It’s been two years since the unthinkable happened and my husband died. Part of we wants to forget that the unthinkable ever happened and get on with being a single person and the other part of me can’t forget and sometimes almost drowns.
I barely remember the first anniversary. I was consumed with caring for our son (who fasted for the 9 days his Dad was in a coma to honor his death) and supporting him through his senior year with the biggest band competition of the year, his Eagle project, and 3 AP tests — all falling on the weekend of his Dad’s death anniversary. No wonder I barely remember it.
So, with my son away in college and the house empty, this anniversary was a double whammy: no son, no husband. Thank God I painted the living room red. I desperately needed the energy. I feel like a helium balloon on its last legs. The breath is sucked out of me. I’ve run the race, I’ve passed the test, I’ve done for others, still pledged to the church, gotten healthier, exercised daily, lost 25 pounds (most of it in my tits), and tried to keep winning against death.
But death steals from you in ways that are hard to explain until it’s happened to you. On the outside, you look the same. You may even look better. (People tell me I look great, i.e., wow, you’re not dead!) But on the inside, your valves are having a hard time staying open. Your shoulder-blades ache because they hold the cave of your heart and it’s dark in that cave. Your heart is sore. Your heart is like a busted up knee from childhood, it has to shed layer after layer of scabs until finally, you can barely see the scar. Memories come in waves and crash against your mind, like a storm-surge dragging sand from the shore. You never know when they’re coming and there’s less of you left when they leave.
Memories form us, identify us, and ground us in life. They are us. And when the people in your memories are gone there is an unspeakable loneliness that sits down at the table with you. It becomes a strange companion. A companion you never invited in. You try to chase it away with dinners out with friends or a drink at the local brewpub or a movie or a red living room. You ask it to leave and it snuggles with you under the covers. You run away from it, it shows up on the next corner. You scream at it…it echoes back but says nothing.
I made a big fire when I came home alone. Bought nine candles for the nine days and lit them all and sat with them in the darkness. I talked with him there about things we’d shared. About the day we walked hand-in-hand in the park at the end of autumn and my belly was big with our baby and I made fun of a bumblebee that couldn’t get off the ground and he said, “Baby, you’re a bumble-bee, too!” We doubled over in laughter about that. It was true. I reminded him how people thought we were illicit lovers because we were in our thirties spooning at a restaurant. We used to laugh when people would shoot us dirty looks and then flash our wedding rings at them. I talked about knowing our magazine had made it when the South’s Grand Hotel owed us money and we ate the lavish Sunday buffets every week and had a personal trainer at their health club and gave Peabody Hotel gift certificates to all our employees for Christmas that year. And then I extinguished the candles and sat in the darkness with the loneliness because that’s what is real.
“They” say that eventually time erodes the loneliness. I know being proactive has helped. Of course “helped” is not the same as “fixed.” Having been plunged to the bottom of the pool and held under water now three times (Mom, Dad, Husband) I’ve gotten pretty good at taking a deep breath before I get pulled back under. I’m better at struggling to the surface to breathe, too. And, I must say, it’s getting harder to hold me down there. I am slippery against the grip of the dark water now so maybe it is getting better.
And, I was there to help our son break his nine-day fast again this year. On the anniversary of his Dad’s release from the body that no longer served him, he ate a dozen different donuts and a steak at the Texas Road House, my pleas for soup were brushed aside. This college man knows what’s best for him. His Dad lives on – he was stubborn about stuff, too. We’re grown-ups together now. Well, almost. When we got back to the dorm he leaned in for a hug against my breast and as his body sank into his place of comfort he dropped a tear. I caught it from his cheek as he pulled himself away. As he walked off, back into his new life, I laid it against my heart and held its tenderness there. The salty water speaks to that which is hard to say.
We are fragile creatures, we human “beings.” Sometimes true courage lies in acknowledging that. Then and only then can we gather what strength we have and struggle back up to the surface to breathe. Some days breathing is all we can do. And I’ve decided that on those days, it’s enough.
