And Hope Does Not Disappoint

From where I sit in this borrowed space, sunlight invading through the twin windows opposite my chair, there is peace. There is order. And there is silence.

Everywhere are reminders of him. His helmet on the wall. His favorite hat atop the high bookshelf. The gifted windchimes spinning outside which bear his name. His two flags, presented to me in his honor and memory, stand at attention near his photos.

The tabletop Christmas tree I put up yesterday makes me aware of the season we’ve just entered. Last year he put up the giant one in our little lost cabin. This year I walk out my courage once more, even though decorating reminds me there will be no more magical Christmases spent with him.

The silence is deafening, my also-widowed friend wrote.

It is.

But it is also stalwart. There is strength here. A slowly revealing hope. A tranquility which plays out in the cool blues and grays of this borrowed space echoes the promise of my daughter’s favorite plaque, hung on the wall inside her home nextdoor.

All shall be well ~ All shall be well ~ And all manner of things shall be well

My tears cry out in daily desperation, praying this comfort is true.

How can one live in both hope and unbearable sorrow at the same time? How can I put one foot before the other one more time after time after time? How do I keep taking in one breath after the next after the next?

Daily, in all the pain in which I live, with all the grief I am learning to carry, I know this:

God is for me. He carries me. He loves me deeply.

In this dark, yet joy-filled, season where morning sunlight filters hope, it is all I know.

Many thanks to Richard Walker for permission to use the lovely photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: 

Windermere Rays | Rays of sunlight fall on Windermere, Lake … | Flickr

Echoes

I guess at the very moment I got that call, the one no one ever wants to believe they’ll have to answer, my mind went numb. Paralysis set in. For weeks afterwards, months actually, I couldn’t remember our life together. I forgot the sound of his voice. Couldn’t recall his mannerisms or his body language. If a happy memory tried to surface, something interrupted and it disappeared, the way a soap bubble bursts just as you reach out for it.

I became afraid that I’d never remember anything about our life together. “That’s silly,” some might say. “You’re just in shock. It’ll all come back to comfort you.” But how would I know that? I’ve never lost my husband before. Have you?

I filled the dresser with his photos. Then I packed them all up again. “I’ll face those later,” I whispered. He looks too alive in them. I can’t make the connection between a normal moment from a year ago when we took our marriage for granted, certain that death didn’t know our home address, until today where I sit alone in my room, craving his voice and his scent and his touch. How could I have ever been so deluded as to believe we’d always be together, just because we signed all our cards that way every Christmas?

Gradually the swelling that surrounds my broken heart begins to subside. With every morning that I wake up without Rob beside me, I become a little more accustomed to his absence. I squint in the new day’s light at meager glimpses of our life together, cautiously testing recall’s tenderness the way you’d put a toe in a tub of hot water. Still wary of the pain of remembering the way he loved me, how comfortable we were together, how easy it was to move in a rhythm created by years of trial and error and laughter and living, an unexpected irony emerges.

The first memories that flood my mind arrive with regret.

I recall how, when our children first left home to create their own adult lives, I was deluged with the luxury of remorse. Instead of relishing smiling moments, shared jokes, proud accomplishments, and answered prayer, I remembered my failures as a mother, wishing that, somehow, I could hit a rewind button and apply all that I’d learned from those mistakes and change my reactions. The pain I caused my children because of my ignorance and pride screamed so loudly in my conscience it silenced the multitude of happy times we spent as a family.

Just so, the memory of Rob’s and my life together works its way backward from now, unavoidably passing through the troubled waters of our illness, our hospitalization, our forced separation due to hospital policies, the stress of moving away from family and friends, selling a home we loved, the surprise of retirement’s adjustments and stresses, until, exhausted, I can gaze at these images no longer.  I realized quickly that I, as the surviving spouse, have been left as the curator of all our memories. There is no one else to call in to question the details. My version is recognized on the witness stand as gospel. Whether or not my recall is accurate, the only other eyewitness to our life is no longer here and no longer has a voice.

Unfortunately for me, my inner critic is experienced at condemnation. Once again, I see my failures. Regret my words, my self-centered moments, my insecurities, my neediness. I wish I had done things differently. Been kinder. More understanding. More generous. More . . . everything. I bargain with God, begging for even one minute with Rob again. In a dream or a vision, anything, somehow to tell him face to face how much I love him and always will love him and am sorry I wasn’t a better wife and playmate and partner and friend and . . . listener.

Regret rolls in where Rob’s laughing eyes once dismissed worries like these.

I tell myself that if I think about all those memories we built together and cherished for the future and invested in for the lean times, if I remember the millions of happy times we shared, that they will push away the sadness and remorse and help me, as someone told me who still has her husband, to “just be thankful for all the years you had together.”

Perhaps it’s just my melancholy personality. My tendency toward guilt and self-condemnation. My ongoing shock that he’ll never hold me in his wonderful arms again, that I’ll never bury my face against his neck, or smell the fragrance of his skin again.

Or maybe it’s this. The day I had to say good-bye took me so by surprise that I have spent the last nine months second guessing everything that brought us to that point. And still I have no answers. Only, as I have said, regrets. And questions that are hard to move past to where the happy memories live.

And then I realize. At first startling, the truth of this comes packaged in understanding and hope.

Wherever you’re standing when the door slams shut is the place where its sound echoes loudest.

Many thanks to Kerry O'Connor for permission to use the photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link:

Door Eighteen | Very old doorway from an abandoned house. I … | Flickr

Widow's Dance

Two steps back . . .

One step forward,

Two steps . . .

That’s the wrong way to dance. But I’m not dancing. I’m barely breathing sometimes. I’m just pantomiming the life I know I have to live. Bowing to the shadows, taking my cue from the rising sun, I make my way out of bed, do the things, shut out the lights, and go back to bed at the end of a long day of surviving.

Day after day after day.

There’s no calendar for this. No roadmap. I don’t know where I’m going or when I’m supposed to get there. I don’t know if I’m doing this right. Or wrong. Most of the time I feel like I’m carried along by momentum. Caught up in this awkward, painful dance. Trying. God, how I am trying. But I can’t feel the rhythm. It doesn’t seem to exist in this silent vacuum devoid of Rob.

I don’t know what my purpose is anymore. I am loved. Surrounded by family, supported by them and my friends, I know I am loved. I take care of my own business. Pay my bills. Clean my room. Do my laundry. Drum my fingernails. Escape in my truck. Eat too much sugar. Hope for a sign that Rob sees me and prays for me. That’s not very Baptist of me, but I’m not much of a Baptist anymore.

What I am is, suddenly, against my will, retired. I’m a retired housewife. An out of work homemaker. Once skilled at caring for my husband, my services are no longer required. There’s no employment bureau to turn to. How weird would that be? The worst part is how inexperienced I am at being a widow. Turns out you don’t need to know anything about it before you’re placed in that position. It goes hand in hand with retirement. I even qualified for a widow’s pension, courtesy of the Social Security Administration. They gave me a one-time paycheck of $255.00 for being my husband’s widow. I don’t know how they arrived at that figure or whether it was a reflection on me or Rob, but it was an insult regardless.

That’s what death feels like. An insult of the worst kind. No matter how well you took care of yourself and the one you loved, death is inevitable and rarely is it a "buy one get one free" opportunity. One of you is gone. One of you is retired. Left to dance alone. In the dark and the silent void.

One step forward.

Two steps back.

Out of rhythm.

Bowing to the shadows in pantomime.

With thanks to Soffie Hicks for permission to use the phine photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following the link below:

Dancing ghost feet | Soffie Hicks | Flickr

Down

And she’s down. Face down on the table again. Five minutes earlier she was laughing with the grands, beating the card shark at her own game, giving robot hugs and blowing kisses. Picking up the cell phone/daily calendar/keeper of the memories, his picture flashes across the screen. Three years ago in Texas, they stood by a river together, acting like life was normal and nothing could go wrong. Unaware that all they had left was three more years. She took a photo of him taking a photo, his turquoise wedding band always evident on that hand she loved so much. The one that held her face so often. The one that wiped the tears from her eyes. Held the steering wheel while his other hand held hers across the console. The world was theirs.

Until it wasn’t.

Tears flowing freely, she’s always amazed at how quickly she can be knocked on her back by a reminder. He always looks so real in these pictures.  That jawline she first fell in love with. She knows every expression on his face. Every voice inflection he ever made. She’s held his hand so many times, when she lies alone in bed she can imagine it holding hers again. She remembers every detail of the body that once was hers and hers alone.

And she weeps. Face down on the dining room table, knees buckling again, she weeps. Grief holding her in its vice, unexpectedly seizing her heart again, she gives in to the moment and sits in the pain. Someday, she once read, the vice will relax a bit. The pain will loosen somewhat and, along with love, the two will find new pathways. Little by little, all on their own. Unforced, impervious to willpower or pressure, when they are ready, not when she demands it. Until that happens,

She is down again. On her face. Weeping