The Voice of the Heart

I thought I needed a good night’s sleep. Maybe a long drive through the desert at sunset. A cold, chocolate Breeze from Dairy Queen. A solid cry from a bottomless well. A moment with God. A talk with a friend. A comedy clip to make me laugh. A hug from a grandbaby. Some days one or all of those things help. Yesterday wasn’t one of them.

But I never. Never. Ever put on music to ease my pain. It doesn’t work for me. So why am I tormenting myself watching American Idol? For three years I turned away from this favorite show of ours. In 2020 when they made people perform in isolation on their own back patios. In 2021 when I recovered from covid and watched my husband die. In 2022 as I packed up my meager belongings in the garage apartment I’d called home since Rob’s death and prepared to move into a home of my own. In each of those years it was easy to say no to watching the dreams of young people come true. There were more important things on my mind.

Like surviving.

2023. There’s a silent rhythm now in my life. The sound of my own voice is all the company I have most days. It’s not enough. I long for him. I ache for him. My soulmate. My darling. My best friend. My love. Gone in a heartbeat, Solomon’s ageless words come to mind. Life is a vapor, vanishing quickly, leaving nothing behind. Except Rob left everything behind, including me.

Maybe there should be college courses on sorrow. Something to give people like me at least an outline of what grief looks like. Because when you fall into this deep, dark place, devoid of light and without even a map, everything is upside down. The echo of my weeping bouncing off the walls of this captivity make it that much harder to get my bearings.

How long, Lord? How long? Will it take forty-six years of sorrow, equal to the time we had one another, before I can breathe again? This roller coaster ride traveling between relief and desperation is confusing. Just when I think I’m on level ground again, it gives way and I’m catapulted into a freefall once more. My expectations do a nosedive right along with my heart in those moments. “It’s been more than two years,” I hear myself say. “Snap out of it. Trust in Jesus. Look on the bright side. Rob’s really happy where he is. You know he’d never want to come back even if he could.”

Sometimes I hate the sound of my own voice.

So, last night I turned on the TV so I could listen to someone else for a while, and landed on American Idol. I’m rooting for every single musician on the show. Their stories of heartache, survival, broken dreams, terrible experiences, all of it winds up in their music, drawing me in, making me weep, drawing you in, reminding us we’re not alone.

Music is the voice of the heart.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that music makes me cry. I’m crying anyway, draining off every new day’s pain, looking for some sunshine after the dark clouds. What I find strange is that I can read song lyrics without crumbling. The words are always the most important thing to me, but they rarely affect me like music does. So, when a friend with good intentions sends me a YouTube link to a song that makes them think of me, instead of listening to it I look up the lyrics. Give me the black and white text. I can handle that. But let an orchestra touch the shattered places of my heart? I won’t make it through to the first chorus.

The world is divided by cultures, religion, appearance, politics, and language, among many other things. But when it comes to music, there are no borders. A pianist from Japan can read the same sheet music as a musician in Milwaukee, both will perform it as written, and never need an interpreter. They say it’s the universal language. That it’s more powerful than words.

I’ve tried to write songs. It’s really hard to condense my thoughts into three verses, one bridge, and a chorus. It takes poetic license and often leaves the curious listener wondering why clouds’ illusions mean you really don’t know clouds at all. It’s because you need more words.

Words, as painful as they are to read sometimes, feel safer to me than music. It’s the personal stories behind the songs the Idol contestants sing that capture my attention. I’m just putting up with the orchestra. Maybe music makes me cry because it doesn’t speak clearly enough. It makes me wonder what the composer meant. It makes me work too hard to find hope.

I still love music even if I rarely listen to it anymore. I love drives at sunset and long talks with friends, hugs from grandbabies and Dairy Queen ice cream. But when my heart is scrambled with pain and longing, upside down in another whirlwind of sorrow and I’m lost in the darkness, I gather up these shards of glass and piece the fragments together. Making sense of my pain is one way back to solid ground. For me, words are everything. The mosaic reveals the story.

Thank you for your willingness to listen to my story.

With gratitude to Leeds Harold for permission to share the beautiful mosaic seen above. The original photo can be viewed by following this link::

DSC00416 | A mosaic created from broken pottery and glass. T… | Flickr

Addictions

I’ve taken up a new hobby. Well, to be honest, it’s an old one with a new twist. I was dinging around on You Tube since there’s never anything on TV, and with a mouth full of chocolate chips and half a cookie still waiting in the queue, it occurred to me that if I kept my hands busy doing something besides snacking, I’d feel less guilty about my sugar addiction. 

Deep in thought and polishing off those cookie crumbs, I pondered this idea. Mmmm . . . I mean, hmmmmm. There are so many hobbies I’ve taken up over the years. Sewing clothes for my troll dolls in the 60’s. Creating clothes for myself in the 70’s. Stitching outfits for my babies in the 80’s. In the 90’s we wove rag baskets. Which led to lap quilting. Followed by stamping. Pie making. Pie selling. Pie eating. Coupon Sense. Fermented foods. And blogging.

With all these hobbies to manage, it’s amazing I ever had time to clean house or make dinner.

Alas, the golden age of nearly all these fads has passed. No one asks me to weave a shabby basket for them anymore. Stamping has gone the way of troll dolls. Frankly, I just got bored with most of these things. Sewing clothes is more expensive now than buying them already made. Everything changes. But eating chocolate chip cookies? That’s forever. 

And so are the pounds they accumulate.

I had to do something. Finding a fresh pastime seemed like a good idea. It turns out I’m not one of the fifty percent of grieving widows who gag at the thought of swallowing food when their hearts are broken. Lucky me. I blame that on all the cookies I was given as a child in exchange for my tears. Homemade chocolate chip cookies. I mean, come on. As in touch with my emotions as I am, I never even had a chance.

I wracked my brain, trying to get it off of chocolate. What about in-person classes for senior citizens? Now that the pandemic is more or less behind us, it’s considered safe to gather as human beings again. I didn’t know if I wanted to commit, though. What if there were no snacks? Or worse, only the healthy kind?

Enter You Tube. Such a lowly name for a resource that rivals all of the World Wide Web. Want to learn to bake a cake? How about repair stucco? Maybe you want to install a dishwasher? Or diagnose your own terminal illness? Well then, sit back, turn up the volume, and prepare to be enlightened. You can do all of that in your pajamas and no one will ever know the difference. You Tube is better than a dictionary and more current than the encyclopedia, which isn’t saying much. Every time I have a question about how to do anything, my kids remind me they discovered how to perform brain surgery while living off the grid, just by watching this channel.

Forget millennials and xennials. This is the You Tube Generation.

I put on my pajamas, grabbed my favorite cookies, powered up the television, and hit the search button. “K – N – I – T – T – I – N – G,”  I painstakingly spelled.  Baziiinng!  I knew it. You Tube even cares about Baby Boomers. And to prove it, here was the hobby first taught to me by own grandmother. I scrolled through all the options and settled on a beginner’s project I thought I could handle—blankets using only a knit and pearl stitch. Cuz that’s all I know how to do and it's all I want to do. I’m not trying to get fancy or make sweaters here. I’m trying to overcome my chocolate chip cookie addiction.

I found a blanket pattern I thought would make a cozy addition to my living room, studied the technique, and took notes. Then I drove to JoAnn Fabrics, bought a bunch of yarn and tools and, as soon as I got home, I started knitting one and pearling one and knitting one and pearling one. Instantly, I was addicted. And elated! I’d solved my snack problem and identified my purpose in life. As long as there is Christmas and people who don’t know how much they need my blankets, I will never overeat chocolate again. It was that easy.

You Tube is a genius.

Except. The girl on the tv wasn’t giving directions away for free. She was advertising for her Etsy business. If I wanted to find out how many rows of knitting make either a throw or a lap blanket, I would have to track down her Etsy account and pay for that information. Aren’t they pretty much the same thing though? You know, like, “Throw me a lap blanket.” I felt confident I could figure this out on my own. I graduated high school. It doesn’t require a college education to know when a blanket is big enough. I’d just cast on a few stitches and knit until I was done.

I found an exciting UFO documentary to binge watch, and in hardly any time at all I knit and pearled a blanket all over myself. It was awesome. I loved the texture of the yarn, the color I’d chosen, and the clickety-click of the needles.

Knitting was better than cookies.

It was relaxing. It was comforting. It was low calorie. I knitted and pearled and knitted and pearled until my shoulders ached and my hands cramped and the wooden needles caught fire. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I had to stop.  I ran out of yarn. Proud as punch with my finished project, I held it up as high as I could in my stocking feet and then took ten steps backward. It stretched out in front of me like a woolen river, covering the living room from side to side with every skein of Lion Brand Natural Heather I could find. I was as proud as a new mother could possibly be. It didn’t look much like what I’d seen on You Tube. It wasn’t exactly a lap blanket. And it was too heavy to throw anywhere. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of a creation like the one I brought into the world.

It appears I knitted myself a sleeping bag. If you fold it in half and put in a zipper on one side—yep. That there’s a sleeping bag. Hunh. Maybe I didn’t need to purchase quite that much yarn. Or watch that many episodes about aliens.

I think we’ve all learned a lesson here. A lesson about moderation. About trading one addiction for another. And about overconfidence. But the most important thing we’ve learned here today, something they won’t even tell you on the You Tube, is this. Sometimes the best things in life are not free.

I should have just paid that Etsy girl. It would have been a lot cheaper than buying all that yarn.

With thanks to Martin Cathrae for tempting me with the mouth watering image seen above. While I go bake up a batch for my next binge watching event, you can view the original photo by following this link: Saturday Night Cookies | Allie made cookies to aleviate her … | Flickr

If Only

I miss you. My head hurts today and you’re not here to rub my neck. For two years and one month today, you haven’t been here to rub my neck. It feels like forever since you’ve been in the same room with me, talked to me, lived life with me in the ignorance we used to enjoy. We didn’t know you’d be gone so soon. Too soon.

I cry a lot. I make sounds I never knew could come from a human being when sorrow smothers me. I cry so much it makes my eyebrows hurt. Who knew crying does that? Two years and one month. Eleven more months and I’ll hit three. Maybe then I can take a deep breath again. Maybe by then I’ll have found direction for this life I’ve been left with, the one without you in it. Maybe I’ll feel passion again, or a slice of happiness. Or hope. Maybe.

It isn’t fair, Rob. Can you read this from your side of the veil, the side I can’t see but I assume through which you can? You were strong. You cleared an entire cabin of furniture on your own, carried it down wooden steps and stacked it in the cabin’s garage while I was at Walmart picking up groceries. You took care of yourself. Seeing a doctor for annual checkups, keeping up with INR checks for the blood thinners. Your levels were right where they were supposed to be from the very beginning. You never wavered. You were optimistic and excited about retiring to our mountain home. You always beat the odds. Always won when things were stacked against you. We called you the luckiest man on earth.

And then we got sick. Both of us. The same day, the same symptoms, the same diagnosis, the same hospital. And that’s where everything changed. Now nothing is the same.

I miss you. I miss everything about you. I miss the way you teased me just so you could get a rise out of me. I miss your bare feet and seeing you in the orange Gators sweatshirt I keep in my dresser now. I miss the crooked index finger on your right hand that you injured as a two year old spinning the blades on a push mower. I miss your laughter. Your goofiness. Your stubbornness. Your kindness. Your tenderness.

I miss the way you looked at me. I miss the cards you loved to surprise me with. I miss the Peppermint Pattys in the refrigerator that you brought home when I wasn’t looking. I miss curling up in your arms and taking a nap while you chewed your fingernails and watched football. I miss our disagreements and misunderstandings and the way you tried to improve how I make meals. There’s no one here to tell me how to rearrange the dishwasher because “it’s easier.”

I miss wishing you’d go play golf so I could have a few hours to myself after you retired, knowing you’d be back for supper. You never come home for supper now. You never come home at all. I miss your snarky comments and the way we narrated mystery movies together and figured out in the first ten minutes who done it. I miss being bored together and talking you into going for a drive. I loved watching you drive.

I miss having you hold my hand, and guide me through a door with your hand at the small of my back. I miss driving through Starbucks and texting you to see if you want anything. I miss breathing the same air you breathe and reaching for your hand in the dark and knowing you’re there when I have a bad dream. I miss the smell of your coffee in the house but I won’t keep a coffee pot around here anymore because you’re not here to drink from it. I miss seeing your excitement about playing the tenor drum with the pipe band.

I miss watching you with our grandkids. Planting trees for them. Trimming trees with your daughter. Sharing a beer with your son and son-in-law. Teasing your daughter-in-law and watching her laugh. Reading to the grandbabies. Tucking them into bed after you sang their favorite, The Unicorn Song, to them.

I miss competing with you at cards and Rummikub and Scrabble. I miss trying to figure out if the current argument is in my limited four per cent of being right and if I should hold my ground or give in to your computerized memory. I miss my Florida boy. My Gator Eyes. My K.I.N.S.A. I miss the inside jokes and the life we built together and the movies we watched and enjoyed side by side and hearing you sing and whistle. I miss the good, the bad, and the ugly because we got through it together, you and me, the way we promised each other that we would.

I miss what it feels like to be married. To take a long term marriage for granted. To live every day convinced that death will never come to call, never threaten to destroy, never tear us apart. Ignorance is bliss. I miss bliss.

I used to be able to breathe because all the things I miss were once right where they belonged in my life. But when the shattering happens and what was whole becomes fragmented, now every time I take in a breath another jagged piece of what we used to be together stabs me. Do you know how hard it is to breathe with broken shards stabbing your heart?

I don’t know who I am anymore, Baby. The woman I was died the day you did. Grief changes a person. I’ll never again be who I was. I’ll always know how easy it is to lose your world with one heartbeat.

I keep hoping that if I keep writing that it will help my soul find rest. Find relief. Find peace. I don’t think that’s going to happen. It’s like turning on the faucet so the water will run out. It never does.

You used to write poems to me. Love letters in those unexpected cards. Post pictures of us every time an anniversary of any kind came up so your Facebook friends knew how much you love me. I would so much rather read your current words of love than my words of sorrow. If only the tears would run dry. If only the clock would go backwards. If only we could have saved you.

The saddest two words in the English language are those.

If only.

An Invisible Tide

There are days when I feel more like a widow than on other days. Strange to see that written here. Some words, once reserved for the misfortune of others while kept safely out of reach behind museum glass, reside in my life’s story now. And I hate it. Words like widow, died, when, and I can’t imagine. Those were the descriptors for other people’s pain. Other people’s tragedies. Other people’s sorrow. Now I know how it is. There are no other people. We’re all human and we’re all going to lose people we love. 

Love is a risk.

I regularly chat with another woman who, like me, is also a reluctant member of the Widows’ Club. We’re pen pals, separated by a distance of seven or ten states, depending on whether or not you take the scenic route, yet joined together by this simple phrase we use often while writing to one another, “I know that you know.” Five simple little words that say it all. Your heart is shattered like mine, and the pieces reflect one another. We process our pain, refusing to offer advice, weeping in the reading, validating with our responses.

Sometimes when one or the other of us writes, the letter begins with, “Today was a grief day.” Five more little words that need no explanation because, “I know that you know.” Grief days roll in on an invisible tide, which is so unfair because you never see it coming. At least when you stand at the ocean’s edge, you can watch the waves gather and rise, backing up dramatically into the horizon beyond before they slam in fury onto the beach where, only moments before, you walked in peace. If you’re paying attention, you can get out of the way.

But you can’t get out of the way when the tide of sorrow rolls back in. There’s no escape. And there is no warning. It catches you up in its undertow, threatening to pull you out to sea which, on some days, would be a huge relief. No one could blame you for expiring in the depths of an angry ocean that refuses to let you go. But no, these sorrowful waves spit you out Jonah-style, choking and sobbing with nasty green stuff hanging in your hair, onto the salty shore of your own tears, exhausted and weary, but still . . . breathing.

The most you can expect from your life on a grief day is to keep breathing.

Those are the days when I feel the most like a widow. When the waves beat relentlessly against the shoreline of my battered heart and I wonder if I’m about to lose my mind right along with all the security and dreams that were stolen from me when I lost Rob two years ago. Just when I think I’ve turned a corner, there it is in the shadows, waiting for me again. Grief. It’s not a condition—it’s an emotion to be managed, like hormones and low blood sugar. Oh, people told me it would change, but I think that’s splitting hairs. It never goes away. Grief steps into the void as a companion you learn to live with—a really lousy substitute for Rob, if you ask me.

On the days when I’m swept out to sea, drowning in my own tears, I worry that I’m right back to square one. Back to the moment the doctor called and said Rob couldn’t fight anymore and I had to let him go. That day. That second. That nightmare. In those agonizing moments, which I’ll admit have spread themselves out since the early days when their assault on my soul felt like a Normandy invasion, I fear that I will never be happy again. Never know my purpose again. Never find passion again. I didn’t know until my life was shattered how much those things matter to me. How much we need them while we keep getting up and putting our feet on the floor every morning.

By now, I think I’ve heard and read in one way or another all the platitudes that try to offer hope and vision for my future. “People grieve differently.” “Everyone is different.” “It’s going to take time.” There is truth in all of them. We do grieve as individuals because no one else can feel firsthand what we each feel in our hearts. I know of people who fill up every waking moment so they won’t have to think about all they’ve lost. Distraction is the name of the game. But I wonder if there is healing in it, or simply a covering over that camouflages the wound beneath the surface. Sometimes you have to take a break from the sorrow, for your body’s sake if not for your heart’s. But a diet regular in diversion, I fear, can leave a person bound up, if you get my drift.

I’m not discounting the differences in personalities. I’m validating the necessity to feel the feels. My counselor told me the week after Rob died that the only way through grief is through it. There are no shortcuts, even though my worn-out heart really longs for a shortcut. Suffice it to say it wasn’t good news. But it was honest, and it gave me permission to be authentic and to let grief happen. If shortcuts lead to nowhere, I’d rather go through this thing I never wanted and make it through to the other side without wasting time or risking a heart abscess somewhere down the road.

I just didn’t realize what a long journey this would be. I’ve read that when you love deeply, you will also grieve deeply. But I'm telling the truth when I say that I would not wish this pain on my worst enemy. We want so much to be in control. All my insecure life, I’ve desperately grasped for the elusive safety of control, only to discover that it is an illusion. I’m not alone in this. We are all, at our core, control freaks. But life is a risk. And we cannot control all the risk factors inherent in living and loving. If I’d figured this out forty-five years ago, would it have made any difference? Who knows. I’ve always done a pretty good ostrich imitation, and it’s hard to see with your head stuck in the sand.

I see it now, though. I have no other option. That’s become my standard reply when people remind me that I’m strong. “What choice do I have?” I ask. Today I read of extreme losses suffered by another woman, and when she was asked how on earth she survived, her reply was, “I didn’t mean to. I just kept waking up every morning.” I wish I’d thought of that.

Some days I feel more like a widow than others. Other days, though I recognize that I am on my own now without Rob, the tide is out and I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. I can breathe without thinking about it. Maybe two years isn’t long enough to bring healing to a broken heart which was loved by a great man for forty-four years. Chonda Pierce, who lost her lifelong sweetheart in 2014, said it was nearly three years afterward before she felt like she could take a deep breath.

That seems about right to me from where I still stand most days, struggling for air like the widow I am. Feeling the waves crash as the earth beneath my feet washes away. Waiting for the tide to go back out and solid ground to reappear. Again.

Some days.

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

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