Batting Practice

Alone at the concrete picnic table, she drains the cup of iced coffee she brought with her to the park. A gust of wind ruffles the pages of her Bible while, pen in hand, she fights back against the unruly breeze and writes in her journal.

She came to figure it out, she explains to the intrusive black grackles who fly past. They couldn’t care less. Instead, their curious squawks alert the others that she’s eaten all the donut herself—they’d have to find scraps somewhere else.

“Figure it out.” Good luck, she thought. How would she ever understand anything, she wondered? All the safe places where she’d found refuge from prior heartaches had disappeared. Now what was she going to do? Across the park, a steady “Crack!” interrupts her already fragmented concentration as a small group of men gather for batting practice. Hand on her chin, she gazes off at the steady line of fluorescent yellow softballs sailing past her peripheral vision where each of them lands with a thud, the soft ground cushioning their fall.

And she remembers.

What a painful word that one had become. “Remember.” Remember how your heart skipped a beat the first time you watched him come alive on a softball field, she muses? God, what an arm he had. If he threw it, it had no choice but to reach the goal he had in mind. Crack of his bat, speed to first base, round to home plate. Her teenage heart had melted watching his strong, young, athletic body compete at the sport they both loved. That’s when she fell in love with him. Watching the quiet man on the field of her dreams play ball.

Another “Crack!” brings her back to the present as one man ends his turn and changes places with another. Their arrival surprised her until she remembered she’d seen them here before. It was on those other breezy mornings, she recalled, as the foggy memory of Sunday donuts eaten at this same picnic table emerges in her mind’s eye. Side by side, they’d sat together watching this same group of men practice their batting skills. She can’t help it anymore. The tears come when they want to.

Weeping quietly, the pages of her two books flapping in the obstinate breeze, she reaches for a Kleenex, her gaze falling to some verses in the open Bible. “. . . you will be filled with sorrow, but know this. Your sadness will turn into joy when you see me again!” And it’s echo—“You will pass through a time of intense sorrow when I am taken from you, but you will see me again!”

Sure, it was Jesus speaking, but God’s Spirit knows how to speak all truth to wounded hearts. Hadn’t she heard it from his lips in a dream just last week? “We’ll be together again.” Truth is truth.

A gust of wind blows her little pack of Kleenex to the ground, and she stands to retrieve it, the shape of her turquoise blue shirt moving beneath the covered shelter beside the makeshift ballfield. “Time to go,” she tells herself, gathering books and phone and purse. 

Dropping her empty coffee cup into the trash, her sigh is lost in that of the spirited wind, and she walks across the asphalt to her truck. Lonely yearnings left behind, she steps up into the driver’s seat as the ball practice continues, unphased. Everything ends, she reminds herself, sooner or later. Beautiful love stories, and even softball practice. Non-plussed, two more grackles fly past her Tahoe, instincts focused on a distant snack. The sound of leather against hardwood punctuates the closing of her own door and she rolls up her window to shut out the wind as another softball soars across the wide expanse of green. Soon she’s out of earshot of the low voices emanating from the chatty friends playing ball.

“That was close,” the pitcher hollers. “Good thing they left before that one ricocheted across their picnic table.”

“Yeah, good thing,” the catcher says.

“I’ve seen them here before, but it’s been a while.”

“Who?” the batter asks, his softball piling up with dozens of others in the distance.

“The guy with the ballcap and the lady in the turquoise shirt. They were sitting at that table a minute ago.”

With a quick glance at the empty shelter, the batter nails another ball, sending it far into right field. “Good thing they left,” he agrees with a grunt, his energy focused on the connection between his bat and the ball. His grounder lands hard, chasing away a hungry sparrow in the grass.

Waiting in her Tahoe at a stoplight, her phone whistles suddenly. A text from their son in Kentucky.

“Today’s his first game,” it says in a joint message to his mother and sister. A photo of a slender, blonde five-year-old fills her screen. At that very moment, Iain McLeod, dressed in blue from his ballcap to the tip of his tennis shoes, stands grinning at the camera in his miniature uniform, ready to take on t-ball and make his grandfather proud. Staring at the photo, she remembers again. Another photo of another slender, towheaded boy, grinning at a long-ago camera from a ballfield.

What timing, she thinks, as the first tear rolls down her face. Another sign from Rob. Maybe she’ll never figure anything out. But he lives on. She’ll see him again. When the time is right. For now, she sees him in the face of her little grandson playing his first game on the ballfield, as another McLeod steps up to bat. Crack!

Timing. It’s everything.

Sweet Dreams

I dream a lot. I always have, but I’m suspicious that all the melatonin I take every night is really working overtime right now. Its effects on the day's events and whatever tv show I watched before bedtime result in a kaleidoscope of crazy that makes slumber feel more like a roller coaster ride. I may need to adjust my dose.

I dreamed Rob died again. Again. For the second time this week. The first time I woke up sobbing and was wrecked for another hour. The circumstances were different, but the outcome was the same. Let me just tell you here and now – ain’t nobody needs to experience something like that even once, let alone three times. Praying to God there won’t be a fourth, but who knows. The mind does whatever it needs to do to process things.

This time the dream involved a car full of family, with me at the wheel and Dan’s sister seated behind me, backseat driving. Literally. She’s the one who drove us off the cliff. I’m not laying blame or pointing fingers. I’m just mentioning that it wasn’t my fault. And since she couldn’t see all that well, it probably wasn’t her fault either.

The good news was most of us survived the impact. I didn’t see where my husband was. I was simply told after I got up and dusted myself off that he wasn’t as lucky as the rest of us. And I lost it once more, in my dream, stomping my feet and yelling through my tears, “Not again!” I looked for him in the hospital as I ran up and down the halls, but I couldn’t find him.

Suddenly, I knew he was right behind me. I felt his arms pull me close, his voice in my ear. And this is the part that made the difference between my waking up this morning destroyed for the next hour or waking up with some peace and a smile.

“We’ll be together again,” he assured me. I knew I was sensing him in spirit, but if it weren’t for the lack of a visual, I’d have sworn he was truly standing next to me.

I know Rob can see me. He can communicate with me. That the veil is thin between heaven and this 3D existence. This shadowy world is only a dim reflection of the real one where Rob and Jesus walk and talk now. Whatever the crazy circumstances in this morning’s dream, this part, where he put his arms around me and reassured me, this part was as real as if my eyes had been open. 

Maybe they were.

“We’re going to be together again,” he promised, like he knew something I didn’t. Which he does. “And I’ll bring you a cupcake,” he added.

“Chocolate with white icing,” I answered, wiping away a tear.

“I know,” he smiled.

That’s how I know he really spoke to me in that dream. I’d rather have Rob here than my favorite dessert any minute of any day, but nobody else could make a promise like that and guarantee it with chocolate.

It was the icing on the cake.

With thanks to Stephen Luke for making me hungry for cupcakes. The original of his yummy photo can be viewed by following this link: Cupcake | Chocolate cupcake with cream frosting | Stephen Luke | Flickr

Spare Change

Finally. They’re going to let me move into the house. I’m going to have a home again, Baby. Queen Creek approved the electric blueprints and in a couple of weeks I’ll move into the home you made sure I’d have.

You were my home. You were always my home. You knew that, didn’t you? God, I hope you knew that. I know you’re close by. You keep sending me signs so I’ll know you see me. And hear me. But I can’t see you. I keep breathing by faith, believing that I’m really hearing you, seeing your real-time love notes, and knowing you’re near.

Like the dimes. I found the first one lying on the ground beside my truck when I stopped at a gas station on the way to your memorial service last summer. It seemed odd because normally I only see pennies, so I picked it up and dropped it in the tray in the truck. The next day it happened again. Then I learned that dimes are often an encouragement that our love is close, so I kept keeping them, however they appeared, as long as it was simply . . . dimes.

That’s how I know the one I found in my pocket last week was from you. A shiny new 2022 dime. At the very moment my heart cried out in that desperate prayer I’ve been reduced to since you left—“Help”—a dime suddenly showed up. I’d washed and vacuumed the truck that morning, cleaning out that little console tray and putting the treasured collection of dimes in my pocket. I returned them all when I was finished. But one of them was a stowaway, I guess. I was sure I’d put them all back. And maybe I did. There’s always a logical explanation for the signs, it seems. But there’s no explanation for the timing.

I tell people I have an investment in heaven now that you’re there, but it feels like more than that. I walk around in this dimension only half listening while my ear is pressed up hard against the one where you are. Half in and half out, this is my new existence. Listening with my spirit feels like talking with someone underwater. Or learning a new language. It’s not as easy as some people make it sound which leads me to think they’re just repeating things they’ve heard other people say. I’m learning to tell the difference between fresh baked bread and the reheated stuff.

I’m also learning to depend on God the way I once depended on you. I’ve always struggled with that. Guilt is crippling and confusing. I think church teaching has messed up the simplicity of two imperfect hearts becoming one. I still hear people say that if you love someone too much or focus on them too hard, you’re making them into an idol. Where did that kind of lie come from? Like I need to ask. When your body died—because I know you’re very much alive—and we were wrenched away from each other, half of me was gone. Katy told people we were bleeding out. Absolutely accurate. There’s no way to prepare for that.

And there’s no good reason to feel guilty about it. With all our failures and faults and frailties, you and I became one, the way sugar and tea, dissolved into a new creation, become sweet tea. Or this— “A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” Losing you was a shock to my system that has taken over a year just to wake up from. Shock does that to you. But I’ve stayed active. Reached out to friends. Paid my bills. Put on makeup every day. All the things. But now it feels as though the anesthesia is wearing off and throbbing pain is what I live with daily as I go forward. Slowly forward, but forward without you nonetheless.

I had another fight with you last night. I guess you know that. I can hear you laughing at the absurdity of it the way you always did, even as I type this. That makes me smile. God, you were so adorable. I could never stay mad at you. I was describing the way you kept things to yourself. Things I wished you’d shared with me. It would have made me feel like I was a partner in all you faced if, for example, you’d let me help you study during fire school the way other wives helped their husbands. Or if I’d learned about your hair-raising shifts from you instead of learning about the close calls while you described them to our friends. You didn’t want to worry me, you said. I recognize that you were trying to protect me. But protecting me kept me in the dark.  I told you everything I ever thought about, described ad nauseum every event I experienced. Don’t deny it—I saw your eyes glaze over. I needed to be included by you in a way you weren’t able to do. Maybe that’s a guy thing. You don’t give details, you summarize. But friendship is a two-way street. This is probably something we should have handled while you were here in the flesh, but we weren’t good at that either. You hate conflict and I hate fighting alone.

So, I guess it wasn’t all that weird that I fought alone with you last night, telling you all of this, wishing we’d handled it while we had the chance, and recognizing that we did the best we could between our differing personalities, upbringings, and points of view. We were imperfect in every way, and perfectly suited for one another. Maybe that’s why you loved that song so much . . “Cause all of me loves all of you . . . all your perfect imperfections. . . ”

One of the miserable things I’ve dealt with this last year is all the rehashing and second guessing that’s so easy to drown in as I look back on our life together. The memories were stunted for a while, you know. Letting them resurface was too much for me for a long time. But now I can handle more of them and the pain that often accompanies them. Still, this Book of Rob and Eula is closed. All that’s left is the epilogue where I cross over to the other side and join you. So, I keep re-reading the novel we “wrote” together because there are no more pages to be added, wishing some chapters had turned out differently. If I’d changed that response or sacrificed that desire or trusted you better, what would that have looked like and why didn’t I do it? And why didn’t we communicate better before we lost that gift permanently?

The Cliff Notes of our novel could be reduced to one word if I allowed it—“Why?” But I won't. I think all the "why's" suggest that perfection is attainable, when it's not. And that’s the way our fight ended last night, with the recognition that you and I were human. We came into marriage as imperfect humans who simply loved one another and were willing to give marriage our best shot, warts and all. Expecting you to be perfect, expecting perfection from myself, these unrealistic expectations steal forgiveness and acceptance. Worse, they’re a setup for being fake. Inauthentic. Maybe now more than ever, I need to recognize that and let myself off the hook. You never pretended that I was perfect. You accepted me fully and loved me to your core. I did the same for you, although I’ll admit I sometimes called you Roby Poppins (because you were “practically perfect in every way.”)

So, maybe those dimes show up not only to remind me to pay attention in the moment and trust my instincts, but also as an invitation to talk with you still, even in spirit, about what it takes to survive the loss of you, my love. Maybe this is one way you’re able to help me get through this. “A penny for your thoughts,” the saying goes. Mine must be worth more than that or you wouldn’t keep paying me for them.

A dime for your thoughts, I hear you say. Keep dropping that spare change, Baby. I’ll keep talking. 

Avoidance

I don’t think this is going to help. Writing. Draining off all the ache with tears welling up in my eyes, dripping off my cheeks and splattering on my shirt. Thirteen months. Two days. Barely into the second year of living without Rob and today I’m down.

There’s no reason to call anyone. There’s nothing they can do. Or say. I’m just terribly sad. I don’t want questions about how I got here because I don’t know the answers. The questions make me feel like I could have avoided this if I’d been paying more attention—the way you could have avoided dog doo if you’d been watching where you walk.

I’ve been walking in memories. But I don’t take myself down that path. I just find myself there with no warning. Like a few minutes ago while I scrolled through etsy looking for floating shelves. Suddenly the screen was filled with football team logos instead of barnwood creations and I was transported to the Gators Man Cave wall hanging I ordered for Rob’s birthday five years ago. I haven’t seen it since we moved to the mountains a year and a half ago. But I will. Just as soon as my new house is completed and I finally have to face all the boxed up, bubble wrapped photos and wall art and décor that represent all the happy times when I created a refuge for Rob and I that looked like us.

Now I’m creating a respite for myself devoid of my husband. There’s no man cave. There’s no us. There are three storage units filled with memories I haven’t seen in over a year, and I fear them all. Friends are already offering to help me move everything out of those air-conditioned units and bring them to my new home, but I don’t know if that’s what I will need.

Some people think when you’re thrown into a pit of grief as I’ve been, that the best thing to do is get your mind off your sorrows. You can’t change anything by staring at it. It’s done. Rob’s gone. He’s not coming back. Get on with life. Deal with it. Unpack those boxes and set up your house. Get back to the business of living. Keep the noise going in your mind and all around and those sneaky little memories won’t be able to compete with the commotion. Eventually, they’ll all fade away into what once was while you stay busy creating the new what is. There’s just one problem.

It doesn’t work.

Some people love me so much they suffer watching me do the same. Some people love me so much they want desperately to help me find joy again. Some people love me so much they’d do just about anything to rescue me. But it’s impossible. They can’t rescue me. I can’t even rescue me. The only way through grief is straight through. “There are no shortcuts,” my counselor reminds me from time to time. Grief is a voice of honesty that won’t let me off the hook. It won’t let me ignore its presence forever. Grief is another kind of wisdom that demands to be heard; actually, it deserves to be heard. Grief tells the truth, holds wide its arms, and beckons the heartbroken into its safe embrace where validation of the pain allows its full expression. Grief isn’t trying to destroy me. It’s not trying to imprison me. It’s trying to heal my broken heart so I can find my way back to the living we all want for me.

So. Those boxes. I have to face them soon. I have to open them in front of other people because there are too many of them for me to move or sort through alone. I have to allow the emotion to surface because I don’t have the space in my soul to shove all of that down. This feels so scary. It makes me feel vulnerable. It lays open my pain again to the observation and possible scrutiny of others, even though they love me. There’s no way around it. The only path to recovery is the one that goes through the suffering.

So, I’ll go through it. I’ll admit my humanity. I’ll probably weep at the opening of all those Pandora’s Boxes overflowing from a lifetime of love with a man I desperately miss. And perhaps, maybe, hopefully, after I baptize all of those precious possessions with these honest tears, I’ll find peace.

It’s worth trying. And honestly, I have no other choice.

Paradox

Hope is hard, she said. And I agreed. Just like love, hope costs us something. Perhaps it costs us control. Or puts us at risk of looking foolish. Or being disappointed. Who can say for sure why we hesitate sometimes to hope.

Unless we’ve hoped before and had our hopes crushed.

A distant melody ran across my mind as I thought about all of this today. It was from an old album Rob and I used to love when we were newly married. “Faith is the confidence of things we hope for, being certain of . . .” I couldn’t remember the rest of the words.

Google to the rescue.

Of course, the lyricists took liberties with the phrasing, but since translators frequently do the same thing, it didn’t matter. Find your favorite translation and take your pick.

·         “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see.”   Or . . .

·         “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen.” Or . . .

·         “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.”

And so on. Hope, then, is a paradox. And my weary brain is too tired to rely on a paradox to help me see in the dark.

You see, I’m in the dark again. I loved and lost . . . again. My beloved dog, Brody, not yet six years old, had to be put down tonight because he was overcome by an illness so mysterious it left four vets shaking their heads. “We’re stumped,” they each said as I wrote out enormous checks in exchange for their confusion. Though I was encouraged to seek out specialists, Brody was fading fast and I couldn’t do it. I knew in my gut he was never going to get better. He knew it, too, and did all he could to make it clear to us that this was his time.

I found my heart crying out the same words I cried out almost one year ago to the day when I lost Rob. “It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way!” But heaven was silent again. The circle of life spins whether we like it or not, I’m told, and we lost when we desperately wanted to win.

The vet came tonight to our home and one by one we each loved on my broken pup and said goodbye. I looked for a sign that Rob was close all afternoon and through the evening until darkness fell and the vet’s truck drove off with Brody’s body. But while I sensed Rob was near, there was no sign. Throughout the whole ordeal, I whispered to him where he lives somewhere on the other side of a thin veil, “Please come get Brody.” And to our Creator who knows every hair that surrenders to a tile floor and every sparrow which falls from the sky, “When Brody passes, please let Rob come get him.”

The grands and I had spent the day talking about how Brody would be with Rob and would be able to jump and run with the joy he always had until he got sick. Jules said, “He’ll probably run right between Chief and Jesus’ legs!” And we laughed at the image, holding it close in the next hours when faith was eclipsed by sorrow and pain once more. “Please come get him, Rob,” I whispered into the wind again.

Alone in my room tonight, I began going through the photos and videos I’ve kept of Brody for the last six years. It was so hard to see his tail down this week. To watch him stumble into walls and get stuck behind table legs. To know he wasn’t eating or drinking and to note the absence of a spark in his half-closed eyes. Even though it was late, I needed to see him healthy again before I turn out the lights on this awful day. I gathered over a hundred photos into a new album I made on my phone. And even though my exhausted phone kept insisting it was about to run out of juice, I kept scrolling and saving. Suddenly, I stopped short. “Oh, my God,” I said out loud, as the tears welled up in my eyes.

There’s a photo of Rob and Brody in the snow that I took in 2019. It’s one of my favorites of the two of them and it’s been my screensaver ever since I took it. I’m always worrying that I’ll accidently replace it with a different picture, so a couple of years ago I decided to find the original and make another copy of it.

But I couldn’t find it.

It was nowhere on my phone. I found the photo taken right before the one I was searching for, but the original of my screen saver was gone. Vanished. I’ve looked over and over again, but it was nowhere to be found. I finally took a screenshot of my screensaver, complete with an intrusive app that I couldn’t remove, just so I’d have some kind of backup.

Tonight, as I scrolled and saved photos of our wonderful, loving pup, the missing photo suddenly was back in place. It’s not the poser/substitute shot with the unwelcome app that I created a couple of years ago. It’s the pristine original photo of Rob smiling in the snow, his hands firmly holding onto the lead of a healthy, happy Brody.

And I knew.

Rob knew the significance of that long-missing photo. And when I saw it reappear on my phone, tonight, after I’d spent the day asking Rob to come for our dog, I knew that’s exactly what he did. I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me. They're together again and Brody is fine once more. I’ve learned by now, after over a year missing my husband, that from heaven our loved ones know what we’re going through. They pray for us. They send us signs that they’re alive and aware. And they’re the first ones to welcome emancipated souls when they arrive.

Including beloved pets like our Brody.

I sent an immediate email to a friend who had assured me Rob would send me a sign today. Then I glanced at the other two windows still open on my laptop from my earlier google search. “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for . . .” one of them read, while the other echoed its words.

“And this hope will not lead to disappointment,” the New Living Translation reads in Romans 5:5. “For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”

He cares. He even cares about happy white dogs and broken hearts left behind. He cares enough to send a photo of my two beloveds together again, an answer to my prayers, so I can sleep in peace tonight.

Maybe faith isn’t just a paradox. And maybe hope is worth another try.

Hope Soars

“The calendar’s rolled back,” I said as she listened quietly. “Today is Day One again.” And the tears fell. I didn’t know. I hoped that once I’d made it through five weeks of remembering where I was at any time of the day one year ago. Once I’d passed the surprise anniversary of the last day that we lived a normal life together. Once I made it through the final three days marking his last three, and the worst day, the nineteenth of February, was over . . . Then. THEN I would feel some lifting of the heaviness of the last month.

“Don’t have expectations,” I was warned several times. “Take it as it comes.” Of course. One day at a time, sweet Jesus. One day at a time. One hour at a time. One breath at a time. The number one is quickly becoming a symbol of exhaustion. It’s hard to see the horizon in the distance when you’re focused on each breath. Hope is out there somewhere, but I still can’t see it. I don’t have the energy to try.

“The second year is worse than the first,” I’ve read more than once. “And the third can be just as difficult.” I would renounce that in the name of Jesus, but I’m not sure it would accomplish anything. Already, today, the twentieth of February, feels harder than it did yesterday. And yesterday was tough as granite.

Through all of the first year, there was always a day when I could say, “Last year, Rob and I . . .” Phase Two of losing Rob means I can’t say that or remember him that way anymore. There’s an entire year now between today and every memory I have of our evaporated life together. A year ago I held his denim jacket against my face and imagined I was weeping on his shoulder. A year ago flowers and cards flooded our home with the reminder that I am now ‘that woman.’ A year ago I had stacks of heartless paperwork to fill out, declaring that I am alone in what’s left of the union once known as Mr. and Mrs. Rob McLeod.

A year ago my life collapsed right before my eyes.

I’ve spent the last 365 days doing what had to be done, buying Kleenex by the truckload, processing my feelings on paper and in counseling, building a home to live in by myself for the first time in my life, and learning how to exist with an aching desire to see the face of the man I love one more time - while knowing I can’t.

A lot can happen in one year.

I decided to drive to Texas to be with my sister on this first terrible anniversary. We always have fun together. We also cry together. Rob was a brother to her. Only five when he and I got married, she doesn’t have a single memory in which he doesn’t exist. We headed to our favorite haunt, Magnolia Market in Waco, Texas, filled up on Joanna Gaines’ cupcakes, and took a drive across the Brazos River to explore the countryside. There were no expectations or agendas or familiar roads. We just drove.

That’s when I saw it. Circling and soaring, doing loop de loops through strands of clouds set against a deep blue sky, its light brown wings were stretched as far out as they could go. Watching what I was sure was a hawk, the bird rose jubilantly in the air and flew directly over my truck as my sister and I drove the open highway of central Texas. And for the first time in over a year, my heart soared, too. “Good for you, Baby,” my soul sang as I watched the freedom displayed in one of Rob’s favorite signs of hope to my children and me. I was so surprised by the momentary joy I felt as I sensed the liberation Rob is experiencing, that the pain I’ve lived in for so long was eclipsed by hope. Just for a moment or two. It didn’t last long. It didn’t have to. This isn’t a race I’m running to hurry and be okay again. There’s no deadline that demands that I get a grip and return to normal. The anguish of losing Rob won’t be shed like a worn-out garment.

I will never be the same woman again. Death and loss change you. If they don’t, life and love didn’t either. Grief has to do its work in a broken heart. There is no healing without grieving. And that will take as long as it takes.

I’ve been told, though, the grief will change. I will always long for Rob. Always look for him in a crowd. For the past two days as my sister and I have been on the road together, I’ve reached for my phone every afternoon with the thought that I’d give Rob a call and tell him about my day. And then the pain started again. He was my life.

But today, as joy eclipsed that pain for a brief moment, I saw the horizon for the first time.

And he knew it. Hope called my name and, much to my surprise, my wounded heart answered with joy.

Maybe that's why the hawk soared.

With thanks to David Bush for permission to use the photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: Soaring | Class: Aves Order: Accipitriformes Family: Accipit… | Flickr

One Year Later

I didn’t expect it to hurt this much. 

I’ve worried about this weekend, of course. It began one year ago today when the doctor called instead of Risa. When instead of a good report about how they planned to bring you down off that mountain, we were told that the fight was over, and we needed to come say good-bye. That was the 17^th. Today’s date. Tomorrow is one year since Katy and I drove up the mountain and saw you suffering. While Lee stayed with us for hours on his phone, listening, we all gave you what you needed. Release. Saturday will be one year since you left us, and our suffering began in earnest.

I wanted to go to Florida to visit your grave this weekend, but the logistics were too much for me right now. Another road trip to Florida for another sad reason was overwhelming, and flying isn’t even on the table. This was one of those decisions I made that has also left me in pain. I knew when you died that you needed to be with your ancestors in that tiny Florida cemetery. But I live two thousand miles away where you and I raised a family together. And built our marriage. Dreamed our dreams. And lost our future.

So, I can’t sit on that bench your sister added to the family plot, talk to you in private under those massive southern oak trees, and weep over all that was stolen from us beside your grave. I never knew something like that would be important to me. I didn’t grow up with funerals and cemeteries and such. But I never thought I’d lose you, either.

Today I loaded up my truck and drove to Albuquerque, day one of a two-day trip to meet up with Lynette in Amarillo. “We’ll get you through this,” she told me a few months ago when we decided to spend the coming week together in Texas. I looked at the map and tried to figure out a route that would avoid our last hometown of Heber on top of our beloved Mogollon Rim, but there was no other path that I felt comfortable driving alone.

I’ve been as angry with the mountains for taking you from me as I’ve been at God for doing the same. I told Katy when we drove down following your last day in the hospital that I would never forgive the mountains for the part they played in my losing you. I’ve been back to them a few times, trying to reconcile with the sanctuary where you and I often fled for respite from frantic city life. I know it’s not really their fault. But I don’t know who to blame for this horrible tragedy, and since the mountains called us and off we went, pointing the finger at all those pines that have the nerve to stay standing seems logical. Sort of.

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about your grave. About your name etched in granite when it should still be written on our mailbox. We couldn’t have your memorial for five months after your passing. Covid postponed everything last year. I wasn’t even there when they interred your ashes. That figures. Just like I was prevented from being there to comfort you while you spent four weeks fighting for your life in a lonely ICU four hours away from me.

It wasn’t supposed to end that way, Baby. Sometimes that’s the biggest hurt of all. Death loves to get the upper hand.

I realized yesterday as I lay in the dark, thinking, that driving back through Heber this weekend is another way I can honor you on this first horrible anniversary. Your ashes are buried in your home state, but your life didn’t end there. It ended here, in our mountains. So, I drove through there today. I wept through there today. Tonight my steps are re-traced as I stay in the same hotel where I stopped last summer on my way to pick up Lynette in Amarillo before we drove together to Florida.

I don’t know how long this deep hurt will last, but I am determined to go through this pain because there are no shortcuts around it, just as there were no shortcuts around Heber. The only way I can reach the hope I need so I can face the rest of my life without you by my side is to experience this honoring, transformative thing called ‘grief.’

“It hurts so much because you loved so much,” my counselor reminds me often. Then so be it. I will hurt and grieve for as long as it takes. I will feel the feels. Miss you like I’d miss my own heart. Long for what we cannot have. Treasure the moments when I still feel you near. And cry out to God in the dark.

One year later. Still loving you, Baby. I always will.

Elephant Story

I am astonished that people want to read the sad things I’ve written for the last year. I never intended to do so. I’d rather be putting my funny bone to work telling stories about the hilarious way we all live our lives. But life isn’t always funny, is it? Sometimes your heart breaks and your normal disappears and you find yourself standing in a field of devastation where all that remains is your voice—and your pen. So, you write. Because it’s the only way you know how to cope.

By telling your story.

This isn’t the way I thought my story would turn out. It’s not the way I believed Rob’s story would end. When you’re a writer telling tales, you can change plot lines and create characters—complete with superpowers if you want to—and while the goal is to keep your reader’s hand at their throat while they worry that the bad guys will win and all will be lost—it never is. That only happens in real life where we don’t have control over anything except . . . well, actually, nothing comes to mind anymore.

We’re not in control of our story.

I had just written a new chapter for our story. All about how the mountains had called our name and we had to go. It was going to be our greatest adventure. We weren’t old, but we were headed there. It was our last chance, and we went for it. And if you follow my blogs closely, you’ll discover there’s a long gap in the narrative between when we answered the call of the wild during Christmas of 2020, and when I announced that my home address had changed. “This is where I live now,” I explained in early March, three months later. “In sadness.”

That Christmas post was the last time my story had a happy ending.

In about two weeks, a day I’ve dreaded for the last year will resurface. The first anniversary since we lost the most wonderful man my family has ever known. Through it all, the shock and numbness and shattering and surviving, you have been here. Standing beside us. Weeping with those who weep. Holding on to us so we wouldn’t collapse. Praying in the night when you couldn’t sleep, knowing we weren’t sleeping either. Sending us notes and flowers, bringing food and paying for Door Dash orders.

You did it all while you didn’t know what to do. You loved us while you watched us grieve. You were here even when our eyes were so blinded by tears we were unaware of your presence and could only see our own pain. You told us you didn’t know what to say. That you couldn’t imagine our agony. That you prayed so hard it hurt. And you told us you love us.

Then you proved it.

You stood by as a witness to our pain. That’s what shattered, grieving people need. We need a witness. We need someone who sees the hand life has dealt us and will acknowledge how unfair it is. We need people without answers. Eyes that don’t judge. Hands that comfort but don’t point fingers. When it feels like we’re the victims of a random act of violence, we need someone who has our back.

In the wild, when an elephant goes down due to illness or death, all the rest of the herd gather around the fallen one in a huge circle. They stay with the injured one for as long as it takes, sometimes crying, always watching, determined not to abandon the wounded. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they form a ring of love and care simply by being there. They don’t do anything more because they can’t. But their sturdy presence, this cloud of witnesses, provides emotional strength to the one on the ground like nothing else could while she endures what no one else can.

That’s what you have been to me and my family this year.

We’re so tempted to explain why bad things happen to good people, aren’t we? We long to be the hero and the fixer of broken hearts. We even want to save face for God, worried as we are that His reputation will be smudged if a believer questions His motives. I have been a Job’s friend to the grieving myself because I was afraid of the day when I would become Job.

I’m not afraid anymore. I am here.

For now, I’m the one who is grieving. I will grieve for a long time. And that’s normal. I know it’s hard to watch. It takes an enormous amount of patience to allow it to happen while you stand by helplessly with your feet itching and your trunk swinging around aimlessly. But to you, my beloved elephants, I extend my eternal gratitude and love. Thank you for being here. For standing beside me and my family. For refusing to think you can fix our brokenness and for insisting on loving us as we are. You have been witnesses to our pain. That’s what we have needed most.

Because of you, we will get up again. We will stand tall in our grief. We will walk into the next chapter of our story with our heads held high, knowing how well we were loved by Rob and how well we are loved by you.

You have done this for us. You, my friends, are awesome elephants.

With gratitude to Jim and Robin Kunze for permission to use their photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: 

Elephants | Denver Zoo | Jim & Robin Kunze | Flickr

Camel Down

“I can’t . . . do this . . . ALONE!”  

I stared in disbelief at the chaos lying on the dog-hair covered floor. All I did was hang up one more shirt on a rolling clothes rack that’s tucked into the corner of my little apartment and realized, too late, it was literally the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was a loud SNAP! and my four-foot-tall rack was reduced to four and a half inches.

Tears and sobs erupted as I stood there in my pajamas at bedtime. Alone with a minor inconvenience that felt as catastrophic as a Mount St. Helens eruption, I wept in the room again, “I can’t do this alone!”

Then I did it alone.

I was angry, but I did it, saying all the while, “I guess I can do this. I can do this. I’m doing this!” I picked up handfuls of hangered garments, threw them across the sofa and a couple of chairs and finally reached the traitorous pile of poles that lay askew beneath everything instead of standing tall and proud the way they were supposed to. The metal poles pointed to the real culprit in it all – a flimsy plastic joint that had snapped under the overwhelming weight it was never meant to carry.

I hate it when my furniture behaves like me.

The next morning, I stood on the driveway talking with my daughter, Katy, telling her about the late-night drama in my room. “Oh, no, Mama,” she sympathized.

“I had a little temper tantrum,” I said. The corners of her mouth turned up the way her dad’s used to, barely concealing a smile.

“Then I had a fight with your father,” I added, and the smile went full-scale grin. “I feel really silly doing that,” I admitted, easy to understand since her father, my husband, rests in peace in faraway Florida. Another brilliant move on his part. There isn’t always a lot of peace these days if you hang around me. 

“I have to do everything myself now, I told him, all of it while my heart is shattered. It’s like learning to walk again but without legs. Learning to breathe without lungs.”

 My wise daughter nodded, waiting for the rest of the story.

“Meanwhile,” I’d said to Rob, “you’re busy flying around heaven, having tons of fun with absolutely no idea of what I’m going through.” At that point I’d thrown another shirt on a chair. “I’m tired of talking to you, Rob,” I finished. “I’m going to bed. Just . . . go off and enjoy another conversation with Moses or Abraham or Pharoah or somebody, although Pharoah probably isn’t there.”

Looking at my daughter, I confessed, “I worry about my sanity sometimes, Kate.”

Katy, so much like her dad, was chuckling, picturing me telling Rob to go find some ancient prophet to hang out with and leave me alone. “I think, Mom, when I hear you say things like that to Dad, that he’s probably cracking up the way he always did when he got tickled by something. I bet his face was turning red and he was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.”

She’s probably right. My one-sided fight with him sounded a lot like all the other one-sided fights we used to have. I always thought it was because he avoided conflict. But maybe it was just because he was laughing so hard inside, he couldn’t answer me.

Nothing ever got the best of Rob McLeod. Not my temper. Not the opinions of others. And now, I am realizing, not even death.

He’s still my hero.

With thanks to Adair Broughton for permission to use the photo seen above. The original can be viewed from this link: camel bow | my humps, my humps, my sexy camel humps? | adair broughton | Flickr

Untethered

I’m weary. I’m weary of grieving. I’m weary of adjusting. Weary of missing the man I loved to be with. Weary of finding my way in the dark. Everything I once clung to for safety and security, comfort and familiarity, is gone. There are days when I feel like a hapless balloon, escaped from the grip of its birthday party guest. Set loose with no destination in mind, I float along at the whim of the wind, helpless to navigate direction because, in part, I don’t know where I’ll land.

This is faith.

I didn’t know that until now. I don’t think you can know what faith is until it’s all you have left. I knew it in my head. I knew all the right answers—I teethed on a Baptist pew, after all. But I didn’t know it in my experience. Because what I thought I knew had never been tested like this before. Now that it has, I’ve come to this conclusion.

I don’t like to live by faith.

I like to live by sight. I like my feet on solid ground unless I’m in an airplane and even then I can still touch the floor. I feel safe when I have some control over where I am and where I’m headed. Doesn’t the Bible have something to say about not being blown about by every wind of doctrine? It sounds like the wind is a troublemaker. So, whose idea was it for me to be blown about by every gust of circumstance? I didn’t ask for this. I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid grief and loss. More than once in the last year I’ve screamed at my Creator for letting go of the string on my balloon. A lot of good that does. He’s not afraid of heights.

Not long ago I heard my son say on his Sunday podcast that God created everything both visible and invisible. I never used to think much about the things that are invisible. They don’t quiz you on that in school unless you plan to be a microbiologist or an astronomer and even then, if you have powerful enough lenses, you can see things that are invisible to the naked eye. Instead, I memorized dates and places and names of dead people. I learned to manage numbers and pronouns and musical notes. I didn’t learn geography, though, until Rob and I picked up a roadmap and started driving across America, but today I can tell you with certainty that the east coast is crowded and I like Montana. That’s because I saw them in person, not just in a geography book. Which is a pretty good way to see the visible things God made.

But the invisible? From his pulpit, Lee asked the young ones in his congregation to name things that we can’t see. Oxygen, one child told him. Germs, another said. God, was the obvious answer. For being so short, they’re all pretty smart. There were a few others that came to mind for me. I can’t see Rob right now. I can’t see heaven either. And even with the strongest microscope, I don’t think anyone has seen the particles of an atom. We know they exist, but we can’t see them. Like the wind, we see their effects, but we cannot see them. It doesn’t stop us from believing these things are real, though. If we see only their effects, does it still take faith to believe they’re there?

Maybe the altitude is getting to me.

I looked up “faith.” From the world’s most reliable source of information—Wikipedia. Faith is “a firm belief in something for which there may be no tangible proof; complete trust, confidence, reliance, or devotion.”

Then I looked up what God had to say about it. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…” (Hebrews 11)

Faith confuses me.

Something I can’t see is evidence. It’s proof of the existence of a thing hidden from view. It is substance, but I can’t see it or touch it or smell it or hear it or taste it. There may be no tangible expression for something I firmly believe in. To make it even more confusing, I read that things which are seen don't last forever, but things that are not seen are eternal.

Faith sounds foolish.

How do I know Rob is still alive, waiting for me, loving me, anxious to take me on another road trip, this time through the galaxy? How do I know I belong to Jesus, and I can believe Him when He said whosoever will may come? How do I know God loves me to the moon and back even though He stood by and let my heart shatter in a million pieces? How do I know He will somehow turn what the enemy meant for evil into good?

I don’t. Not without faith.

Because it’s all invisible. For now. That’s the rub. The God of all the universes, brilliance times infinity, wants us to lean into the things we cannot see and come out believing. He wants to give us a new heart so we can trust Him, but walking by faith is still up to us. Rational thinking has its place right up until we can’t explain the way God intervenes—or doesn’t—in the affairs of men. There’s a reason for that.

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1)

I don’t know why I lost Rob. Nobody does, though many have tried to explain it to me. They mean well, but they don’t know either. I don’t know why everything I was anchored to disappeared overnight and my life was suddenly set adrift. I am confident of this, though. Rob is still very much alive. He’s more alive than I am. And because of that, I have an investment in the invisible that has changed my point of view.

Oh, I guess I’m just rambling now. Like I said, I’m weary. Untethered. Waiting to see where the wind takes me today. There’s not a lot to do up here when you’re floating aimlessly through the air except think deep thoughts and try to see life from a new perspective.

I’ll tell you what, though. I’ve gained a whole new respect for balloons up here. They may be untethered, too, but they're survivors.

 

Things that are seen don’t last forever, but things that are not seen are eternal. 

This is why we keep our minds on the things that cannot be seen.

(2 Corinthians 4:18)

With thanks to A. Currell for permission to borrow the phine photo seen above. The original can be viewed from the following link:  Going... | A.Currell | Flickr

Titanic

There are many losses when your best friend and lover dies. And mini-losses that appear later, much later, after the numbness wears off and the swelling from your shattered heart begins to subside. That’s when the throbbing pain takes over.

For months I’ve been unable to remember much from all the years Rob and I enjoyed together. Finally, I realized it wasn’t due to shock. It was self-protection. I was putting up a barrier every time a memory tried to show up because it hurt too much to recall all that I’ve lost.

But now I know I need those memories to comfort me in whatever way they can. The problem is, they will still hurt even while they help. I suppose it’s similar somehow to getting a root canal, coarse as that analogy may appear. Pain will accompany the remedy, but there’s no other way to save my broken heart.

I need to remember.

Lately, when the memories float up like artifacts from the Titanic’s debris field, instead of pushing them away, I’m learning to let them materialize. To pick them up. Inspect them. Weep while I hold them in my hands. And let them live again.

It’s a blessing, and it’s a curse of sorts, because now, even though they are cherished treasures from a happy marriage, they are still evidence of what I no longer have. It was my counselor who first described them to me as mini-losses. There are thousands of them, floating to the surface of my mind at inopportune times. They always catch me off guard, leaving me with only two ways of handling them. Either push them away or face them.

I have many friends who have stood beside me in my sorrow, sharing in this loss we all still cannot comprehend. Few of them are single. They’ve taken me to lunch. Visited my temporary home. Laughed with me and filled me in on their lives. And I watch as these couples finish each other’s sentences. Laugh together before I hear their punchlines. Work toward their dreams. All the things. It takes decades of commitment and sacrifice to build a relationship like that. I had that once.

I bought a car on my own for the first time last June. I knew how to do it because Rob and I have done it together several times over the years. I was able to pay for it. Insure it. Care for it. But rarely will I ever relax in the passenger seat. Seldom does anyone help me navigate. If I see a hawk in flight, I have to pull over to snap a photo—no one can do it for me. I had to move the toothpicks to the console because I can’t reach the glovebox from my side of the car. I nearly always drive alone now.

At Christmas this year, it was a friend who came with me to see Christmas lights. I don’t date my husband anymore. Rob and I have driven tens of thousands of miles together across America. We’ve been in forty-eight states together. If I want to pick up the remaining two, I’ll have to do it without him. Now if I travel, I either go on my own or with a good friend. I ate at our favorite restaurant today and ordered the meal Rob and I always shared. Tonight, I finished off his half as my supper. Service for one.

I’ll never hear him call me sweetheart or babe or darlin’ anymore. The endearments were silenced when Rob’s voice was. It was only last week that I recognized this particular grief.

Mini-losses. They feel like major losses. I’ve pushed them away like too many floatable toys in a bathtub, but I can’t keep them all under water anymore. I knew from watching other people live and die that this could happen. It’s a risk to love someone as deeply as I loved Rob. It means someday you might lose them. You might cry your eyes out every day, sleep with their t-shirt instead of with them, and order one sandwich at your favorite sub shop for the rest of your life. It’s scary enough to imagine even those things.

What I never saw coming was the aftermath of disaster. The ongoing parade of pain. Pieces of my shattered world floating to the surface all around me while I tread water and try to survive. As I said, I need our memories now. I suppose if I cling to some of the larger pieces that maybe I won’t drown. Or maybe they’ll form a flotilla and help me find my way back to solid ground.

One mini-loss at a time. Still, I'm not convinced grief is ever small.

It feels titanic.

With thanks to Travis for the use of the photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: Titanic | There would be larger ships and worse disasters at… | Flickr

This Time

It’s a sad anniversary. Not in honor of a wedding forty-five years ago. No longer a celebration of our first date in 1974. That one was always a bigger deal for you than the day we said I Do.  It’s not even the one coming up in February.

A year ago today was the last time we ever lived together. Last night was a year since I slept beside you. The last time I kissed your lips. The last time we had a home. And a life. Dreams. And one another.

A year ago today I lost everything.

I didn’t see this pain coming, Baby. I’ve been bracing for February 19, not January 13. But the nightmare began weeks before we had to let you go. Nine days in the hospital for me, worrying about you from a separate room. Four weeks once I got here, waiting for the phone to ring twice a day. Your sister kept us updated with news from your doctors while we all held our breath and hoped against hope . . .

That you’d make it. We all believed you would. We’d been believing it ever since Dan drove up and called for the ambulances. I was so relieved when they all arrived. I just needed someone to take care of me. To take care of you. To take care of Brody. We were so sick. I was grateful for oxygen. Grateful for doctors and nurses and a place to rest. I knew we’d get well. You always got well, Rob. So did I. But this time . . .

Well, this time was different.

You sent me a picture of you in your hospital bed, blowing me a kiss while wearing the bi-pap oxygen line, tethered to all those monitors. I was so full of hope. And relief. And delusion. We didn’t know how sick we were, did we, darlin’? Especially, how sick you were. It took five long weeks for all of us to realize that this time . . .

This time. It was the last photo taken of you.

I began to cry last week, dreading today. Knowing it would all roll back in on me. The nightmare days I spent in the hospital while the nurses danced around the truth every time I asked how you were doing. The guilt I felt when I had to tell you they were going to release me. The catch in your struggling breath as you answered, “I’m so glad for you, darlin’.” You couldn’t come with me. I couldn’t stay. They wouldn’t let me come back. Not until . . .

The last time I saw you. That’s the next hurdle. That day will be here in a few weeks—when it’s been three hundred sixty-five days since I touched your hand and kissed your forehead and watched you fade away. I always thought you were going to make it, Babe. No one could have had more faith than me that you’d rally and we’d have one heck of a story to tell. This wasn’t the story I had in mind.

I’m talking to God again, honey. I guess you already know that. It’s different now. I don’t even know what prayer is anymore. It’s not what I thought. It’s not what everyone else thought either. But the other night I cried out to Him, asking Him to comfort me and give me hope. Right away Romans 8:28 rose up. For we know that all things work together for good to those who love God.  That’s a tall order. Losing you wasn’t God’s fault, no matter what anyone has tried to tell me. If they believe that, they don’t know God.

The first time I asked God to comfort me after you left was the first time I’ve ever had a vision from Him. As hard as it was for me to focus in those early days without you here, I sat with my eyes closed and tried to wait for hope. I saw God reach for me with His left arm and pull me in close to Him. It was pure and tender, and I knew He saw my anguish. When He turned to face me, I saw his right arm was wrapped around you, Babe. He saw the heartbreak in us and held us close to Himself. All three of us just stood there.

I think I’ve spent most of my life telling people I love goodbye. Waiting until I could see them again. Separation is the story of this broken world. But in that moment, hope pulled back the veil and I saw God’s heart for us. Sharing in our pain. Standing as the connection between us. Promising that He’d make good come out of even this horror.

I don’t know how He’s going to do it. I’m not even sure I believe it. I’m tired of pretending I have all the answers. None of us know. None of us have any idea what we’re doing. You know more than any of us now—you don’t even need faith anymore.

But I do. I need faith. I need hope. I need to get through the next five weeks as the last year finally counts down and I can put the “year of firsts” behind me. If only I didn’t have to. If only this time . . .

I could wake up and you’d still be here.