Superpower

I got a flat tire today. I was almost back to town when the dashboard lit up, telling me to check the tire pressure. I’m not much of a mechanic, but I was pretty sure “12” on the left front tire wasn’t a good thing at fifty miles an hour. I slowed down, made it to the Target parking lot in Queen Creek, and pulled into a large empty section just as the pressure fell to “5.” It was the warmest day this year, I was wearing a black t-shirt, I needed a bathroom, and I was stranded. The tire looked like it had expired. I wanted to join it.

Just another typical day without you.

I had AAA, but they take forever to arrive anywhere. Fortunately, our son-in-law with the heart of gold came to my rescue. It was a dirty, hot, tiring job, but he had the screw-pierced tire in the Tahoe’s back end and the original spare tire bolted onto my truck in record time. I limped the Tahoe over to Discount Tire, got two new tires ordered, and drove home.

No biggie. I’ve done this before. It wasn’t my first rodeo.

I’ve got a lot of experience at handling minor catastrophes without you, Babe. Your work schedule and my bad luck seemed to always coincide with each other. Like the time I was driving home after dark from church with the two littles and the muffler fell off our Toyota Cressida. Dragging it out of the road, I waited—pre-cellphone era—for some Good, Trustworthy, Samaritan to stop and render aid. Somebody did and soon I made it home with the kiddos to put them to bed and curse used cars and Fire Department shift work.

Any time the kids got hurt, with the exception of one kid’s broken arm, you were always at work and I was always driving our suburbanite ambulance to the doctor’s office. When the vehicles needed tire rotations and oil changes, I’m the one (until you retired) who drove them to the sacred male strongholds known as Discount Tire and Walmart’s Auto Zone where they’d try to talk me, the wife, into new air filters and expensive oil and new windshield wiper blades, and I wished with all my heart you would handle the guy things so I wouldn’t be taken advantage of.

Looks like I’m back to wishing that again.

You often told me I can handle stuff like this. “You’re completely capable,” you said, flinging the compliment at me like a dead fish.

“Yep,” I agreed. “I’m nothing if not capable. It’s my Superpower.”

I know you always had complete confidence in me, except when it came to my sense of direction. And I’m sure when you left this world to enjoy the one we all will be much happier living in someday that you knew I’d rise to the occasion, put on my big girl pants, and carry on. Like the good little McLeod that I am.

But I don’t want to. I don’t want to do any of the things I have to do now without you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter one iota what I want anymore.

I wanted to call you today and have you come rescue me from the heat and the misshapen tire. Put your arms around me and tell me it was okay and you’d take care of it. I wanted you to meet with the investment guy whose office I’d just left where I had to close out the IRA’s owned by you and open a new one in my name, because I’m your beneficiary and I have no choice but to benefish. I didn’t want to deposit the check I got for selling your truck last weekend, either, but it had to be done. What I wanted was for you to drive up in that truck like you did for five years, grin at me, shake your head, and save the day. But we don’t own that quadcab anymore. I sold it along with your Gator stickers on the back window and the Fire Department logo and the bent tailgate that you created when you backed into a tree on a hunting trip. Because there’s only one of me now and I don’t need two trucks.

I keep having to make decisions about my life without you that I used to make with you and every time I have to do it . . . you die all over again. I couldn’t even watch when the happy new truck owners—soon-to-be newlyweds—drove off in the Dodge Dakota you loved. I just stayed in the house and . . . you know.

I’m sure I’ll be fine. Someday. Everyone says so. I’m braver than I think and all that. And I’m experienced at doing the guy stuff even if I hate it. All those years you spent working, I was the one with the time to take cars to shops, call insurance companies, handle bank statements, and take the dog to the groomer. I can do it. I have no choice.

I’ll just dust off my experience, put it back to work, and pick up where I left off. It’s no biggie.

After all, I’m nothing if not capable. It’s my Superpower.

The End

 I’m writing again.

This isn’t the kind of writing I thought I’d be doing. I have two novels in the oven, another blog with an ongoing story I haven’t finished, and files of blog ideas I thought I’d be immersed in while I stared out at our forested backyard hoping for a glimpse of a skittish deer. Instead, I’m journaling the pain of living without you in my life anymore. I’m crushed by the good memories of adventures and loving and laughing that will always be all I have left of you. And I suffer at the thought that I took you for granted and wasted too many opportunities to make you feel loved and cherished because I was distracted by things like writing books and blogs.

Regret is a terrible substitute for being with the one you love.

You were my person. My confidant. My muse. You drove me from one side of America to the other, helping me search out records of my ancestors so I could weave all their facts together into a book. Partially written, ignored in a box, it sits patiently now, waiting for editing and completion. But you’re not here to help me figure out the ending.

It sounds a lot like us.

I don’t understand our ending either. I’ve tried, but you’re not here to help me make sense out of it. Every time I got stuck in a scene in one of my novels, I ran the problem by you, and you and that creative brain of yours offered up solutions. You may have felt neglected by my writing passion, but you were always ready to be a sounding board when I needed you. Of course, I promised to give you full credit on the dedication page, but I don’t think that flimsy shot at fame was your motivation. We had fun together figuring things out. Talking them through. Coming up with solutions.

I’m not having fun anymore. I have no solutions. I don’t know what I’m doing.

My birthday will be here in a few weeks, the first I’ll have ever celebrated without you here beside me. I’ll have other family around me, but I’ve already warned them I’m not much fun right now. There’s not much to celebrate. Katy’s had a couple of rough birthdays in her life, too—once because they could only schedule your heart surgery on that date, and now because she’s in mourning for her dad. She joked this month that she was moving her birthday to some other place on the calendar, and I’m considering doing the same thing.

I was thinking I’d move it to 2045. I might be more fun by then.

I’ve journaled some hard things lately on the autobiography I casually call my blog. I’ve made people cry with this walk through grief, maybe because we’re all grieving over you. I’m not trying to cause tears. It’s just that putting my soul on paper so I can see it is one way I can look at what’s going on inside me and sort it all out. My heart feels scrambled up right now, with every conceivable emotion churning around inside. Angry feelings, hopeless thoughts, shocked disbelief, and crippling explanations are interwoven with sorrow, hurt, and confusion.

But even though I write it down, when I lay it all out in front of me, it makes as much sense as a table full of puzzle pieces without the box. I have no idea how this deconstructed picture will ever come together again or what it will look like when it finally does. You were always better at jigsaw puzzles than me, too. And now you live in a unique place where you know what this one represents but you can’t tell me what you’ve discovered. That’s not fair.

Nothing about this is fair.

It’s not logical. Or merciful. Or better for anyone but you. I’m sorry. That sounds horrible. But I’ve read about heaven. No one who gets a glimpse of it ever wants to come back here. I don’t blame you for preferring it there. I’m just still upset that you didn’t take me with you—like you had any say in that.

Oh, I’m probably just having a pity party, which isn’t as much fun as it sounds. Like I said, I’m not having fun right now. I’m just typing a lot. Crying a lot. Missing you—a lot. A lot a lot. Remember how you used to say that? I miss all the things you used to say. And do. And share with me. I miss sharing life with you, Baby, even when we shared it imperfectly.

But, hey, at least I’m writing again. Tearing up the keyboard with questions that have no answers, plots that have no endings, and memories that make us all cry. I have the whole confusing story written down, interspersed with vivid word pictures and emotional connections. What I don’t have is an ending that makes sense.

Because, right now, life without you in it doesn’t make any sense.

Together

“Til death do us part,” I echoed, my flowers shaking as I took this forever step into the unknown. All those vows are all about being “together.” For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. We vowed not to give up. Neither of us went into marriage thinking there was a backdoor, like divorce, if things got tough. And they did. There were scary times. Lots of moments when we knew we were in over our heads in life. “We’re a good team,” we often reassured each other. And when it was hard to see eye to eye, “We’re worth fighting for,” was the point we agreed on.

We always kept our promises.

I was eighteen. We’d been in love since I was sixteen and you were twenty-one. But I had school to finish, and you had orders for Germany, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. I couldn’t go. Actually, you wouldn’t take me with you. So, you went overseas, promising to come back for me. Sixteen months later you did, stood beside me in that church, made identical vows with me, and we headed down a road that wouldn’t end for forty-four years.

Til death did us part.

Does anyone ever think what that will look like? I guess that’s a dumb question. That part of the ceremony is the scariest. It could end a million ways. I just hoped we’d go out the same way we began—together. “I don’t want to be a rich widow,” I warned, but you only laughed. “You won’t be rich,” you quipped. It was the “together” part I wanted guaranteed.

You’ve always loved to give me cards out of the blue. I saved most of them. “A cord of three strands . . . We’ll make it together, Babe!” you wrote in one. I still have that card. “I’m your greatest fan! I’m with you all the way,” you wrote in another. “I’ll be lovin’ you through whatever may come! Let’s do it together!” you penned. And, “No matter what .. or how long . . . we’ll get through it together, my precious darlin’! I promise!”

Together, you said. Until now. Because before you penned those promises to me, we made this promise to each other—til death do us part. It’s the law of first mention. There’s no “together” when death does its part.

I’ve been agonizing over how it happened. Separated for five weeks, both in and out of the hospital while we each suffered from covid. No communication. Dependent on phone call updates and the hope that our text messages were being read to you. I’ve worried that you felt abandoned, left to fight alone. Others remind me you knew hospitals were keeping people apart and that we’d have been there if we could. Knocking down the hospital doors would only have guaranteed I’d never get even one last chance to see you again.

Honey, I always believed you’d recover. We all did. Everyone except the doctors, who didn’t pass that on to us until twenty-four hours before you died. We’re still not over the shock of it. The decision you made that you’d had enough. The decision I made to support you and whatever you needed. I guess we did that together even though discussing it was out of the question. All you could do was nod yes and no in answer to us.

Twenty-four hours. I know, some couples don’t get that much notice. All they get is a phone call or a knock at the door with no chance of saying “I love you” or “good-bye.” I know I should be grateful that we were able to drive up to Show Low to be with you finally. Sit at your bedside for a few hours and tell you how much you mean to us while you still had the ability to hear us. Katy and me. Lee by phone. Your sister, Risa, late in the night when she took my turn at your bedside.

But I have regrets. Sorrow. Too many questions. No one explains to you in the brief moments before you walk that aisle to the sound of the Wedding March that, when death finally parts the two of you, it’s full of trauma. And confusion. Frightening. Sometimes made up of rapid decisions while you do the best you can based on the information you have at the time. Guilt and condemnation are unwelcome companions when the dust settles.

I guess I keep writing the same things here over and over again. It ended too fast. I never saw it coming. I wouldn’t let myself think that you might die. You were fighting so hard, so many people were praying, and between the phone call updates every day, we held our breath and listened for hope and believed you’d make it. You always made it before. It was out of the question to think it would be different this time. No matter what, we’d get through this together.

I don’t understand—none of us do. We’re just trying to make sense out of something that is senseless and painful and traumatic. It’s hard to realize that even if we had answers, they wouldn’t fill the void left in our lives by losing you. That even if we’d been able to do anything different, you still may not have made it.

This is grief. This is what it looks like. This is the risk we took forty-four years ago while my flowers shook and the vows were made and we tried to forget that death comes for everyone eventually. That someday, despite our best efforts and heartfelt promises, we might not be together.

For a while.

I will be with you again. And when I am, there won’t be any need for vows that talk about sickness or poverty or death. You know it and I know it. “Together” will be forever.

That’s the promise I’m holding on to now.

Courage Under Fire

 

I am not courageous. Or brave. Or doing great. You only think that because you haven’t heard me screaming at God at the top of my voice when I’m here alone,

“Why!!!”

It seems to me that courageous people don’t scream at the Almighty. They bow their humble heads and submit to the “will of God” when tragedies happen. They don’t demand answers and call Him names like The God I’m Not Talking To. They praise the Lord and thank Him for the forty-four wonderful years they had together and gush about how happy they are to know their husband isn’t suffering anymore and is happy now in the arms of Jesus.

That’s what I’ve been told. To tell you the truth, though, I’m not buying it. I don’t think they’re being honest.

So, no, I don’t feel courageous. I’m fragile and raw and numb, but I’m not courageous. I don’t feel brave either. I’m shellshocked and weary and sleep deprived and dehydrated, but definitely not brave. It’s just that I have no choice. I’m here. I’m alive. And I feel alone. I hurt like hell and, with every cell in my being, I miss Rob every second of every hour of every day. But that’s not courage. Or bravery. Or even remarkable.

That’s just the crappy hand I got dealt.

Doesn’t sound very spiritual, does it? It doesn’t to me either. It does sound honest, though. Authentic. And it probably makes people uncomfortable. What do you do with a woman who sits at your bank counter crying because she has to remove her husband’s name from their joint checking account? And when she bursts into tears in a department store because she glanced at his photo on her phone, should you ask her if she’s okay or pretend you didn’t notice? If her tears splash all over the bananas in the grocery store because she realizes she’ll never buy them again for her dead husband, should you bring it to the attention of the store manager? After all, that’s not very covid-friendly of her. “Clean up in Produce!” the loudspeaker squawks.

So, let’s recap. I’m not courageous or brave. I’m not living my best spiritual life right now. And I’m dripping snot in literally every public place I go in a dismal effort to pick up the shattered pieces of my life and get back to the business of living. At this point, I don’t think I’m succeeding at much of anything—except crying.

I am honest, though. And I ask honest questions. I always have. Whether I politely question God like the good Southern-style woman I am or scream “Why?!” like a banshee in the jungle, throwing it out there now is as straightforward as the day eight years ago when I found out I had cancer and stood alone in the backyard, staring up at the sky, daring to ask the Creator of the universe, “Where are You?”

I felt pretty alone that day, too, and Rob was standing right behind me.

I can ask God anything I want to ask Him. He can handle it. I know a few people who can’t, but God seems up to the challenge. He’s a fan of honesty. He knows what I’m thinking anyway, so why shouldn’t I ask? I want to know why He didn’t heal my darling’s lungs when hundreds of people prayed thousands of prayers asking Him to. He healed lots of other people, many of whom never even saw a doctor when they caught the virus. He healed me in the same hospital where Rob lost his life. We had the same diagnosis on the same day. Why did He leave me here alone asking questions Rob would never have asked if the tables had been turned?

I think He got our rooms mixed up.

I want to know why my grandchildren lost their Chief. Why my son didn’t get the chance to tell his father goodbye in person when he hadn’t seen him for nearly two years because of covid. Tell me why my daughter had to lose the father she adores, holding his hand for nearly twenty-four hours until he took his last breath? And our friends who’ve wept over the loss of a man who was like a brother to some and a hero to many. Why is that, God?

I should be clear here, since some people never question the way life turns out and others have all the answers so they never need to ask questions. I don’t believe in pat answers. That hasn’t stopped people from offering them, but their consolation cards wind up in my circular file when they do. Pat answers are easy when it isn’t the love of your life who has suddenly died. Religious explanations are even worse. They blame God but make Him look heroic while they do it. It makes me wonder if those people even know God.

I know God is weeping with me. That He is saving my tears in a bottle. I don’t know what He plans to do with them, but somehow the image of Him caring that much is comforting. I know He carries me when I don’t have the emotional strength to even get out of bed, which has been happening a lot for the last five weeks. There’s more I know about God, but so far I haven’t forgiven Him enough to give Him credit for those things. I also know He won’t hold that against me even though I’m holding the loss of my darling against Him.

Oh, I know, some of you are so shocked your socks have flown off. I’ve ruined the good Christian perception you had of me. Good. If we can’t ask God hard questions in hard times without worrying about the way we package it, then He’s not the God we thought He was. Don’t worry. If lightning strikes from heaven in the next ten minutes because I just wrote that, you won’t get hit by Eula shrapnel. You’re a safe distance away, reading my last words and wondering where I found the courage to shake my finger in the face of God and question His motives.

I got it from Him. The Author and the Finisher of my faith. God’s not afraid of my honesty. His favorite people were never Pharisees, remember? He’s always loved a desperate heart. He’s the One Who asked Adam and Eve the same thing I asked Him in my backyard eight years ago and at Rob’s bedside five weeks ago,

“Where are you?”

It takes courage to be honest. Maybe I’m braver than I think.

Dear Roby

 

Dear Roby,

One of your love notes made its way into my hands last night. Allie came across it in a calligraphy book you’d been practicing in and told me about it while she and I were driving to Chick Fil A to pick up some chocolate milkshakes.

“I think it will make you cry, YaYa,” she began, but I was already crying before she could finish the sentence. “I’m sure you’ll love it, though.”

She’s very intuitive for thirteen.

We got the shakes and brought them home where I asked Allie for the promised page. Which made me cry again.

“Eula,” your practice sheet was titled. “My Love. My Life. My All.” That’s all it said. It was more than enough. I placed it beside the photo of us standing arm in arm along Oak Creek in 1986—remember that itchy year when the worst thing I’d ever experienced were those chronic hives?

Perspective is a tardy teacher. But your love note arrived on time.

Yesterday was a hard day, darlin’. On a scale of 1-10 it ranked at about 97. I woke up crying, like I do every morning. Paralyzed in bed, I cried out to The God I’m Not Speaking To for help. “I have to get up,” I wept. “I have to move but I can’t do it. Please help.” He’s always listening, The God I’m Not Speaking To. I’m fairly sure He still loves me, but I can’t hear His voice most of the time because I’m having trouble trusting Him. Actually, I’ve always had that problem but it’s a lot worse now that I feel so betrayed by His decision to take you Home.

I sat up and checked my phone for texts, reached for the Kleenex because I couldn’t breathe or get up, when suddenly my phone rang. It was Sue. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was on another line when you called.”

“When did I call?” I asked, confused and stuffy-nosed.

“Just now.”

“I did?” I questioned, blowing my nose again. “I didn’t call,” I said. My memory is as full of holes as fishnet right now—a major side effect of grief, my counselor explained last week—but I knew I hadn’t called her this morning.

“I can tell you’re crying,” she said carefully. “What triggered it?” she asked, ready as always to listen to her grieving friend process her painful loss again.

“Waking up,” I told her, and began crying once more. Every morning is like that. I wake up. I remember. I see your photo across the room. I begin to sob and stop breathing until I can reach the Kleenex again, begging for help to face another day without you. Usually, The God I’m Not Talking To will inspire someone to send me a text or mysteriously guide my feet to the shower, but this morning He made my cellphone call Sue’s phone so Sue would call me back and comfort me.

I wish The God I’m Not Speaking To would let you call me. I guess Verizon’s coverage doesn’t extend that far.

Sue’s call helped. I got up, drove to the west side of town to spend the day with Robin who’s here for a few days. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive round trip, part of it on a newer stretch of the 202 that I don’t remember being on before. Maybe you and I drove it and, as usual, I wasn’t paying attention because you were the driver and I was along for the ride. But yesterday I was the driver and nobody came along for the ride. It was really quiet, and I discovered that makes me an easy target for triggers. Thoughts like, “Rob would love this mountain view,” led straight to sobbing and a frantic search for Kleenex at seventy miles per hour. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly my fingers ached, trying to ward off the sorrow that threatened to blind me with tears. Blurry eyed, weeping drivers account for nearly thirty per cent of all highway traffic accidents, you know. If you were here, you’d give me that face you make and demand proof of my statistics.

But you’re not here. So, my statistics stand.

Robin and I spent a precious day together, and then I drove that same tear-filled route back home with a couple of wrong turns because you weren’t there to remind me to take the correct exits and you know I have a terrible sense of direction, especially when I get turned around. I’m pretty turned around right now without you here, Baby. I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do every morning except cry and beg The God I’m Not Speaking To to push me out of bed.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.

It was so good to get back to Katy’s house where the kiddos all gave me big squeezy hugs and Dan and Katy had supper ready for me. And even though the traffic was awful—which Robin had predicted but I shrugged off since Phoenix traffic is always terrible—I invited Allie to get in the truck with me and we drove to Chick Fil A. That was treat enough all on its own—chocolate shakes with grandbabies—especially at the end of a long, steering wheel gripping drive, wishing with all my heart that you and I were on another road trip and that I won’t be the permanent driver from now on.

I loved road trips with you.

Then the news of Allie’s discovery. And my memory of begging The God I’m Not Speaking To for help yesterday morning. And knowing I never was all alone on the long drive going to and from the west side of Phoenix even though it feels like I’m alone all the time. Grief does that to you. You were my person, Baby, and now half of me has been ripped away. I’m the only one who knows how I feel. Which makes me feel alone.

Until you send a love note unexpectedly. Or I find your voice in a long-deleted voice mail telling me you love me, which happened last week. What I’d really like tonight is a lengthy dream where you hold me in your arms, smile at me with that expression you’ve had in your eyes for the last forty-six years, and tell me it’s going to be all right. Somehow. Some way. When The God I’m Not Speaking To dries all our tears, undoes all the sadness, and turns what the enemy meant for evil into good.

I have more to say, but I’ll save it for another letter on another night. I just want you to know how much I love you. How much I miss you. And that your love note was a miraculous gift.

You are my love. My life. My all.

Eula

Friendly Fire

 

We talk almost every night, my son and I, usually for two hours or more. Ever since his father, my husband, died a month ago. It’s been a long time since we’ve had this much conversation. Heart connection isn’t easy with the distance between us as it is—nearly two thousand miles as the interstate rolls between the deserts of Arizona and Kentucky. But this nightmare has shown us how much we need each other. We’ve been shattered. The wounds are raw. Our chats are punctuated by frequent silences and the sound of someone’s breath blowing out—a last ditch attempt to avert tears.

This loss has changed everything.

“We got hit by a semi,” I whisper, my voice choking on emotion. “That’s what it feels like. We never saw it coming.” He agrees, and another sigh escapes. He tells me of a local pastor who offered his point of view recently on how he’s never known of anyone who died of covid. The man had chosen the wrong moment to sound ignorant. A few sentences later, he realizes his error, hopefully a bit wiser for the discovery.

“I know,” I say, strangely conflicted by the account. Though I deactivated my Facebook account several months ago, last week I went back in to see if there were any messages of sympathy from friends that I might want to respond to. There may have been some four weeks ago, but if so I couldn’t find any. Instead, I found my feed strangled by posts I once subscribed to from the suspicious side of the novel virus fence. I don't stand there anymore—not that I have switched loyalties. Rather, I have experienced both sides of the covid issue and have reached this conclusion:

I no longer care who’s right and who’s wrong.

I don’t believe I was entirely incorrect about my point of view for the majority of 2020. Nor do I believe I was entirely right, as I once did. What I have learned in the last two months is that no one—not even doctors and researchers—have a definitive answer as to how the virus is contracted or why some survive while others perish. And because no one knows that most basic of facts, no one on social media or network media or printed media or even sidewalk preachers have any right to deny its danger or point fingers at those of us who have contracted this mysterious illness. They are not qualified to have an opinion.

Believe me, they don’t want to be. Because the only way you’re qualified to have an opinion is if you’ve watched someone you desperately love suffer and die from complications of covid.

So, here’s my opinion, since I qualify. Sprinkled with a few facts.

It has become a divisive topic that generates a lot of money for every kind of media outlet. Covid was politicized by opportunists in an election year and because of that I will probably never vote again. It is a heart wrenching arena where exhausted nurses cry with sobbing family members who must tell their loved ones goodbye too soon. As a result of overwork and stress, nurses are quitting to look for some other way of making a living. I know—they told me themselves while I was hospitalized.

But most of all, covid is a topic that has been foolishly debated on the cowardly platform of Facebook and Parler and other internet sites. Bows drawn on both sides of the topic are cruelly aimed at innocent bystanders and opponents alike. People feel protected launching their arrows from the supposed safety of their personalized platforms, taking no thought as to whose heart it will penetrate, caring only that they make their point even though no one is listening.

I searched for sympathy on my silenced Facebook page and instead read the following meme as it scrolled by. “Those of you who have remained hidden in your homes for the last year out of fear have wasted a year of your life.” And I wept. If Rob and I had done that, maybe my darling would still be alive.

Covid is the enemy. I believe that. But it has some surprising allies. Our careless words, whether written or spoken, make it clear this virus is not the only thing creating casualties.

That’s just my qualified opinion.

Rights and Wrongs

I never thought it was covid.

Not once did it cross my mind that the cause of our fevers and congestion was the feared virus of 2020. We were busy moving into a cabin in the woods, isolated from the media, unpacking dusty boxes, overseeing home improvements, and miles away from the nearest sneeze 95% of the time. We’d survived an entire year of social hysteria, lockdowns, mandates, and all the rest without even a case of the sniffles and rarely the use of a hated mask—something some people considered unintelligent, and others considered our right to choose.

But in the Age of Covid, no one has the right to anything.

There is always an abundance of judgers around when the time comes to die. Popular philosophies perpetuated by the media center around the idea that if we take care of ourselves, we will live forever or at least to the ripe old age of whatever your oldest dying relative was when they passed, but probably at least ninety. You’re not supposed to die at the age of sixty-seven, especially when you’re strong and active and love life. If you take your vitamins and exercise regularly, don’t smoke or drink too much, and get a flu shot, you, too, can avoid the grim reaper and cheat death. Anything else is unacceptable.

It must be someone’s fault when you go against the grain and die anyway. I presumed it to be mine.

I am the wife. The homemaker. Nurturer. The woman behind the man who doesn’t go to the doctor just because he has congestion and a cough. Therefore, it was my responsibility to get medical attention on time. But I am also afraid of doctors and painful tests and blunt remarks, which doctors are notoriously well known for. So, when we both began with the same symptoms, both of us believing we had allergies, and then a bug, and later maybe an infection, we treated our ills the same way we always did which was usually effective—fourteen days at home or two weeks if you see a doctor. We preferred the fourteen-day plan.

It was a fatal mistake.

And now it feels like there is shame in the two of us having contracted covid, especially since one of us died of complications of the experience. I have a box filled with sympathy cards from friends and family who lived through the same treacherous year as Rob and I yet did not succumb to a novel virus from China. Clearly, I reason, they did a better job of taking care of themselves than we did. Left alive as my husband’s widow, I now have the unique experience of noticing how many people around me have not died of covid. After all, the odds are against it, 99.9%. It leaves me feeling like there’s a crimson “C” branded on my forehead. Unclean, I want to shout, warning people away from the woman behind the tardy mask.

I realize that’s not really logical. I know a lot of people who have contracted the same virus as we did, survived to give thanks for the goodness of God, and do not seem to blame themselves for being so careless as to get sick. At the height of a pandemic. It’s what we do—we live in a risky world where no matter how careful or carefree you are, you may or may not become ill and perish. It’s a crap shoot. And it’s nobody’s fault if you find yourself counted among the .1% who run out of luck.

But it still feels like the fault should lie somewhere. All the “what if’s” and “if only’s” are precursors to the perceived “I told you so’s” I suspect people are thinking. My son said this stage of grief where I blame myself for my husband’s death is simply a way of trying to make sense out of a tragedy. Out of the trauma we have suffered. Which we must try to heal from or find a way to live with.

But there’s no making sense of it. “I don’t understand” is my mantra as the tears fall down my face and I relive the horrible last two months, suffering its fallout. We’d gone to a doctor the day before we were admitted to the hospital, were given a covid test with a 3-day turnaround, told that we were very sick, and sent home with medicine. Would that one day have made a difference? Who knows. The questions are nothing short of endless torment. I’ll never know how we contracted it. I’ll never know why I recovered from it. And I’ll never know why it took the life of my best friend.

I wish I could go back. I wish I could wake up. I wish I knew what happened.

But I’m just a person. A person who recovered for unknown reasons from a virus that has proven deadly for many. After all, one tenth of one per cent of half a million Americans equals a lot of broken hearts. I don’t have the privilege of knowing the answers to the why’s, and I don’t have the power to prevent death. We’ve cheated it many times, Rob and I. Until now.

Sadly, the answer to why this was the time is one more thing I don’t have the right to know.

That may be the hardest thing of all to live with.

Fallen

 

I fell flat on my face in Petsmart today. Our giant white panda bear of a dog tripped me right out in front of God and everybody.

“Did you hurt anything?” Katy asked me in concern when I told her what happened.

“My knee. And my pride,” I said. But the other thing that hurt is that I couldn’t tell you about it. There are so many things I’ve been saving up to tell you, but short of writing you letters here or making people think I’m crazy by talking to you in an empty room, I can’t really talk to you about anything, good or bad. You were usually the one to take Brody to get groomed, you know. Because we both know he’s a bruiser with big clumsy feet and no sense of direction. You could handle him. I fall on my face.

I checked my emotions while the store manager appeared along with a cashier and two other customers, all wanting to know if I was all right. I laughed it off and held my breath until I got outside where no one could see me. “Why aren’t you here?” I accused, tears running down my face as I let go of the frustration. All these things I have to do on my own now. Why aren’t you here?

It was another rough day. Days are like that now. I cry every morning, which is as normal as brushing my teeth, and then I get dressed, open the blinds to let in the sun, and some days I actually function almost normally. Today wasn’t one of those days. Today I was in the toilet. All day. It started the moment I woke up with a text message asking my opinion on your headstone. At noon, I spent an hour listening and watching via zoom to tributes given by all your friends at Toasties who love and miss you. There were plenty of tears mixed in with the kind words. After that, I had two emails to deal with—one requiring a death certificate and the other wanting information about the military honor guard for your funeral.

Your death certificate. That one triggers every nerve in my disconsolate body. To see your name on something like that. Your occupation—firefighter. It’s you. It’s not supposed to be you, but I guess it is. I can’t get my mind around it yet. Still, with the painful precision of an ice pick, truth keeps stabbing at the numbness that encircles my heart. With every piece of ice that falls away, a little more reality sneaks in, forcing me to face the fact that you died last month. A month ago today. It’s been four weeks and, while I am still Rob’s wife, I am also your widow.

But mostly I am heartbroken. Who needs a heart anyway, I ask myself. Anything that can cause this kind of pain is, in my opinion, highly overrated. Maybe we’d all be better off if they were optional equipment. If I had the option right now, I’d disconnect my heart so it could never make me suffer this way again.

It would be pointless. I’m already infected by sorrow. Grief, which must be second cousin to the chicken pox, will never go away. That’s what they tell me. Like the virus, it changes form, but it will always be there. So, it doesn’t take time, does it? It’s not the great healer of all wounds after all. No matter how much of that tick tocking stuff flows under my crumbling bridge, I will always miss you. Always ache for you. Always wish I’d had more of that fleeting time to hold you close and tell you again how much I love you.

My knee is sore and my back is withholding judgment, probably until I wake up tomorrow, but my heart? Even an accident like the one in Petsmart today couldn’t make it any more shattered than it already is. My poor, lonely heart will never be the same.

I’ve fallen again, Baby, and just like this morning, you aren’t here to pick me up. It’s not the hard ground that hurts, though.

It’s the truth.

Fires

I draw in a breath and stare at the photo. I’m as attracted to what I see as the first time I found it. Our house. Tucked away behind guardian pines, survivors of one of the worst fires to ever hit northern Arizona’s Mogollon Rim country, our modest little place looks like the retreat it is, painted this time with freshly fallen snow. Idyllic. Serene. Inviting. I can’t stop the tears.

This is one more in a series of terrible, difficult things I am left to handle on my own now. Selling our house in the mountains. We already have an amazing offer and it hasn’t even hit MLS. It’ll be gone before I can blink, exactly like everything else I’ve lost in the last month. I hope there’s something amazing God has planned for me, Romans 8:28 style, because right now I feel like I’ve been abandoned by Him.

Crushed by loss, I told my counselor two weeks ago about my decision to sell our new home in Heber. I can’t live there without you, Babe. It’s too full of brief memories, the last of which are painful reminders of how it all ended. It wouldn’t have mattered where we lived when the virus destroyed our story. I’m not the kind of woman who is comforted by empty rooms with loud memories of the loved ones who don’t live there anymore. I’d have sold that pain and moved on even if we had still lived here in the Valley. I’ve done it before. It’s just that it still hurts no matter what I decide to do.

“Leave a mark somewhere on your property,” my counselor advised. “Something that will continue on long after you and Rob have left there.” She suggested carving our initials in one of the pine trees on our land. Our land. We’ve never had land before, and I probably never will again. Oh, how my heart aches for you.

I welcomed her idea and, since I was headed back to the house for the first time since ambulances drove us away in mid-January, I knew going back would be painful. Taking her advice gave me a purpose not wrapped up in packing boxes. I decided to pick a tree and commemorate our love story there. You’re the wood carver, Baby, not me, but I found one of your fire department knives in a dresser drawer as I cleaned out our room that weekend and tucked it in my pocket. The pines were going to be challenging. They’re so thick with protective bark, I wondered if I’d need a chainsaw to cut through with our initials. Katy wondered the same thing.

We met up in the backyard Sunday afternoon after all the friends who helped me pack up our belongings had left. “Mama, I found your tree,” Katy told me, and we held each other and cried, standing in the yard you and I had fenced for our wanderlust dog, knowing he’d never run free there again.

She had found it. The one tree out of the dozens on our land. Right off the deck. At eye level, there was a dinner plate size exposure where its thick bark had mysteriously disappeared, leaving a smooth place where I could use my amateur skills to carve. It was perfect. It was difficult. It was bittersweet.

Katy disappeared into the house and I stood at that tree, sobbing, carving, trying not to cut off my fingers as I pressed the blade as deeply as I could into the scarred pine. Adding more pain to a survivor of a terrible fire, I commiserated with the tree as I branded it with the only thing I could think of to remind people that you and I once lived here, once dreamed together, and once took a final risk, here, on this spot. R Heart E, I scratched in the golden smoothness of the exposed wood. Rough. Oddly artistic. But I couldn’t make it cut as deeply as I knew it needed to go if it would stand the test of time and not disappear the way our dream had.

Katy’s husband, Dan, appeared beside me. “Want me to get a Dremel tool out of the garage and make it deeper?” he offered. I stood back and watched while he leaned into the tree, impressing the tattoo I’d scratched out deep into the tall Ponderosa Pine. When he was finished, he snapped a picture and sent it to my phone.

That’s when I saw what I’d never noticed while I stood there alone, crying, and adding even more damage to a once ravaged pine. Surrounding the clear initials and the heart shape I’d left as a memorial to our brief presence here were burn marks. And encompassing the new image like a frame was heavy bark as black as coal, evidence of the Rodeo-Chedeski fire. Nearly twenty years ago, that 468,000-acre monster jumped the road in our canyon and swept through the empty acreage north of our house, leaving our trees wounded but the house intact.

Like me.

I have to try to believe that now.

If God is the Author of my story, of your story, of our story, then this tree had a story for me. Of terrible fire. Of survival against unbelievable odds. Of life on the other side of destruction. And of memories that will someday comfort and remind me and those who know us that we loved each other deeply and always will.

I left a picture of our love on a scarred pine tree at our dream house in Heber, Arizona, darling. I think the tree had more of a message for me than I realized when I used it to leave a memorial for others to see.

I’ve been through fire, too. I’m forever scarred by the nightmare. But I’m still here. I don’t know why, but here I am. And I will always love you and remember you and thank God that you and I belonged to each other. You are still my beloved.

R Heart E

 

“You've walked me through fires
Pulled me from flames
If You're in this with me
I won't be afraid
When the smoke billows higher, oh and higher
And it feels like I can barely breathe
I'll walk through thesе fires
'Cause You're walking with mе.”

~ Fires, recorded by Jordan St. Cyr on the album, Be My Defender

Picture Perfect

 

“I’m sorry, Baby,” I said to your realer-than-life photo. “I couldn’t hang onto it. Not without you. It only made sense if you were there, too.”

The house. Our dream. I put it up for sale today. On another snowy day in Heber where we missed seeing elk prints and deer droppings, no doubt, where they dotted the fresh, white wonderland of the dream we went for last fall. We missed it again, just like we missed the biggest snowfall in five years—a foot at our cabin—because we were both in the hospital in Show Low, fighting our individual, lonely battles with covid. A battle I won. A battle you lost.

I lost you. My one and only darling who I’ve loved since I was sixteen years old. I lost you. It’s been more than three weeks since Katy and I sat on each side of your bed, holding your hands, and telling you it was all right for you to go. You asked to go. Demanded it when the questions were asked. Those horrible questions we never saw coming until the doctor called unexpectedly. But when they finally said we could come see you, since we agreed not to fight your wishes, we knew instantly that you were right and we had to let you go.

I didn’t want to. I wish we didn’t have to. We had no choice. You didn’t either. I don’t know what happened, Baby. Why did I get well and you didn’t? The questions are deadly, packed full of guilt and condemnation. They torment me when I’m not looking, prodding me with remorse and regret. If only I’d . . . dot, dot, dot. I should have never . . . fill in the blank. It’s endless. Merciless. Pointless.

Sometimes I envy you. There are days I’m so angry that you left me here to handle all these painful details, grieving without your comforting shoulder to cry on, knowing full well you’re free and happy with Jesus. It makes me angry with both of you. How could He do that? How could He take you from me? From Katy and Lee and their families? And how can He remain silent while we beg for explanations?

There are plenty of explanations—from others. But they don’t help and they don’t explain anything. Why did it look like this last chance at our mountain home dream was meant to be? Why did everything fall into place? We got the last house in Heber when we picked up the keys that day in late November. An acre and a half in the woods. Three bedrooms and an office. My dream kitchen. Your dream property. A deck overlooking the forest where we could spend the next twenty years drinking coffee and cocoa together in peace and quiet while we scanned the distance for tentative deer.

We had it all. We bought a fun swing for the grandkids. Planned ziplines in the trees, treehouses for overnight visits, built gates to the wash where the kiddos could explore and build forts. We put up a Brody-proof fence so he couldn’t escape from the biggest backyard a dog could possibly want. We unpacked nearly every box. Set up my writing space. You even attended a Toastmasters meeting from the office looking out at our front yard of tall pines. We were home. Not completely settled, but we finally had our place in the woods.

For five weeks. Thirty-five days. Until the fevers and shortness of breath got our attention and the ambulances carried us away from there, leaving our sanctuary in a state of suspended animation. Frozen in time with blankets and thermometers scattered around the living room where we both struggled to catch our breath. We left together for the last time. I’m left without you for the rest of my life.

I can’t live there without you, Darling. You wouldn’t want me to. Hours away from our family in the Valley, trying to make sense of my shattered world in a town where I hardly know anyone. So, the dream is gone. Stolen from us in broad daylight

Worse than that, you’re gone.

I don’t understand. None of us do. Maybe there where you live now, happy and free and enjoying Jesus, that mansion He promised is a million times better than our faded, twenty-two-year old cabin in the woods of northern Arizona. I’m sure it is.

I just wish He’d waited a lot longer to give you the keys so I could have been there, too, instead of sitting here alone at my computer, virtually signing away the last home we ever shared. And missing you.

Still, I saw pictures of the snow in Heber today. Like a picture postcard, it was everything we ever dreamed of together.

It just wasn’t worth the price we paid.

If I Could Save Time In A Bottle

 

This is where I live now. In sadness. With time as my enemy. It drags on. All day long, every single day since the doctor called and said you would not survive, I have been immersed in the dark waters of grief. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning, like when a memory surfaces to remind me of what I’ve lost. But that only happens every other minute of every single day. On the off minutes I tread water and try to catch my breath before another wave of sorrow hits me in the face and threatens to wash me out to sea.

Some people reassure me that I’m going to be okay. But I don’t feel like I’m going to be okay. I don’t think I will ever get over losing you, Rob. My rock. My baby. My love. Oh, my darling love. I miss you desperately. Missing you isn’t a strong enough description. I ache for you. Bending over, sobbing out every ounce of air in my lungs until I come up for air and do it all again. And again. And again.

How could there be that many tears inside of me, all flooding out each day? If my heart were a river, it should have run dry by now. Instead, it’s a bottomless spring of heartache and pain, always seeping out, never far from the surface, bursting its fragile boundaries like a geyser right when I least expect it.

I never knew such grief existed. I’m ashamed of all the lithe, careless, poetic sympathy cards I’ve naively sent to my suffering friends when life tore away their own true loves. Or parents. Or babies. “I’m so sorry, but I’m praying you will find comfort in the arms of Jesus,” my manufactured pen writes, gliding glibly across the manufactured card I bought at the drugstore on my way to the mailbox where I dropped off my obligatory pseudo-comfort. I was ignorant. I was pretentious. I was whole. Back then when I had all the right answers to questions no one had ever asked me before. You know, when I had all the time in the world.

I’ve received cards like that, now that I am that woman. The one whose world exploded into unrecognizable fragments last month, like a tornado shredding an innocent town before it skips away to do it all again. “So sorry for your loss,” wrote a long-ago acquaintance I haven’t seen in twenty years. “We’re all sorry for your loss,” scribbled the employer whose track record belies his attempt at sympathy. “God knows best,” some present in a weak attempt at spirituality. “He’s in a better place,” another reassures—without me, I immediately think, even though I told you we were supposed to kick off together so I wouldn’t find myself left behind, suffocating in this goulash of conflicting emotions. “Your memories will comfort you,” anonymous Hallmark writers gush with no concept of the gut-wrenching pain accompanying those memories. Christmases I once shared with you are gone forever. The inside jokes are no more. Desperately I search my phone for videos of your smile and your voice, longing to hear you say something, anything, no matter how insignificant.

Word to the wise—take more photos. Film more videos. Make the one you love talk to you on camera and save it forever. I haven’t heard Roby’s voice since the day I left the hospital, on my way to my own recovery. In the Age of Covid, when the man you love spends every second for four weeks trying to breathe in a lonely hospital room, visitors aren’t allowed and conversation is a technological impossibility. I’d give anything in the world to hear him tell me once more how much he loves me. Or to stop filming him.

I’d give even more for one minute to feel his arms around me again. Instead, I smell his favorite jacket and pretend I’m burying my face in his shoulder once more. I sleep with his t-shirt and pretend his arms are around me. In the morning I refold it the way I used to fold his laundry for forty-four years and put it back under my pillow where it waits patiently until it’s time to use it to dry my tears. Tonight. When I sleep alone again.

This is hell, this unexpected loss and its accompanying grief. “It’s going to take a long time,” they tell me. It’s already taking a long time. Every day feels like a year since the last time you smiled, held me in your arms, kissed my lips, told me you love me. Every morning the sun rises without the sense God gave it, pretending that everything will look brighter today in its beaming renewal, forgetting that from the moment my eyes open until hours later when exhaustion brings its solitary relief, this is only the beginning of a long day of missing you. Longing for what I can never have again. Regretting all the moments I was too distracted to bask in your generous love. And wondering how I am ever going to live without you in a world where I feel as disconnected as an alien on a foreign planet.

I miss you, Baby. Like the ocean would miss the shore. And I’m drowning in my sorrow with no hope of a rescue. Katy said we’re all just trying to stop the bleeding. So true. Half of me is gone, viciously torn away, leaving me alone here, violated, shattered, bleeding out. But I’ll be all right eventually. In time. Everyone says so. Just as soon as I forget how I was perfectly loved once. As soon as the memory of you fades enough to soften my sorrow. When I stop trying to remember what you smelled like or sounded like or the way your eyes softened when you looked at me and how your laughter diluted my worries. Just as soon as time heals all my wounds.

That’s what the Hallmark cards say, anyway. It just takes time.

The Mountains Are Calling And I Must Go

 

“We could live here,” I told him. “Or some place a lot like this.”

He gazed across the lush green meadow at the distant hills scarred by a long-ago fire. Where legions of ponderosa pine, heady spruce, and douglas firs once rendezvoused, the ravaged landscape had softened with the arrival of a new generation of aspen—young, for sure, but tall enough to paint the rolling contours with summer green. In a few weeks, the view that kept us captivated for the last month would transform into fall’s golden gala.

“Yes, we could,” he agreed. Simple and profound, that lengthy exchange abruptly changed the course of our life. Four months ago, on vacation in Arizona’s White Mountains, we let ourselves believe in the dream. Yesterday we celebrated our first Christmas in our new home on the Mogollon Rim, deep inside an evergreen forest. Mostly moved in, the dining room holds the last twenty boxes waiting their turn to be unloaded, but we’re here.

I still can’t believe it.

We ran away from the crazy of 2020 last August, secluded ourselves deep in the woods for a month, found some sanity and calm, and realized we couldn’t live in the urban jungle anymore. Not only that, we didn’t have to. Rob’s been retired for over six years and I’ve been a kept woman for way longer than that. So far, this is still America and we can do whatever we want to do and are willing to work and fight for.

I knew moving would be a fight. Not with Rob—with the status quo. It meant I’d be forced to clean out those closets filled with thirteen years of forgotten materialism that I’ve been avoiding like unwelcome relatives. It meant the heartache of explaining to our nearby grandchildren that we’d be living a few hours away now. We’d lose the comfort and familiarity of the best neighbors we’ve ever had. Leave us wondering how to manage doctors and hairdressers. And worst of all, my OCD self would willingly choose to dismantle my home and live in a whirlwind of chaos for the unforeseeable future.

All in order to make the dream come true.

We had to ask ourselves a few times if it was worth it and encourage each other—when the vision got cloudy—that it was. I’m sure you’ve been there and know what I’m talking about. In 44 years of marriage, this is our eighth move. But I hate doing it. I hate chaos. And stress. And starting over. I loved our last home and all the perks that came with it. No one has been more shocked than me at this drastic thing we’ve done in the golden years of our retirement. It was exhausting. My body, devoid of the vigor I had those other seven times, may never forgive me. I think I’ve accurately predicted that we will die in this house—perhaps sooner than I expected according to my angry joints and aching muscles.

But I had a dream. A dream of writing from the desk where I now sit in full view of a forest of trees. I could actually see it as it drove me every day to pull photos off the wall and fill cardboard boxes with the security I once called home. I need tranquility. I crave serenity and peace. This year has destroyed that for me. As fear has taken over our country and once friendly faces have disappeared behind masks, as elected officials have declared themselves dictators and the concept of God-given rights has morphed into perceived selfishness, and even people of faith surrender their freedom and common sense to fall in line six feet apart and avoid any semblance of assembly, the familiar became the forgotten. It was a year of hiding for most of America. Believing that a virus with a 99.9% survival rate was equivalent to the plague, everything that we once took for granted was taken from us. The simple pleasures of being with friends, returning a smile, keeping my temperature to myself, attending movies and concerts, worshipping shoulder to shoulder in a crowded church, traveling easily. All gone. Relegated to history books and tearful memories. Things are difficult now. Lonely and complicated. Easy has been stolen from us.

No longer do friends offer healing hugs—they bump elbows if they even dare to get that close. No more can we sit in a coffee shop or fast-food restaurant while children play carelessly on a jungle gym nearby. Instead, the drive-throughs are open so we can eat cold food at home or spill ketchup on our shirts in the discomfort of our cars. It’s not even considered safe by some to enjoy the outdoors—that virus is sneaky. It apparently hovers all around our own heads wherever we go. Mask up, Arizona—you’re on somebody’s radar.

There’s a lot more going on than fear over a politically charged virus, though. Unfortunately, the majority of people still believe the mainstream media, i.e. evening news, tells the truth. I’ve known since my high school journalism class that manipulation and fear is what sells newspapers and pays the bills for networks. Perhaps the biggest loss to Americans right now is their ability to think for themselves.

Maybe people are beginning to wake up. I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell what they can see while they stay hidden behind worthless masks. I’ve thought about it a lot from where I now sit watching squirrels race up pine trees, listening to them leap onto the roof of our house here in the woods. Oblivious to the chaos of boxes in our new home or the lies of corrupt politicians and censorship testing our First Amendment rights, they just live life on their own terms, enjoying the piney jungle gym in our back yard, breathing free the way God intended.

While we were in the Adirondacks a few years ago, my husband bought a hat with the inscription, The mountains are calling and I must go. That’s why we’re here. We’ve returned to the simple life where we laugh at our dog’s delight as he races across the acre of treed land we call our own. Every day we listen to the soothing sound of swaying trees in a cool wind. Wake up to the delight of fresh fallen snow and fall asleep at night under a canopy of stars I’d forgotten exist.

The mountains offered us peace. Ravaged as they have been by manmade fires just as all our lives have been this year, they, too, are healing and life has returned. “I lift my eyes to the mountains and realize my help comes from the Lord, their Maker.” It was time. Time to go after the dream of tranquility and sanity. For us, that could only be found here, on the Mogollon Rim.

The mountains were calling and the only choice we had was to listen and come home.