Slam Dunk

I’m sitting here at my desk in front of the huge window I asked for two years ago when I built my home. Big windows were important because I wanted to always have plenty of sunshine streaming through the rooms. Every window in my house takes up half its wall and every bird within two blocks has slam-dunked itself into them not realizing the straight-through view to the back patio isn’t open space. It’s a house.

I often sit at this desk and write. Writing sets my soul free and sometimes the inspiration for what I write comes from my view at this window. Now that I’ve hung a hummingbird feeder above the fence in my front yard, for example, I watch them endlessly from here, which is the reason I hung it there. I also know, of the four I see regularly at the feeder, which one is the bully bird and which ones are the chickens. Poor little insecure things. They really ought to stand up and fight for their rights. But I don’t speak hummingbird, so they don’t listen to me.

I’m witness to a lot of life in this front row seat, gazing past my front yard to the road that separates it from the neighbor’s pasture. The goats across the street are an endless source of entertainment. You might think the brown one is a deer, but even she knows she’s not graceful enough to launch herself Bambi-style up and over the chain link fencing. She’s content to just be a goat. And the two black ones who love to rest on the ground side by side facing opposite directions blend together so well, I mistakenly think there’s a Pushmepullyou living over there.

Families stroll together past my house all the time, pausing to admire the livestock in the neighbor’s pasture and disappointing the Pushmepullyou’s who were expecting snacks from them. Dogs walk their people, always barking a surly “How’s it goin’?” to their incarcerated canine cousins. Kids ride their bikes and, most recently, pair up to sail by on electric scooters, posture impeccable, hair flowing out behind them like they’re posing for a shampoo ad. Just now, somebody’s dad did that, standing tall in his white dress shirt and black pants while his tie flew across his body in the breeze, hands holding on tight to his scooter. It made me laugh. Guess he gets good mileage riding to church that way.

Laughter is good. I was crying until he flew by, and just like that, my spirits lifted. Then a friend called with her own story of heartache. We talked through the details and then something made us both laugh and two hearts lifted together out of the pain for a while. Sometimes, in the middle of my tears, usually when someone catches me swimming in them, I shift gears and make a joke so I can stop crying. Tears come and go, like that well-dressed dad on his scooter. This I know.

It's been three years since I last saw my husband alive. Barely. But alive nevertheless. Three years ago today was the last time he mouthed the words, “I love you” to me. The last time I held his hand and felt him squeeze back his love for me. The last time. Three years. It’s a long time. And it was yesterday.

So, the tears are flowing all out of rhythm, punctuated by moments of much needed laughter. What a ride this grief experience is. I’ve been in my office a lot this week, glancing out my giant window, reading and printing off all the blog posts I’ve written about life since Rob died, one hundred thirty-six posts in all. Plus this one, one more. I need to empty the trash can on the floor beside me before it overflows with used tissues. It’s been emotional like that all week, leading up to this weekend’s painful remembrance. Maybe today is turning out to be harder than tomorrow will be. It's rougher than I expected, though tomorrow is the day I told him good-bye. I don't know. I don't know much of anything anymore.

A friend of mine, who will see the fourth anniversary of her own husband’s passing in April, calls this a Marker Day, and the days of dread leading up to it the Season of Sorrow. Maybe there will be relief on the other side when Day One of the fourth year begins for me. If not, there is always this big, sunny window where I can sit and wait for something to happen that makes me laugh. I desperately need the release in laughter.

And right on cue, Church Dad sailed by on his scooter again. I think I saw a Bible tucked into the back of his trousers.

I bet Rob is laughing, too.

When The Fog Lifts

Here it comes again. Here I go writing about it again. I wonder if people weary of this story that has no obvious ending. I weary of it, but I can’t do anything about it. I’m the protagonist in this “adventure.” Supposedly that makes me the heroine. I don’t feel very heroic today. Or very eloquent.

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the day we found out Rob wasn’t going to survive. Sunday will be three years since I sat beside his hospital bed while Katy sat on the other side and Lee stayed with us long distance on his phone. And Monday, the nineteenth, it will be three years since there was a Welcome Home party to greet Rob, but which we weren’t invited to attend.

I’ve been living in dread of this weekend since the middle of January, remembering the whole nightmare when it began in 2021. Maybe next year will be different for me. I hope to God that it is.

For the past week, I’ve been re-reading and printing off every blog post I’ve published since Rob died. A few people have suggested that if I turn these writings into a book, it might comfort other broken hearts on this same path. I’ve never read them all like this before. So far I’ve made it through my twelfth box of tissue. Word to the wise—buy stock in Puff’s. There’s this heartbroken writer in Arizona who’s keeping them in business.

It probably sounds crazy for me to read again about all the agony I’ve lived through, but the important thing there is that I’ve lived through it. Against all odds, though I’m a terrible gambler, I am surviving. I spoke with Rob’s mother today and she asked how I’m doing, neither of us wanting to say out loud what the approach of this sad anniversary represents.

“Oh, you know,” I told her in answer to the question that has no answer.

“Surviving,” she filled in.

Yeah. Surviving. Yet, it’s not only my loss. It’s hers. It’s my daughter’s. My son’s. Their families’. Rob’s friends'. His sisters'. Their families'. My sister’s. Her family's. Our neighbors'. The hole Rob left in his departure is a deep one. We all grieve his absence.

That’s why I decided, since grief is inevitable, especially this week, to see where the journey took me over the last three years. The first year remains a blur to me with big blank spots and memory lapses but still I recorded its highlights. Or lowlights. Take your pick. It was The Year of the Fog. The emotional/mental kind aside, I usually love a good fog. It’s scary to drive in at times, but it’s romantic in its wispiness. It softens the edges of the everyday view. It makes you slow down and focus on what’s right in front of you.

That’s the part that resonates with me. I’ve had to slow down and focus on what’s here in front of me right now. Looking back is painful except when laughter is involved. Looking too far ahead is pointless because I can’t make out any details. Living in the right here/right now feels like a miracle of survival to me. Everyday tasks take twice as long as they used to. Sometimes just getting my weekly laundry done deserves a high five, especially when it sits in a basket in the living room for three days like it did this week, waiting for decontamination. Definitely cause for celebration when that happened.

In year two, as shock’s anesthesia wore off, throbbing pain replaced the numbness in my soul. Who knew brain fog was my body’s attempt to protect me the previous year. I thought getting through the Year of Firsts was all I had to do to get back on track and reclaim my life. But when Day 365 ended, Day One of the Second Year began, and I had to face all those difficult holidays and celebratory dates all over again, not to mention the continued waking up without Rob. I think that’s when the fog burned off—the day I realized this was the first day of every day of the rest of my life.

Now, year three is coming to a close in my own personal calendar of events. I’ve made it through three of everything from Valentine’s Day to our anniversaries to Christmas. Seems like quite an accomplishment if it weren’t so sad. And in a few days, February 19^th  will arrive again. In all those blogs I’ve read, 113 so far and I’m only at the end of 2022, I’ve noticed a lot of repetition in what I described.

Like how I live in Sadness now. That this is the slog of grief. How the only way through grief is through it. And especially, that this is going to take a long time. I agree. Of everything that comes into focus with the disappearing fog, what I recognize more than anything else is how long it’s going to take for me to adjust to the life I’ve been left with. Still, I’ve seen peace come in little pieces, both with God and with these unchangeable circumstances. I’ve seen my vision expand to include not only the things we can see but also the things that we can’t. I’ve watched hope rise from the dead, a welcome sight indeed.

But I’ve also noticed the continued fatigue and loneliness I experience and how they seem to be companions to my companion, Sadness. Megan Devine, in her book “It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok,” writes that the loss of your loved one leaves a hole that will never shrink or fill in. Instead, the life you are asked to live in the aftermath of tragedy grows around that hole. You learn to carry what cannot be fixed.

I was actually hoping for better news than that when this journey began.

Apparently, this is my new reality. I know from experience and from what I’ve shared in those blogs that Grief teaches you honesty as well as how to live a life that holds both sorrow and joy together at once. It’s an interesting bouquet.

In all of it, you have been an important participant with me. You have witnessed my pain, and that is more powerful than all the explanations any of us have ever come up with. Grief needs a witness and as hard as I know that is, you have risen to the occasion in my life.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me even when I repeated myself so often. Thank you for praying for me and my family through it all. For loving us and holding out hope for us and saying nothing when nothing can be said. For forgiving me when I have been too honest and pain-stricken to be tactful. Thank you for saying Rob’s name and keeping his memory alive with us. My one consolation is the knowledge that he is very much alive still and I will be with him again.

I still don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going, but it’s good to survive. It's good to find hope. It’s even good to cry and sit with the Sadness. 

 And it's good when the fog lifts. 

With gratitude to Broo_am (Andy B) for permission to use the lovely photo seen above. The original can be viewed from this link: Fogged | Solo young tree in the park | Broo_am (Andy B) | Flickr