Hope Soars

“The calendar’s rolled back,” I said as she listened quietly. “Today is Day One again.” And the tears fell. I didn’t know. I hoped that once I’d made it through five weeks of remembering where I was at any time of the day one year ago. Once I’d passed the surprise anniversary of the last day that we lived a normal life together. Once I made it through the final three days marking his last three, and the worst day, the nineteenth of February, was over . . . Then. THEN I would feel some lifting of the heaviness of the last month.

“Don’t have expectations,” I was warned several times. “Take it as it comes.” Of course. One day at a time, sweet Jesus. One day at a time. One hour at a time. One breath at a time. The number one is quickly becoming a symbol of exhaustion. It’s hard to see the horizon in the distance when you’re focused on each breath. Hope is out there somewhere, but I still can’t see it. I don’t have the energy to try.

“The second year is worse than the first,” I’ve read more than once. “And the third can be just as difficult.” I would renounce that in the name of Jesus, but I’m not sure it would accomplish anything. Already, today, the twentieth of February, feels harder than it did yesterday. And yesterday was tough as granite.

Through all of the first year, there was always a day when I could say, “Last year, Rob and I . . .” Phase Two of losing Rob means I can’t say that or remember him that way anymore. There’s an entire year now between today and every memory I have of our evaporated life together. A year ago I held his denim jacket against my face and imagined I was weeping on his shoulder. A year ago flowers and cards flooded our home with the reminder that I am now ‘that woman.’ A year ago I had stacks of heartless paperwork to fill out, declaring that I am alone in what’s left of the union once known as Mr. and Mrs. Rob McLeod.

A year ago my life collapsed right before my eyes.

I’ve spent the last 365 days doing what had to be done, buying Kleenex by the truckload, processing my feelings on paper and in counseling, building a home to live in by myself for the first time in my life, and learning how to exist with an aching desire to see the face of the man I love one more time - while knowing I can’t.

A lot can happen in one year.

I decided to drive to Texas to be with my sister on this first terrible anniversary. We always have fun together. We also cry together. Rob was a brother to her. Only five when he and I got married, she doesn’t have a single memory in which he doesn’t exist. We headed to our favorite haunt, Magnolia Market in Waco, Texas, filled up on Joanna Gaines’ cupcakes, and took a drive across the Brazos River to explore the countryside. There were no expectations or agendas or familiar roads. We just drove.

That’s when I saw it. Circling and soaring, doing loop de loops through strands of clouds set against a deep blue sky, its light brown wings were stretched as far out as they could go. Watching what I was sure was a hawk, the bird rose jubilantly in the air and flew directly over my truck as my sister and I drove the open highway of central Texas. And for the first time in over a year, my heart soared, too. “Good for you, Baby,” my soul sang as I watched the freedom displayed in one of Rob’s favorite signs of hope to my children and me. I was so surprised by the momentary joy I felt as I sensed the liberation Rob is experiencing, that the pain I’ve lived in for so long was eclipsed by hope. Just for a moment or two. It didn’t last long. It didn’t have to. This isn’t a race I’m running to hurry and be okay again. There’s no deadline that demands that I get a grip and return to normal. The anguish of losing Rob won’t be shed like a worn-out garment.

I will never be the same woman again. Death and loss change you. If they don’t, life and love didn’t either. Grief has to do its work in a broken heart. There is no healing without grieving. And that will take as long as it takes.

I’ve been told, though, the grief will change. I will always long for Rob. Always look for him in a crowd. For the past two days as my sister and I have been on the road together, I’ve reached for my phone every afternoon with the thought that I’d give Rob a call and tell him about my day. And then the pain started again. He was my life.

But today, as joy eclipsed that pain for a brief moment, I saw the horizon for the first time.

And he knew it. Hope called my name and, much to my surprise, my wounded heart answered with joy.

Maybe that's why the hawk soared.

With thanks to David Bush for permission to use the photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: Soaring | Class: Aves Order: Accipitriformes Family: Accipit… | Flickr

One Year Later

I didn’t expect it to hurt this much. 

I’ve worried about this weekend, of course. It began one year ago today when the doctor called instead of Risa. When instead of a good report about how they planned to bring you down off that mountain, we were told that the fight was over, and we needed to come say good-bye. That was the 17^th. Today’s date. Tomorrow is one year since Katy and I drove up the mountain and saw you suffering. While Lee stayed with us for hours on his phone, listening, we all gave you what you needed. Release. Saturday will be one year since you left us, and our suffering began in earnest.

I wanted to go to Florida to visit your grave this weekend, but the logistics were too much for me right now. Another road trip to Florida for another sad reason was overwhelming, and flying isn’t even on the table. This was one of those decisions I made that has also left me in pain. I knew when you died that you needed to be with your ancestors in that tiny Florida cemetery. But I live two thousand miles away where you and I raised a family together. And built our marriage. Dreamed our dreams. And lost our future.

So, I can’t sit on that bench your sister added to the family plot, talk to you in private under those massive southern oak trees, and weep over all that was stolen from us beside your grave. I never knew something like that would be important to me. I didn’t grow up with funerals and cemeteries and such. But I never thought I’d lose you, either.

Today I loaded up my truck and drove to Albuquerque, day one of a two-day trip to meet up with Lynette in Amarillo. “We’ll get you through this,” she told me a few months ago when we decided to spend the coming week together in Texas. I looked at the map and tried to figure out a route that would avoid our last hometown of Heber on top of our beloved Mogollon Rim, but there was no other path that I felt comfortable driving alone.

I’ve been as angry with the mountains for taking you from me as I’ve been at God for doing the same. I told Katy when we drove down following your last day in the hospital that I would never forgive the mountains for the part they played in my losing you. I’ve been back to them a few times, trying to reconcile with the sanctuary where you and I often fled for respite from frantic city life. I know it’s not really their fault. But I don’t know who to blame for this horrible tragedy, and since the mountains called us and off we went, pointing the finger at all those pines that have the nerve to stay standing seems logical. Sort of.

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about your grave. About your name etched in granite when it should still be written on our mailbox. We couldn’t have your memorial for five months after your passing. Covid postponed everything last year. I wasn’t even there when they interred your ashes. That figures. Just like I was prevented from being there to comfort you while you spent four weeks fighting for your life in a lonely ICU four hours away from me.

It wasn’t supposed to end that way, Baby. Sometimes that’s the biggest hurt of all. Death loves to get the upper hand.

I realized yesterday as I lay in the dark, thinking, that driving back through Heber this weekend is another way I can honor you on this first horrible anniversary. Your ashes are buried in your home state, but your life didn’t end there. It ended here, in our mountains. So, I drove through there today. I wept through there today. Tonight my steps are re-traced as I stay in the same hotel where I stopped last summer on my way to pick up Lynette in Amarillo before we drove together to Florida.

I don’t know how long this deep hurt will last, but I am determined to go through this pain because there are no shortcuts around it, just as there were no shortcuts around Heber. The only way I can reach the hope I need so I can face the rest of my life without you by my side is to experience this honoring, transformative thing called ‘grief.’

“It hurts so much because you loved so much,” my counselor reminds me often. Then so be it. I will hurt and grieve for as long as it takes. I will feel the feels. Miss you like I’d miss my own heart. Long for what we cannot have. Treasure the moments when I still feel you near. And cry out to God in the dark.

One year later. Still loving you, Baby. I always will.

Elephant Story

I am astonished that people want to read the sad things I’ve written for the last year. I never intended to do so. I’d rather be putting my funny bone to work telling stories about the hilarious way we all live our lives. But life isn’t always funny, is it? Sometimes your heart breaks and your normal disappears and you find yourself standing in a field of devastation where all that remains is your voice—and your pen. So, you write. Because it’s the only way you know how to cope.

By telling your story.

This isn’t the way I thought my story would turn out. It’s not the way I believed Rob’s story would end. When you’re a writer telling tales, you can change plot lines and create characters—complete with superpowers if you want to—and while the goal is to keep your reader’s hand at their throat while they worry that the bad guys will win and all will be lost—it never is. That only happens in real life where we don’t have control over anything except . . . well, actually, nothing comes to mind anymore.

We’re not in control of our story.

I had just written a new chapter for our story. All about how the mountains had called our name and we had to go. It was going to be our greatest adventure. We weren’t old, but we were headed there. It was our last chance, and we went for it. And if you follow my blogs closely, you’ll discover there’s a long gap in the narrative between when we answered the call of the wild during Christmas of 2020, and when I announced that my home address had changed. “This is where I live now,” I explained in early March, three months later. “In sadness.”

That Christmas post was the last time my story had a happy ending.

In about two weeks, a day I’ve dreaded for the last year will resurface. The first anniversary since we lost the most wonderful man my family has ever known. Through it all, the shock and numbness and shattering and surviving, you have been here. Standing beside us. Weeping with those who weep. Holding on to us so we wouldn’t collapse. Praying in the night when you couldn’t sleep, knowing we weren’t sleeping either. Sending us notes and flowers, bringing food and paying for Door Dash orders.

You did it all while you didn’t know what to do. You loved us while you watched us grieve. You were here even when our eyes were so blinded by tears we were unaware of your presence and could only see our own pain. You told us you didn’t know what to say. That you couldn’t imagine our agony. That you prayed so hard it hurt. And you told us you love us.

Then you proved it.

You stood by as a witness to our pain. That’s what shattered, grieving people need. We need a witness. We need someone who sees the hand life has dealt us and will acknowledge how unfair it is. We need people without answers. Eyes that don’t judge. Hands that comfort but don’t point fingers. When it feels like we’re the victims of a random act of violence, we need someone who has our back.

In the wild, when an elephant goes down due to illness or death, all the rest of the herd gather around the fallen one in a huge circle. They stay with the injured one for as long as it takes, sometimes crying, always watching, determined not to abandon the wounded. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they form a ring of love and care simply by being there. They don’t do anything more because they can’t. But their sturdy presence, this cloud of witnesses, provides emotional strength to the one on the ground like nothing else could while she endures what no one else can.

That’s what you have been to me and my family this year.

We’re so tempted to explain why bad things happen to good people, aren’t we? We long to be the hero and the fixer of broken hearts. We even want to save face for God, worried as we are that His reputation will be smudged if a believer questions His motives. I have been a Job’s friend to the grieving myself because I was afraid of the day when I would become Job.

I’m not afraid anymore. I am here.

For now, I’m the one who is grieving. I will grieve for a long time. And that’s normal. I know it’s hard to watch. It takes an enormous amount of patience to allow it to happen while you stand by helplessly with your feet itching and your trunk swinging around aimlessly. But to you, my beloved elephants, I extend my eternal gratitude and love. Thank you for being here. For standing beside me and my family. For refusing to think you can fix our brokenness and for insisting on loving us as we are. You have been witnesses to our pain. That’s what we have needed most.

Because of you, we will get up again. We will stand tall in our grief. We will walk into the next chapter of our story with our heads held high, knowing how well we were loved by Rob and how well we are loved by you.

You have done this for us. You, my friends, are awesome elephants.

With gratitude to Jim and Robin Kunze for permission to use their photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: 

Elephants | Denver Zoo | Jim & Robin Kunze | Flickr