The drowning of a widowed heart

Christmastime is upon us and, while many shop and gather together in friendship, I stand alone. Partly because I have been left alone by those I care about as they spend time with their close(r) friends and family. Also partly because I choose to be alone. I carry a sorrow that I cannot (and do not wish) to share. Even in my sadness, I wish for others to experience the happiness I had.

This time last year, my spouse, James, was in and out of hospitals dealing with chemo, blood transfusions, seizures and medications that carried him away down a river more quickly than expected, more quickly than I could follow. By January, he was gone, swept around the bend, out of sight for now.

Here I languish. I bob along with a slower flow, occasionally struggling against the current, often just floating, occasionally face up, often face down. Dead man’s float. I bide my time until it is my turn to be swept around the bend. Like a discarded, plastic soda bottle – empty, with no means to steer my own course.

For me, the holidays were always a time of intense loneliness, even in the crowd of my big family with tons of aunts, uncles, cousins gathered in a small farmhouse heated by a wood stove and bodies. Music from accordion, fiddle, and harmonica would tumble out the windows opened to let in crisp, snow-scented air. A cacophony of voices from a myriad of conversations would fight for position – federal and local politics, health of a grand-uncle in Boston, what a wayward cousin has been up to lately, where to place the still-warm rabbit pie on an already groaning table. Words and noise piling up, up, up towards the smoke-hazed light on the ceiling. I should have been happy. Even as a small child, I knew that I was unusual in my seclusion in a crowd. It made me feel that much more alone. Every so often I would slip off to another room or out to a corner of the barn to release the tears. Then I would readjust my mask and return to the noisy fold. No one ever noticed.

Twelve years ago all that changed in an amazing way. I met James on the eve of Christmas Eve, or Tibb’s Eve as it may be called by some. December 23rd, a day that is forever etched in my heart. December 26th was our first date. By New Year’s Eve, we just knew – this was It. We had found each other at long last. I didn’t have another lonely Christmas again until this year. So much love, joy and laughter in the too few years we had together.

The sudden absence of that happiness now creating a sucking whirlpool. It’s like all the loneliness and sorrow that I used to carry at Christmas was just off to the side, building itself up, biding its time, waiting to pounce. It’s back eleven-fold.

There is a saying, “Laugh now, cry later.” I never knew what that meant until now. The yin-yang yo-yo of life has flung me off the other way. I’m underwater, trying to get my bearings, grabbing at rocks and branches, but nothing is solid, no thing to stop the swirling and spiralling. It sucks. It sucks. It sucks.

I won’t be by myself this holiday season. My family will see to that. Sighing, I cling to the flotsam of a dusty, aged crate and dig through the memories it contains.

Ah, my mask. Here it is. It still fits.

Undone by a breeze

I can sometimes go a few days to a week with smiles and a few responses of, “Oh, yes, I’m fine.” Then, unexpectedly, I can be undone by a breeze.

Tonight, as I was walking to my car after work, a gentle breeze caused me to slow my step. The breeze smelled of the sea, of hope and a promise. It was a quiet sigh against the back of my neck and raised small, damp hairs on this muggy, summer’s day.

It felt like you were touching my forearm like you often did at night before taking me in your embrace, my back against your chest. As you took me into the enveloping warmth and safety of your trust and love, I would close my eyes, complete and content. I would drift off to sleep as you whispered, “I’ll never leave you.” Your breath on my neck was a gentle exhale that smelled of mint, of hope and a promise.

Another breeze and flashes of every time I was in your arms – the night we met and danced, our first kiss, our wedding as we danced to Feels Like Home, our last (and last) anniversary spooning in your hospital bed. “I’ll never leave you.”

Tonight, I was undone by a breeze. It was all I could do to get to my car before the first tear fell.

The beauty of old things (or What the driftwood taught me)

I was walking along a rocky beach with a friend on her 49th birthday. We were enjoying a girls’ weekend at a cottage with BBQ, wine and hiking. We had celebrated my 49th the month before. As we picked our way over shifting stones, trying not to roll an ankle or stumble headlong into the line of driftwood at the high-tide mark, we discussed how we would be turning 50 the next year.

Fifty. That number, that age, is weighted with tears and laughter, music and silence, pauses and experiences. Some scars and wrinkles we bear with shame, some with pride.

As I stop to get my bearing, I balance on two semi-solid, salt-grey stones. I notice a long, slim piece of driftwood a little ahead of me and to my right. I step carefully, making my way over to pick it up. I examine it as I lean on it for balance. I am 5’8″ and it reaches my armpit. A slight notch at the top fits my hand comfortably.

It is warm from the mid-morning sun and beautifully marked as if some master craftsman had delicately and lovingly attended each part to make it so. I test its strength and it is sturdy and unbending, slightly bowed as if honouring the wind that once tickled its leaves. It is capable enough to bear my ample weight as I try to balance on the wobbly rocks. It’s solid enough to steady me even when my leg betrays me, the one that had been broken and fixed with a plate and screws 16 years before. It’s strong in spite of all that it must have been through on its journey to meet me on this beach on this day as I contemplate my own age and weathered frame.

The face of the wood is partly smoothed by sea, sand and stone, while artfully etched and aesthetically scraped in random spots. It was once young and supple supporting leaves, perhaps fruit, and woodland creatures. It gave and received life until, felled by an axe or storm, it landed in the sea and was tossed about on the waves. It had been bleached by burning salt and sun, ignored by the sea that beat it about. The sea’s strange creatures were oblivious to the existence of this forlorn stick. It wandered adrift and alone without the anchoring roots that once nourished and provided support. It had made its way up a rocky shore to be battered, reshaped and cast down. The cold, churning water left it there, foaming and roaming off to find another body to break, unaware of the mess it leaves in its wake. I don’t know how long the stick had remained here. I found it this day among the flotsam and jetsam. With the other driftwood and castoffs of humankind, it waited. As it wept the loss of its roots and leaves and woodland friends, it lingered.

We meet on that shore, the steadying driftwood and I. Subconsciously, I recognize a weary soul in need of purpose, lost and still adrift on solid land. The rest of the walk is stepped with more confidence. When my friend and I arrive back at the cottage and start packing the car for the trip home, I cannot leave this driftwood behind. I feel a need of it, even though my walk on the beach is done. So home it came with me, to stand in the corner of the room where I get ready for work each day.

Maybe it knew something I did not at the time in the way that loss and sorrow can attune one to the cosmic way of things. It may be, somehow, it was aware that in one month’s time my husband would start to get headaches, that the cancer he fought two years before had returned. Perhaps it knew that, even as I walked on that lovely beach, laughing with my friend, the metastatic melanoma was growing inside my love’s right frontal lobe.

That beautiful piece of driftwood had been one of the first things I saw as I prepared myself for each day of the next seven months until my husband was gone. He has been gone six months and it has stood silently in support as I continue to grieve.

I am weathering the storm of sickness and loss with the help of a silly stick. It reminds me each morning that, in spite of age, of storms, of drifting without touching ground, through waves of pain and love and sorrow, the seasickness of hope and despair, that this old body and heart can offer strength and balance to another, to myself. I still have a beauty and a purpose, though I will always mourn the loss of my nourishing roots and my wind-tickled leaves.

Letting go of my expectations of others

I no longer have hopeful expectations of other people and I am content with that. Expectations have led me to my greatest sorrows and heartache. We grow up being taught to give without expecting to receive. When did that change?

I expected that, by this age (50!), I would be further along in my career, have more vacation days to enjoy my middle age, have been with the same company for many years. The economy and a few ladder-climbing co-workers took that expectation away. I moved on, as we all must, and have found a job that I quite enjoy. I no longer expect that, if I just work hard and stay late most nights. I won’t be downsized or restructured. It makes for less stress and more planning for the next time that it might happen.

I expected that those I thought of as close friends would be there for me as they insisted they would be. I have not seen them for months. I’m not sure why they went away and became somebody that I used to know. It just happens sometimes. I had assumed we were closer, more bonded. We look up from work, from love, from grief, and the others have wandered off. Perhaps they expected me to be a better friend. Maybe I’m the one who wandered off. It could be they expected me to reach out to them, that I would ask for help. I guess they didn’t know me that well after all.

I had an expectation that, when I fell in love, I would have that joy and happiness for the rest of my life. I expected him to live, that we would go on with our lives, put cancer behind us and laugh about it someday. “Remember the time you threw up on me after your chemo?” “Yeah! Hahaha! The look on your face was priceless!” After that, no unmet expectation could ever break me as much.

Of course, facts don’t change. I expect the sun to come up tomorrow, the moon will wax and wane. If I trip over something I expect that I will fall because gravity still works. I expect the storm clouds to gather and that the sun will come out tomorrow. I expect the tide will come in and go out and come in again as it removes our names in the sand no matter how many times I re-write them. I expect I will keep re-writing them anyway.

I expect that others have placed their expectations on me. That they assumed I would continue to be there for them. They believed that I would want to hang out, chat about shallow topics and drink Red Rose tea at their kitchen table or meet at a coffee shop for a latte and a blueberry scone while smooth jazz plays through a speaker. (Okay, that last one actually sounds pretty good.) They probably think that, because they haven’t seen me in a while, that I  just got on with things after I lost my best friend and the love of my life. I expect that they are very disappointed in me no matter what their expectations were.

I expect that whoever has been mowing my lawn when I’m not home will eventually stop. I will then have to get that scary, loud mower out of the garage and do it myself, all the while terrified I am going to cut myself because I’m a klutz. I expect that I will rediscover comfort and joy, but I do not expect it tomorrow or any day soon. I expect that something in the house will break and I will have to figure out how to fix it myself or pay someone to do it for me. I expect me to rise to that occasion. I will most likely disappoint myself on occasion.

I still expect that I will be surprised and delighted when I receive a kindness or a hand of friendship. I expect I will appreciate my own strength as I pick myself up and stand alone, however much I quiver. I expect to look back and notice that someone was there all along and I just didn’t understand what they were doing.

I expect that, inevitably, someone that I know will read this and think I am writing about them. But I’m not. Not specifically. They will assume I am angry. But I’m not. There is no anger. There is heartache and loss, but there is no ire.

I do not blame people for disappointing me, for tumbling or jumping off the pedestal that I put them on. I blame myself for expecting too much from them.

I expect that we are all human after all.

Forward into darkness

When you lose someone who has been such an essential part of your life, of your everyday, of…you, it shakes you to the core of your being. You are shattered on the floor in pieces and, at last, you understand Humpty’s predicament. There are no horses, no king’s men, no king.

You wrap up the business of dying, the paperwork, you’ve sorted through most of the pieces of your loved one’s life, the friends and family who gathered to support you have gone back to their lives and you sit alone. Very alone. You realize that an expansive, dark abyss exists in front of you. You slump at the weighty greatness of it. It has a terrifying beauty of its own. Your eyes widen just to try to take it all in.

This is the bulk of the dim and drab years ahead of you. The rest of your life without The One. Your future was woven and stitched together with the life of Your One. Now, you begin to pick at the glittering stitching and unravelling artful threads. Like the canker sore in the mouth, you continue to poke and pick in spite of the pain, maybe even because of it. A reminder that you still live, you exist, if only barely.

Some days the abyss gapes and you get dizzy at the stretch of years yet to come before you can rest from the agony of that damn soulful ache in the arms of love once more. Miles to go before I sleep.

Other days, the warm sun shines, the vivid flowers bloom, the sand and sea kiss and tickle your toes and you can focus on just today, just this moment. Then, without warning, you remember that The One loved days like this. Your hand clenches and unclenches. Nothing there. You hear laughter on the wind and gorgeous, excruciating memories swirl and buzz like gnats inside your head. Again the spinning void opens and vertigo swirls. The One is not there to catch you and yet…they are. They stand firm in your memories, your heart, your soul.

You know them – every smile, every turn of the head, every sound they make means something. You know. You know what they would do and say right now if they were standing beside you. You steady yourself and take a tentative step forward.