Holding On

“I still cry every day,” I told her, nearly four years down the road she’s just begun. Any morning the sun coaxes my eyes to open and I don’t immediately soak my pillow feels like a gift. A reminder of normalcy, whatever that used to be. 

It’s just another day on my own when he was supposed to be here, kissing me good morning. Difficult to face. But I have to get up. Nature calls. A few minutes later, I return to my side of the bed, which is whatever side I want now. My back hurts and I reach for the massage gun because he’s not here to rub sore muscles for me. He’s not here to grab my hand and pull me to my feet, wrap his arms around me and tell me, “It ain’t nothin’ but a thang.”

Empathy might not have been his strong suit.

The thought brings a smile and the tears stop. I do some stretches, let out a big sigh, and glance at the picture window across the room, knowing that opening the blinds will let in sunshine’s serotonin. I depend on it now, more than a pluviophile like myself would have believed. But first, I have to will myself to walk across the room to the window.

It takes more inner strength than I’d have ever thought possible.

Every morning begins this way. Tears that have woven stories into my dreams spill out in the daylight. He’s nearly always in my dreams in some fashion. Rarely the main character, just part of the story, taken for granted the way we often do in marriage. There’s no reason to feel bad about that. No reason to count down the days of matrimony in fear. Head in the sand, I just assumed we’d grow very old together and not just a little bit old before we said goodbye. I feel lucky, a little tiny bit. Many widows I’ve met never dream of their husbands.

Feet on the floor. “You can do it,” I tell myself. “Just stand up.” It sounds so easy. Nothing is easy anymore. Finding my way in the dark isn’t easy or desirable. What little girl does a ballerina spin and announces, “When I grow up, I want to be a widow!” It’s dark humor but it does what I need it to do. He taught me about laughing at the dark.

One more sigh. Another anemic surge of determination. Face the day. You can do this. Get moving and things will get better. I'd lay down and stay in bed but that’s not who I am. It wouldn’t help. I just need a little extra . . . hope.

Across the room on a bookshelf in the corner is framed word art my granddaughter created for me three years ago. It’s on a specific shelf for this specific reason: it lies exactly in my line of sight when I sit on the side of the bed each day and wonder how on earth I’ve survived this long. I forget it’s there every morning during this monotonous routine, but the genius of the shelf where I placed it proves itself every single time.

Every time the tears start up again. Every time I miss the smell of his coffee in the other room. Every time I wonder where I find the strength to face another day without him to talk with, explore the world with, laugh and fight and make up with. Every.Day. My eyes land, like muscle memory, on that framed reminder that waits on the bookshelf for me.

I will not

I will not

I will not,

In any degree, LEAVE YOU HELPLESS.

Nor forsake you NOR let you down,

Nor relax my hold on you!

ASSUREDLY NOT!

            ~Hebrews 13:5

 

This is the secret of survival for me. This is the fountain of strength I draw from when I see how weak and broken I am. It’s not The Universe that has my back, lovely and remarkable as it is. A thing cannot love me. A Person can love me. A Person can hold me in the dark when I can’t see a thing. When I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing here anymore.

My granddaughter’s artistic pen highlighted those three repeated words in differing scripts for emphasis, the same reason God spoke them that way.

I will not

I will not

I will not

He will not leave me helpless.

He will not let me down.

He will not relax His hold on me no matter how much I blame Him or accuse Him or beat my hands against His chest.

He will not. He loves me that much. Unconditionally.

Allie attached a smaller note that I tucked into the corner of the frame, another favorite reminder to me. “You’ve got this,” she added. I love that phrase and have gained courage many times reading it.

But the truth that keeps me upright, moving forward down this road I never wanted to travel is that God’s got me. And he made it as clear as possible that He’s not letting me go.

On my feet at last, I walk to the window and open the blinds.

Hello, sunshine.

Story Line

Every photo. 

Every single one is there on purpose, chosen from a collection ten times larger than the montage I created. I laid them all out on my counter and waited to see which ones spoke to me, setting aside the silent ones, reserving those who held hands with each other and with my heart. I framed them, let them tell me where they belong on that enormous wall in my living room, and stood back in solemn satisfaction.

It's a gallery wall. A story wall. It tells the story of us, where we began, the places we explored, where we went for the last dream, where it all ended. It comforts me to see it there. It also makes me cry to see all the stars we reached for together, knowing that the final one was only within reach for him.

I’m alone in the audience now, gazing on the story wall, without him.

There are pieces of him, of our life, scattered throughout my house in places where I’m usually the only one to see them. He never saw this house, though he’s the reason I was able to build it. He never lived here with me, but it holds so many things that once were among his treasures. He didn’t choose the granite or the flooring or the exposed beams crisscrossing the ceiling, but they were all selected with him in mind, checked off the wish list he gave me when he didn’t know I was listening.

Behind the drywall in every room lies a symbol of us that I first carved on a tree in the mountains after he died. I hand drew it on every window ledge in this house with a black Sharpie pen. It’s a simplistic, lopsided heart with each of our first initials etched on either side—an R to the left, an E to the right. Rob Loves Eula. Three words that sum up who we were. Who I was. I carved it into the wet cement of the driveway I poured outside. And a photo of that tree from our final home hangs among this collection here, my first home without him. So I would remember that he was here once. That we were together once.

That’s important. When someone so valuable goes missing, silence replaces presence and in time makes you wonder if they were ever here.

The day we poured the foundation, my grandchildren, my daughter, my son-in-law, all of us stood here where I was invited to build a home on their land, dropping love messages written on rocks into a trench which would soon be filled with cement. Love messages to Rob, our Chief, husband, father, grandfather. A few weeks later, inside the new build, my daughter added her own words of comfort using the same Sharpie pen. Above the front door, inscribed on the bare wood of the header, she wrote these words from her favorite quote, “All shall be well . . .”

And all manner of things shall be well. She wanted me to know that they will, reminding me of that on the kitchen window framing with three more words, “You are loved.”

This house, built to my specs, was built for Rob.

There were a few surprises, some bittersweet. The ceiling beams, milled from Douglas Fir, my favorite tree in the forest, came from Nutrioso, Arizona, where we spent our honeymoon nearly fifty years ago. Stretching above me, across the ceiling of my great room, they’ve become a reminder that I am held even when I feel completely lost and alone. The rustic little coffee table placed in front of my sofa was made by an artistic woodsman in Heber. I remember where it sat in the cabin Rob and I owned for a short time there. When I see it, I see him and our mountain dream. The old fire hydrant given to him years ago is planted in the ground at the edge of my patio. In every home where we lived for the last thirty plus years, that symbol of his career has come with us.

So I cannot escape the fact that Robert Lee McLeod III made his mark on this planet, on my life, on the hearts of our children and grands, and on every person who knew him and some who didn’t. Even though his voice can only be heard in fragments on my iPhone. Even though his smile and that jawline I fell in love with can only be seen in photos like those on my gallery wall. Even though I can’t nuzzle his neck and breathe in his fragrance anymore, I remember.

Tears fall when I do. Often when I look at that giant story wall that represents our life.

I could tell myself another story and stop crying over this one. I guess that would plug the hole in my heart where pain leaks out sometimes. For a minute. Perhaps I could shift the narrative, declare my independence, and go off in search of a new adventure that celebrates a new chapter in my story.

But I don’t want to. It isn’t honest to change the facts. The wall tells the story of us. There is a risk in loving people. There is danger in giving your whole heart away to another heart made of flesh and blood. The truth we all want to avoid seeing is that people we love will someday die. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It takes great courage and even a fair amount of naivete to do it. Till death do us part seems a lifetime away—until it isn’t.

I could have held back. He could have as well. We could have kept our distance somehow despite our vows and tried to preserve the heart between the R and the E. That way it wouldn’t have ripped in two the day he died.

But that’s not love.

And this isn’t the end of our story—it’s only a chapter break.

My daughter, Katy, connected those dots for me as she stood on a chair in my half-built house penning a few words written by a woman who lived seven hundred years ago. A writer, a lover of God, a mystic, Julian of Norwich was a widow who knew that there is much more to each of our stories than what we see with our own eyes. Even if some of it is displayed on a gallery wall.

 

“All shall be well

All shall be well

And all manner of things shall be well.”