An Invisible Tide

There are days when I feel more like a widow than on other days. Strange to see that written here. Some words, once reserved for the misfortune of others while kept safely out of reach behind museum glass, reside in my life’s story now. And I hate it. Words like widow, died, when, and I can’t imagine. Those were the descriptors for other people’s pain. Other people’s tragedies. Other people’s sorrow. Now I know how it is. There are no other people. We’re all human and we’re all going to lose people we love. 

Love is a risk.

I regularly chat with another woman who, like me, is also a reluctant member of the Widows’ Club. We’re pen pals, separated by a distance of seven or ten states, depending on whether or not you take the scenic route, yet joined together by this simple phrase we use often while writing to one another, “I know that you know.” Five simple little words that say it all. Your heart is shattered like mine, and the pieces reflect one another. We process our pain, refusing to offer advice, weeping in the reading, validating with our responses.

Sometimes when one or the other of us writes, the letter begins with, “Today was a grief day.” Five more little words that need no explanation because, “I know that you know.” Grief days roll in on an invisible tide, which is so unfair because you never see it coming. At least when you stand at the ocean’s edge, you can watch the waves gather and rise, backing up dramatically into the horizon beyond before they slam in fury onto the beach where, only moments before, you walked in peace. If you’re paying attention, you can get out of the way.

But you can’t get out of the way when the tide of sorrow rolls back in. There’s no escape. And there is no warning. It catches you up in its undertow, threatening to pull you out to sea which, on some days, would be a huge relief. No one could blame you for expiring in the depths of an angry ocean that refuses to let you go. But no, these sorrowful waves spit you out Jonah-style, choking and sobbing with nasty green stuff hanging in your hair, onto the salty shore of your own tears, exhausted and weary, but still . . . breathing.

The most you can expect from your life on a grief day is to keep breathing.

Those are the days when I feel the most like a widow. When the waves beat relentlessly against the shoreline of my battered heart and I wonder if I’m about to lose my mind right along with all the security and dreams that were stolen from me when I lost Rob two years ago. Just when I think I’ve turned a corner, there it is in the shadows, waiting for me again. Grief. It’s not a condition—it’s an emotion to be managed, like hormones and low blood sugar. Oh, people told me it would change, but I think that’s splitting hairs. It never goes away. Grief steps into the void as a companion you learn to live with—a really lousy substitute for Rob, if you ask me.

On the days when I’m swept out to sea, drowning in my own tears, I worry that I’m right back to square one. Back to the moment the doctor called and said Rob couldn’t fight anymore and I had to let him go. That day. That second. That nightmare. In those agonizing moments, which I’ll admit have spread themselves out since the early days when their assault on my soul felt like a Normandy invasion, I fear that I will never be happy again. Never know my purpose again. Never find passion again. I didn’t know until my life was shattered how much those things matter to me. How much we need them while we keep getting up and putting our feet on the floor every morning.

By now, I think I’ve heard and read in one way or another all the platitudes that try to offer hope and vision for my future. “People grieve differently.” “Everyone is different.” “It’s going to take time.” There is truth in all of them. We do grieve as individuals because no one else can feel firsthand what we each feel in our hearts. I know of people who fill up every waking moment so they won’t have to think about all they’ve lost. Distraction is the name of the game. But I wonder if there is healing in it, or simply a covering over that camouflages the wound beneath the surface. Sometimes you have to take a break from the sorrow, for your body’s sake if not for your heart’s. But a diet regular in diversion, I fear, can leave a person bound up, if you get my drift.

I’m not discounting the differences in personalities. I’m validating the necessity to feel the feels. My counselor told me the week after Rob died that the only way through grief is through it. There are no shortcuts, even though my worn-out heart really longs for a shortcut. Suffice it to say it wasn’t good news. But it was honest, and it gave me permission to be authentic and to let grief happen. If shortcuts lead to nowhere, I’d rather go through this thing I never wanted and make it through to the other side without wasting time or risking a heart abscess somewhere down the road.

I just didn’t realize what a long journey this would be. I’ve read that when you love deeply, you will also grieve deeply. But I'm telling the truth when I say that I would not wish this pain on my worst enemy. We want so much to be in control. All my insecure life, I’ve desperately grasped for the elusive safety of control, only to discover that it is an illusion. I’m not alone in this. We are all, at our core, control freaks. But life is a risk. And we cannot control all the risk factors inherent in living and loving. If I’d figured this out forty-five years ago, would it have made any difference? Who knows. I’ve always done a pretty good ostrich imitation, and it’s hard to see with your head stuck in the sand.

I see it now, though. I have no other option. That’s become my standard reply when people remind me that I’m strong. “What choice do I have?” I ask. Today I read of extreme losses suffered by another woman, and when she was asked how on earth she survived, her reply was, “I didn’t mean to. I just kept waking up every morning.” I wish I’d thought of that.

Some days I feel more like a widow than others. Other days, though I recognize that I am on my own now without Rob, the tide is out and I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. I can breathe without thinking about it. Maybe two years isn’t long enough to bring healing to a broken heart which was loved by a great man for forty-four years. Chonda Pierce, who lost her lifelong sweetheart in 2014, said it was nearly three years afterward before she felt like she could take a deep breath.

That seems about right to me from where I still stand most days, struggling for air like the widow I am. Feeling the waves crash as the earth beneath my feet washes away. Waiting for the tide to go back out and solid ground to reappear. Again.

Some days.