Scars

It never stops throbbing. Or goes away. It’s always in the background, this jagged scar in my soul. Scars are like that sometimes. Even a gentle touch can make them spasm with pain, a reminder of what caused the injury. I want relief. I ache for relief, if you can believe the irony in that statement. I used to describe intensity like this by saying my circumstances made me feel like I was held in a vice. I craved release so I could breathe freely again. I was practically a relief junky, I joked. The rush I got from a happy ending was nearly worth the anxiety of the problem.

But there is no escaping the vice that holds me now. Not this time. There was no happy ending. There was an unhappy beginning with no turning back. No “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards have been dealt to me or my family. Sometimes you win it all. Sometimes you go bankrupt. It all depends on a roll of the dice.

My counselor explained things to me this way. “Sadness is going to be a companion to you.” I already knew that, but it was validating to hear it from a professional who specializes in grief. The first time I wrote about losing Rob, the opening line read, “This is where I live now. In sadness.”

I guess it’s strange to think of sadness being a companion. Who wants a buddy like that? It flies in the face of our most cherished and unalienable right—the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. I think it’s fair to say that happiness and sadness seem mutually exclusive. Combining the two sounds like we’re either not good at picking a partner or somebody doesn’t know their rights.

I’ve discovered two things in the aftermath of injury:  I don’t have rights and I don’t have control. Instead, I am learning to live with loss. It’s not exactly the American Dream.

This is what is so difficult to explain. I didn’t understand it myself until I landed here. No one wants to live in this space or be companioned by sadness. We try to avoid it the way you’d step around a mud puddle or a pile of poo. We don’t want it on us. Or near us. A fragrance like that repels, it doesn’t invite. Being happy is the goal. Feeling joy is the expectation. Best to look on the bright side, be grateful, thankful, feel blessed, and decorate our walls with reminders to keep up the good work. No one buys plaques that say, “Life is Hard,” even though it often is. We must keep our heads up. Our spirits high. No negativity allowed. Positive energy is the god of the age.

But there was this man. He wasn’t famous for his good looks. His honesty offended the religious. He saw through the masks worn by everyone. And though love does conquer all, it was the way he identified with the broken of the world that stood out most. He was known as a man of sorrows. Well acquainted with grief. I have to assume grief and sorrow and suffering were his companions, too. One of the last things he told his devoted friends was, “In this world you will have trouble.” Not exactly a motivational speech, I’d say, even though he followed up with, “But be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

You don’t overcome without facing something that requires it. And whatever it is won’t be easy.

So, I was thinking about trees. Rob and I always planted trees at every home we ever made. My family and I planted one in his honor right outside the window of my new place. It’s young and healthy and will someday be a magnificent oak. But when it is, it will bear scars. Trees can’t dodge trouble because they’re rooted in place. They lose branches in storms. Are targeted by insects and birds. Star-crossed lovers carve their initials into them. The list of damage is endless. I read that by the time a healthy forest tree reaches maturity it could easily have had a thousand wounds, each with the potential to leave the inside of the tree exposed to disease and the risk of death. If they’re going to survive, they have to overcome their injuries. But the way it’s done is surprising.

The trick is in sealing, not healing.

We’re tempted when we see a cut on a tree from, say, a careless lawnmower incident, to slather on tar and conceal the wound. Hide the damage and hope that covering it up will allow it to heal from the inside out. That’s what we do when we’re careless while chopping onions. Band-Aids to the rescue until all is good as new. Not so with mighty oaks.

New wood grows around the wound. It forms a protective barrier that prevents the infection or decay from spreading. This kind of sealing compartmentalizes the injury with the gradual growth of new, healthy tissue. The damage is isolated, not covered up, and the tree grows beyond it. But the original wound is always there. The resulting protective tissue is called “callus.” Wounds remain incased and trees simply grow around them.*

Seems even trees can’t escape the vice.

As I said, I’d give almost anything for permanent relief. Covering up the injury doesn’t help even though doing so might make the view less uncomfortable for everyone. Or, if I was merely taken captive by a temporary inconvenience, relief would be swift once the pressure was off. There’s no escaping this one, and no rushing the progress either. “This is going to take a long time,” my counselor told me early on. “There are no shortcuts. The only way through it is through it.” A callous will form, but the wound will always remain. A reminder of loss and life, courage and endurance.

There’s no healing for trees. There’s no healing for me either. For the rest of my life, I will live without Rob. You can’t heal that fact. Instead, over time, I will learn to navigate a world without him the way a tree grows new tissue around an injury—not ignoring it, but allowing its truth while, at the same time, continuing to live. And maybe, in time, the imperfection of a once unmarred life will exhibit its own kind of beauty.

I guess I’d better teach Sadness how to play some cards. It looks like we’re going to be together for a while.

 

 

*Woods Whys: How Do Trees Heal Wounds on Trunks… | Winter 2015 | Articles | W (northernwoodlands.org)

Many thanks to Tony Alter for permission to use his photo, "Nature's Heart", in this piece. Tony's original photo can be viewed by following this link: Nature's Heart | Nice heart shape formed in the scar of an o… | Flickr

Looking Back, Facing Forward

Sometimes I think about what I would change knowing what I know now. The pastime is tempting but leads to regret. I’m not who I was. I can’t go back, though God knows how much I want to. What if we hadn’t sold our home on Del Rio? If we’d stayed there, we’d have never moved to the mountains where covid tracked us down. But if we’d locked ourselves inside our house, we’d have betrayed our own hearts.

We rejected that. Both of us did. No one brought us a contract to sign, promising that if we avoided humanity, we would never catch a man-made virus. No one can guarantee that. More accidents occur in the home than anywhere else which makes me wonder just how safe it is to shelter there.

We don’t have control. I don’t have control. I could write that a thousand times and still something inside me wants to scream, “No!” The same guttural cry I screamed after Rob died when no one was around to hear me. And now, just as then, I have limited influence. I resent it. I resist it. Dozens of times a day we’re reminded that somewhere outside our view lies the remote control we’re missing. 

When the power goes off in the middle of a storm. 

When the baby gets sick and you have to cancel dinner plans. 

When the airline changes your reservations without asking and doesn’t care if it makes your life harder. 

When the temp outside exceeds your A/C’s ability to keep up.

When you go the doctor’s office with a fever and shortness of breath, and still they send you home.

We have no control.

Control freaks get a bad rap. The term sounds unhinged and selfish, but there’s usually a reason why people fight for the keys to their private world. Devoid of control, it seems I pay the price for the randomness that rules my existence like a roulette wheel. No wonder I hold on for dear life to everything that is dear in my life, until the wheel’s centrifugal force throws me to the side and whatever will be, finally is. Reminding me once again,

Control is an illusion.

I don’t know what the rest of my life is going to look like from here. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m living a life I never asked for. I loved the life I had for as long as I had it. When it was taken away from me, it vanished without a trace. I want it back. I can’t have it back. I’m stranded here in the middle of nowhere, a woman without the relationship she enjoyed with the man she loved all her life.

I’m living in the in-between. The space between what I had and what I don’t yet see. There’s a word for this—liminal. It means a threshold, a doorway, a transitional space between places. I see it as a wavering place where the longing to go back pulls my heart, but my logical mind keeps telling the truth—I can’t.

Three months after Rob died, weary of wandering along the arrow-pocked floors of IKEA one afternoon, I stopped cold in front of a large photo on the wall, unable to take my eyes off it. A wide rope bridge spread out over a river-carved chasm drew me in, its far-off, narrowed length exiting into the foggy green hillside where an enormous tree spread its arms in welcome. The photo is mesmerizing and peaceful, but the bridge leads into the unknown, inviting the observer to trust its swaying fibers, cross it single file, and discover what lies on the other side. There are no promises. There are no certainties. No companions. Not even any hints as to what awaits. It simply beckons.

It's mysterious and terrifying. And now it hangs on my wall because it looks the way my life feels. I didn’t ask to be here. I can’t find my way back. I don’t know what lies ahead. I’m frozen, even paralyzed at times, not knowing how to take the next step because I can’t see a next step. I only see a questionable bridge that ends in a forest shrouded by fog.

I’m frustrated. Deeply sad. Often angry. Impatient with my lack of motivation, yet aware of the energy absorbed by the necessity of grief, I exist here at a shadowy gateway without the benefit of a roadmap, wondering what will become of me and if I will remain here forever. Knowing I must be kind to myself in the interim while I wait and see. Just,

Standing.

Listening.

Weeping.

Swaying.

Sighing.

Remembering to be gentle with my liminal self in this place where I am neither this nor that. Caught by my circumstances, companion of grief. Giving myself permission to be, knowing this is all the control I have, I live in limbo. Here. 

In the in-between.

 

Dominoes

Triggers. They connect the dots like a falling wall of dominoes.

Watching my favorite detective series about an FBI agent and his sidekick, as the credits roll the agent surprises his longsuffering wife with a surprise marriage vow renewal, the intimate wedding of her dreams.

And, just like that, I remember.

The evening I picked Rob up from the airport after he’d been gone for two weeks, and instead of taking the familiar route home, he drove us to a resort for the night. Overwhelmed by the surprise, I told him there were things I’d need for a night way from home and what about the kids? The kids, enjoying a sleepover of their own, had packed my bag, he answered. It was in the back of the van. I never saw it there. I was in such a hurry to see him again.

Triggers have a domino effect, much like the tears rolling down my face.

A new memory arose, right on the tail of the previous. A full-on vow renewal of our own, celebrated in the backyard of friends under twinkle lights, complete with an audience and a fresh topper on the wedding cake. From there we flew to the UK to finish celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary.

There will be no more celebrations like those. I've been sidelined.

While I’m still Rob’s wife, I’m not a couple anymore. My presence presents a problem where foursomes are the norm. I can’t join in any longer on conversations when the topic turns to the habits of husbands. There won’t be any more surprise rendezvous with the love of my life. The anniversary clock stopped cold at forty-four years together, even though I’ll remember that day when year forty-six arrives right on time this month.

The line of memories is endless. The tiny reminders, the triggers, wait to sabotage even TV shows I enjoy. I’m learning that grief is something I will carry for the rest of my life. Not because I admire the way it slips over my shoulder and hangs at my side like a leather purse. But because it has moved into the hole in my heart where all my love for Rob resides. We grieve deeply because we loved deeply.

This is a lot of pain to observe. It has the potential to be a buzzkill, turning casual encounters on their head the way this afternoon’s pastime transformed into tears. A ninety-degree shift like that can leave you with whiplash.

Casual. I’m not very good at casual anymore. My elephants have been good at witnessing the aftereffects of my life's devastation. They are learning, just like I’ve had to learn, that advice is seldom appreciated. Ordinary questions can cause extraordinary pain. And in the end, when normal really does turn out to only be a setting on the dryer, everyone winds up with either unintentional hurt or a realization that they’ve been misunderstood. The wounded are wounded again while the healers are afraid to say anything at all.

This, too, is grief.

I don’t know why I got thrown into this hell hole. Perhaps it’s simply “too many candles on my birthday cake” as doctors have begun to tell me. It’s the price of love, I’ve read online, I think. Or somewhere else. Who knows. There are the judgy, unhelpful religious answers, of course, but those should be moved to the sin category and never mentioned in public again.

It’s simply very lonely here. I hear stories of some widows and how they’re doing. I’ve even met one or two of them and heard them take the high road, put on their happy faces, and tell everyone how thankful they are and what gratitude they have for the years they were granted with their soulmates. How staying busy is the answer and trusting God fills in all the other blanks.

And I don’t believe a word of it.

Which is where I found myself crying again this afternoon. I don’t measure up. I have never felt like I do, and even now when I’ve lost everything and am no longer trying to prove anything, I don’t measure up. I don’t have a straight A report card detailing how I’m moving on and getting better. There are no checklists showing resolute advancement into the Season of Life promotion I’ve been given. There’s no handbook on grief. No roadmap either. “It’s different for everyone,” the authorities write. So, good luck. You’re on your own trying to figure out how to start all over again without your beloved.

Just remember – be better, not bitter. It could be worse. At least you’re not raising children on your own. You don’t have to go to work to support yourself. You have your health. Try to stay positive. Keep a stiff upper lip. Rob would want you to live your best life.

Like I said. I don’t measure up.

If grief is another of life’s great equalizers, it’s been hijacked by the admirable desire that we find happiness again. As soon as possible. This year even the American Psychiatric Association decided that grief is a disorder when it lasts more than one year.* This makes it easier for doctors to prescribe medication that insurance companies will pay for - their words, not mine. Unfortunately, even medication does little to eliminate the problem of grief. And the pressure from professionals and innocent bystanders to cheer up results in fear among people already trying to find their way through the dark. What is a natural response to loss is now considered by some to be mental illness.

We already don’t know how to grieve. We don’t know how to support those in the middle of grief, either. So why not add to the confusion by labeling those in loss with a disorder and pressure them to take medication to cover up the symptoms?

I know this is starting to sound like circular reasoning, but it all comes back to the same thing. We don’t know what to do about the problem of grief. Even mental health professionals are on opposing teams. My favorite author on the topic explains, “Grieving people are met with impatience precisely because they are failing the cultural storyline of overcoming adversity.” **

Death, more than anything else, reminds us that we are not in control. And that’s a tough pill to swallow no matter which side of the fence you lean against.

* Prolonged Grief Finally Gets Its Own Diagnosis (webmd.com)

** Megan Devine, "It's Okay That You're Not Okay", p. 34

Many thanks to JoLynne Martinez for permissiosn to use her fluid photo of falling dominoes in this post. The original photo can be viewed by following this link: Falling Dominoes | Photographed in response to this week's C… | Flickr