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