our last vehicle had 298,000 miles on it when I traded it in last month and we took credit for all but 20,000. We’ve crisscrossed this country numerous times, from Seattle to Maine, Montana to Texas, and all the heartland in between. We visited forty-eight states in our forty-four years together.  North Dakota and Hawaii didn’t make the list because, well, North Dakota. And you can’t drive to Hawaii.

Rob taught me how to travel and today I took everything I learned from all those miles I navigated for him and set out on my own. I’m on this journey to tell him good-bye once more. His ashes are already in place at the foot of a headstone in his family’s cemetery plot. Next week my family and I will gather with his mother and sisters and together mourn the man we lost too soon.

I’ve grieved all day today. My route leaving Arizona took me through all our favorite places on the Mogollon Rim where we finally made our dream come true to live in the mountains, only to lose it after five short weeks. It was the shortest route google maps offered, but the most painful. We spent most of our marriage in the places where I drove today.

I passed through Payson where our kids spent much of their own childhoods playing in the woods and throwing rocks in Tonto Creek. I drove by the entrance to Woods Canyon Lake where Rob and I escaped any time the desert heat got too suffocating. So, we were there a lot. When the turnoff to our cabin in Heber appeared, I followed it for a mile and a half to the driveway where Rob’s homemade sign sits out front, a slice of juniper with the address where ambulances came last January when we were seriously ill.

I’d never seen our house in the spring, and I wanted to see what it looked like with the bushes filled out and new growth in the planters Rob had built. The new owners hung a hammock out back between two large pines—it was the one thing that made me smile. It’s clear they love it the way we did. Selling the house to their young family was the only thing I could do to protect the place where we barely got to live. We were there in the stark fall and winter—we never got to see how pretty it is when it’s full of life, watered and vibrant. Sitting in the driveway of the last home Rob and I shared, it took a while before I could see to back out onto the road. I didn’t want to leave. Goodbyes are like that.

The sign Rob had made, the one he’d talked about having for decades, wasn’t in place there, though. Next week I’ll be reading his name on a headstone instead of reading the words ‘McLeod’s Keep’ on the massive piece of juniper Rob commissioned for that cabin in Heber. It’s not fair. That’s not whining or selfish, it’s simply the truth. And facing the truth has been as much of my journey as the drive across America will be this week for me.

We’ve lost so much. I’ve lost so much. I still can’t believe it most of the time. Even tonight, when I got to my hotel room, the first thing I thought when I put my things down was that I needed to call Rob and let him know I got here safely. The agony in my gut doubled me over as I realized that my brain is still protecting me from the full reality that Rob is gone. He doesn’t answer his phone anymore. The instinct to touch base with him was so strong, though, that remembering he’s not waiting to hear from me felt like he had died all over again.

Grief is relentless.

There was a moment today, though, a mercy for a while, that softened the hard reality of what I’m doing these next two weeks. One of our favorite places is on top of the Mogollon Rim on state highway 260. The four-lane highway is steep and curvy, driven at fairly high speeds lest you get run over by trucks and campers on their way to cooler heights. The road follows the very edge of the Rim and all that lies between vehicles and a death drop to the Ponderosa Pine floor below are concrete barriers. The view is spectacular and it’s hard not to take a quick look at the expanse of thousands of acres of pines that spread as far as you can see.

I had trouble seeing it, though, through my tears. My hands held the steering wheel in a death grip while I tried to control my emotions. The memories of all the times we’ve driven that road together, gasped at the view like we were seeing it for the first time, it all rolled in on me like a monsoon storm as I climbed that mountain.

In that moment of pain and sorrow, I sensed Rob’s presence with me. I’ve felt his presence before, but usually it’s in moments of rare joy when our family is laughing together the way we always loved doing. But today, I knew he was aware of how hard this trip is for me. How much pain I’ll revisit and share with family and friends. And I knew I’m not alone.

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to know the veil between this life and the next is thin and that someone who loves us from the other side is close by. But I’ve talked with many others who’ve experienced the same thing. I know it’s a mercy of God to allow us this awareness. Rob’s presence was close for the next hour while I drove past Woods Canyon Lake and down that long road to our cabin in the woods, even as I sat crying in the driveway we owned last Christmas. And as I left Heber, the sensation faded with it. But I left comforted. Not that there won’t be more tears and more pain. But today, comfort came when I needed it and, with it, strength to do this impossible thing that life has asked of me.

I am grateful to God for carrying me, surrounding me, allowing the veil to be thin in places, and walking through this experience with me. I don’t know how I’d get through this without Him. And in the moments when I feel His arms around me, I understand that He meant it when He said He'll never let me down or loosen His grip on me. That's when courage comes again.

I’m not alone.

Only Human

I was late today. I often am. I’d be happy to take responsibility for that character flaw, but it’s really not my fault. Even my arrival on planet earth was late. I started out life a full month after my due date. Tardiness is the cross I have to bear and completely out of my control.

My new doctor didn’t see it that way. 

I did call ahead to explain my dilemma this morning. I spoke to a gracious woman who reminded me that we’re all human, to give myself a break, and she’d be sure to call the doctor’s office and let them know I’d be ten to fifteen minutes late for my appointment.

She lied.

Or maybe she just forgot because it was easier than making a phone call. I was late because it was easier than canceling my appointment. And less expensive. I was also late because I didn’t want to start one more day without Rob. Because I spent too much time crying and not enough time putting on my makeup. Because I fell back asleep for another hour after staying up too late last night because I didn’t want to go to sleep without my husband again.

I haven’t slept with my husband in six months. Excuse me while I go cry about that for another minute.

“You’re fifteen minutes late,” the woman in blue scrubs mumbled beneath her mask, her judgey Jersey eyes narrowed in irritation. She really was from Jersey. I got her whole life story while the blood pressure cup revealed my own emotional turmoil.

“I know,” I said, wondering what happened to the gracious voice on the phone. “I called ahead to ask if I should still come in.”

“We didn’t get a phone call,” Judge Judy replied. “Is your blood pressure always high?”

Only when I’m getting yelled at in a doctor’s office by a medical assistant. “Yes,” I said, tightlipped.

“The doctor will see you, that’s the important thing. Even though you’re late.”

“I apologize,” I said. “It was entirely my fault.”

Her face relaxed. “Well, you’re here. That’s all that matters. And you look nice.”

I let my eyes do the smiling because of the mask over my mouth. My mouth didn’t feel like doing it anyway.

“Have a happy birthday tomorrow,” I told her as she headed for the door. She liked that. Next week she’s going to visit her ninety-five-year-old mother who lives in an assisted living facility back east. She hasn’t seen her mom in three years, but her mom still loves her even though she was the rebel who moved here years ago, raising her family two miles from where I raised mine.

Blood pressure monitors take a while, I noticed.

After she left, I pulled out my phone to play Rummikub and kill time. I had a lot to kill since I was fifteen minutes late. They were squeezing me in now. I figured the doc would be irritable when he finally appeared. I assumed he'd have to give up some of his lunch hour to hear about my aches and pains. If I had to give up some of my lunch hour against my will, I’d be fed up, too.

I felt terrible about the situation. I really liked this foot doctor when I met him two months ago. He joked with me, took his time to answer my questions, and seemed very kindhearted. Suddenly, I lost at Rummikub and took that as a bad omen—a sign that the new doctor probably wouldn’t be as pleasant today as he was the last time.

The door opened and Dr. Omen came into the room, solemn-eyed and a lot less chatty than I remembered. Yup. He was ticked off about my tardiness. So much for me being human and giving myself a break. He took a look at my foot, checked my pain level, and sat back in his chair. His body language said it all, which was fine with me because I didn’t want to read the lips hidden behind his mask.

“You’re doing the stretches, the icing down, using the cream?” he asked. I nodded and let him speed up the exam. I was pretty sure that corned beef on rye he’d ordered was getting dried out.

“We’re just trying to avoid surgery here, you know.”

I knew. “Last time you said you’d be happy if I had thirty per cent improvement on this visit,” I told him.

“And what do you have today?”

“Thirty per cent.”

A few crow’s feet appeared outside his eyes. I guess that made him happy. I relaxed a little.

“The next step would be rehabilitation to stretch that tendon,” he said. It sounded good to me. “After a few weeks of that, I’d be happy to see sixty to seventy per cent improvement.”

“I’d like that, too,” I told him.

“Of course, by then, you’ll be so used to the pain you probably won’t even notice a difference,” he said, almost as an afterthought. We chatted another minute or so, just small talk, where I told him I could start rehab after I get back in August from burying my husband in Florida. He wanted to know more and suddenly the crow’s feet disappeared behind his sympathetic eyes. It’s a sad story and he was sorry. Me, too. By the time he left, I felt like we were friends again, and I even nodded to the Jersey Girl on my way out. I also got a much later appointment for a morning eight weeks from now.

Back in my truck, I closed the door on my tears and let them flow, unhindered. I read it’s safer to sob in a parked car than when driving on a freeway. Why am I always late? I asked myself, pummeling my lousy character flaw. It’s so inconsiderate. Thoughtless. Selfish. I wasn’t exactly being kind to my grieving heart because, the truth is, I’d gotten a lot better about being on time before I lost Rob. Now, it takes me twice as long to get up and get going and get out because I don’t want to face another day without him. But I’ll have to face a million of them, I’m guessing. Who knew an overweight widow could be so dang healthy? Except for that aching foot thing.

Blowing my nose, I checked the mirrors and pulled out of the parking lot, still stinging from the interaction. This had been my big event for the day—thank God it was behind me. Now, the rest of my Friday stretched out before me like a long, Texas road. I can do anything I want to, I thought, with a tiny sense of relief. I’m not that unfamiliar with being alone. When Rob was working long hours at the Fire Department, I spent a huge amount of time alone. I did anything I wanted to and enjoyed it.

But in those days, Rob always came home.

A stabbing pain in my heart killed the piece of delight I’d just felt. He’s not coming home anymore. I’ll never see him on earth again. Next week I’ll drive to his hometown and sit in front of the headstone with his name on it and listen to a bagpiper play and a preacher talk and accept his veteran’s flag. Officially his widow. I carry this pain around with me all day long every day, all night long every night. There’s no getting away from it. No relief. Just the constant pressure of being trapped in a vice of grief. Sometimes it moves to the back of my consciousness, but never very far. It throbs in concert with the beat of my broken heart.

“By the time I see you again, you’ll be better, but you’ll be so used to the pain you probably won’t even notice any improvement.” The doctor’s words from a few minutes earlier surfaced in my mind. “You’ll be so used to the pain,” he’d said.

“Are you being kind to yourself?” my counselor often asks.

“What does that even mean?” I responded the last time it came up.

“It means to allow yourself to be human. To experience the suffering, the grieving. This is very hard. Ask yourself what you need to do to give yourself room for what has happened to you.” That’s a toughy. Every time I give myself a little room, I take a mile and, the next thing I know, some doctor’s pissed at me because I was late.

“We’re all human,” the forgetful voice on the phone told me this morning.

“Allow yourself to be human,” my counselor reminded me.

“There are no rules for grief,” a card in my room reads. “There’s no time frame. No judgment. Do whatever is right for your soul.” I love that. Every time I read it, my heart rate slows down.

Thank goodness there really are no rules for grief. Because if there were, trying to figure them out would be like understanding how to play one of those role-playing games my son loves so much. You'd need a master’s degree just to get through the manual.

Right now, I have very little emotional space for the expectations of others or the expectations I put on myself. And the main expectation we have for me is that I’ll be the way I’ve always been in time. Getting back to normal is the goal. Getting over my grief is the target. Be myself again.

That’s what is called an ‘unrealistic expectation,’ and it’ll bite you in the butt every time.

I may never be the person I was again because my life will never again be what it once was. The same way Rob is never coming home, I will never be the same again without him and the life we built together. Accepting that is the key here. Resting in God’s timing is the lock acceptance will open.

After she told me to be gentle with myself, I showed my counselor the tattoos on my wrist and foot—the same sore foot that I keep babying. There’s a quarter rest on my wrist and the word “Selah” on my foot, both reminders to pause. To rest. Stop tapping your fingernails impatiently on the table.

“I see a theme here,” she said. “Other cultures are good at incorporating rest and pause into their days. But in this country, productivity and performance are wired into us. Remember, transition affects how much you can get done now. Change of any kind slows you down.”

Maybe that’s good. It’s brilliant to pause. To give ourselves permission to rest. After all, it's my birthright to be tardy. My tattoo says so. It may not be easy to give myself space in this difficult season, but at least I can start giving myself permission to try. And to remember I'm only human.

I’ll try it on my own time, though, not when I have my next doctor’s appointment.

I think I owe that guy a new sandwich. 

Changes Are Coming!

 

Hi, my friend,

Thanks so much for following the View From The Winepress for so many years. By the end of this month, perhaps sooner, blogspot will no longer notify my followers of new posts. As a result, I will be sending those notices out myself through mailchimp.com.

If you've already notified me that you'd like to continue receiving notices about each new post and included your current email address, then you don't need to do anything except perhaps alert your email server that mailchimp.com is valid and not spam.

If, however, this is all news to you and you'd still like to be included in notifications, please reach out to ViewFromTheWinepress@gmail.com with your email address. Blogspot has not shared that info with me and I don't want to lose you if you don't want to be lost.

If you've enjoyed this run but aren't interested anymore, there's nothing you need to do. Thank you, again, for following along on the journey so far. It's been wonderful to have you on board.

Thanks for your time!

Eula McLeod

ViewFromTheWinepress.blogspot.com

Contact: ViewFromTheWinepress@gmail.com

Bleating Heart

I got knocked down last week, but it wasn’t at Petsmart and this time it didn’t involve my dog. Someone on social media warned me not to pitch a tent in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I guess that’s how my honesty about grief was interpreted—that I enjoy this nightmare resort so much I’m planning an extended stay. It’s probably safe to say not everyone is equipped with healing words when dealing with people like me.

Never have I needed friends like I need them now. Never have I felt as vulnerable to the opinions of others as I do right now. It’s a raw, tender thing people hold in their hands—my broken heart. I know why some, perhaps many, people stop talking about the pain they constantly live in and keep their grief hidden behind pasted smiles. It’s less risky. On the other side, it's also hazardous to want to console someone you love, someone racked with sorrow, when you don't know what will help. If you haven’t been here yourself, how do you know what to say? Until I lost Rob, I didn't know what comfort looked like either. 

The reader probably meant well. But meaning well can take all kinds of forms, as I’ve discovered this year. It would be uncharitable of me to list many examples here, but if you’ve ever stood at the edge of the crater that was once your life while someone told you things could be worse or how to look on the bright side, you already know what those easy explanations sound like.

They sound like someone who’s never been here.

Being knocked down like that was crippling. I worried that people are anxious for me to hurry up and move on past this place of grief but are too polite to say so. For the last week, it’s been hard to write anything. Not writing is, for me, like not gardening would be for my daughter—we’d wilt, wither, fade away from the loss. For us, these are life-saving tools that keep us moving ahead, one difficult step at a time.

I don’t want to be here in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I’d give anything to go back to the world I lived in before that sinkhole opened up and swallowed my life, but it’s all gone. I will never be the same again. That’s reality. You can’t cheerlead yourself out of something like that. In a very real sense, I died right along with my husband. That’s a double grief to my friends and family. But it doesn’t mean I’m planting myself in a place of despair. It means I am searching for the way through. I’m doing that through my writing. I’ve been forced to learn how to carry what cannot be fixed.* How to go on in the life I’ve been asked to live now. Without my best friend, Rob McLeod, beside me.

I’m doing the best I can.

Those judgmental words led me to think about the Twenty-third Psalm, so maybe they ended up being a favor. What did David mean when he wrote about the Good Shepherd leading his sheep to a pasture that includes a valley like this one? Was it all a mean trick? Not if He is good. “Even though I walk through . . . I will fear no evil. Your rod and Your staff are a comfort to me.” This shepherd doesn’t beat up his sheep. He uses his staff to gently guide them in the way He wants them to go. He protects them from all kinds of enemies with His rod. He meets every need they have while they travel through. And they will travel through. There are no shortcuts around this valley.

David was a shepherd. I’m not. The closest I’ve ever been to real live sheep is when I throw a bunch of alfalfa pellets over the fence to the two in my daughter’s back pasture. They’re kind of skittish little things, jumping at unexpected sounds. Bleating, also known as complaining, whenever they crave more Purina Sheep Chow. Head butting the pigs who get in their way. I’ve watched them a lot, but I still don’t understand them. I don’t know how they feel in the dark. I can’t tell if they’re happy out there. No one told us what kind of hardships they experienced before they showed up here. They just landed in Katy’s pasture where they’re doing what sheep do. Eating and sleeping and bleating.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hang around a bunch of sheep for a living. But David put his life on the line to protect his animals. He even herded them into enclosures in that scary valley and then lay down across the opening every night, becoming a human doorway where nothing could get in or out without going through him first. He seemed to understand them. Their skittishness. Their hunger. Their selfishness.

The one thing he never did was criticize them for being sheep. Or for being afraid in the dark canyon he led them into. He just stayed with them, guiding them safely through until they reached the other side. They were his responsibility and he loved them.

That’s the thing about being in this terrible valley. I’m not even remotely interested in buying up real estate in such a desolate spot. I didn't ask to be here, but I'm not alone. I suppose I could get lost if left to my own devices—I have a terrible sense of direction. But I don’t need one. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is with me. He doesn’t criticize me for not knowing the way out. Or for bleating too much. He knows me. He has compassion on me. He doesn’t expect anything from me except to rest, letting Him restore my soul while He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake—it’s His reputation that’s on the line, not mine.

He knows where I am. He knows where He’s taking me. To His house. And for all the rest of my days, goodness and mercy will follow me until I get there.

I’ve never been here before. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just doing it anyway because I have no choice. The only one who’s been here before is the One Who promised never to leave me or forsake me, no matter how long this journey takes.

I’ll admit, I’m overwhelmed by this dark canyon. There is no shame in that. I miss my beloved’s voice, his comforting arm around my shoulders, his warm hand in mine. But just because I’m grieving doesn’t mean I’m broken. I don’t need to be fixed. Grief is something that happens to us, I’ve learned. “It no more needs a solution than love needs a solution. It’s a mystery to be honored, not a problem to be solved.”*

It isn’t a paper cut, this bisection that has happened to my heart.

It is simply the price of love.

*"It's OK That You're Not OK - Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand" by Megan Devine.