Rrrrrrroooombah

I’ve been thinking about getting another dog. My best bud, Brody, decided he’d rather hang out with Rob and Jesus instead of me last year, and now when I drive through Starbucks they won’t give me a pup cup full of whipped cream anymore. I can’t figure that out. I always gave them to Brody. Honest. Usually. Whatever.

So far I’ve owned three dogs, pound puppies we got from the same maximum-security joint. The first one, a rowdy little redhead we misnamed “Harmony,” was on death row when Rob and I rescued her. The second, another female, had eyes like Cleopatra and a fear of enclosed places, such as dog crates, SUVs, and fenced yards. Though we called her Sydney (under the delusion that she was part Australian Shepherd), a better name would have been Houdini.

Brody was a charmer, our first male dog, who we won in a lottery at the same Big House where his adopted sisters had once been incarcerated as well. Rob always had the magic touch when it came to contests or raffles, and six other families went home with broken hearts the day we took Brody home with us. He was the biggest dog we ever owned, and though, as a yellow lab/shepherd mix, he was exactly the dog I always dreamed of, he was a lot more dog than I could handle. He was my Christmas present that year, but by then I had no illusions about how things would shake out. From the get-go, he was Rob’s dog just like the other two were. So, I understood when he chose to join Rob in heaven rather than stay with boring old me, but I still miss him.

Now that I live alone without husband or puppy underfoot, my feet are lonely, just like the rest of me. My grandkids have been telling me for months that what I need is a sweet little lapdog to keep me company. Nothing too big. Definitely nothing that sounds yappy. Furry but not prone to much shedding. Old enough not to chew up my new furniture, young enough not to die too soon. The perfect pet. That’s what I need. I don’t think they make those.

Still, if I could find myself a slug dog that doesn’t need to be walked every day, I’d be open to the idea. This may be harder than I think.

They say it takes about a year for an animal to settle into the groove when you bring him home, and in my experience that sounds about right. It took Harmony a year just to remember her name. Sydney never did learn that there’s no place like home and was forever searching for Oz. Brody was a puppy to the very end. All of them needed more attention than I gave them. All of them drove us crazy. All of them were irreplaceable. It’s just that the last time we had a dog, Rob and I both were here to teach them to behave like decent human beings. Now there’s just me.

I don’t think I’m qualified.

I got to thinking about options and how to ease myself into the possibility of owning another pet, beginning with the problem of excess dog hair everywhere. I hate it because I hate to vacuum. I also hate doing laundry. And bathrooms. And dusting. All the things. But especially vacuuming. I thought if I got a little help with floor maintenance, keeping up with doggie debris might not be as hard as it used to be.

So, I bought a Roomba. They should have named it Rum-ba. The thing behaves like it’s drunk. It’s a rotund little robotic floor sucker that roams around the house in circles, bouncing off the furniture, and randomly snorting dirt and lint and crumbs up off the floor like the tasty morsels they are. I read the fine print, all the reviews, studied the stars—there were 4.5—and settled on a mid-range version that people raved about because it is especially good at picking up dog hair. Which I don’t have. Yet.

There was only one problem. All but two of the reviews were written in Spanish because this model, for some unexplained reason, sells best south of the border. And that explains why, when my Rrrrrrroooombah (it’s important to roll the R’s) chokes on the floor-length drapes in my living room and comes to a complete stop awaiting my rescue, I don’t always know it’s in trouble even though it’s yelling at me from across the house.

Because I don’t speak Spanish.

Perhaps I missed some of the finer fine print when I did my research.

I also don’t know how to re-program my sucky robot so it can yell for help in a language in which I am fluent. Like English. Or pig latin. Possibly even a smidgeon of French. The only word I have recognized so far is por favor, and that doesn’t begin to describe for me the kind of trouble Rrrrrroooombah has gotten into once I recognize the phrase.

So far, it’s tried to eat five of my drapes. Has vanished without telling me where to look for it. Overeaten all my rug’s fibers until it winds up with conditions I can only describe as both a carbohydrate coma and an intestinal blockage. Frequently, it disappears beneath the living room sofa and turns itself off, refusing to come out even if I say pretty pretty por favor. Yesterday it went after a used Kleenex, and by the time I figured out why the floor was covered in white confetti, its brushes were clogged up like the 202 at rush hour.

And here’s another thing—it’s kind of noisy for being so small. To compensate for that I’ve been running it in one room while I’m somewhere else trying to ignore it. But this house isn’t very big which means I’m not that hard to find, so that little tyrant keeps tracking me down. The only time I go looking for Roomba is when it chokes on too much lint or can’t swallow the curtains. Then all I can hear is an explosion of what I assume are Spanish expletives followed by piercing silence. That really chaps my hide. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s passive aggressive appliances.

If any of that happens while it slips out of view, I have no idea where it may be hiding. It won’t come when I call. It won’t even give me a beep to let me know whether I’m hot or cold. It just sits there, pouting, until I find it and apologize for making it wait.

I don’t know. This is all beginning to feel very familiar. Either I’ve purchased a cranky Mexican housekeeper or I’m in a relationship with a narcissistic automaton. Now all I need is to introduce Roomba to some barking little shitzu and let the games begin.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be doing that any time soon. In the quieter moments when Roomba is just running around bumping into my dining room chairs, the steady hum and clunking make me feel like I already have a pet, only cheaper. This one doesn’t require rabies shots or Purina Robot Chow.

I just need to put a collar on it that glows in the dark so when it finally stops yelling at me and shuts down, I can find it. Or not. 

With gratitude to Marci Maleski for permission to use her perfect photo of both her roomba and her annoyed dog. The original photo can be viewed by following this link: Ambivalence | Beau is not too sure about my choice in applia… | Flickr

732

Seven Hundred Thirty-Two. It doesn’t sound as long as it feels. Two years and two days since Rob left us. Two years and three since I last saw him. It might as well be a thousand. Before we know it, it will be.

The first year was an empty slate of disbelief. There are so many ways people describe the first three hundred sixty-five days after loss. They use words like numbness. Shock. Depression. Fear. Anxiety. Paralysis. I have felt all of those things, but most of the time I simply couldn’t believe what happened. Coupled with the extreme amount of stress I was shouldering, I suddenly couldn’t remember anything about our lifetime together. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, why my brain wasn’t working. Was I to spend the rest of my life living without Rob while simultaneously robbed of our memories together?

There is so much opportunity for fear.

Each morning when I woke up, with the first ray of sunlight that hit my face, realization dawned with it. And I began to cry. Every morning. Every night I fell into bed exhausted and alone, and cried myself to sleep. I still do. In the hours in between, I counted the minutes and reminded myself to breathe. One breath in front of the other, I signed papers and made important decisions that most people have the luxury of postponing for at least a year, while I tried not to think about how normal life seemed only twelve months earlier.

I learned about the unique experiences grief affords, like, “All the firsts.” The first Easter without him. Then my birthday. Soon, his birthday and our forty-fifth anniversary. Followed by the first of thousands of questions—was I supposed to say we were married forty-four years or, since I’m still his wife, can I count the forty-fifth and forty-sixth as they arrive? Is there a book somewhere with all the rules laid out? How long is it appropriate to feel sad? Does my best source of advice on that one come from people who have yet to experience firsts?

The first Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went, precursors to the worst first of all, the first anniversary of Rob’s death. I hate to even write those two words together. Determined to soften the blow, I loaded up the Tahoe I had to buy on my own and drove as far away from my sorrow as I could go. Hilarious. I forgot the universal rule about suffering of any kind—wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

Finally, on the three hundred sixty-sixth day, I began to breathe without needing to remind myself to do it. I’d made it through all the firsts. This was really something. Maybe I was stronger than I seemed and braver than I believed. Or maybe I just had no other choice. When you’re a new member of the Widow’s Club, survival is worth celebrating even though throwing a party would seem super awkward. But let’s say you do it anyway. You eat a cupcake, toast to your success, and when the last bit of confetti falls to the floor, a shocking thought occurs to you.

That calendar of firsts is perpetual. Now you get to go through it all over again. Welcome to Year Two.

Year Two arrives with experience. By now, I had fifty-two counseling sessions under my belt. Lots of guidance and regular reminders to be kind to myself, show myself compassion, make space for the pain when it demanded my attention. And breathe. What is missing in Year Two is any sense of numbness. Now as I looked to my second birthday without Rob, the second anniversary on my own, the second Christmas holiday season, and the second anniversary of his death, I did it with all my senses (nearly) fully intact. It was as if the anesthesia had worn off. Picture dental surgery without novocaine.

The good news is, my memory returned. The bad news is, memories are not as comforting as Hallmark thinks they are. They remind me of all that I had and will never have again.

Two days ago was the second anniversary of the day we lost Rob. Or the day he went to be with Jesus. Or the day he died. Mostly, it’s the date when we said goodbye. The date I pushed as far from my mind as possible for forty-four years. The date over which I had no control. The date that ruins the word “date” for me.

I did my best to get through it, as did the rest of my family. We held onto each other just like we have for the last two years. We got together by Zoom two nights ago and toasted Rob with his favorite Scotch whiskey from the McLeod homeland, Scotland’s Isle of Skye. The same whiskey with which he lifted a glass to his children on their wedding days, and each of his six grandchildren on the day they arrived on earth. It was a sacred toast filled with deep love and respect for our hero. He was, after all, and always will be, the finest man each of us have ever known.

This year I did not run away from February 19. I watched it coming for five slow weeks, the same amount of time it took two years ago for Rob and me to be hospitalized, separated from one another, and eventually separated for all time. I know this is a hard read. Believe me, I’m trying to find some hope here while I journal the journey. Hope is always a good idea when your world has imploded. It’s there somewhere, even if it seems hidden among all the debris.

My heart aches for him. The questions are difficult, and answers don’t come easily. Some will never come at all. Such is the stuff of faith. And trust. Which I’m not really that good at. And on top of it all, yesterday was the first day of the Third Year, not entirely unlike the Second. What these two years both have in common is the realization that we have lost Rob and this loss is permanent. Acceptance may be one of the feelings identified in the so-called ‘stages of grief,’ but it is just as transient as the rest of the stages.

I’m talking to God again, have I mentioned that? I missed him almost as much as I miss Rob. It’s a strange thing in loss to know that God had Rob’s best interests at heart when He released him from his broken body and set him free to really live, with Him, while at the same time God was holding me and my family in His arms, too. Rob’s best day was the beginning of my worst. But somehow there is also the recognition that God is good. And that He feels every tear I shed. 

Seven hundred thirty-two. You have no idea how many boxes of Kleenex that represents. On the up side, I’m seven hundred thirty-two days closer to seeing Rob again. And in between all those firsts and seconds and thirds, hiding somewhere in the confusion, I believe there is hope.

Invisible

I miss him. I miss his arms around me, as I’ve said so often. His love languages were touch and service and I miss that, too. In the absence of both, I’ve wanted God to show up in person, take Rob’s place, sit across the table from me, and talk to me face to face. I know He doesn’t do that, though I’m not sure why, Biblical explanations aside. I only know that I sit alone at the table now, with no one to hug me or help me clear away dishes. And that God is invisible.

Which makes me feel invisible, too.

I have called this the Silence of God. It confuses me. He is, after all, Emmanuel, meaning God With Us. It makes me think I have a different definition for “with” than He does. “With” is how Rob lived with me. In person, up close and personal. He verbalized his thoughts. Lowered my blood pressure with his generous hugs. Helped me carry in groceries. Drove me to doctor appointments. Even kidded me about worrying over my test results, or his test results, or the both of us being admitted to a hospital.

Sometimes I have reason to worry, but it always helped to see his smile and the sparkle in his eyes. Does God have eyes? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them even though He is with us. It makes it hard to understand why he calls Himself “Emmanuel.” Especially at night when I cry alone and go to bed alone, and each morning when I wake up alone and face another day without Rob. 

Alone is such a lonely word.

The holidays seem to amplify the problem, underscored as they are by their focus on togetherness and family and memories. This was my second Christmas without Rob. There’s a lot of attention given to all the “firsts” when your husband dies. By the time a year has gone by, so have several dozen "firsts" it seems. It's a lot to deal with. Surviving it feels significant. But once it was over, to my surprise, Round Two arrived and I realized I had to do it all again. And again.

And again.

This Christmas I was in my own house and needed a house-sized tree. I bought a fake one that was pre-lit, wrestled it into submission in the living room (something Rob always did) and, after all that bravery, I was reduced to a pile of tears by the thought of pulling out all the decorations safely hidden away in storage. Where they could not hurt my broken heart. Unless it is Christmas, and you don’t have anything else to hang on tree branches.

So, I turned my back on all of them, drove myself to Walmart, bought enough silver and blue baubles to color coordinate with my newly decorated great room, and hurried home to adorn my new tree. And when it was finished, I sat down on the sofa and burst into tears again. This was my tree? The one with mass produced decorations that made it look like it belonged in a hotel lobby? And where were the stockings? Not hung by the chimney with care, I can tell you that right now. I don’t even have a chimney anymore. Though I have a fake fireplace that I enjoy every single day, I could not bring myself to purchase a Christmas stocking that no one would fill for me. And I could not bear the thought of hanging it up all by itself, devoid of one for Rob.

So, I didn’t.

Surrendering to the paradox of comforting, painful memories, I tried anyway to retrieve our ornaments from storage, but they’re all hidden behind heavy boxes of books, and I couldn’t reach them. So, the tree remained adorned with brand new ornaments and I grudgingly adapted. I fell in love with gnomes, bought a few, and set their amusing, wintery figures around for decoration. Throughout it all, I ignored the glaring absence of my very favorite part of Christmas—the stockings.

I told myself it didn’t matter every time I saw a display of them in department stores. Stockings are for children, not sixty-four-year-old women who need to face reality. I barely had space for a fake tree. Where was I supposed to hang a foot-long pouch that would surely make me cry every time I looked at it? Nowhere, that’s where. This is your life now, I reminded myself. Get a grip and be thankful for what you do have. After all, lots of women have husbands who never fill their stockings or even buy them presents. You’re just late to the party.

One night, a few days before Christmas, my dear friend, Sue, and I had supper together and drove around looking at lights and talking. There are a few people in the world who offer their therapy services for free—hair dressers, nail techs, and best friends. Soon, my Christmas heartache was spilling out all over the inside of her car and she was handing me Kleenex to soak up the mess. I told her how I couldn’t face Rob's and my years of collected ornaments, and how I didn’t even try to hang up my lone stocking, or replace it. “Who would fill it?” I said.

After a few minutes, Sue said something I will never forget. “Oh, Eula,” she began, “I feel so bad. A few days ago the Lord told me to buy and fill a stocking for you. But I was in a rush that day and it was a strange impulse, so I let the idea go by.”

She apologized but, of course, there was no need for an apology at all, and I assured her of that. Actually, my heart lit up with her surprising confession. “I don’t need a stocking,” I told her. “I can’t believe God told you to do that. He saw me, Sue! I can’t believe that He saw me. Every time I walked past a display of Christmas stockings reminding me of my loss, He saw me. I never told anyone about this. Never mentioned to anybody how important stockings are to me. Only Rob knew that. But God saw it and it mattered to Him and He told you to do that. That's more important to me than if you’d done it.”

Well, Sue has a gift of giving. She loves to give, just like Someone Else I know. And when I came home from a Christmas Eve spent with my daughter and her family, a beautiful and stuffed full stocking with my name on it sat beneath my Christmas tree, snuck in while I was away. It was perfect. And when I emptied it the next morning and hung it on the wall beside the tree, it looked like it belonged there.

I listened to some Christmas sermons from my son’s church during Advent this year where they talked about Jesus, Emmanuel, God With Us. And I was right—it’s not Biblical for God to appear at your dining room table in person. The closest He's come to doing that was in the form of His Son, Jesus. But how did He communicate with people before Jesus came? He sent messages through prophets, angels, dreams. And I realized, no matter how angry and frustrated I am by the Silence of God, He is not silent. He shows up, usually in the form of other people. People who listen to Him and then do or say things that don’t always make sense at first. At least, not until someone else gives them the translation.

We are the Body of Christ. We are His hands. We are his feet. We are his voice. We are even His wallet. And learning to listen and then speak His language to hurting hearts is what brings heaven to earth every day of the year.

Emmanuel is with us.

Silence

The leaves are falling to the ground right along with the rain on this wet New Year’s Sunday morning. My favorite kind of day, and it’s supposed to be like this until tomorrow. Maybe. It’s like this right now and I’m here to enjoy it. That always needs to be good enough. What’s here. Right now. Fleeting as “now” is.

Katy’s huge ash trees are in various stages of undress as I stand here, gazing across her pasture. The big one off my patio has lost nearly every leaf thanks to recent storms. The granddaddy of them all, which shelters the kids’ rope swing and trampoline, seems more modest, perhaps prolonging it’s own personal “fall” until February when the new 2023 crop of determined sprouts pushes the old out of the way so they can strut their stuff.

At the back of the pasture, another giant stands totally barren. The normally camouflaged treehouse where Will plays with his cousins is perched among the expansive arms of this third, darkened ash. A vagrant yellow leaf wouldn’t dare hang around this old man where he hovers protectively above children’s playgrounds and a nearly empty chicken coop. I’ve never heard of a haunted ash tree, but this one may have posed for the artistic pen of Tim Burton.

Listening to the raindrops fall while I hold my hot mug of cocoa, a long-ago memory surfaces, as they do so often now. A couple of newlyweds of maybe two years, Rob and I lived in the land of rainstorms where his family set down their own roots generations ago. He loved the rain just as much as I, but there was never enough of it. And because of that, we owned an audio recording of thunderstorms that I played any time I needed to create the cozy setting which has always brought me comfort.

There are so many things, unfortunately, that Grief stirs up in my mind now, and the domino effect is always staggering. For example, there is a massive silence that encapsulates my home, emphasizing how much I miss the sound of my husband’s wonderful voice and, on days like this one, even the chaotic noise of televised football games. They were always coupled with the scent I still associate with Rob—his beloved cup of coffee. Out of the blue, triggered by things I can’t recall later, there are frequent reminders of the life we built together and how loved he made me feel. Like the stealthy way he used to walk up behind me and wrap his arms around me. And, just like that, overwhelmed by the memory and what I've lost, I nearly crumble to the floor in aching sorrow.

How do you go on when half of you has been amputated?

There’s another silence that has appeared, nearly in sync with Rob’s absence, and it feels like absence, too. The silence of God.

This one is the most difficult element in the journey of Grief, for it is a journey. A “slog” my counselor reminds me. I had hoped that Rob and I would continue to beat the odds in a culture where nearly half of all marriages fail, by reaching that golden anniversary goal and sailing past it “to infinity and beyond.” Or at least until we both had contracted dementia and simply didn’t recognize each other anymore. We were well on our way. But we were not in control. It makes me wonder who really is. Which is the stuff of theological debates between people who have no idea either.

Until I lived here, in the Land Of No Answers, I had theories, too, about who is really in control. I had opinions about God’s will. Definitions for faith. Explanations for the broken hearted, believing that my uninjured heart could lend clarity and clear up all confusion. Now, while I have experience, I still have no answers. All I have is silence.

I think it’s safe to say that God rarely explains Himself. Perhaps there is a sort of pirate’s map out there somewhere detailing my life’s journey where ‘X’ marks the spot and a treasure trove of revelation is buried. But we all know how difficult it is to interpret something like that, drawn up as they usually are by a less than artistic hand, with all the important details either written in code or ripped away by hostile opponents who got to it first.

That may be the first time anyone has ever compared God to a pirate. No offense intended. I’m just trying to figure out why we can only hold onto this moment’s falling rain and are unable to prevent it from escaping from between our fingers.

Silence. The silence of God. C.S. Lewis wrote about it in his private journals, later published under a pseudonym and entitled, "A Grief Observed.”

“When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?”

If life were actually a Greek production with every act orchestrated, this would be the cue for Job’s Friends, his comforters, to slip in from stage left, detailing to one of the most brilliant minds and Christian apologists of all time why it was necessary for his beloved wife, Joy, to die and leave him brokenhearted, while they themselves exited stage right and continued their journey home to a dinner table set for two.

Even God doesn’t explain why He is so often silent in our pain.

The closest we can come, although I am neither an apologist or a Bible scholar but only an actor in that Greek production, is to listen to the words of Jesus, struggling to breathe, while hanging on a Roman cross, “Why have You forsaken me?”

Because that’s what it feels like when your world has been shattered. Perhaps the concussion has temporarily deafened us. The blinding pain leaves us in the dark begging for any light. The sense of isolation is suffocating, for no one else will ever feel what you feel in your worst moment. It’s impossible, no matter how hard they may try. Your feelings belong to you. And even Jesus felt, in His worst moment, like He had been abandoned by His God.

But He wasn’t. Because “God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to Himself.” His Father was there, the Comforter Holy Spirit was there, the three of them, God in One, all suffered together on that cross.

It only felt to Jesus like He was alone. Which is suffering enough.

Across the pasture, taking in the expanse of that stand-in tree for Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, a black bird hangs onto a barren branch, somehow uncaring that there are no leaves there to protect it from the rain. It seems to me while I ponder this view that, in the long of winter, a tree loses its purpose. It offers no shade. No umbrella canopy for lesser creatures. No barrier from the sun’s intensity. No shelter for the weary.

And yet.

The bird disagrees. Despite the other trees in my daughter’s back pasture with their varying degrees of leafdom, this blackbird chooses to perch in what could be misinterpreted as a dead and useless tree. Is the question whether the grackle prefers a high spot unencumbered by the interference of foliage? Can its enemies be located faster when the view is unhampered?

Or maybe the point is that a majestic tree, stripped of its vibrancy, is merely resting. The roots still run deep, nurtured by good soil and frequent rain. But it is not green. Instead, it is waiting. Pausing in the silence of unseen growth. Fully aware of the hope that spring will come.

And with it, life.

The Rhythm of Rest

I’m surprised to realize that I welcomed beauty today.

I didn’t even realize how much I leaned into the refreshing tranquility it offered until I’d drunk it in for a few hours. I’ve heard other bereaved hearts describe the first time after devastation that their blurry eyes recognized an emerging bloom, but it’s been so long since I took peaceful loveliness for granted that I didn’t notice I was breathing it in.

There is both relief and a new sorrow in the mix of my discovery. Such is the symphony of grief.

Arizona’s belated autumns, as they arrive here in the desert in December, have transformed the full, broad arms of the tranquil ash tree beyond my fenced enclosure into a vibrant painting of golden leaves-in-waiting. Tonight, a winter storm arrives and the remaining, shimmering bangles now clattering together on the tree’s lengthy limbs will surely lie wet and downtrodden on tomorrow’s patio, leaving the ash barren and undressed until February’s spring. We march to the beat of a different drummer here. Our version of Americana only confuses Currier & Ives.

The Sonoran Desert doesn’t care anything about acceptable timetables or the approved behaviors set by social mores though. It does what feels right and distrusts anything which challenges its own inner wisdom. “You be you” is the heartcry of our temperate climate.

Maybe that’s why I love the desert so. We have the same maverick soul.

The sun, so far to the south this time of year, spreads softened rays across an overcast sky, making the golden ash appear more brilliant by contrast. Now and then a weary leaf flutters to the earth, its departure serenaded by a gentle melody played on the wind chimes, and the breeze behind it all whispers past my face as I sit inside my house, taking it all in.

It’s an invitation to learn the rhythm of rest. To drink in this morning’s beauty even as, in truth, it represents another kind of death—another passing season before new life emerges again.

I can only hope the same for me and my own bruised heart.

Parlez-vous Francais?

All my life I’ve wanted to know how to speak French. It’s a beautiful, melodic language, but it’s pretty impractical here in the southwest where even my doctor’s office has only two sets of recordings—one in English and the other in Spanish. It’s beyond me why I wasn’t born in Louisiana or Canada except that I wanted to be close to my mother at birth.

I don’t know where the inspiration to be fluent en francais came from. It’s not like I look good in berets or striped socks. I don’t even like fine wine. Or cheap wine, either. But in high school I found out French was an elective, so I signed up right away. For three years. And never became fluent. Fifteen years ago I went after that dream again at community college and signed up right away. For three semesters. I’m still not fluent.

Unless I decide to go live in France and immerse myself in the language and culture, I will never  become fluent enough to turn down cooked snails in a fancy restaurant.

Immersion is the key to understanding and absorbing a foreign language. You can’t learn it from a book as easily as you can by breathing it and living it day in and day out. Some people are adept at learning other languages. The top student in my college French class was a young woman who came from Taiwan. Mandarin Chinese was her native tongue, and because of that she can read a Chinese newspaper fluently. She also speaks Korean, Italian, German, and English. She was a Mandarin Chinese speaking woman who learned French in America in an English-speaking classroom using a book written with an English alphabet.

She’s brilliant. And I’ve never met anyone else like her. She is fluent in French.

My takeaway from all of this is that there are three ways to make French your second language. You can be born in a Francophile country or state where the language will naturally become your native tongue. You can reside in a Francophile country where no one speaks English and be forced to learn French or starve. Or you can make the rest of us jealous with your rare ability to pick up languages easily.

After my third college semester, I dropped out of French class. I still wanted to converse in French, but I was busy with the rest of my life and thought if I bought enough French instruction books at Barnes and Noble, keeping those volumes on my bookshelf would make me fluent. I’m sorry to say that no one learns French by osmosis.

For nearly two years now, I have been learning another language by immersion. It is the language of grief. I never wanted to become fluent in such a thing, but I was thrown into its culture headlong and forced to live with it day in and day out. At first, I didn’t understand any aspect of how it works. The only person who could translate it for me was the counselor I began meeting with. She told me things like, “There are no shortcuts.” And, “The only way through it is through it.” I wanted the Cliff Notes version so I could get back to my life, but she only smiled and shook her head, knowing I was new at this. “This will be a slog through grief,” she told me.

It was not good news.

So I began writing about it. Processing my thoughts and feelings and experiences with the one friend I’ve been able to count on for most of my life—journaling. I am never judged by the words I put down on paper. My laptop never interrupts me or tries to fix me when I’m trying to sort out my heart’s brokenness. Writing down how I feel when I don’t understand how I feel is as much therapy for me as meeting with my counselor. In fact, I take notes while she and I talk and when we finish, I write down everything she tells me. Because it’s that important. Still, no one knows how to navigate grief and survive a shattered heart unless they’ve lived here themselves, immersed in this culture of pain and confusion. Even my professional counselors, though they can guide me, say they are learning from me, too.

I bought books, of course, at first. I tried to absorb the advice of experts, some of whom had never lost their husband and best friend before. When I bogged down reading them, I put them on my bookshelf and hoped for osmosis again. Eventually, I donated all of them and wrote down my thoughts instead.

Because I live here, in Sadness, as I explained in my very first blog post after Rob died, I know firsthand how it feels to co-exist with deep grief. I’ve learned that I have to make space for the heartache. I can’t ignore it, or it will eat me alive. I can’t postpone it. Or silence it. Or wrap it up in a box and shove it under the bed. Even more than all of that, I’m discovering that grief is important. I cannot, even after these twenty-two months of living without Rob in my world, fully comprehend that he is gone. How could I? He’s been my life for forty-eight years. I still reach for my phone to see if he’s sent me a text. Or for a split second think I should let him know I arrived safely at my destination. And hope this is some elaborate, lengthy bad dream instead of my horrible truth.

There is a protection in the way we are made that will only allow such a devastating truth to be absorbed slowly. I guess it's easier for those on the outside to accept that Rob is gone and not coming back. But his departure isn’t a side issue for me. It has rearranged my entire life, leaving me without direction. The daily grief I experience is one way my mind and soul and even my brain are ever so slowly adapting to the harsh truth of my husband’s loss.

I’ve discovered something else important, too. I’m not a lousy Christian just because this is taking so long. Though Jesus was a man well acquainted with grief, he doesn’t remove the pain for us when we become intimates with it, too. Instead, he stays close by, proving why he is so well acquainted with it. You know what else I’ve noticed about him when I’m overwhelmed with sorrow? He rarely says anything to me. He doesn’t give me advice. He never ever judges me. He just stays with me even if I can’t feel anything but my anguish and even if his presence changes nothing.

I think Jesus is fluent in grief. And though I would give almost anything to cut this whole educational experience short so I will stop hurting so much, he isn’t very concerned about making that happen. He’s not rushing me through this process. He’s not disappointed by how difficult I find it to be. He doesn’t think I’m failing at faith. He just stays with me. He lets me say what I need to say even if it’s not socially acceptable, and never condemns me for any of it. He’s not looking for performance from me. He knows how much this hurts.

To my great surprise, even though I’ve yelled at him for being so silent, begging him to say something, I’m discovering that in his silence there is full acceptance of how I am experiencing this pain. Which makes sense to me when I stop to think about it. His love and acceptance of me has never depended on my performance. It has simply depended on him.

I don’t think I’ll ever go to France to focus my attention on their language and culture. I’d have to stay there permanently so I could find someone to speak French with. I’ve learned enough in foreign language classes to help me understand the course I’m immersed in right now. 

Sometimes we’re just navigating in the dark without a flashlight.

La vie et un voyage au milieu de la nuit.

Merci beaucoup to Terence Faircloth for permission to use his photo seen above. The original can be viewed on his site by following this link: French Woman in Blue Beret | Mural by A-A-Ron aka @ag_pnt se… | Flickr

.

In The Shadows of Courage

There are people who understand how to come alongside someone who is up to their armpits in battle. It’s a rare gift, and I know myself well enough to recognize that I used to be more comfortable supporting people from a distance (which might be a contradiction in terms) than I was standing so near I could see their lips quiver. At that distance, reality is too close for comfort.

Any kind of support helps. There are so many unspoken needs when death comes to call. I finally get why people supply food or gift cards for meals at the first whisper of loss. You have to eat, but when you can barely breathe there’s no energy left for cooking. I’ve learned everyone is different. Some people are comforted by flower arrangements, but I discovered that, for me, they were painful reminders. Live plants were different. Somehow, they brought hope. Against all odds I kept (most of) them alive, almost like their thirst gave me purpose when my world was gone.

All the ways people tried to fill the gaps left in our shattered lives made us feel loved and remembered. We saw the empathy and compassion underlying each thoughtful expression, like the friend whose bagpipe rendition of Amazing Grace suddenly filled the air one afternoon in Katy’s front yard. Dressed in full Scottish regalia, she stood in solidarity with her pipes and with us.

I’ve mentioned this several times before, but it’s worth bringing up again. Sorrow doesn’t lessen when the rush to comfort wanes. I know people must return to their own lives, responsibilities, and personal heartaches once the flowers are thrown out and the shock wears off. It has to be that way. This is a broken world. Death visits all of us, and other crises as well. We each have our own burdens to bear. And even if we love one another deeply, no one can walk through personal grief except the grieving. I alone feel what I feel, as painful and difficult as it is. No one knows what losing Rob has cost me except me. But in the lifelong aftermath, the road feels lonely.

And here is where things get a little tricky. This is where the desire to see someone’s pain end begins. Where we want them to go back to normal, for their sake as well as for ours. It’s hard to watch while someone tries to figure out how to build a new life they didn’t ask for. We want to fix them. And maybe we even want them to stop reminding us that no one is immune to extreme suffering.

So, we might try our hand at cheerleading. Judgment is the next step in that parade. The temptation to stop the tears or change the subject or see someone smile, or dissuade our own anxiety, comes out sounding like this. “Just trust in God and have faith.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “Look on the bright side.” “Things are going to get better.” “At least . . . . .” “Keep a positive attitude.” “This was God’s will.” “God is in control and we have to trust Him.” And then there’s my personal favorite, actually said to me a few weeks after I lost Rob. “Don’t set up a tent in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

Yeah. I know. We were lied to as kids. Words hurt a lot worse than sticks and stones.

I have spent enough time now as a widow that I’ve learned to expect criticism. It comes disguised as concern but only underscores how isolated this slog through grief feels. I don’t expect people to understand how I feel or what all the challenges are unless they’ve been here. I was widowed fairly young, so right now I’m surrounded by more spectators than club members. It’s just the way it is. First out of the chute, so to speak.

But there are those rare friends who know how to come alongside.

I just took a trip back to Florida because of a happy event. Rob’s youngest sister got married. I wanted to be there for a lot of good reasons. Still, I knew the experience would challenge me to the max. There are a lot of moving parts to flying across country on your own, for example. Things I didn’t used to think about. Rob was always there to help with the ridiculous amount of luggage I carried. He booked hotel rooms. Rented cars. Did the driving without getting us lost. Slept beside me in the unfamiliar bed. Was my soundboard and dinner companion and favorite comedian when things got crazy. Now all of that fell on me in finite detail, or was absent entirely, and I was afraid.

At this point, twenty-one months after losing him, I’ve put nearly forty thousand miles on my new Tahoe. By comparison, you might think flying sounds easier. But this trip, back to the town where we brought two kids into the world, where he established part of a career that he left behind when we moved to Arizona, and we built our first home—this time I knew I was in for a hurricane of triggers. And some of my friends and family knew it, too. They knew when I visited his grave on my own for the first time that it would be beyond difficult. That every street where I drove would remind me of the beginnings of us at a time when I grapple with the fallout from the end of us. That I would watch my sister-in-law walk an aisle on the arms of a friend instead of her father, supported by her mother and sisters but devoid of all three brothers.

While I stepped out on faith and challenged more fears, in the shadows of my courage stood a couple of friends who have never left my side. Honestly, I didn’t know what they were up to. I was so anxious about what I was dealing with within myself that I didn’t see them there. One by one, as each worrisome need was met and I moved on to the next, they stood silently and held me up. I wasn’t aware of how much they were doing. I thought I was the one doing it all, on my own, checking off each thing as I got through it.

It wasn’t until I added up the sum of their texts and phone calls and follow-up chats that I realized they had both anticipated what I was up against and prayed in detail for my success. They asked for things I hadn’t even thought of but which turned a fearful challenge into an unexpected gift of connection, confidence, and redemption. The details are personal, but these friends who know me well were able to stand alongside and hold me up when my self-assurance was anemic.

They weren't the only ones. Between my children's support and a few others who wrote encouraging words in various ways, I felt the love that reminded me I was on the minds and hearts of others. But every time someone full of their own heartache steps into the shadows of my courage to hold me up, this is what I think about:

I don’t think I’ve ever been a friend like that. 

I am astonished at the devotion of someone who prays again and again the way these women do. It cannot be easy to be a friend of mine right now. It’s not easy to be me right now. Sadness companions me—I’m not exactly the life of the party. Because I’m up to my armpits in a battle of survival and rebuilding and overcoming. Sometimes my arms get weary. My heart is weak. My soul cannot bear the thought of any more tears. I’m.Just.So.Tired.

And that’s the moment when, like Aaron and Hur did for Moses, a friend appears on each side and holds me up.

Slowly, the tide turns. Energy restores. Hope surfaces. And I begin to believe I will survive this. Not because anyone said the right thing. There is no right thing to say. Nor because I rose to the challenge on my own, because I didn't. It's just because someone knew that the best thing they could do, all that I needed, was for them to stand beside me. Even if it means standing in the shadows.

May I be a friend like that someday, too.

With thanks to Ben Seidelman for the lovely photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link:

Brace Yourself | Ben Seidelman | Flickr

To B or not To B

We never talked about what I should do if Rob went first. 

We only talked about the smallest details of funerals and burials, and how we didn’t really care much about a lot of hoopla. It was whatever the other wanted and needed to do. Rob wanted his name on a marker in the family plot in Sarasota, even if he was cremated or buried somewhere else. And he wanted a special song that he once played for me which I didn’t write down and needed a miracle to remember later on. Beyond that, I didn’t want to talk about it. I told him not to let some hellfire and brimstone preacher run my funeral. Find someone who understood the fathomless love of God and speak hope and encouragement to the grieving.

That's it. That was our plan. He dies. Or I die. Have this song. Don’t have that preacher. Put his name on a headstone in Sarasota. And I didn’t know where I wanted my remains to remain. There was no Plan B. There wasn’t much of a Plan A.

I'm not sure if we really had a plan.

Because I didn’t want to talk about something that sad. I didn’t want to think that I might lose him someday. Or ever. And I didn’t want to think that my life could be cut short. I told him we were in this together to the end – let’s kick off side by side. I thought we could arrange that without breaking the law or jeopardizing our salvation. Just grow old together and die hand in hand of natural causes.

Too bad life doesn’t include your requests when it hands you over to death. It’s all out of your hands at that point. Control is an illusion anyway. And making plans for a funeral is, by contrast, the easy part. Surviving the rest of your life without your darling is where the hard comes in. Maybe we should have talked a little bit about that. Even if it made me cry. There’s plenty of crying now. I wish I’d figured that out beforehand.

There were a lot of things we should have talked about. After all, forty-four years of marriage is a pretty long run even if you start early like we did. We’d both had scares. Several. We also had some bad information. Like, God always performs miracles. No. He doesn't. He did for all those earlier scares. Just not for this one. This one ended badly.

I wish I’d known more detail about Rob’s feelings regarding life support. I wish he’d used that superior intellect of his to help me figure out where I’d live if the unthinkable happened, no matter where we were living at the time. I wish he’d written down all of his computer passwords. I’ve said this before, but I wish I’d forced him to tell me on camera that he loved me and always would.

I wish I’d scratched his back more. I wish I’d made him gingersnaps and spice cake and snickerdoodles every month. I wish I’d let him take me to Paris. I wish I’d gotten on a plane by myself, flown to a big city, rented a car, and driven to the sticks by myself just so I’d know that I could. He always wanted me to do that.

I did that. This week, I did that. I know he’s proud of me. And also, he knew I could do it all along. He just wanted me to know I could do it.

I can do it.

I’m doing all of it. I had to figure out the Plan B on my own, with the help of my children. I had to make hard calls while he was incapacitated in the hospital. I had to face my fears and walk this grief journey alone. Not that I don’t have support. It’s just that when you grieve, no one else can feel the loss you suffer except you.

Maybe he and I couldn’t have come up with Plan B. We barely came up with Plan A. But sometimes, when the comparison train rolls by and I notice how some couples have months and even years together handling longterm illness before one of them passes on, I feel a little jealous. I know that’s another kind of hard and horrible road to travel, but I can’t help but wish we’d had time to talk before he left. There wasn’t any talking. Now there’s only guessing. And hoping I’m going to keep figuring out Plan B, the plan I never wanted to talk about. How to go on living without Rob beside me.

They say an ostrich sticks its head in the sand so it won’t have to look at what’s going on around it. Pretending that nothing bad is happening even if it is. It turns out that’s just a myth. What they really do is dig a hole in the dirt with their heads so they can make a nest. They prepare for the future. It only looks like they’re ignoring the present.

Maybe if I’d understood what ostriches are really doing, I’d have prepared myself better for what I’m forced to live out today. I’d have understood Rob’s insight when he joked that we’re all terminal. Or possibly I’d have realized that the price of deep love will someday be deep, profound grief.

And then again, maybe not. After all, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans.”

We lived life, he and I. We lived it well and long. And when the end came, we faced it with courage. Together. The same way we did everything. 

Hand in hand, after all. Which was the plan.

With thanks to Sven-Kare Evenseth for the captivating photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: Ostrich | Ostrich at Kristiansand Dyrepark (zoo). | Sven-Kåre Evenseth | Flickr

Lost On The 202

Okay. I’ll admit it. 

I am directionally challenged.

It’s no exaggeration that I can get turned around in a parking lot. Most of the time, it’s such a win to find my car after I step outside that I forget which road brought me to the grocery store. If I exit east instead of south, I could spend twenty minutes traveling the wrong way and wondering why the mountains are missing. Soon I’m driving ever-widening circles, like a Labrador Retriever searching for a stick in a pond.  

Don’t judge me. You’re not perfect either.

The problem, I think, is that I’m a visual learner. I navigate by landmarks. And because I’m visual and the Phoenix area is laid out on a grid that I carry around in my mind, north is always whatever direction I’m facing. Actually, that’s true no matter where I am. Even if Siri says she’s tired of recalculating and that I’m about to cross a state line, I never believe her. She doesn’t know the shortcuts like I do.

I don’t think this is all my fault. Rob was a superior navigator, but he was also a superior elaborator. Once or twice my eyes may have rolled back in my head while he described every billboard and street sign I’d pass between our house and that little café in Taos where we ate breakfast that one time, remember?

All I asked for was directions to Costco.

So, between the immobile, north-facing grid in my brain and the years of training I’ve received in landmark recognition, you can see why I always get lost, especially on the 202. It’s not logical, but it’s predictable. Especially to my daughter.

Katy has been my emergency contact ever since she went to college and learned first-hand how to navigate the freeway systems here. It’s her cross to bear. She once drew a map of every highway crisscrossing the Phoenix Metro area for me on a napkin. It’s like she engineered them herself. And when she was done, I still couldn’t figure out why we need the 202 if we already have the 101. Now they’re talking about finishing the 303.

Mind. Blown.

I can’t keep these freeways all straight in my head, especially when I must use one of them to get to another one. It’s like looking at a bowl of alphabet soup, only with numbers. They float here, they float there, there are numbers everywhere. I’m a word person. If you want me to find my way to you, give that freeway a name I can understand. Something logical, like “Cow Pasture To Saguaro Lake Road.” If that had happened last week when I took Rob’s sister and brother-in-law on a tour of our desert foliage, we’d have never started singing that Kingston Trio song about the guy who spent the rest of his life lost on a subway system.

See? He wasn’t even driving and he couldn’t get off that track. It’s not just me. 

The 202 has been my nemesis ever since they built it and told us to use it. As Katy explained to me with that napkin, the 202 freeway is a loop. One minute you’re driving east and the next you’re circling north. Which means if you stay on this freeway for very long, you’ll have two chances to exit onto the same street. They’ll just be five or ten miles apart. If you ask me, that’s confusing. And stupid.

The other problem is that I think all we ever needed was the 101. The 101 goes north and south. It doesn’t curve. I don’t think. But now that there’s a 202 circling everything like Christmas tree lights, I never know which one of those numbers I should be driving on. So, I just pick one and try to make it work. Which doesn’t work.

And that’s how Risa and Fred and I ended up singing that Kingston Trio song. We were trying not to panic. I’ll admit we could have picked a more cheerful song to bolster our spirits when I couldn’t find our exit. As I mentioned, that guy in the song is still circling Boston on a subway while his wife shows up every afternoon and tosses a sandwich through the window so he won’t starve to death.

But I digress.

I just wanted to show off some beautiful desert landscaping to my out-of-town guests. I also wanted to avoid all the traffic on the one road which would have led us straight there—Ellsworth. Everybody here hates Ellsworth Road. And, thanks to Katy, I knew a shortcut. A shortcut to the 202. The amazing freeway that hates me and will always disgrace me in front of people I want to impress. That shortcut. I wasn’t sure where I would make the transfer to the 101 so I could skip all the delays and rejoin Ellsworth Road later, but I was confident that I’d know it when I saw it.

Risa and Fred and I sailed along the shortcut, joined the 202 without incident, and merged into high-speed traffic, all while I acted like I knew what I was doing. I saw the big green signs telling me I could go east onto the 60 or west onto the 60. The 60 east didn’t feel right. I was pretty sure that one takes you to New Mexico. I remembered driving west on the 60 a few times and taking the 202 north from there. I eased into the lanes that would lead to complete humiliation and pretended nothing was wrong, cheerfully chatting with Risa while I did it.

She’s not falling for that anymore.

I thought if I went west that it would lead to the 202 north which would take me to Ellsworth which was east of us. I realize you probably don’t live here and are getting a brain cramp trying to keep track of the road map I’m drawing. In cooking terms, here’s what happened. I put a bag of flour in a hot oven and ten minutes later I pulled it out, adding two beaten eggs and a bottle of ketchup with the mistaken belief that this would result in a beautiful pork tenderloin.

See? 

We finally found our way after I called Katy in a panic, which is my typical MO. “Mom,” she said in a carefully controlled voice, “you were already on the 202. You didn’t need to exit until you reached University Drive.”

“But I thought the 202 ended at the 60 east and the 60 west,” I said in disbelief. “It split like a wishbone! Do you mean it wasn’t forcing me off the road?” It’s unfortunate for Katy that she’s so much like her dad and inherited both his perfect sense of direction as well as his perfect astonishment over how I’ve survived as a human being. Well, it’s not my fault. As I’ve been telling you, all we ever needed was a 101.

Fred and Risa thought the desert was lovely, especially after we were safely back at my house. And I assured them that the PTSD they suffered while trapped in my truck will recede over time. Probably. They seemed reluctant to ride with me anymore, though, preferring after that to use their rental car. I guess they just don’t like shortcuts.

“Not the 202! Please don’t make us take the 202!” they said in unison when they asked me how to get to a gas station.

Well, that’s just silly. There aren’t any gas stations on the 202. They’re all on the 101. Or Ellsworth. I’d know them if I saw them.

Maybe I should go along for the ride.

 

 

 

And now, with apologies to the Kingston Trio for desecrating their smash hit, M.T.A., this one’s for Fred and Risa. Your bravery knows no bounds.

 

I want to tell you all the story of a gal named Eula
Longing for a desert view
She topped off the gas tank, headed up to Ellsworth
And the onramp for the 202.

 

Well, did she ever return?
No, she never returned and her fate is still unlearned
(What a pity)
She may drive forever searching for that exit
Lost on the 202.

 

She could have called her daughter for a simple explanation
Of the way to get off that loop,
But Eula was a native, so pride became her downfall
Now she’s dizzy on the 202.

 

But did she ever return?
No, she never returned and her fate is still unlearned
(Shame and Scandal)
She may drive forever round that loop of Phoenix
Lost on the 202.

 

It’s a tragic story that could have been avoided
If she’d checked out a map or two
And I’ll bet you that she worries that she’s runnin’ out of gas
Lost on the 202.

 

Well, did she ever return?
No, she never returned and her fate is still unlearned
(It’s getting dicey)
That Tahoe is a gas hog, too bad it’s not a Prius,

Since she’s lost on the 202.

Thanks to VTrans for permission to use the scarified road sign photo seen above. Seemed appropriate. The original can be viewed by following this link: Scarified Road Sign | This is a photograph of a sign that re… | Flickr