Everywhere and Nowhere

I sit at their dining room table. The one you and I brought back here to Arizona from your childhood home. The one with the memories of all the Thanksgivings and Christmases celebrated year after year as a different generation of McLeods gathered together in your parents’ house in Florida. Our daughter makes the meals for this table now, in her home where her children laugh and learn, a wealth of guests are made welcome, and extended family, like me, are included.

And I remember. I remember the first night I sat at this table. The first night I met your family. I was terrified, young, so inexperienced. Sixteen years old, with the sparkling diamond you’d just given me hidden in my lap, I tried to relax and join in the dinnertime banter bouncing around the room, this mahogany expanse between us all. A bowl of fresh strawberries in front of me, nervously I brought the spoon to my mouth only to have the ripe, red fruit roll off and onto my blue jeans. I glanced around, relieved that no one had seen what happened. No one but you, Babe. And you sold me out.

Your dad, the intimidating Scotsman whose jovial eyes betrayed his next move, stood up and went quietly into the kitchen. Grabbing one of your mother’s aprons, he walked around the table to me and secured the cotton ties around my neck, the whole of my clothing now protected by a giant, makeshift bib.

“There now, darlin’,” your dad teased, “you can drop as many strawberries in your lap as you want to.” He took his seat as laughter exploded around this very table and my face went as red as my dessert. I loved your dad forever for making me feel part of your crazy family that night. And I never forgave you for ratting me out.

“YaYa,” the young voice calls, breaking into my memories, “it’s your turn to deal.” Tonight, my nine-year-old granddaughter and I sit at one end of the long expanse of dining table playing cards together. I shuffle, deal, and sit back again, absentmindedly staring out the wide picture window on my left. Waiting expectantly, unconsciously noting the time and how long it’s been since we ate supper, I watch for your truck. Listen for your step. Yearn for your smile. In a split second, my heart leans forward in full awareness that you are missing from this small gathering, that you’re late, you’re not here when you should be, only to have my mind jump in and coldly remind me that you’re not coming home. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

You’ll never sit beside me at this table again.

Baby, you have no idea what a gaping hole has been blown through my life. The way I can do something as casual and innocent as play a game of cards, when suddenly I realize for the millionth time that you’re not here. This isn’t our table. Our life together has ended. In those brief moments, grief takes advantage of my inattention and pulls me back down again into its quicksand of sorrow. This is the slog of grief.

I had no idea what this was like until it happened to me. Trying to adjust to life without “us”, without you, is probably going to take the rest of my life. The fog that filters in and out of my mind is strangely blinding. There are moments after all these months since you left when I think I’m getting it. The paperwork is all completed. The mail arrives with only my name on it—usually. The memorials are all behind us. I’ve made it through half a year of “firsts.” I go to bed alone. Wake up alone. Day after day, alone. There’s no reason to expect you to show up at this point. No reason at all except that for forty-seven years of my life, you were my person. You were my everything. I have no idea if that’s some kind of idolatry when God is supposed to be our all, but since coming up with marriage between one man and one woman was His idea, a picture of His love for His Church, I’m gonna say “no.” Missing you is normal. What’s abnormal is that you’re not here.

And that makes me a sitting duck for grief’s cruel reminders. A target for familiarity. You are still a massive part of me, woven into the fiber of my soul. Nothing fills the place where you lived and breathed into my life. My empty heart cries out when I’m not even thinking about you, pulling my attention back to its painful awareness that you’re gone. I have no answer for its questions. Only tears.

I see you everywhere. And nowhere. I see you in the mountains where we picnicked. At our favorite restaurants where we celebrated. In the gas stations where you always parked me in the shade. In the grocery where you knew which eggs I always bought and where you waited for me at the registers. Your fire helmet hangs on the wall in this room, across from where I sleep on the mattress you bought. The folded flags they gave me stand in respect behind your photos and your favorite ballcap. But you’re not here. Only these shadows of you remain.

Life is like that. Exhilarating and cruel, almost in the same breath. One minute you’re a teenager in love, dropping strawberries in your lap at the family table, and the next you’re a widow playing cards at that same table with your granddaughter, wishing to God for something as ordinary as the sound of your husband's footsteps in the hall.

I miss you. I will always look for you and miss you.

You are everywhere and nowhere.

With thanks to Veronica Aguilar for the exceptional photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: Such a lovely day in London! | Veronica Aguilar | Flickr

Help

“Falling! Falling! FALLING!” I yelled, as I lay back on the upholstered table. In the dim light, I felt strong hands holding my head where it extended beyond the edge of the padded bench, but the room was spinning and my eyes repeatedly swept left to right, desperately trying to find radar lock on something, anything, that would ground me.

“You’re not falling,” a voice from behind spoke to me. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. You’re not in any danger.” Easy for him to say. His head was screwed on straight.

I didn’t feel safe. I felt like a numbered ball rolling wildly inside a rotating Bingo cage. With the room refusing to right itself, nothing felt stable, and I had no control over the chaotic ride my body had taken me on. Vertigo. It’s not for the faint of heart.

This morning when I woke up, it wasn’t the room that was spinning out of control—my world was. It’s the same every morning. Upside down inside grief’s cage, the thought of facing another day without Rob feels like emotional vertigo. As sunlight convinces my eyes to open, before my feet even hit the floor, the roller coaster ride has begun, and I have no choice but to let anguish take me where it wants to go until it runs out of energy. But just like the physical sensation of being caught up inside a tornado, I don’t feel safe. I feel helpless. Battered. Unable to even locate some solid ground.

Vertigo is different from dizziness. Where dizziness makes a person feel off-balance, vertigo makes you feel like someone tossed you into a dryer and hit the “on” button. Vertigo is dizzy times twelve. Or a million. The first time I experienced it and the chiropractor convinced me I was not going to fall off his table, he did the Epley Maneuver and righted everything that was wrong. Then he taught Rob how to do it so we could forestall any future attacks.

But no one can right this wrong. I don’t have Rob anymore, which is the reason I’ve been experiencing emotional vertigo. Seven long months of it. Fourteen days. Eleven hours. Thirteen minutes. That’s a lot of spinning. A lot of searching for a horizon that’s in a free fall right along with me. I feel like I’ve lost my footing most of the time because Rob’s not here to hold me and tell me everything is going to be fine. I’m not sure it will ever be fine again. Every morning when I open my eyes, they search this room, sweeping repeatedly left to right, trying to locate my love. Instead, I'm freefalling. And it’s exhausting.

I knew I needed some rest in a place with few memories of our life together. I have a close friend who lives in Montana, so two weeks ago she and I drove to her home where I stayed for eight days. Rob and I didn’t really spend much time in Big Sky Country, and as fall exploded across the mountains of western Montana this September, I rested. My friends took me into the countryside where we explored hidden backroads, followed meandering rivers, picnicked on low, wooden bridges, and breathed in the Christmas tree fragrances of fir, spruce, and pines. I didn’t forget how much I miss Rob, but there was little around me to remind of all that I lost when I lost him. It was a breather I desperately needed and absorbed to the max.

And then I came home. I parted ways with my friend and her husband after the three of us, in our two-car caravan, drove south through Montana, Idaho, and Utah. I was alone again, the new story of my life. Alone in my truck, alone with my thoughts, alone with my fears. I cried all the way down I-17 out of Cordes Junction, which is really a bad idea when you’re the driver. I also spilled my guts to the God of the universe because the universe doesn’t control anything—its Creator does. I prayed. I prayed the only prayer I am able to offer right now and the only one I’ve been able to pray since I started speaking to Him again.  It’s an uncomplicated prayer, not hard to remember, and it cuts through all the religious verbiage in its simplicity.

“Help.”

That’s it. That’s what I pray frequently every day and it’s what I prayed in the cab of my Tahoe as I snaked downward to the Valley of the Sun last Friday evening. After the tears slowed, I elaborated a little more.

“Please hold me,” I added. “Please wrap your arms around me,” because I feel like I’m falling, falling, falling. Rob isn’t here to hold onto me anymore and I miss stealing a hug from him any time my world is threatening to go into twister mode again which, as I mentioned, has been every single morning for the last seven and a half agonizing months.  I begged God for help while I drove that curvy highway, blinking hard at a cascade of tears until I could see.

I used to call myself a prayer warrior. I once believed I had the right as one of God’s kids to stand in my authority and expect God to move on behalf of whoever I was praying for. That’s faith, right? Or so I believed. Practicing boldness in prayer while my husband fought for his life in the ICU, there was no one who was more convinced than I that his body would recover. Audacious in intercession, I was certain he would make it.

And I was wrong. He did not.

The day they called and said Rob was going to die, I stopped praying. I stopped asking for anything because suddenly I didn’t know what it was supposed to accomplish. I don’t tell God what to do anymore. I don’t speak to Him with any expectation of anything. It’s as though my hard drive has been wiped out and I’m starting over again. Like a newborn babe, conversation with my Savior now is simple and often monosyllabic.

Help.

It’s honest and quick when my eyes are blinded by tears and I’m behind the wheel of a life I never asked for. And when someone else asks me to put in a good word for them with Jesus, all I commit to anymore is this promise, “I’ll mention it.”

Help. Please put Your arms around me and hold me because I’m afraid I’m falling. It’s all I’ve got.

I made it back safely. Stepping into the converted apartment space I call home right now, I looked around and noticed a new frame on the high top table at the back of the room. Penned with artistic precision, I recognized the beautiful modern calligraphy of my oldest granddaughter beneath the glass. She had written out a verse I’ve run to many times in my life. But this time, it ran to me.

 

I will not

i will not

I WILL NOT,

in any degree, LEAVE YOU HELPLESS,

nor forsake you, NOR LET YOU DOWN,

nor RELAX MY HOLD ON YOU!

ASSUREDLY NOT!

~ Hebrews 13:5

 

“Falling! Falling! Falling!” I keep yelling as the tears cascade down my face in confirmation of how lost I feel. Each day of this painful journey, traveling the serpentine highway I’m unfamiliar with, I feel like I’m falling.  Desperately missing half of me, I find myself either paralyzed or upside down inside spiritual and emotional vertigo. There is no way I can describe the assault of feelings that lambast a soul who has lost their person—the one who knew them best, loved them most, their two lives melded into one over the course of nearly half a century. This is a long journey for me. I will never be the same again. How could I be? I was one with Rob McLeod and he’s not here anymore. I live a half existence now, an amputee in a couples’ world.

I don’t know how to pray anything but a childlike prayer. I don’t have any confidence that more than that will make any difference. All I know is when the spinning begins and my frightened heart cries out, “Help,” He does.

“I will not, I will not, I will not leave you help-less.”

Amen. It’s the only prayer I know.

With thanks to XoMEoX for the use of the dizzying photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link:   Vertigo | XoMEoX | Flickr

Like A Waterfall

 

I’ve held off all day. It’s the day before our 45^th anniversary, the one many of our friends have already or will soon celebrate. But we never will. Not together. Only me.

The tears fall freely where I write in the guest room in Montana. We got back a bit ago from a long drive along the Skulkaho River, ending up face to face with a magnificent surprise waterfall. Robin and Jerry have been here before and always bring their houseguests up this narrow backroad, but they never reveal what’s waiting for them at the end of the bumpy, gravel drive. They let the waterfall speak for itself.

Most of the road was paved, but it’s a good thing I’m not afraid of heights. The view I had out the side window of the primo front passenger seat was probably a hundred-foot drop to the ravine next to us. I know it had to be that far down because a) you know how much I exaggerate, and b) the tall Engelmann Spruce and Grand Firs grew up from the ground floor and topped out only a few feet above my window. True story. Probably. We’d followed the river along the side of the road until it meandered out of view, downward, perhaps into another county, and then, ta dah!

“Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed as the road suddenly widened and a massive waterfall covered the landscape before me. No one told me where we were going (like I would even know) and, since the fall colors are in full-on riot mode here right now, I assumed we were just headed back into the woods to fill up cloud space with fresh photos. This was stunning.  And I didn’t even have to get sweaty and dirty hiking back in the trees to find it - you know how much I hate to sweat. There it stood, waiting for me, while we rock and rolled up a pothole covered gravel road to the top of the mountain.

You’d have loved it, Baby. I know that because I started crying again, the same way I did yesterday while I stood in the middle of a bunch of 3,000 year old cedars and I missed you so bad I couldn’t catch my breath. We always loved exploring together, didn't we? I leaned against the crisscross shapes on the bark and whispered into that thin veil that keeps you hidden from me, “Why aren’t you here?’ It’s a question I’ve asked a million times since that night we told you it was all right to leave. To go home with Jesus. I know where you are. I just wish you were here instead.

I’ll probably ask the same question again tomorrow on the anniversary of our first day as husband and wife. How my flowers shook as I stood at your side in full view of God and everybody that night and whispered, “I do.”  You looked so handsome in your new suit, and the arm you wrapped around me while my uncle took pictures after the ceremony held me tight with love and pride. We were so young, our eyes so full of love and dreams, the inevitability of “til death do us part” locked away in the naivete of all the years and years it would take us to get there and face reality in its hardened face. I've done my best imitation of Scarlett O’Hara for all these decades with her famous, “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” and then I pushed tomorrow away and refused to return its calls.

It tracked us down anyway. Now I have to think about it. Life without you beside me. The first anniversary I’ll spend without a card from you. Or a kiss. Or flowers that you hid in the garage overnight so you could set them on the table where I'd find them in the morning. I can’t even look at our wedding photos right now. How could those forty-five years have passed so quickly? Remember the widow we visited on our honeymoon because my dad said we should pop in and say hello since we were in the area? I remember the way she missed her husband and I felt so sorry for her. Now I am her.

Robin is taking me shopping in these beautiful mountains tomorrow, honey. It’ll be fun. A good distraction. I’m just trying to get through the day, another one of the dozens of firsts that the first year holds for people like me.

I miss you. A million times a day, I miss you, but especially today as I anticipate tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know and let my tears speak like that waterfall. I love you and I will until the day we can finally be reunited again, when I will love you even more.

Happy Anniversary, my love. You’re still my everything.

Chickpeas

 

You would think that of all the inane, innocuous things to watch on television, a cooking show would be the last thing in the world to make you cry, wouldn’t you? I mean, maybe if you’re in your own kitchen, sautéing onions right along with the TV host, then I guess you could find yourself in tears. But if the camera zooms in on a pretty blue bowl filled with fresh chickpeas, the only thing sentimental about that might be the bowl itself, right? Especially if it belonged to your grandmother and she always made sure it was full of chocolate kisses when you came over because she knew you had a weakness for them. Then you’d cry. Watching a cooking show. On television.

I can’t watch TV much anymore. Everything reminds me of Rob. Game shows where we worked as a team to answer the questions before the contestants did. “Ooh, I knew Botswana was in Africa! Why are those people so dumb?” Movies he fell asleep through every time we watched because he got up at six every day and couldn’t keep his eyes open at nine at night. “Honey, you missed the good part again. That little hobbit almost kept the ring this time.” I can’t watch romances because . . . that one is obvious. Comedies are out because those were our go to’s. I can’t watch House Hunters or Fixer Upper or Home Town because they’re filled with dreams that come true and families who still have each other.

I turn on Roku now. And Hulu. Because they let me watch a preview and read the synopsis, and then, if the story line makes me tear up, I either melt down and deal with it or change the channel to reruns of Psych because Rob never stayed awake through those and they crack me up. I’m just worried. I’m nearly through bingeing on Sean Spencer's antics for the second time. What am I going to watch when Season Eight ends again?

So, you’re wondering about the chickpeas, aren’t you? I don’t even like chickpeas. Or garbanzo beans either. But I do like hummus and Rob loved my hummus and I spent years learning everything I could about how to make healthy food so we’d both stop having colds and cancers and surgeries and could enjoy being together for at least another twenty years. We relied on the benefits of fermented foods in particular, and I discovered that if you sprout dried chickpeas before you blend them into hummus, that yummy little dip skyrockets with good stuff that will protect you from bad stuff—like novel viruses. In theory.

Gordon Ramsey didn’t sprout his chickpeas. He shoved them inside a chicken and roasted them in the oven. They eat weird food in England. Or Scotland. Wherever he’s from. He made a sandwich filled with French fries, too, and called it a Chip Butty. Like I said. Not only is the food weird, the names are, too.

So, I was watching Gordon Ramsey teach his teenage daughter how to stuff a chicken with chickpeas when, unexpectedly, I started crying. I didn’t even see it coming. That’s what happens when your best friend of forty-six years disappears and you turn on a cooking show from a foreign country because there’s nothing else to do anymore and it seemed like a safe idea because what on earth could possibly make you cry if all you’re doing is watching someone fry up fish—or roast a chicken?

Chickpeas, that’s what.

What kind of world are we living in where you can’t even trust a chickpea to be as boring as its name? Now I have to find out if you can make hummus out of garbanzo beans. I’m never eating chickpeas again.

With thanks to Jason for doing the hard work of sprouting chickpeas himself and taking a photo of them. You can view his original picture by following this link: Sprouting garbanzos | Jason | Flickr

Nothing

I exist now in fragments of time. 

Short spaces between gut wrenching sorrow where tears are shed and silence steps in, not exactly peace and certainly not relief. There is no relief. Just a kind of nothing. A kind of waiting, until the next spasm gathers momentum and sidelines me again. I'm starting to get used to it, this new sort of existence I live out every day. But it makes me tired. I miss so many things since Rob has been gone, especially him—but also me.

And us.

Once upon a time, I thrived in the security of his lavish love. Now, in these in-between spaces, I gather my strength for sorrow’s assaults, alone and wrung out. It’s deathly still, here in this pseudo-shelter, but I don’t feel safe.

Or serene.

I don’t feel hope, though I’m not hopeless. Acceptance eludes my ravaged heart.

To coin my own phrase, it’s a numb of lull.

It looks calm. It feels empty. Sounds quiet. It’s just . . . nothing. Maybe this is what Rob’s “Nothing Box” was like for him. The place he always went to where no one else was invited. I knew he was in there by the blank look on his face as he’d brace himself against a wall, cross his arms over his chest in that oh, so familiar way, and stare off into space.

“Whatcha doing?” I’d ask. “Nothing,” he’d answer.

“Whatcha thinking about?” “Nothing.”

“You’re not thinking about anything?” I’d ask in disbelief. “Nope,” he’d answer from deep inside the echo chamber I wasn’t allowed to enter.

I think it was a bomb shelter of sorts. Or a storm cellar. Some isolated place to escape where no one could follow and the noisy world could be shut out. That’s what these moments of nothing feel like right now.  While I keep an eye on the second hand’s motion, fierce winds swirl above me, bearing down like a falling barometer until the pressure sends me spiraling into waves of grief. Again. There is no escaping this storm. It never moves on. It just withdraws for a while, gathers momentum, and nails me once more.

They tell me the intensity of the grief cyclone will lessen, but the wailing in my soul is so loud I can’t imagine that ever being true. “It hurts so much because you loved so much,” I am reminded. This is the high cost of love. This half existence with its unanswered questions and unfinished business, this is what alone looks like.  There is no big picture anymore. There is no “taking it day by day.” There is no “fine” to the question, “How are you?”

There are only integers of nothing, bookended by the ongoing agony of missing him. Emptied of tears, for a short while my heart welcomes the respite here—the in-between where I brace again for the onslaught of perpetual grief.

As if watching the hands on a clock, I catch my breath and wait. It’s intermission.

Day after day, fragments of time.

With thanks to Peri Scope for the use of the brilliant photo seen above. The original can be viewed at the following link: Time | Peri Scope | Flickr

Still Standing

That was me. The one who had a fever, too. Sitting on the couch, unable to eat for days. Knowing I was sick and thinking about him. Would he get a meal for himself? I really should get up. Take out the trash or get dressed or unpack another box or go back to bed. The “shoulds” swirling around my brain like the fog I was living in. Finally, when I couldn’t find the strength to walk across the room anymore, leaning on the bathroom counter for support, I whispered, “Uncle.” 

Making it back to bed in the middle of that night, I told Rob, “We have to go to a doctor tomorrow.” “We do?” he replied from deep inside his own fog. “Yes, Baby,” I told him in weariness, “it’s time.”

It was past time. The first doctor sent us home and added to the lost time. When the ambulances came the next day, we were out of time. And now time is all I have left of Rob and our life. Time to think and blame myself for not acting sooner. I have faced my own condemnation and wondered how I will survive this. For seven months, I’ve relived it all again and again, and this morning as I woke up in neck pain, surrendering to insistent daylight and a rainy morning, I got out of bed and watched my perspective unexpectedly shift.

There is no blame.

For the first time, it dawned on me. Rob didn’t tell me to go see a doctor about my fever. Nor did he look someone up to treat his own symptoms. We just didn’t know. We were living in a fog.

I took off my wedding ring the day he died and replaced it with his. It made me feel close to him as I remembered the way it looked on his finger. I didn’t feel married anymore. I felt lost. Stunned. Caught up in some kind of tornado that wouldn’t let me go, twisted in guilt over a loss I couldn’t stop but thought I should have. This morning, after all I’ve had to live in the aftershocks of his death, I set his ring on my shelf and replaced it with the one he gave to me. And I stood up straight.

Listen to me, baby girl, I told myself this morning. You don’t have to be strong.

You don’t have to be brave. Or courageous.

You can be weak. Broken. Hurting.

You can sit in the confusion for as long as it takes.

Grieve for as long as you live.

Miss him and his beautiful eyes for the rest of your life.

You don’t have to explain anything to anyone. Their approval is a luxury you can live without.

You know your heart. You know what happened. You know his heart. “We don’t owe anyone any explanations,” he always said. “This is our life.”

He’s still yours. Your one and only. You’re still his. His one and only.

This story belongs only to you. No one else has the right to edit it. Not unless they want to switch places with you.

You’ve walked through the fire. Lived through the pain. You wear the scars. Stood at his grave, winced as they rang the bell, and listened as the last call for Chief Robert McLeod echoed, unanswered, across the cemetery.

You left half your heart lying at the base of the headstone bearing his name. And yours.

You have faced your worst fear and you are still standing. Leaning, sometimes, but still standing. No one else could have handled this as you have. No one else knows what it feels like to have been loved by Rob and then to lose him.

For all you have walked through and suffered and faced in this, the biggest tragedy of your life, stand tall, knowing he’s proud of you.

Be proud of yourself. You were the wife and lover and best friend he adored. And he still does.

Alone Through A Door

 For the last thirty days, I've followed prompts offered by Megan Devine's "Write Your Grief" course. Megan, whose husband drowned in a river accident, has written the best book I've read on how to live with grief, "It's Okay That You're Not Okay." This post asks, "What is the story of the story you're in?"

The story I’m in is the one they don’t know. The heaviness in my shoulders as I walk alone through a door he used to hold open for me. The way my smile has disappeared behind lips I bite so they won’t quiver. The eyes he used to say are so sparkly still are, but now it’s my frequent tears that catch the light. 

People know there’s a story here, but they’re too polite—or afraid—to ask. “Ask!” I want to yell at them, “but don’t ask!” I also think. Such is the conflict of grief.

Because if I say the words that explain what’s going on behind all this suspicious body language, I’ll break down. I won’t be able to finish talking. There's new fear here. They might try to twist my words. Delete paragraphs and insert their own. “Your version isn’t valid,” I expect them to say. “You’re not telling it right. Or living it right. We are disillusioned by your details and probably won’t buy any of it when it’s finished. If we were living out your story, we’d tell it much differently. Clearly, you are unqualified and have misunderstood the characters as well as the plot.”

I suppose. Is it possible they don’t realize this is my reality? Do they get it—Rob was here, just last Christmas, decorating the tree alone while I unpacked boxes because he loved Christmas and I love order. And this year, this year he won’t be here to hang ornaments because HE DIED. Do they recognize that I am living in the fallout of a thousand shattered dreams, haunted by a million regrets, trying to find my footing in a foggy landscape?

No. No one knows what to say when you tell them your husband died and you must go on living even though all the rules have changed and no one gave you the rule book and even if they’ve experienced the same thing they didn’t live it out the same way and no one, no matter how much they loved Rob, too, knows How.This.Feels.To.Lose.Him. Not the way I do.

This is the loneliest story I have ever lived.

So, I write. I write about it, searching for a way back to the surface of this dark, cold sea into which I’ve fallen. I journal the hard, raw feelings. The painful, confusing thoughts. The gripping agony that steals my breath and keeps me up too late at night and ruins my makeup so I wonder why I bother with it every morning. I write about the ignorant things some people say when I do describe my reality and how I chastise myself afterwards for trusting them with the truth.

It’s a complicated mess in this world I must call my life, more a jigsaw puzzle most of the time than a story. There’s a story there, for sure. Somewhere. Maybe, if I keep clicking these keys and searching for words and imagining analogies, someday, somehow, even I will begin to see the story line and find hope in the way it comes together.

But, to tell you the truth, I’d hand it all over in a heartbeat to one of those qualified professionals in exchange for whatever narrative they’ve created for themselves. If I could. I just don’t think they’d go for it.

Critics are a dime a dozen. Storytellers must learn the hard way.

With thanks to Natalia Medd for allowing the use of the creative photo seen here. The original can be viewed by following this link: It's Time | Natalia Medd | Flickr

 

 

Going Bananas

 

When I remember Rob, I remember bananas. 

I wouldn’t have to "remember" them if I liked them because they’d still be right here in front of me. But I can't stand bananas, not unless they’re all mashed up and formed into a loaf of bread. They were Rob’s favorite food. He loved bananas, and I made sure he didn’t run out of the curvy, yellow fruit. He ate them first thing in the morning, grabbed them for snacks, and loved them on peanut butter sandwiches. His potassium level must have been sky high. He was so healthy in so many ways. If only bananas had superpowers. He'd still be here.

After I lost him, the first hurdle I had to face in finding my life again was waiting for me inside the grocery store. I didn’t know what I was in for. I was sick for so long, too, with the virus and its aftermath, that when I finally had the strength to get in my truck and go for a drive, I went to the store. To find independence. To reclaim some small part of my old life. To pick up some food.

But the produce aisle was right inside those heavy, automatic doors. I walked right up to the display where spotless, yellow bananas were piled as high as I’d ever seen them, and suddenly I was in tears, standing in the middle of Basha’s, fully realizing the way my life had disappeared. There they perched, acting innocent, like it wasn’t their fault I’d nearly grabbed a bunch of them to take home to Rob.

I’ll never buy bananas again because Rob will never be here again to eat them.

It was a replay by the coffee aisle. Passing the cereal aisle. In the cold beer section and the wine displays. Suddenly, I was trapped inside a mine field of sorrow as everything I ever bought for Rob to enjoy blocked my way of escape. Everywhere, on every aisle, were all the things I’ll never buy again because he’s not here to look pleased and hug me for bringing home those little things that told him he was always on my mind. All the painful reminders that those days are over—they're on sale everywhere at Basha's. Especially bright yellow bananas.

Why are those things even allowed out in public?

I didn’t know a trip to the grocery store could be so traumatic, but when half your heart goes suddenly missing, the most unexpected things catch you off-guard. Still, I couldn't avoid this forever. After all, a girl has to eat. I had two choices: spend every penny of our retirement money on takeout and Door Dash, or conquer the bananas.

I haven't given up eating. Or shopping. I forced myself to keep going back until it got easier. Until I made it through without blowing my nose on aisle two and three and five and seven and eight and fourteen and nineteen and twenty-three. I’m pretty good at it now. Shopping for one. Averting my eyes when I pass yellow fruit. Giving a cold shoulder to the coffee displays. Staying away from the wine bottles he so loved to browse. I’m boycotting all of them. I wouldn't give them the time of day even if they bribed me with chocolate. I have one test now before something lands in my shopping cart—if it makes me cry, I walk on by. Onions aren't the only thing at Basha's with a bad reputation.

There is one exception to the ‘cry test.’ The Kleenex aisle. I never skip that one when I go shopping. Actually, I’m thinking of taking out stock in the company. I deserve some kind of reimbursement for the way I’ve kept them in business lately. And because bananas are everywhere, just waiting to trip me up, I’m counting on Kleenex to have my back.

Bananas. Those slippery little devils with their evil, upturned grins. I've never liked bananas, but I'm wise to them now.

I can run, but they won't hide.

With thanks to Peter Tully for his imaginative photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: Bananas | Bananas and a water splash, so starts my journey o… | Flickr

One Bite At A Time

 

I select the silver package with its navy-blue emblem from a jar filled with thirty others just like this one. Unwrapping it carefully, I bite into the chocolate and the fresh taste of peppermint transports me back in time. Who knew candy had such power? Maybe if I quickly ate the whole bag, I could undo what happened six months ago.

He used to bring me York Peppermint Patties.

I’d find them in the refrigerator waiting for me and knew they were another love note from him. Now I buy them for myself, crying as I eat them. Maybe I should switch to his favorite candy—what was that again? God, I can’t remember what Rob bought from the candy aisle for himself.

This is the fear of grief. That I’ll forget. And if I forget, he’ll disappear. I’m already in charge of his memories, and that’s a big mistake. He was the one with the filing cabinet memory, not me. He knew the number name of every road we ever traveled on. Excuse me while I yawn again. Honestly. If you’re going to give a road a name, make it interesting. Haven’t you ever read Anne of Green Gables?

I’d ask him as we charted a course for our next adventure, “Have we ever been on that road before/in that town before/at that restaurant in that town off that road before?”

“Sure,” he’d say. “Remember? We passed that little gas station on the east side with the bright blue walls and the busted-up parking lot?”

Right. Just like every other little gas station in every other little po-dunk town we ever drove through. I’d swear he was making things up and even say that out loud—right up until the moment when we drove down that numbered highway and passed that ramshackle gas station he remembered as clearly as his own name.

His own name. Robert L. McLeod III. I don’t want it to be forgotten. Not ever. I tried to get the bank to say I could sign the checks on the account that only belongs to me now as “Mrs. Robert L. McLeod,” to keep his name alive. To keep my connection with him alive. They wouldn’t let me. Now I just have boring checks bearing only my name that flash in neon the admission, “Widow.”

That’s not a name I ever wanted for myself. I just wanted to be Rob’s wife.

The remembering of everything we spent forty-four years doing is hard right now. Often, I can’t recall much at all, which scares me to death. Not because I’m afraid I have some as-yet-undiagnosed brain disorder, but because I’m afraid the life that once was, which was my world, will disappear right along with Rob if I can’t let it come close to me. It’s the reason many of us in grief are so torn by it—the pain is impossibly hard but, as time softens it, we will lose more of the one who is already gone from our side. Picture yourself set adrift on a raft, floating farther and farther away from the one you love and the life you shared until it becomes a tiny speck in the distance. That’s the fear.

There’s a great deal about grief I didn’t understand until I found myself here wondering how anyone survives it. The most surprising thing so far, though, is how difficult it is to remember all that I’ve lost with Rob’s death. I can’t sit and bring up the happy memories very much. It’s too painful. This is my brain protecting me from the overwhelming truth that Rob is gone. I suppose that sounds crazy. After all, we just passed the six-month mark. By now, she should realize he’s not coming back, right?

It’s not that simple. I have to learn how to live in the void created by Rob’s absence. Without a home of my own yet. With everything we gathered over half a decade, whatever I kept once I sold our home in Heber, it’s all placed in storage. My life has completely changed. There are mini-losses everywhere, every day. The fact that he’ll never ride in the beautiful new Tahoe I just bought, and most of the time I’ll never ride in the passenger seat. Our dog will never again chase a ball thrown by his master’s amazing arm. We’ll never watch Rob blow out a birthday candle. We’ll never celebrate our golden anniversary together.

All the “nevers” make it difficult to retrieve the “remember when’s” that I alone am in charge of now. But I will. In time. However long I need, in that much time. It’s just another reminder of how little control we actually have in this life. I don’t even know when I’ll be able to laugh freely and remember easily all the beauty of the life I had as Mrs. Robert L. McLeod III.

Still, when I nibble that York Peppermint Patty, it takes me back. Maybe one small bite at a time, I’ll get there.

The Color of You

Orange.

It was never my favorite color. It was yours. You painted your high school bedroom a vibrant version of orange. The little sports car you drove your senior year matched your walls. No wonder fall was your favorite time of year, the way October always bowed in your honor with its piles of pumpkins and seasonal, falling leaves. And every night as brilliant, fiery clouds hide the yawn of a sleepy, setting sun, orange is the color that speaks, “I’ll see you later.”

How on earth did you wind up marrying a girl of blue?

I’m not sure blue and orange even go together. Orange and green are matches—I remind you again of those jack-o-lanterns with their green, garden stems. Yellow and orange are kissin’ cousins, as sunflowers loudly proclaim. Even red and orange enjoy each other’s company, each nodding to the other in feigned humility. “You first.” “No, please, after you.” “Really, I insist.”

Hot hues demand attention. So unlike you. So, tell me again, why was orange always your favorite? And how did you wind up with a blue for your wife?

Was it the love you had for your Florida Gators? Is that the magic combination that gave you permission to love me? They splash orange and blue everywhere they go, who knows why. Real gators are a boring green, and you were never once boring.

I’ve been coloring since you’ve been away. Remember how you always loved coloring and how I never did? I found out it helps my mind relax and let the truth of your departure slowly sink in. Now I’m addicted to the pastime. I’ll bet you thought I’d fill up pages with shades of blue, didn’t you? Sky and turquoise and powder and slate, all the blues a tranquility obsessed girl like me could desire.

Wrong. Well, maybe just a little bit of those. Mostly, though, I fill up the swirly pages of my adult coloring book with bright orange petals, bold red blooms, and happy splashes of yellow. Because I have plenty of blue in my life now, Baby, now that you’re gone.

What I don’t have enough of, is you. 

Dog Is My Co-Pilot

“I’m exhausted, buddy,” I said, as I walked into my room this morning and plopped into a chair. “It takes forever for me to get ready.” Brody looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. I tried again. “It’s hard to be a people,” I told him. “You’re lucky you’re a dog.”

His head tilted in curiosity, he folded his doe brown ears into perky triangles while his dark, obsidian eyes watched me expectantly from the soft cushion where he was lounging. Who knows why. It’s not like I said any of the forbidden words. Ride. Treat. Wanna Go? I know better than that—I spell those out whenever he’s around. I guess he thought if I had something important to say to him, it must mean food or fun was in the forecast.

This is my life. Reduced to conversations with my giant white dog. Not unlike his dad—who’s away on spiritual business—Brody is a man of few words. None, actually. Like I said, a lot like Rob. Still, it’s useful having him around. I entertain myself at his expense, exercising sarcasm, asking him pointless questions, scolding him for chasing cats and skunks.

Yesterday he was in lockdown for the entire day because of that one. Washing my face in the bathroom the night before last, I heard voices in the hall and stuck my head out to investigate.

“Do you smell a skunk?” Katy asked as Dan headed into the laundry room. I did. Weird, since skunks usually wander around outside. This one must have gotten into some serious garlic because his fragrance was wafting through solid walls.

My face went pale. Well, it’s always pale, but I assumed my freckles disappeared into my natural paleness as a terrifying thought popped into my brain. “Brody’s outside,” I told them.

It took all of five seconds to realize he’d introduced himself to something with a bad attitude and stinky breath once we found him. He spent the night locked in the laundry room, suffered the indignity of a serious bath the next morning (thank you, Katy—you’re my hero) along with his pseudo-sibling, Rocky, and dried in isolation for the next twenty hours until he was deemed suitable for polite company.

Maybe that’s why he looked at me like that when I complained about washing my hair, putting on makeup, and gathering all my stuff to go run errands. I don’t know nuthin’ about a dog’s life.

Well, maybe there’s one thing I know—this guy loves to go for a ride. Just open a car door in his general vicinity, and he’s right there in the pilot seat, ready for take-off. Last summer when Rob and I were renting a cabin in Greer, friends from the Valley came up for a few days to hang out. When they got ready to leave, they discovered an extra passenger in their sedan. With the doors left open to load their luggage, Brody escaped down the cabin steps and leaped inside—seventy pounds of fluffy, white energy filled the entire front seat. They coaxed him out of the car, and he ran around to the passenger door, jumped back in, and took his place again behind the wheel.

He’s not a backseat driver. He’s an opportunist.

When we went dog hunting at the pound four years ago, though, one of the things I hoped for was a companion who enjoyed riding in the car the way our first pup, Harmony, did. Our second dog, Sydney, didn’t especially like the open road. Suffering from high blood pressure and anxiety, she practically broke out in hives any time a car even showed up in the driveway. Taking her to required appointments like the vet or the groomer sent her into a tizzy, drooling all over the seat and staring nervously out the windows. That’s how some people act when they ride with me, too, come to think of it. In her case, though, she did that no matter who sat behind the wheel of the car.

So, we lucked out when we chose Brody. It was a gamble whether he’d turn out like Harmony or Sydney. It’s not like you can interview a dog about his likes and dislikes and peculiar habits when you decide to adopt him, you know.

“So, White Dog, do you enjoy car rides? Long walks on the beach? Pina coladas and gettin’ caught in the rain?” He’s so compliant he barked ‘yes’ to every question, especially the one about getting caught in the rain. How do you trust a dog who can’t say no?

He misses Rob, though. I can tell. We both do. Rob played outside with him every day, throwing a ball with that great arm of his. Taking him on long bike rides. Teaching Brody to catch lizards. You should have seen that one. Hunkered down beside the dog, with his hands on each side of his head, Rob directed Brody’s gaze to our back wall where the lizards liked to sunbathe. Once they had radar lock, Brody went into stealth mode, tiptoeing like a cat as he stalked the wild, rabid lizard and then launched himself at the trespasser. He launched himself so well, one afternoon, he smacked his nose right into the wall. After that, he was a lot more . . . prudent.

There are plenty of things for Brody to chase here where we live at the Brady Funny Farm now, or as I like to call it, the Brady Rehabilitative Ranch. So, I don’t need to point out anything to my crazy mutt except that skunks are a stupid thing to stalk. And I have a terrible throwing arm, so my poor dog has no tennis balls to chase after, either.

What I do have, though, is a truck. And the love of long drives. And that secret, dangerous question, “Wanna go for a ride?” He always knows when I’m about to ask, taking his best sitting position, tail wagging behind him like it’s sweeping the ground for landmines. As soon as he hears those magic words, he leaps off the ground like Tigger—no kidding—straight up onto the backseat of my Tahoe, settles himself in on the floorboard, launches his shoulders and front paws up on the console, and the next thing you know, two blonde heads are side by side in the front seat, charting another course across the desert.

We escaped together again tonight after dinner. A few miles down the road, we pulled into a Starbucks drive-thru and he slid off the console, climbed up on the backseat, and pressed his nose against the side window until I rolled it down. He knew what was coming. A Puppaccino—Starbucks’ version of a whipped cream-filled paper cup just for canine passengers.

Don’t judge me.

I held it for him while he licked it clean and we were back on the road again, heading nowhere in particular for a while. Mostly because I get lost in the dark and have to turn around a lot, but that’s not really important. Eventually, we decided we’d had enough fun and it was time to go home. There’s a lot of road construction near our street, so I turned a mile early hoping to avoid it. But I forgot that Ocotillo Road doesn’t go through to the east from Val Vista until it was too late. Making a u-turn, I glared at my companion who clearly didn’t understand how he’d let me down.

“Why’d you let me turn that way, Brody? Geez, you’re the worst navigator ever.” He responded the way he always does and licked my face.

Well, I thought, when you put it that way, I guess it’s not the end of the world. I spun around in the world’s best turning radius truck, and we headed for all the flashing beacons in the narrowed two-mile stretch of Chandler Heights Road that led back to the farm.

We’ll probably run away from home again tomorrow night or the next. I know Brody will never turn me down when I ask nicely.

All I have to worry about is whether he plans to drive and make me the navigator. No matter what he thinks, he's only licensed to be a dog. And besides, he's no good at making u-turns.

If he was, he'd have never been caught by that skunk.

Unwelcome Mat

I heard God call me to sit with Him today. I knew I needed it. My counselor reminds me frequently to go there when I’m weary and need renewal. It’s so hard for me to do, though. Whether it’s my nervous system that’s still so out of whack after all the trauma and grieving, or if I’m upset with Him and can’t listen. Maybe the reason it’s so hard to do is because I’m afraid I’ll be in trouble with Him. But today, I did. Eula, Daughter of the King. I sat with Him and I told Him all my hesitations.

When I am still, all the confusion and pain runs through my mind. While I wait to hear from God, I fear I’ll be clobbered by righteous correction for not being a perfect person. It’s a long way from what I know to be true of my identity in Christ, but everything in my life is topsy turvy right now, and I don’t know much of anything for sure anymore, now that I’ve lost Rob, my whole world.

So, I sat in my chair. Forced myself to stay there. Crying. Telling Him all of this and more. When I ran out of steam, I sensed God tell me, “I see you. I hear you. I’m holding you. I’m carrying you.” Soon, there was an image in my mind of a bird with a broken wing. Unable to fly on its own. Carried gently by someone stronger. Always with the birds. That’s what I gravitate to, though I’ve never known why. So does Katy right now. The hawks. And now feathers. Some say they’re angels’ feathers, reminders that Rob is still with us. Near. Watching. Praying. Helping somehow. It’s not very Baptist, but it seems to be true.

The things I’m learning.

I began to journal. “I am wracked with guilt,” I wrote. Though I sat at his hospital bedside for fourteen hours, ten of them after he was in a morphine-induced coma, I wasn’t there when Rob took his last breath. Experiencing low oxygen and fatigue, four weeks out from my own hospitalization with covid, the combination forced me back to Katy’s mountain cabin. I never saw Rob again. He died with Katy and his sister at his side. When he was gone, Katy made the call to me.

What kind of rotten wife am I that I didn’t put my needs aside to sit with him right up to his very last breath?

“I’m listening,” God said again. No condemnation. No disappointment. No finger pointing. Just acceptance and listening. Nobody knows how to do that like He does. As much as I want Him to say something, it’s a relief to just talk while He listens. Listening like that is a holy skill. Go figure.

I began to wonder. Would it have mattered to Rob in the condition he was in—wanting to go Home, ready to be with Jesus, anxious to be released, already in His Savior’s arms as Katy and I realized when we walked into his room and saw him—would it have mattered to him in his last, sleeping hours, whether I was there beside him or at the cabin avoiding being hospitalized again myself? Heavily sedated, did he need me there at the moment he took his last breath and was finally free of the suffering, released to his dad and brothers and Jesus?

I don’t know.

I talked to Katy about it later and she reminded me that we made the decision for me to leave together, and it was the right one. She also reminded me that Rob was the most pragmatic man we know, and he would have expected me (and her) to do the practical thing when a decision had to be made. When it was made clear that he wanted to go Home, my children and I supported that decision together. When it was obvious that my body needed rest, we made that decision together, too. And when the hospital refused to let more than two family members in his room, we made the decision that Rob’s sister would take my place and wait with Katy (and Lee by phone) until I returned. Rob went Home before I got to return.

I understand now that I didn’t leave because I’m a bad wife. Or because I was afraid. Of course, I was afraid. But I expected to be with him to the end, knowing it would happen once the ventilator was removed. Well into the night, we all waited with him in person and by phone, weeping, praying, and listening to him breathe in peace. I stayed as long as my body could that night, the night he was dying, hours after we gave him what we didn’t want to give him.

We took abuse from the hospital staff who judged our intentions. I answered horrible questions about a funeral home, asked while Rob was still conscious. I signed paperwork with hospice at the foot of his bed because we weren’t allowed to come back to his room if we ever left it. I listened to that terrible chaplain yell at my husband in what she called “prayer.”

There was all the loneliness I felt in isolation in my own hospital room weeks before, separated from him for nine days, and the five weeks afterwards when we held our breaths praying and hoping and begging for him to be healed only to see hope blow up in our faces. The heartache we felt knowing Rob was fighting for his life alone in Show Low. The terror I often experienced, worrying about losing him. The forced separation by the medical industry and government control, the heart stopping updates we received twice a day from Rob’s sister, his advocate, and my own recovery without him beside me. My unacknowledged text messages to him, and his silence because he couldn’t communicate anymore.

Horrible as that whole experience was, none of it was the hardest thing I’ve done during this whole nightmare.

This is.

Mourning him.

Missing him.

Living without him.

All of this that I’m doing every day.

After he died, after he was released from his suffering, ours—and mine—began. The sorrow, confusion, wracking grief, loss, loneliness, isolation. All the paperwork I had to handle for months afterwards while my heart was shattered and my brain was scrambled. The memorial video we worked on for weeks right after we lost him. Packing up our cabin and selling it with our furniture. Bringing everything else down here and putting what was left of our life together in storage. Selling his truck. Trading in the Tahoe we drove back and forth across America together for three hundred thousand miles, and replacing it on my own. The drive I made to and from Florida for his memorial. And the counseling sessions that help me cope with it all.

This is what I’ve done alone, without Rob here beside me. Because he needed to go, he had to go, and I loved him enough to say goodbye.

I sat there in my chair, with God as my witness, and released that tormenting guilt. The five month struggle I've had, so common to those left behind, I’ve decided to leave behind. The truth of how God has carried me through all of this finally connected my mind to my soul. And I knew Rob would be proud that I finally understood it all.

No one, including me, has the right to judge me. Not the old friend who spoke unkindly at Rob’s memorial. Not the staff at that hospital where he died. Not even those who mean well but don’t understand. No one has walked where I’m walking, day after day after grief-filled day. This journey is unique to every person. I’ve realized I have to do this my way.

I have paid an enormous price for loving the way I love Rob. I always will. Because he’ll always be a part of me, even though we’re apart for now.

But today I am giving the left foot of Baptist fellowship to that deceiver, Guilt.

You’re not welcome here anymore. 

My thanks to Sharyn Morrow for the perfect photo seen above. The original can be viewed at this link:
shoegazing, with snow | sharyn morrow | Flickr