Chopped

Have you noticed that it’s hard to find three funny things a day? Yesterday’s funny didn’t happen until I was almost ready for bed and decided to watch clips of the presidential debate. That’s enough comic relief for an entire week. Laughter is awesome but it’s keeping me awake at night.

So, I’m upping the ante. I’m calling it a win if I laugh out loud three times a day at other people’s humor instead of putting so much pressure on my funny bone. If I can find one funny thing on my own daily, that should be plenty.

With that in mind, I did the unthinkable this morning and cooked a meal for myself. I used to love cooking and baking and making healthy foods from scratch. Now I don’t. You can add cooking to the long list of things I loved to do before Rob died that have landed in the dumpster now. Turns out that’s super common. As a popular grief coach puts it, “Every corner of my universe has been affected by this enormous loss. Nothing feels the same now. I have to unlearn almost everything I thought I knew and relearn a completely new way.”

I knew this was true instinctively, but it was so weird when I first noticed it. Especially the cooking thing. When you’re grieving, it’s important to get enough rest, water, good food and exercise. These are also the last things you want to do when you’re grieving.

As a result, my new microwave is threatening a coup and fast-food employees working the drive-thru know me by name. This is not good, and I have the extra pounds to prove it.

Still, you have to find a win wherever you can. I was headed out the door with my purse over my shoulder this morning to get another sweetened iced coffee with extra cream and probably a couple of baby donuts as a chaser when, hand on the doorknob, I stopped and asked myself, “Is that really what I want? Is that really what my body wants?”

Sometimes a superior kind of laziness wins out over a basic version, and I make a better decision. I knew that in the time it takes me to drive to Dunkin, make my order on a Saturday morning, and come back home, I could have scrambled some eggs with all the extras, browned up some potatoes (from a bag – I’m not a gonna be extreme here), and enjoyed a hot breakfast in peace. Good food, nourishing food, food I already own and have already paid for.

The cheapskate in me won out and I put my purse away. I’m not sure it was my best decision.

I pulled out the bag of ready-to-cook hash browns and put them into my new non-stick skillet. I covered them with foil to speed things up and then—here’s where you may want to look away—nature called. It was serious.

Now, I know it’s a bad idea to leave a pan on a hot burner to cook while you make a pit stop in the bathroom, but I don’t have a choice anymore. I don’t have someone in the house I can yell to for backup in the kitchen. It was a risky move, I’ll admit. I’ll also admit it just now occurred to me that I could have turned the burner off for five minutes. See? At my age, the synapses are misfiring, and dicey behavior overwhelms common sense more often than anyone needs to know. No, I didn’t fall down in the bathroom, hit my head on the granite countertop, and wake up in a room filled with smoke while a herd of firefighters carried me out into the yard. How embarrassing. You have such an imagination. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, just that it didn’t.

I made it back to the hash browns in time to turn them over, nicely browned, and began to work on the eggs. All scrambled up in a bowl with salt and pepper and lots of onion powder, I did my level best not to make a mess. This is the main reason I don’t want to cook anymore—I don’t want to clean up after myself. I don’t want a dirty stove top or island or dirty dishes in the sink. I don’t want crumbs on the floor or any evidence at all that life is messy. When I pick up supper from Chick Fil A, like I did last night, the dishes go right into the trash and there’s nothing left for me to do except turn on Netflix.

The hash browns all finished, I planned to use the same pan for the eggs. To save on dishes. I picked up my shiny new non-stick skillet, tried to put half the stuck-together potatoes onto my plate and the rest into a bowl for tomorrow, and dropped them on my clean counter instead because nicely browned browns don’t want to stop holding hands with each other. The pan was hot, the potatoes were hot, they slid out of the non-stick skillet as slick as snot and covered the counter from end to end. Frustrated, I left them there to think about what they’d done.

Drippy, eggy fork in my left hand, bowl of liquid breakfast in the other, I realized I’d put an empty hot pan on a still cooking burner without any oil or food in it. I also had no more hands available to fix this problem and I didn’t want to put anything down because everything was drippy and eggy and I didn’t want to make a mess. Smoke was coming up from the new, empty pan. I had to do something. I set the bowl of eggs down and grabbed a rubber spatula to slice off a pat of butter for the pan. Half the stick of butter stuck to the spatula, which is too much even for me, but my left hand was still holding the drippy egg fork.

Why God didn’t give us four hands instead of two leaves me inclined to believe in evolution instead of divine design.

I put the fork down on the counter, which was desecrated by potatoes anyway, picked up the fork I’d set aside for eating my breakfast, and quickly fixed the butter situation. The butter hit the pan like an ice cube in an angry volcano and before I could pour in the eggs it began to bubble and burn. I sighed, gave the eggs one last whip with the drippy fork and, with both fork and bowl in my left hand, poured in the yellow liquid anyway. I’ve heard browned butter eggs are chic. And here is where I made a costly error and was reminded again of why I don’t want to cook anymore.

I’ve lost my mojo.

I also lost my fork. It slipped out of my hand and into the skillet of eggs where, before I could blink, it disappeared into a pool of bubbling yellow. Chic browned butter eggs are one thing, but omelets aren’t supposed to come with a fork cooked into them. I grabbed the rubber spatula which was no help at all in rescuing the fork because—rubber. The fork fell in again and I had to leave it there to cook while I put the empty mixing bowl in the sink, and when I came back my scrambled breakfast was nearly set. I snatched the drippy egg fork from its resting place on the potato-covered counter, wedged it under the superheated scrambled egg fork in the pan, and in one quick flip watched it fly into the air, do a triple reverse backward twist and slide down the lower cabinets just before it hit the floor. I gave it a 7.9 for style and returned my attention to the eggs.

The kitchen was a disaster area. Egg was all over the counter, running down the side of the cabinets, and pooling a bit on the floor, but not too much since half of my omelet was still attached to the hot fork. The butter dish, smeared with a rejected slab of butter, needed to be washed now, and the stove top was splattered with an overspray of oil from the potatoes and yellow drips from my sloppy egg maneuver. The sink was filled with a pile of dirty dishes not even seen in the kitchen of Chick Fil A, and there were dots of ketchup all over the island from a bottle that I forgot was nearly empty before I decorated my hash browns.

The food was delicious. And it was free-ish. And hot. But it wasn’t worth the trouble or the nutrition.

I watch a lot of cooking competitions on tv, but not once have they ever given credit to the people responsible for damage control in the kitchen. They barely even show you the pile of dirty dishes in the sink or the way the counters have been desecrated in the process. I want to see a show where dishwashers compete to see who makes it through without dropping a dish or getting chopped. Now that's something I can aspire to.

Honestly, though, I don’t want to cook a meal for one and have to do all the clean up, too. It’s not satisfying anymore. If you’re gonna destroy something as clean and organized as a tidy kitchen, you should at least have an audience to applaud you for the effort and tell you the food tastes good.

The only way to keep the mess to a minimum without trying to serve a cheesy fork omelet to yourself is to pick up your purse and head to McDonald’s where Buffy recognizes your voice in the drive-thru and keeps your debit numbers on speed dial. They even have a trash can in the exit lane where you can deposit all your used dishes.

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

With thanks to Mike Mozart for proof that cooking isn't for everyone. The pic seen above can be viewed in its unbroken state at the following link: Broken Eggs, by Mike Mozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMe… | Flickr

Finding The Funny

Sometimes it’s hard to find the funny, especially if you’re not in the mood. I was hoping funny would find me so I wouldn’t fail on my second day of this challenge, but things were feeling a little forced. I’ve won a couple of awards in Toastmasters for humorous speeches, but I quickly learned that if the audience isn’t ready to laugh, you ain’t gonna be funny. There really is a thing called ‘energy in the room’ and I struggled to find it today. Maybe our outside temp of 113 degrees was to blame. There’s not much to laugh about inside a furnace.

I was determined, though. You’ve got to make finding funny its own special kind of treasure hunt on days when life feels too serious. On a good day, funny will fly right into your face where you can’t miss it, like the time I was offering a glass of grape juice to my cousin and it slipped out of my hand. The glass landed straight down on the table in front of her, which was a pretty good save. For the glass. But Newton’s First Law of Inertia states that an object at rest will stay at rest unless the object is acted upon by an unbalanced external force. I played the part of the unbalanced external force.

See, the grape juice had been resting inside the glass until the glass hit the table, and the effect was the same as when a kid jumps out of a tree and onto a trampoline. The contents of that glass, twelve ounces of purple grape juice, hit my cousin full in the face and it was several minutes before she recovered from the shock and the rest of us stopped laughing long enough to hand her a towel.

I actually still feel bad about this incident, but we were both homeschooling and this was our science co-op day, so it all turned out for the best, I think. At least I learned about gravity and my cousin learned to get her own beverages when I'm around.

See? That kind of funny catches you off guard. I wanted to find off-guard funny today, but I think it was too hot outside. Even planet earth was in a foul mood this afternoon, and who can blame it? Four hours east of here, high in Arizona’s beautiful White Mountains, a friend of mine lives in the little, scenic village of Greer. People escape to Greer for months every summer when they find out about the weather there. “It’s raining and 69 degrees,” my friend texted me today, “but I shouldn’t tell others that.” I always forget how lovely it is there. So hard to believe paradise is that close when there's sweat running down your back. "Yeah, you probably ought to keep that to yourself,” I responded. “You don’t want to get TP’d in the rain.”  Four hours from here. Which is apparently the actual physical distance between heaven and hell. I still might go toilet paper her yard.

So, funny had gone into hiding and I had to get out and see if I could find it. There wasn’t much in my email’s inbox to fall back on, and I realized I was gonna have to at least take a drive around the block and put myself in the path of good material if I wanted to squeeze out a chuckle somehow. I decided to go wander around a Home Goods store and either look for inspiration or discover something I suddenly couldn’t live without.

Right away I spotted an amazing table that would look spectacular on the patio of my crazy friend’s house in Tucson. She needs this in the worst way. It was a two-foot tall plaster sailor with a bird on his head and an empty tray held out in one hand. Ugly as sin and a real statement piece. The statement was, “I can’t wait to see the look on your face when I give this to you.”

Don’t go feeling sorry for her. She torments me mercilessly. Outdoing each other with horrible gifts is the foundation of our friendship. She once gave me a huge, painted styrofoam hand that she decorated with fake poinsettias and a photo of herself. It rose up out of a worn-out gift bag looking like a Halloween nightmare. She made me open it inside Starbucks so there’d be witnesses to how depraved she is, and when I did, two customers next to us came over and gushed about how beautiful and unusual the present was. Later I found out she bribed them to say that stuff. I thought they were just crazy like her, but she’s in a league of her own.

I really wanted to get that little nautical decoration for her, but I left the store empty handed today. Home Goods’ price tag for the tacky sailor was a hundred dollars! There is no accounting for taste, but I don’t have to pay for it. She’ll have to buy that ugly table herself.

Just walking across the black asphalt parking lot ruined the good mood I’d almost managed to find, and I climbed inside the oven I call my truck, sat down on a melting leather seat, and turned on the air conditioner full force, sucking in overheated air for a minute until the compressor found its stride. Buckled in, I threw it in reverse, and watched in my backup camera as a woman in a shiny, new Navigator sitting in a parking space on the row behind me did her level best to meet me by accident right outside the Home Goods store. In self-defense, I put my Tahoe in drive and pulled as far forward into the empty space in front of me as I could so the woman wouldn’t succeed and ruin my bumper. She never turned her wheels. She just kept coming at me like I wasn’t there or maybe she assumed I was slowly pulling straight out so she didn’t have to do some fancy maneuver like using the steering wheel to steer.

At the last minute, she changed direction and drove away from potential disaster, oblivious to the fact that I was anywhere close instead of in Greer in the rain where I belonged. Mumbling to myself, I made it out to the main street through town without further incident, only to have another little Zippity Doo Dah try to hit me from behind again. You know, when someone rear-ends your vehicle, it’s always seen as their fault, but that’s no consolation when you lose your mode of transportation.

At this point, Mama had had enough. “Siri!” I yelled above the roar of my air conditioner. “Make a note!”

“To the jerk who nearly ran me over on Ellsworth Road and to the lady who tried her best to link bumpers in the parking lot, better luck next time. I know it’s not very Christian for me to hope you each get flat tires, but I’m still a work in progress so don’t expect too much from me just yet.”

I don’t know if I found funny today or just did the best I could with what I had, but some days are like that. If I’d had the patience to watch the debates tonight on TV, I’m certain I’d have found plenty of rich material there. I’ll settle for an ugly plaster table and a full glass of grape juice, though.

I don’t think I could handle any cow pies today. 

Today's Funnies

My new personal challenge is going very well for the first day. All I had to do was write down three things that showed up in life’s inbox that made me laugh. The sun is calling it a day as I write this evening, and it’s been a pretty good day for humor. I’ve collected my quota times two. That means tomorrow is covered, so I can be an Eeyore if I feel like it.

It’s hard to choose which of the six to write about. Maybe I should update you on the Platypus Sock Company which offered me five bucks to keep their lousy products instead of returning them for a partial refund. I accepted their lowball offer, an email they ignored, and the next day they upped their ante and offered me eight instead. Three more dollars was tempting, but their insecurity was suspicious and, deciding that communication isn’t their strong suit, I let it go. Until this morning. Today they sent me an email requesting a review on their product. I nearly sent a link to the scathing critique I posted here, but I don’t need any more trolls following my blog, so I condensed my feelings and told them what I really think about the way they scammed me out of fifty bucks. When I clicked “Send” I got an immediate reply. They offered me 13% off my next purchase in appreciation.

I’m not sure how to interpret that.

I mean, they’re foreigners so maybe they don’t realize that the number 13 is never up to anything good over here. Don’t you think that’s a weird percentage to offer anyway? Ten or fifteen per cent off I could understand, but thirteen? Maybe I should hold out for more. If I turn them down today, they might offer me fourteen tomorrow. Stay tuned. This is getting interesting.

My email was filled with inspiration today. I have a credit card with a clothing company that I pay off every month. Their clothes are so overpriced and poorly manufactured, though, that it’s been easy to let that zero-balance ride lately. Last week they notified me that if I continue to expect paper bills from them, they’re going to charge me an extra fee.

Well, that’s a first. I don’t understand this. It’s not like this country wants to save trees anymore. There’s some comedienne doing ads on tv now who calls herself a “paperologist” and shames people in public for using plastic bags or buying food that comes in plastic containers. I wish the government would make up its freaking mind. Ten years ago, we were all branded as entitled consumers for choosing paper over plastic even though those were the choices given to us. Today we’re labeled as selfish pigs for filling up landfills with free packaging that will never self-destruct. If you don’t want us to use plastic, stop making it. Starting with credit cards.

Back to that email. The entire message read, “Your credit card is ready for your next purchase.” Like it’s an obligation or something. Or worse, a privilege for me to charge a bunch of overpriced clothing that’s just going to fall apart in my dryer. This is shamefully self-promoting, if you ask me, but it did make me laugh. And that’s all I was looking for.

For today’s final contestant, I’m settling on rogue chickens. I love chickens, from a distance. I don’t want a pet chicken because they feel creepy when you pick them up, and also dogs are pets, chicken are dinner. But they’re hilarious in person. They look even sillier than me when they run, like their arms are tied behind their backs, and they’re so fidgety. What’s that about? Unfortunately, they also taste good raw if you’re a pesky coyote, so when the last of Katy’s pastured fowl passed away recently, she drew a line in the sand that excluded any more chickens. She’s also tired of chicken poop in the pasture which, I’ll admit, is smelly and disgusting.

But now there are no chickens back there to make me laugh. There are two funny looking sheep out there who you’d swear are goats until you gaze into their eyes and realize they’re not looking back at you with a demonic stare. Goats are creepy. Sometimes the sheep are entertaining, but the pasture looks so empty now without the menagerie that once lived there that it makes me sad. Just another reminder that life changes against your will.

But tonight, while I sat watching tv and occasionally glancing out through the patio doors at the pasture beyond, I was surprised to see two bright, white, fluffy chickens wandering around in Katy’s vibrant green pasture, strutting their stuff like they belonged there. I knew this had to be a miracle. Katy wouldn’t have bought two full grown birds without telling me. Nobody sells full grown birds anyway. If you want a chicken, you gotta start from scratch. So to speak. Ain’t nobody got time for baby chicks around here anymore. I know I’m not raising them. I’m retired.

Upon close inspection, especially considering their alabaster white feathers, I surmised that these were visitors from heaven, miracles flown in from the sky or, more likely, dropped from above. I know that’s probably a real downgrade for angels, being forced to show up in the form of a chicken, but God’s ways are not our ways. He knows I love chickens. I texted Katy in excitement. “There are two huge white chickens in the pasture!” “I know,” she wrote back. “They belong to the family behind us.”

Oh. Right. I always forget that chickens fly, even over fences. No matter. Real chickens are better than angelic ones anyway. I’d feel sorry for an angel if he was forced to peck the ground for bugs or run away with his wings in the air while escaping from a territorial sheep, which is what happened tonight in the back pasture. It's just not dignified. That bird was airborne in a matter of seconds and barely made it safely over to her side of the tracks before Esther came charging at her again. Esther is the mean sheep. Even I stay out of her way. The other bird was no help at all to her fellow fowl and did nothing to come to the rescue because chickens are chicken. I’m not really sure what happened to her, but since I don’t see a pile of white feathers out on that bright green grass where the sister sheep reign supreme, I think she’s okay. If not, then she’s flying free like an angel, which is what I thought was going on in the first place.

So, there you have it. It doesn’t take a lot to make me laugh. Humor is everywhere if you know where to look. And if you don’t, just check your inbox.

See ya tomorrow. 

Cheap Medicine

My favorite kind of blog to write is a funny one. And if you get my sense of humor, you are my tribe. My people. My lifeline. If you don’t get my sense of humor, that’s ok. I might need more practice.

I could be a lot funnier if I wasn’t always so worried about offending people who recognize themselves inside my stories. But these are the only stories I know. I’m not that good at making things up, and what’s funnier than real life anyway?

In the last three and a half years since Rob decided living with Jesus would be less stressful than living with me (don’t be offended – I’m just stating the obvious), I’ve tried a variety of ways to cope with my grief. I’ve crossed a few things off the list because they don’t appeal to me or come at too high a cost, such as taking up drinking or driving off a cliff, but some of the more socially acceptable options are things I’ve explored. I met with a counselor every week for almost three years until one of them retired (suspicious timing) and the other one got to yawning a lot while I was talking. It seemed like we both needed a break at that point. Looks like I not only wear out friends, but also professionals.

I’ve read trusted authors and questionable authors and wasted a lot of money on books that Goodwill sold for more than I originally paid for them. I’ve lost a lot of sleep staying up late while I watched YouTube videos about the afterlife and listening to the sad stories of other widows/widowers. (Some people are really a downer.) I also found one or two women who had useful things to say. I joined a writing group for grievers which was profoundly helpful and resulted in a long-lasting friendship still going to this day. That was a win. And recently I’ve joined a one-year program via zoom where I meet with other widows for validation and pick up some useful tips on survival.

I’ve eaten too much and drunk too little water. I’ve tossed out retail therapy because there’s no one around to admire my good taste or complain about my spending habits. However, online gadgets arrive regularly at my front door, are usually a waste of money, but are also a great source of blog inspiration. I’ve depleted a few friends, no condemnation to those on hiatus, and made a couple of new ones who probably question their common sense when it comes to including me in their circles. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words, cried more tears than that, and driven my new truck nearly into the ground trying to hang on to the thing Rob and I enjoyed most in life, seeing the country and being with loved ones.

But my heart still hurts. And I still stand in an empty room where, from time to time, I cry out, “Where are you?” Because I can’t visualize the dimension where he lives now, and God won’t let me take a peek. Rude.

Advice is everywhere on how to survive life after loss. Some of it comforts, some of it is garbage. Author and counselor Megan Devine (“It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok”) spent years telling brokenhearted women how to overcome the loss of their spouses, utilizing all the techniques she learned in higher education. But the day her husband drowned right in front of her, she threw out all her books, shut down her counseling practice, and came out on the other side with an entirely different view of what does and doesn’t work. Experience made the difference, so I feel qualified to have a strong opinion about grief as a widow even without having a college degree.

Free advice abounds, which saves me a lot of money but is sometimes only worth the price I paid for it. I’ve been told to focus on positive energy. Distract myself. Stay busy. Start dating. Remember the good times. Be thankful I had Rob for as long as I did. Find meaning in my loss.  Change the subject. Help out the less fortunate. Get my eyes off myself. Keep his memory alive. Do yoga. Stay mindful and present. Practice meditation. Trust the Lord. Find a job. Stop complaining. Get more sleep. Make exercise a priority. And fresh air. And water. Clean up your diet and eat healthy food.

It’s more exhausting trying to get over my grief than to simply live with it.

I am a list person. I journal a lot and probably post things on my blog that I shouldn’t. But there are lists I don’t love, like the currently popular practice of gratitude journals (gag me). I can’t. I’m grateful for butterflies and sunsets like everyone else, but no. Just no. I don’t make lists of my faults and old wounds and burn them in the fireplace, either. (I don’t even have a fireplace, which helps.) I don’t set goals or read inspirational books about overcoming. (Who needs that kind of toxic positivity?) I’m not a self-helper. Some would agree and go so far as to say that I need a lot of help. Hard to argue with that one.

But I love to laugh. And last week I ran across an idea for keeping a list that finally appealed to me. Every day write down three funny things you notice.

I love this one. Everything is funny. It’s not too hard to find funny things. The challenging part is paying attention and maybe helping out the funny with your own little spin on it. And the other part, mentioned at the top of the page, is having the courage to point out funny things about being human. I’m up for the challenge, though.

This I can get in to. This is good medicine. This lifts my spirits and helps me process pain. Every humorist, or as Garrison Keillor calls it, “the business of humoristicism,” (even spellcheck didn’t recognize that one) finds the source of humor in personal pain. Ta da! I qualify again.

Keillor offers a few insights about the way funny works. Funny takes us by surprise. He said comedy is about absurdity and conflict and irony. Awesome! Permission to rub my hands together in glee and go for it.

fingernails on a keyboard . . . clickety clickety click . . .

the hum of a cheap, off-balance, overhead fan . . .

crickets chirping in boredom. . . .

I can’t think of anything.

But I will. I’m starting that list today. You just watch. I’m gonna be funny from now on, lift myself up from where I’ve fallen, and find my groove again. And even if, when the dust settles, I’m the only one still laughing, I’ll feel better. I’m not the only source of funny. I’m just one of the gang.

Find your funny somewhere. I promise you—it will save your life.

It’s saving mine.

Tears

“Is she strong?” someone asked about a widowed friend.

Depends on what is meant by strength. Does that mean her heart is an erect wall, able to withstand life’s storms without bending?

Then, no. She’s not strong. She bends. Children love to be encircled in her soft embrace.

Maybe she’s as strong as the cadence in a bass drum, its beat constant at the rear of the band, compelling all the other musicians to march on, keep going, never pausing to rest.

            No. She’s not strong like that. Her broken heart beats a syncopated rhythm now that confuses the rest of the band.

            Will she give up?

            Sometimes.

            Will she long to be with him?

            Always.

Will she be changed in the fire?

No doubt.

            No doubt.

I think strength is a paradox. A woman in labor writhes in pain while her body takes her down a dangerous, frightening road. From the outside, her cries may make her appear weak but as new life emerges, it’s her submission to forces beyond her control that reveal what strength looks like.

I once watched Arizona’s Salt River flow with such intensity it took out a bridge built to span its width. Three times the normal amount of rainfall had filled reservoirs to a dangerous level, and if there was no immediate relief Coolidge Dam would burst. But when authorities released record amounts of pent-up water into the swollen river, it flowed with such force it took with it everything in its path, including that new bridge. Yet, the alternative would have been more deadly. By letting the pressure off, catastrophe was averted.

Was the dam strong?

            Yes.

It was also vulnerable. It does no good to pretend there’s no risk when pressure rises.

Does a tree bow in a storm?

            Yes. That’s how I know there’s storm outside—I see how punishing the wind is. I notice how its leaves shake, and the branches react. But I never question the strength of the oak.

“Is she strong?”

            She will bend in her storm, this friend of mine.

            She’ll cry a river of tears again and again, releasing the pain which will fill her heart - again and again.

            On windy days, she’ll feel shaken, even unstable, to those who watch and wonder. She may think her world is spinning out of control.

            But that’s the illusion of vertigo.

Her heart is broken. She is ravaged by a fiery loss. She may not recognize her world anymore and, on some days, not even herself.

            But she will not fall.

            God is within her and He will help her.*

Is she strong?

            No.

            But she knows Who is.

 

 

*Psalm 46:5

All In

We lingered for a while after our coffee grew cold and crumbs were all that remained of an afternoon treat. Heart to heart, we leaned in to the unknown and shared the space where certainty flees and fear feels like shame.

“We live in the boonies,” she said. “If we get sick, there’s not much in the way of good medical help.”

I nodded, remembering. It was on our list when we moved to our mountain dream. Find a good doctor. And a dentist. Have it all in place as soon as you can. But we weren’t sick, and our checkups were up to date. There was time.

Another friend, ten years older than we were, told us it was too late for he and his wife to go after that cabin in the woods they always wanted. He said at their age, despite how active and healthy they both were, they needed to live close to hospitals now. I scoffed at that. No way was I going to let a hospital’s address determine mine. We’d go for the dream and figure things out.

We always figured things out. Going all in, we did it together. But this time we lost it all. I guess Rob won the prize. But I lost everything. I even lost my ignorance.

I’m still figuring things out, but now I have to do it without Rob here. Of all the things I’ve learned the hard way, the one that is the most crippling is a personal awareness of how fragile life is. How easily a strong, healthy man or woman can be brought to their knees by a disease, a virus, an accident. How quickly strength deserts you while you fight for your life.

It makes me afraid. I hate to admit that, and yet remembering how much I wanted to join Rob for months after he left us, I see now where a bit of healing has happened and the normal instinct of wanting to live has returned. It’s the fear of death that makes me aware of how much I value life. It's such a paradox. But also, after having lost so much when I lost Rob, I find myself fearful of losing again, and remarkably aware of how easily it can happen.

I thought I was the optimistic one in our marriage, even though I was more of a worry wart than Rob. He was the bravest man I’ve ever known, but his pessimism kept him from simple things like making a phone call. “What if they’re busy?” he’d say, postponing the effort to find out. “What if they’re not?” I’d respond. “You won’t know until you make the call.”  Or, "What if it doesn't work out?" he'd ask, wishing I'd leave well enough alone. "But what if it does?" I'd answer.

You won’t know until you try. You won’t know if marriage is a good idea unless you make the commitment. You won’t know if children are fulfilling and the best thing on planet earth unless you become a parent. You won’t know if the next house is better than the one you still hold a mortgage on unless you change addresses. And what if, after you take the risk, you end up with an armload of regret, eyes turned back to the city you left behind, forgetting all the things that propelled you forward?

"What if?" It’s paralyzing, isn’t it? Like Lot’s wife in the desert, turned to a salty statue, unwilling to take one more step forward and away from what she could not hold on to, she stands immobile, a monument to regret. And the irony there is that, either way, no matter which way you choose, regret comes along for the ride.

This is not the life I imagined. It’s not the dream we went for. It’s unfamiliar and scary and I feel so guilty that things turned out this way. The “if only’s” torture me, making me forget that only hindsight is 20/20. Where for decades we were one, now I’m all that’s left of us. And I feel frozen. The hard-earned experience I’ve gained, where the blinders are off and I can see clearly how short life is and how little control any of us really have, is both a blessing and a curse. There is nothing I could have done to save Rob’s life. I don’t have that much power. I found myself face to face with the one thing Rob always said was inevitable—we are all terminal. Allowing myself to go free from the torment of self-blame is a relief. It was not wrong to follow our dreams.

Now I am faced with another future—living in the liminal space between what I wanted and what is left to me, “fighting for a life I cannot see,” as a wise woman recently said to me. I stand on the precipice of forward motion, trying to decide if I can let go of what was and untether myself enough to move forward, or if I will allow the salt of my tears to cement me to this ground where at least I know what to expect.

It’s a strange choice unlike any other I’ve ever faced before. I wish Rob was here to talk to. But if he was, I wouldn’t have this choice to make. What I am slowly learning is that, while I feel abandoned, I never have been. God is for me. He is in me. He is holding me.

We’ll figure things out together.

With thanks to Lionel Roubeyrie whose wonderful photo is seen above. The original can be viewed from this link: Bet | a simple poker party | Lionel Roubeyrie | Flickr