Everywhere and Nowhere

I sit at their dining room table. The one you and I brought back here to Arizona from your childhood home. The one with the memories of all the Thanksgivings and Christmases celebrated year after year as a different generation of McLeods gathered together in your parents’ house in Florida. Our daughter makes the meals for this table now, in her home where her children laugh and learn, a wealth of guests are made welcome, and extended family, like me, are included.

And I remember. I remember the first night I sat at this table. The first night I met your family. I was terrified, young, so inexperienced. Sixteen years old, with the sparkling diamond you’d just given me hidden in my lap, I tried to relax and join in the dinnertime banter bouncing around the room, this mahogany expanse between us all. A bowl of fresh strawberries in front of me, nervously I brought the spoon to my mouth only to have the ripe, red fruit roll off and onto my blue jeans. I glanced around, relieved that no one had seen what happened. No one but you, Babe. And you sold me out.

Your dad, the intimidating Scotsman whose jovial eyes betrayed his next move, stood up and went quietly into the kitchen. Grabbing one of your mother’s aprons, he walked around the table to me and secured the cotton ties around my neck, the whole of my clothing now protected by a giant, makeshift bib.

“There now, darlin’,” your dad teased, “you can drop as many strawberries in your lap as you want to.” He took his seat as laughter exploded around this very table and my face went as red as my dessert. I loved your dad forever for making me feel part of your crazy family that night. And I never forgave you for ratting me out.

“YaYa,” the young voice calls, breaking into my memories, “it’s your turn to deal.” Tonight, my nine-year-old granddaughter and I sit at one end of the long expanse of dining table playing cards together. I shuffle, deal, and sit back again, absentmindedly staring out the wide picture window on my left. Waiting expectantly, unconsciously noting the time and how long it’s been since we ate supper, I watch for your truck. Listen for your step. Yearn for your smile. In a split second, my heart leans forward in full awareness that you are missing from this small gathering, that you’re late, you’re not here when you should be, only to have my mind jump in and coldly remind me that you’re not coming home. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

You’ll never sit beside me at this table again.

Baby, you have no idea what a gaping hole has been blown through my life. The way I can do something as casual and innocent as play a game of cards, when suddenly I realize for the millionth time that you’re not here. This isn’t our table. Our life together has ended. In those brief moments, grief takes advantage of my inattention and pulls me back down again into its quicksand of sorrow. This is the slog of grief.

I had no idea what this was like until it happened to me. Trying to adjust to life without “us”, without you, is probably going to take the rest of my life. The fog that filters in and out of my mind is strangely blinding. There are moments after all these months since you left when I think I’m getting it. The paperwork is all completed. The mail arrives with only my name on it—usually. The memorials are all behind us. I’ve made it through half a year of “firsts.” I go to bed alone. Wake up alone. Day after day, alone. There’s no reason to expect you to show up at this point. No reason at all except that for forty-seven years of my life, you were my person. You were my everything. I have no idea if that’s some kind of idolatry when God is supposed to be our all, but since coming up with marriage between one man and one woman was His idea, a picture of His love for His Church, I’m gonna say “no.” Missing you is normal. What’s abnormal is that you’re not here.

And that makes me a sitting duck for grief’s cruel reminders. A target for familiarity. You are still a massive part of me, woven into the fiber of my soul. Nothing fills the place where you lived and breathed into my life. My empty heart cries out when I’m not even thinking about you, pulling my attention back to its painful awareness that you’re gone. I have no answer for its questions. Only tears.

I see you everywhere. And nowhere. I see you in the mountains where we picnicked. At our favorite restaurants where we celebrated. In the gas stations where you always parked me in the shade. In the grocery where you knew which eggs I always bought and where you waited for me at the registers. Your fire helmet hangs on the wall in this room, across from where I sleep on the mattress you bought. The folded flags they gave me stand in respect behind your photos and your favorite ballcap. But you’re not here. Only these shadows of you remain.

Life is like that. Exhilarating and cruel, almost in the same breath. One minute you’re a teenager in love, dropping strawberries in your lap at the family table, and the next you’re a widow playing cards at that same table with your granddaughter, wishing to God for something as ordinary as the sound of your husband's footsteps in the hall.

I miss you. I will always look for you and miss you.

You are everywhere and nowhere.

With thanks to Veronica Aguilar for the exceptional photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: Such a lovely day in London! | Veronica Aguilar | Flickr

Help

“Falling! Falling! FALLING!” I yelled, as I lay back on the upholstered table. In the dim light, I felt strong hands holding my head where it extended beyond the edge of the padded bench, but the room was spinning and my eyes repeatedly swept left to right, desperately trying to find radar lock on something, anything, that would ground me.

“You’re not falling,” a voice from behind spoke to me. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. You’re not in any danger.” Easy for him to say. His head was screwed on straight.

I didn’t feel safe. I felt like a numbered ball rolling wildly inside a rotating Bingo cage. With the room refusing to right itself, nothing felt stable, and I had no control over the chaotic ride my body had taken me on. Vertigo. It’s not for the faint of heart.

This morning when I woke up, it wasn’t the room that was spinning out of control—my world was. It’s the same every morning. Upside down inside grief’s cage, the thought of facing another day without Rob feels like emotional vertigo. As sunlight convinces my eyes to open, before my feet even hit the floor, the roller coaster ride has begun, and I have no choice but to let anguish take me where it wants to go until it runs out of energy. But just like the physical sensation of being caught up inside a tornado, I don’t feel safe. I feel helpless. Battered. Unable to even locate some solid ground.

Vertigo is different from dizziness. Where dizziness makes a person feel off-balance, vertigo makes you feel like someone tossed you into a dryer and hit the “on” button. Vertigo is dizzy times twelve. Or a million. The first time I experienced it and the chiropractor convinced me I was not going to fall off his table, he did the Epley Maneuver and righted everything that was wrong. Then he taught Rob how to do it so we could forestall any future attacks.

But no one can right this wrong. I don’t have Rob anymore, which is the reason I’ve been experiencing emotional vertigo. Seven long months of it. Fourteen days. Eleven hours. Thirteen minutes. That’s a lot of spinning. A lot of searching for a horizon that’s in a free fall right along with me. I feel like I’ve lost my footing most of the time because Rob’s not here to hold me and tell me everything is going to be fine. I’m not sure it will ever be fine again. Every morning when I open my eyes, they search this room, sweeping repeatedly left to right, trying to locate my love. Instead, I'm freefalling. And it’s exhausting.

I knew I needed some rest in a place with few memories of our life together. I have a close friend who lives in Montana, so two weeks ago she and I drove to her home where I stayed for eight days. Rob and I didn’t really spend much time in Big Sky Country, and as fall exploded across the mountains of western Montana this September, I rested. My friends took me into the countryside where we explored hidden backroads, followed meandering rivers, picnicked on low, wooden bridges, and breathed in the Christmas tree fragrances of fir, spruce, and pines. I didn’t forget how much I miss Rob, but there was little around me to remind of all that I lost when I lost him. It was a breather I desperately needed and absorbed to the max.

And then I came home. I parted ways with my friend and her husband after the three of us, in our two-car caravan, drove south through Montana, Idaho, and Utah. I was alone again, the new story of my life. Alone in my truck, alone with my thoughts, alone with my fears. I cried all the way down I-17 out of Cordes Junction, which is really a bad idea when you’re the driver. I also spilled my guts to the God of the universe because the universe doesn’t control anything—its Creator does. I prayed. I prayed the only prayer I am able to offer right now and the only one I’ve been able to pray since I started speaking to Him again.  It’s an uncomplicated prayer, not hard to remember, and it cuts through all the religious verbiage in its simplicity.

“Help.”

That’s it. That’s what I pray frequently every day and it’s what I prayed in the cab of my Tahoe as I snaked downward to the Valley of the Sun last Friday evening. After the tears slowed, I elaborated a little more.

“Please hold me,” I added. “Please wrap your arms around me,” because I feel like I’m falling, falling, falling. Rob isn’t here to hold onto me anymore and I miss stealing a hug from him any time my world is threatening to go into twister mode again which, as I mentioned, has been every single morning for the last seven and a half agonizing months.  I begged God for help while I drove that curvy highway, blinking hard at a cascade of tears until I could see.

I used to call myself a prayer warrior. I once believed I had the right as one of God’s kids to stand in my authority and expect God to move on behalf of whoever I was praying for. That’s faith, right? Or so I believed. Practicing boldness in prayer while my husband fought for his life in the ICU, there was no one who was more convinced than I that his body would recover. Audacious in intercession, I was certain he would make it.

And I was wrong. He did not.

The day they called and said Rob was going to die, I stopped praying. I stopped asking for anything because suddenly I didn’t know what it was supposed to accomplish. I don’t tell God what to do anymore. I don’t speak to Him with any expectation of anything. It’s as though my hard drive has been wiped out and I’m starting over again. Like a newborn babe, conversation with my Savior now is simple and often monosyllabic.

Help.

It’s honest and quick when my eyes are blinded by tears and I’m behind the wheel of a life I never asked for. And when someone else asks me to put in a good word for them with Jesus, all I commit to anymore is this promise, “I’ll mention it.”

Help. Please put Your arms around me and hold me because I’m afraid I’m falling. It’s all I’ve got.

I made it back safely. Stepping into the converted apartment space I call home right now, I looked around and noticed a new frame on the high top table at the back of the room. Penned with artistic precision, I recognized the beautiful modern calligraphy of my oldest granddaughter beneath the glass. She had written out a verse I’ve run to many times in my life. But this time, it ran to me.

 

I will not

i will not

I WILL NOT,

in any degree, LEAVE YOU HELPLESS,

nor forsake you, NOR LET YOU DOWN,

nor RELAX MY HOLD ON YOU!

ASSUREDLY NOT!

~ Hebrews 13:5

 

“Falling! Falling! Falling!” I keep yelling as the tears cascade down my face in confirmation of how lost I feel. Each day of this painful journey, traveling the serpentine highway I’m unfamiliar with, I feel like I’m falling.  Desperately missing half of me, I find myself either paralyzed or upside down inside spiritual and emotional vertigo. There is no way I can describe the assault of feelings that lambast a soul who has lost their person—the one who knew them best, loved them most, their two lives melded into one over the course of nearly half a century. This is a long journey for me. I will never be the same again. How could I be? I was one with Rob McLeod and he’s not here anymore. I live a half existence now, an amputee in a couples’ world.

I don’t know how to pray anything but a childlike prayer. I don’t have any confidence that more than that will make any difference. All I know is when the spinning begins and my frightened heart cries out, “Help,” He does.

“I will not, I will not, I will not leave you help-less.”

Amen. It’s the only prayer I know.

With thanks to XoMEoX for the use of the dizzying photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link:   Vertigo | XoMEoX | Flickr