In Grief’s Silence

There’s a phenomenon that occurs anytime someone finds themself in a foreign land where they do not know or speak the language.  Even though it is an uncomfortable stage of acculturation, it’s actually a vital part of becoming a member of a new culture or Way of life. 

It’s called “the silent period.”  

During this time, a person is inundated with so many unrecognizable sounds and experiences from an unrecognizable culture, that they can’t even make an attempt to articulate what they are experiencing, so they walk around mostly silent.  Anytime they do try to speak, they aren’t quite able to convey exactly what they were meaning to, so they retreat back into observing the world around them until the words that they are looking for are within their grasp.    

To the outside world, when someone is in their “silent period,” it often looks like they aren’t finding any meaning in their surroundings, but, ironically, they are actually deeply engaged with all that is going on while their eyes, ears, mouth and brain try to put everything together.   

Oftentimes when people attempt to rush out of this silent period, they will often misuse words and confuse concepts, but even those mistakes are a crucial part of learning a new language.  

People can stay in this silent period for a long time; it is just how humans are.  We are able to take in and understand our experiences long before we are able to speak about them meaningfully.  

Irregardless of how long we are there, it is necessary to go through this silent period so we can arrive at a stage which is simply referred to as “the home stage:” a stage where the person feels completely settled into a new way of life.  

 But when the words finally do come, when we are able to articulate what we were taking in for all those months and years, the words often come pouring out like water from a spring that had been lying in anticipation for someone to dig deep enough to find it.

This is how I would describe my experience of being taken to the foreign lands of grief.  

I entered into a “silent period” of my own… wandering alone in the deserts for years, acutely  aware that things were happening around me, but unable to put them into words.   And though I knew deep down that Someone was leading me through this desert, I did not know who or what was walking with me, step by step, to higher and more solid ground.  

It’s now when I look back that I can see very clearly where I was and Who I was with: I was the prodigal child wrapped in the arms of her loving Father who was whispering to her all the words she needed to hear but, as of yet, could not understand.  I didn’t quite know how to put into words that I was experiencing “being found” because I had never fully been aware that I was ever lost. 

So I stayed in that embrace like a suffering patient being held by a doctor who kept whispering over and over in a language she didn’t understand: “you will be made well again.  I am making you well.”  

The silent stage is different for all people, but we all experience it when we are in a strange and unfamiliar place.  And when it comes to the places grief takes us, where all of the signs are indiscernible, and the roads all seem circular, I can understand why I stayed spiritually mute for years while my Father continued to whisper as I suffered in my silence.  

But then the words started to come.   At first, it was just words and phrases which I would hesitantly and self consciously speak out of my silence…

God.

Is real.  

He is for me.  

I am his.  

The simplest phrases with deep, profound meanings that I could only understand in the silence of my heart.  These words, simple as they may be, were enough to illuminate the place where all my wayward missteps and the agony of grief had gotten me: to the foot of The Cross.  

And it was only when realizing where I was that the words God had been speaking to me while in His embrace were given to me, and I found myself finally being able to say what I could not before: 

That I am the daughter of the Most High King. 

That my Father has put to death all that was meant to torment me.  

And that death itself, and the grief it leaves in its wake, has been crushed under the weight of The Cross on which my God hangs.  

That I will be well. 

That all things shall be well.  

I found myself saying these words, and I still find myself saying these words as I gaze up at The Cross with a full recognition of what those words mean and why it took me so long to be able to say them and how those words cast a light on the shadowlands of grief. 

It took me years of being in my “silent period” to finally get to a place I never knew I was missing but to which I was always being called…

To finally get me home.  

And So I Tell Your Story

When I was eighteen, my aunt gave me a copy of her favorite book: a small parable about the love of flight.  

It was a thin volume that contained a simple yet deep story which had, over the course of her life, become increasingly important to her because the person who had given it to her, my grandfather, had loved it very much.  In fact, he had been the one who passed the book on to her.  

And she, years after he died, shared it with me.  

And when I met you, I couldn’t help but think of how much you reminded me of the central character in that book.  I remember telling you about it during the first few weeks that our own story began to unfold.   

In fact, that book, and the story it contained, was my first gift to you.  And when I handed it to you, I couldn’t help but feel that the love of my grandfather’s original gift was somehow living on. 

That’s what happens when a good story is passed on: it honors and brings to mind the person responsible for originally sharing it.  The story my grandfather left our family decades ago, to this day, remains a gift.  

And in that same way, six years ago, when God started writing the story of you and I, it too became a story worth sharing.

And I do share it.  Constantly.  

That story, our story, I flip and read through it so often in my head, and I speak of it so much, that I sometimes worry that, over the course of time, some of the details will eventually fade away or distort. Or that some of the pages will be loosened from their binding and possibly be lost or lose their meaning.

I worry that our story will become so worn out, that there will be days, weeks, months, and even years where I won’t even think to reach for it, because I’ll begin to believe that a story that was lived so long ago couldn’t possibly have anything new to offer anyone. Even myself.

I worry about these things every time someone asks me how long I plan to let your loss define me.  

And to be honest, I’m not sure how long defining moments in our lives are allowed to keep defining us.  I’m not sure they ever actually stop?  

What I do know though is that lament and the telling of the stories of our dead is in our bones. 

In fact, for thousands of years, in countless civilizations, the stories of the dead so strongly rattled in the bones of those who loved them, that their grief would pour loudly onto city streets. Displays of lament became so disruptive that eventually laws were put into place in an effort to contain them. Grief was viewed as something to be done out loud; a “discourse of pain” between humans in the throes of mourning and the throne room of God. In some places, the real tragedy was a death that was left unnoticed, unmourned, and “unscreamed.”

The stories of our dead were always meant to be told – to be shared – and so I share yours. I share your story with others so others can then share theirs with me: A call and response about people we love. A growing song of lament.

I share your story because, when I do, the One who wrote it knows that His gift was good. 

And you were a good story… a beautiful one. Albeit, one with too few chapters.

And though I would have written your story very differently… And though I sobbed, tore at my skin, and pleaded at God’s feet that you should be granted a longer one: as time has gone on, I am beginning to see that I could not have actually written it any better.

And so I tell it.  As it was and as it is.  

I speak of your story, which like the one I got from my aunt decades ago, was a gift whose importance I could never have conceived of when it was first, from God’s hands, placed into mine.

On Falling Stars

I told you my favorite constellation once.

It was when we first met, and you were telling me about the place you lived and how the skies got so dark over there, that you could see more stars than you had ever seen before in your life.

I remember asking you if you could see Cassiopeia, a constellation of five stars that formed the outline of a queen who was trapped on her throne. I remember telling you that I always found myself looking for her in the skies.   

I’m not sure what it was about that specific arrangement of stars that always spoke to me, but I guess there was something about the image of someone being helplessly spun around as the world turned beneath her that seemed, in a way, relatable.  

The world always appeared to me as it must have to Cassiopeia: swirling and unstable with no fixed horizon in sight.  I guess I saw myself in her…a constellation that could only be made sense of from light years away, here on Earth.  

I imagine that the five stars that make her up have no idea that they are a part of a larger story which can only be seen with the perspective of someone far away and far removed from them.  I doubt the stars understand that each of them play a role in giving the other four stars meaning and purpose.  I doubt they know they are a crucial part of a cosmic pattern that appears random when up close, but from a distance, makes more sense than it has any reason to.   

I imagine each star in Cassiopeia thinks itself to be alone and purposeless with no idea that there are other stars, just like them, depending on their light and existence to make sense of their own. 

And that’s when I think of you, and I wonder if that’s what it was like for you when you died.  I wonder if you were able to see the light and sense you brought to the world and the people who knew you.  

I imagine you, like the stars within a constellation, could not begin to comprehend how many people depended on your life and the light it brought to make sense of their own lives.  How could someone possibly see or perceive the vital role they play in the configuration of other people’s lives while they are living their own?  

I can’t speak for others, but I know for me, when you died, it was as if someone extinguished one of the five stars in Cassiopeia. 

What was once a recognizable and stable pattern was now randomness and chaos.  With you gone, I could no longer make out the form of my own life.  There was no girl.  There was no throne.  And there was no longer an Earth spinning beneath her.  

I can only imagine how many people felt the same way; people who hadn’t spoken to you in years, who had lives that had expanded far beyond the stretch of sky they met you in, were left broken and grasping to reclaim a sense of self that was inexplicably shaken by your death. 

We can’t see it from here.  Our importance.  Our role. I don’t think you could see it when you were alive.

But I have hope that you can see it now.  

I hope that is a part of the joys of Heaven, or wherever you may be: that you can see what we don’t have the perspective or distance to see until we’re gone.  I hope you can see  the lights of the people who loved you being moved into new constellations, new patterns, and new creations that had no reason to exist when you were still here with us.  

I don’t know where you live now, but I hope that if it has dark skies, you will be able to see what none of us down here can.  I don’t know what the skies of Heaven look like, but I hope we are the stars you see.  

And I hope that you can make me out from where you are and that you can see that I’m transfigured into a new constellation; one that you are still a part of somehow.  I hope you can see that I’ve found solid ground to stand on and a fixed horizon to gaze at.    

And I hope you can feel it in your soul, like I can feel it in mine, that you were the falling star that led me straight to it.  

On Dying Wounded

There are cuts and wounds so deep and irregular that doctors, in an effort to close them, have no choice but to extend them outwards.  Ironically, elongating a wound, well past the boundaries of the original trauma, sometimes is the only way to ensure it has a chance to heal properly.  

I found myself thinking about this yesterday. 

I was at work and was letting my mind wander while revisiting the moments that had stitched the day together, and somewhere between one thought ending and another beginning, a memory of you crept in.

And for the first time in months, I felt that familiar tug.  

It wasn’t a feeling of pain… more a feeling of tension. And for a moment, it was as if every memory of you was being pulled taut, almost to the point of breaking.

It was kind of like the sensation of a suture repeatedly being pulled through a numbed laceration.  

And in that moment, I just needed to hear your voice.  Your voice was the only thing I could think of that could slacken what was being pulled tight somewhere inside me.  

I guess that is the very nature of the wounds we leave on others after we die, John.  (That’s the nature of the ones you left behind on me, at least.)   

The gashes grief left in me are deeply irregular; they’re like the wounds surgeons struggle to close. And, even three years later, I can’t seem to find a way to get the lacerated ends to fit back neatly again.  And so they get tugged on and pulled as I attempt to move forward.   

And yesterday I got to thinking that, maybe, this is also why the hand of God, in all Its wisdom, takes the borders of grief and extends them outward.  Just like the doctors that model themselves after Him, He seems to elongate the wounds of grief far past the boundaries of where anyone would believe they should go. And maybe…maybe that’s why grief lasts so long: because the worst injuries, whether they are spiritual or physical, require extension before they can be sutured and healed.  

Maybe what seems to be the cruelest facet of grief, its duration, is actually an act of divine mercy. Maybe the pain we feel long after people die is a necessary elongation so that our wounds may be mended properly.     

I guess that’s why we feel the sting of someone’s death until we die ourselves? 

And maybe the end of life is finally when the broken edges that continued to tug and pull and grow taut will finally be closed over with a final stitch.  

That might be what death is: the final tug as God removes the threads that bound what always hurt, but never healed.

Maybe that’s how it works? I’m not quite sure, honestly.

I guess all I am sure of is that I will die wounded.  All of us will.   

And all I can do is pray that when my eyes close for the last time, that I will find you John.  That I will find you at the end of the wounds you left behind.  

On Finding Love Again

I treated love as a trivial thing before I met you, John.

I always believed people could will themselves into thinking they loved one another. And that loving someone, just like anything subjected to the trials of time, eventually turned into habitual duty. 

Before we met, I had a pattern:

I would spend a few months going out with friends, meeting new people, and eventually, I would find someone I figured I could will myself to love.  After careful assessment of the person and an attempt to weigh the pros and cons of being with them, I would declare to myself that, yes…I can love this person. 

And I’d tell them I loved them. And when they told me they loved me, I’d say it right back to them.

And when we would break up, I would call up a friend and cry into the phone and say, “…but I loved him.” 

And then a few months later, I would start going out with friends, meeting new people…and the cycle would repeat. 

That’s the pattern I lived out for most of my life.

That was love to me for most of my life: a lukewarm melodrama I could manifest after acting out a recycled pattern of choices that seemed to always work. And I never understood how, if this was love, anyone could will themselves into loving someone enough that something like marriage or long term partnership would ever actually work.  

But then, John… I met you.

And for the first time, love wasn’t a decision that I needed to will myself to make. 

Loving you wasn’t a choice…it was more a reality that I was asked to accept. A reality that something outside of myself was urging and willing me towards: I was simply going to love you deeply whether I wanted to or not.

But I wanted to love you. And I did, John. I absolutely loved you.

I loved you so much, in fact, that I was angry that I had ever used the word before with anyone else.  

I could see it for the first time: how the alchemy between two people could have such a charge to it, that an actual lifetime together wasn’t merely an option as much as a foregone conclusion. Something you’d be crazy not to want to try.

For the first time, my fear of the future was muted.

You would always tease me about that fear and the misguided vanity that it flowered from. You always thought it was silly that I feared how time would change the shape of my body, my face, and ultimately, would change the way you saw me.  I was always so scared of that.

And I don’t think I ever told you this when you were alive, but right before you died, I realized that I was wrong.  Not about time changing the way I looked, but about thinking that time could actually change the way you saw me.  

John, I know now, that in your eyes…I was never going to age.   

I loved you. More than my own desire to be happy. 

And something about what you did to my heart, whatever you were able to pour into it, felt like the whispers of something eternal.  

John, after spending so much of my time on this Earth searching for life and clinging to anyone or anything I met along the way that might have an idea where to find it: I met you.  I was willed to do so.

And there was nowhere else to go after that.  So I stayed where I was, and we got two years together.  And then God took you back.   

We got two years, John. 

It’s almost a laughably short amount of time to most people down here on Earth, but I don’t think most people know what two years with you can do to a person’s heart.  

And what did that time do to it? 

Did it break it?  Absolutely. 

Teach it?  Yes. 

But most importantly: That time showed my heart that it was something worth cherishing.  That it was something good. 

And then when you died, I was left with it.  

That heart you’d spent the last years of your life speaking goodness into tried as hard as it could to keep beating.  

And right around that time you’d been dead for two years, I found myself wondering how, on this Earth, I was supposed to give this heart you left me with to anyone else. 

But I tried.  

I tried my old patterns: to will myself into finding someone to love with this heart that you shaped.

I went on dates, John.  I even allowed myself to get swept up in new romances a few times.  And I’d find myself doing the same things I’d done with you, and having inside jokes, and waking up genuinely excited to have someone to talk to.  

But the love inside still had nowhere real to go.  

And I kept thinking to myself, “he would want me to love again…” And people would tell me that in order to honor you, “I should find someone to love again,” until finally it occurred to me that maybe I should just  ask you where you wanted what you left in my heart to go.  

And (through the grace of God) I heard you say: 

Babe, of course I want you to find love again.  

In fact, I want you to find it everywhere.  And in everyone.  (Even in the people you don’t like)   And even more so in the people who have hurt you. And if you find a person or a place where there is very little goodness…pour my goodness there. 

And love? Find it. Find it everywhere that I’m not.

So I’ve been doing that, John.  I’ve been wringing my heart out like a sponge on other people’s hurt, especially hurt I’ve caused.   And in the lives of our friends.  And in the lives of my students.

And, at times, I worry there will be nothing left in it.  

But in those memories I have with you, and in the words you spoke to me, and in the hands of the God you led me to, I find all the places that I can go to fill it back up with what is good.  

And with this heart you left in me, I go out into this world you left me in, and I find love again, and again, and again.  

And I’ll keep doing so.

****

(Until our hearts beat together once more, John, I will keep following that will that got me to you)

A Year in the Life of a Pilot’s Widow

I want to start off by addressing that I don’t really know why I am writing this right now, other than the fact that I have something to say to anyone who has or will ever mourn a pilot. I’m going to keep this short, and I’m going to keep it concise…

Before I get into that, I want to talk about what it means to love a pilot. Not a person who flies. But a pilot. Someone who was born to take to the skies.

I have heard so many military spouses talk about how they simply pretend the jobs our husbands and boyfriends have are “normal.” They pretend that they are bankers or lawyers. I get that this is done to protect themselves, but ultimately, they aren’t bankers. They are pilots.

Their jobs are epic. They have legendary stories to tell.

If you love a pilot, you love someone who pretty much tames and rides dragons all day. And then comes home and does laundry. And eats dinner with you. And asks about your day.

If you love a pilot this means weekly if not daily conversations about the dangers of the job. The dangers of ejection. The possibility of severed limbs. Third degree burns. Broken backs. And death.

Not just one conversation, but many conversations.

If you love a pilot, you love someone who spends their whole life fighting gravity, and bending it. And to love a pilot means that one day, you very realistically may have to mourn that pilot, because even the greatest pilots can die doing what they love.

It’s the gig. To truly love a pilot is to be ready and willing and able to try your best to survive their death.

And when and if, one day, your pilot falls from the sky, we, their widows, are left to mourn heroes.

We are also left with a community who says they want to support your grief but also really hopes you stay quiet about it.

When you mourn a pilot, everyone mourns with you for a while. You get a lot of calls from people who didn’t know your pilot but want to express their condolences.

You also get messages from pilots you don’t know. Their wives in the next room. These pilots are panicked, they have so much fear of death, but their wife simply can’t understand and so they can’t talk to her. (Maybe because she is trying to convince herself that he has a normal job and he doesn’t want to upset her).

So these pilots talk to you. Because you’re already destroyed.

And though you are broken and grieving, these are your person’s brothers, so you stay up til all hours of the night trying to console broken men while you yourself are broken.

When you mourn a pilot, you know conversations are going on about you in the spouse groups. Are you still a spouse? Most think yes. But there’s always one or two who consider you less of a spouse, and after a few months of trying to figure out how to deal with their passive aggressive dismissals of your suggestions, you decide that maybe, ultimately, you may need to leave that group completely. And leave those friendships.

A lot of people tell you that they’re going to do really amazing things to honor your dead pilot. Getting necklaces made. Bracelets. They’re going to send them to you when the designs are finished…but the designs never get finished, and ultimately you just forget about it.

When you mourn a pilot, you listen to other spouses with living husbands complain about the amount of time their guy is flying. They don’t complain in group chats…they, for some reason, complain to you.

You get called by investigators over and over and over again. Every time, they need a little more information. A few more details for the report. And then the report of the accident comes out, and you read “pilot error,” listed across the top. And your soul screams. And you feel like your guy has died twice.

And on top of that, people keep saying over and over and over again, “I’m sure his last thoughts were of you,” and you want to scream at them, “do you even get it? Do you even understand what they do up there? He better not have been thinking of me, he better have been trying to get out of the god damn airplane so he could get back to me.”

When you mourn a pilot, you show up to their final funeral service, and you see people with their cell phones out.

You collapse by their coffin afterwards when everyone is trickling away and you sob. And you clutch the name tag hanging from the handle of the casket and you look at your dead pilot’s name. And you feel your heart shatter again.

And while that’s happening, someone walks up behind you and taps you on the shoulder and asks if you can move for a second…because they want a picture of the casket (it’s their first time at Arlington Cemetery after all, and they don’t know if they’ll ever be back).

So you move. And they get their picture.

And at the services, you run into one of the pilots who called you months earlier. And later on after the funeral, he calls you again when it is a little too late. He’s alone in his hotel room. He asks if you want to meet up. And you hang up the phone and delete his number. And you mourn your dead pilot even more because he was truly a good person. And you feel like you’ve been left to the wolves.

When you mourn a pilot you consider the idea that maybe you don’t want to live anymore. You make the mistake of telling one of the wives. And she takes the screenshots of those messages and shows them to other wives. And ultimately one of them finally calls you and goes, “I just think you should know she is saying these things about you,” and you stare blankly off into space and ask her, “did you stand up for me?” To which she responds, “well, it’s not really my place to do so, but I thought you should know.”

And so you think about it.

And you make a list of every single person from your pilot’s squadron, and you delete them from social media. And you write really angry posts about things they never let you say. And you’re talking for the first time, honestly, about how you feel. And you let it all out. You use your anger to scorch the Earth around you. And it feels good.

People start calling you and telling you you’re causing too much pain to others. And you laugh to yourself that anyone is trying to talk to you about what “too much pain,” is. And it feels good.

The fact that people can see, for the first time, how little they mean to you in the face of what you lost, feels good. It feels so good, because you finally, after almost a year, feel like people hear you.

And the first year ends. And you’re finally breathing again after spending so much time suffering a death by a thousand cuts.

And you take your first few steps into the second year of being a dead pilot’s widow.

And then another pilot dies. And you see his widow in the news articles and you hear the talks and lofty speeches about how the community is going to pull together to support her.

And you just hope it goes differently this time.

****

There are truly so many great and supportive people within the military communities, please know I acknowledge that.

This post is a culmination of things that happened to me and other widows after their losses. So obviously…there is some room for improvement.

Towers of Grief

In the last few weeks, people all over the world have watched as the life they once knew, piece by piece, was stripped away from them.

People have woken up every day to a world filled more and more with shadows.  People have woken up to see the ever expansive landscape of their life become limited.  They’ve bit by bit had to let go of things that are outside of their control and retreat further and further inward.

Gone are the distractions.  Gone are the loud parties.  Gone are the empty moments that they tried to fill with empty people.

And many people have slowly come to realize that pretty soon, they were going to have nowhere else to go but the four walls of their homes, where ultimately, they would have to deal with that place not many of them ever cared to venture: the inner world of their own minds.

The inner caverns of our minds are where we find anxiety lurking and fears creeping up behind us.  Many of our inner worlds hold skeletons shattered by the hatchets we refused to bury.  Many of our inner worlds are ruled only by shrieking chaos.

My inner world used to terrify me.  So I kept it locked up and used every excuse I had not to venture within arms length of its door.

But after John died, that door was blown wide open.

And from it, the wreckage of every experience I’d ever had and every emotion I’d never dealt with came spewing out, and I had no choice but to look at the chaos around me and try to start fitting some pieces back together without knowing how any of it was supposed to look.

I spent the better part of the last year rebuilding my inner world.

Pulling splinters from bleeding hands and walking away in frustration more times than I can remember.  But continuing to build, and mold, and shape.

And it’s only in the last few weeks that I have been able to see what I’ve been building in the last year. It’s only recently that I can see that I was building a tower.

A majestic one.

One that sits high above the clouds like a castle from a fairy tale.  Somehow I seem to have built a tower out of mangled and charred debris.

It’s almost as if this inner world was crafted by the hands of someone who loved me.  Deeply.  Someone who couldn’t help with the wreckage of my outer world, so did what he could with the wreckage of my own mind.

It’s almost as if I sit in a house built by the kind of love that only grief could unleash.

There are no shadows here.  There are no unlit corners.  There are no skeletons. Or daggers.  Or ghosts.

There is candlelight. There is magic and wonder and fairy houses. There are subtle hints of blue.  There are books.  And words. And there is love.

There is so much beauty in the ivory tower that John built for me out of the wreckage of my grief.  There is a place for me to sit high above the chaos of the world and just peer off into the clouds.

I’m reminded here that the wind can only carry the echoes of cries so far up.  I could ignore the world’s pain from here.  Easily.

But I won’t.

It’s from this ivory tower that I am able to take deep breaths of clean air.  And kiss the whispers of my loved ones every morning before wandering down to the ground and, placing my ear against the door for a second, begin to venture out to do what I know must be done… to minister to the pain of others.

The ivory tower that was built from my grief is only for rest.  And perspective.

It is for a bird’s eye view so I can find people who need me and walk to them. So that I can find people that desperately need magic.  And words.  And wonder.  And love.

This ivory tower was built for me so that I can find people in pain, kneel beside them, and whisper:  I know your world is burning. Mine was too.  

But look…look at that castle in the sky.  Look at what can be built from the ashes of a wrecked life.  

 

 

On God, Blind Faith, and Narrow Paths

It’s been no secret that, in the year since losing John, I’ve been going through somewhat of a profound spiritual experience.

Some people call it an “awakening,” but to me that term suggests that I’m “awake” while others are “asleep.”  And I think that comes across as pretty arrogant. So, for that reason, I prefer to say that I’m experiencing a “spiritual re-alignment.”

I do not think I was “asleep” in any sense of the word before John’s accident.  I think I was like many people who consider themselves atheist or agnostic.  I was fully invested in and engaged in my life.  And I was open to finding and experiencing what people referred to as “faith.”  I just never did.

Growing up, I had sat through sermons in church pews, temples, and gurudwaras waiting for some feeling or inclination that there was more to life than just what we saw around us.  It didn’t matter if I went to a youth group or yoga class, people sitting around and talking about God and universal connection sounded exactly like people just sitting around talking.  It was uninspiring at best.

Nothing ever moved me.  Nothing ever stuck.

So I relegated faith and belief to the same category as I did fairy tales: I felt that they were stories people told themselves to make the world less scary and lonely.

I eventually turned to a much more rational approach to the world…I turned to therapy and, eventually, to travel and this worked well for me.

I did really well in therapy because once I was presented with information that contradicted an existing belief or paradigm, I was open to adapting and changing the way I thought.  My therapists (and John) loved this about me, and through therapy, I honed my ability to experience, process, and adapt to new information.

Though I had therapy to help me process my experiences, I did not abandon religious or spiritual ideas all together.  But I also did not have a meaningful way to incorporate them into a life that already made sense on its own, so I used religion and spirituality in the same way we use filters on photos: as a way to artificially brighten or dim very real experiences.

That was the nature of my faith.

I’d had plenty of dark times in my life before, and “faith” never did anything for me.  It wasn’t like a flashlight that would turn on when times got dark, it was more a kaleidoscope.  A lens I could pick up and hold to my eye anytime I wanted to see the unreal and the abstract projected onto the real world.

And then I met John and found all the faith I ever needed in the form of another person, and I remember feeling blessed.  And I remember feeling happy.  I remember feeling good.

But then he died.

And everything started going dark.

And faith, the children’s toy that it had always been to me, I didn’t even bother reaching for it.  It was useless, and I knew it.

And the day John died I also knew something else…that if there was a God, he must have been silent my entire life for one reason:  because he does not waste his time on the wretched.  I knew that God must only speak to “the good.” People like John who had been lucky enough to be given real faith.

I knew that God must have thought it better for John to be dead than to be loving  someone like me. I knew that God must have killed John in order to “save” him.

If there was a God,  I didn’t hate him, but I knew he must have hated me.

And so I sat in the darkness of my life accepting that I was either truly alone, or detested by a God I didn’t know how to believe in.

And I imagine that’s when God, horrified by the highly dramatic conclusions I was coming to, decided to do what he does best…he decided to turn on a light.

And in the darkness I was in, it was all I saw.

It was a subtle light, like the flashing of an incoming call on a cellphone screen, but it was the only light I could see.  So I walked towards it and stumbled through what I now know were my first steps of blind faith.

I took the first steps of faith, not knowing where I was going or what I was doing. But every time I got to a light I could see that another one stretched out in front of me.  Some were as faint as an engine light on a car dashboard.  Others were haunting, like a T.V. that keeps turning itself on in a dark room.

The lights didn’t make sense.  They weren’t in a straight line, but…they were lights in the darkness, so I kept walking to them.

I was certain that every light I got to would be the last one I would see, but there was always another one.  And I had no idea who or what was turning them on.

Each step was a stumble through the darkness on a path that no one else but me could sense. And that was confusing, and terrifying, and so many times I was worried I’d succumbed to delusion because there was no way any of this could be real.

I struggled to come to terms with what was happening.

And as I struggled through the darkness, I struggled to understand how to even put into words what I was experiencing, so I decided to just use one word: God.  God apparently was happening to me.

Only my experience was so different when compared to anything I had ever associated with God before.

It was almost as if John’s death had broken me in such a way that, like a bent antenna, I could now pick up on a new frequency.  Some sort of “God Frequency.”

And in that darkness I found a new sense of sight, where I could sense order in events where I had only ever sensed chaos and disorder.  I could hear and sense so much more than I ever could before.  But in the darkness, I  still struggled to understand why I was being helped.  If God is real, why had he stayed so silent in my life? Why was he so silent in so many people’s lives? Why did he allow us to suffer?  Why?

I started to ask.  And I started to seek.  And I started to question.   And that’s when God asked me if I was ready for him to turn on more of the lights.

And I said, “yes.”

And so he did.

But these lights didn’t light up only the way forward, they illuminated the path behind me, so I looked.  I could see my past, and in it, I could see all the different times God had turned on a light that I simply couldn’t see because there were already so many other lights on.

I saw the highs of my life, and there was God, laughing with me.  I saw the mundane parts of my life, and there was God, gazing mindlessly off into space with me.  And I saw my lowest moments.  I saw the morning I found out that John was dead.  I saw myself in agony.  I saw myself clawing at my own skin.  And I saw God suffering with me.

In this new light, I saw God laughing, living, and suffering through me.

In this light I could see, stretching in front of me, a narrow path with a small gate…leading somewhere, and I understood for the first time why the path to God feels this isolating…it’s because my path is only for me.  No one else.

No one else will ever or has ever walked this exact path before, and no one else can walk it for me.   And it’s terrifying when you know walking the narrow path of your own faith makes you a lunatic to some and a heretic to others.

I guess this is why, “few are those who find it.”

But I’ve been walking it.  And I’ve been talking about it and trying to put this walk into words.  Telling people about the scenery I’ve encountered along the way.

And when this walk is too much, and I can’t get a feel for the next step, I stop.

And I turn my gaze upwards towards the skies John flew in, and I let myself feel lost and alone.  And I let myself cry because I want to be walking this path while holding his hand.

But then I keep walking down my narrow path. Some days I skip down it.  Some days I curse it.  But most days, I simply walk it led by faith and the knowing that love put me on it.

On this path, I have met the fearful.  Those who urge me to get on their path and abandon mine.  Those who use my experiences to validate their belief in a Heaven that will not have me and a Hell that will.   I have met people who, understandably, don’t believe I’m on a path because they don’t trust roads that don’t show up on a GPS.  And I have met people who, because of the heaviness of their own grief, have stopped walking altogether.

I have also met the faithful (of so many faiths), walking their own narrow paths.  Those who stop to minister to the pain of others by offering to be what John was to me: faith in human form.

I see everyone on their own different narrow path…and I also see God with all of them whether they see him there or not.  And he is turning on lights.  Hoping that our lives never get so dark that we are able to see them.

“Do not be dismayed, for your God is with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:9

 

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I Didn’t Want a Life That Would Make, “A Great Book”

I cannot stress enough how much writing has served me in the months since John died.  Writing has allowed me to illuminate the saturated murkiness of deep grief in a way that continues to surprise, and at times, exhaust me.

Even though the aftermath of loss is where people typically find themselves with, “no words,”  I, for some reason, have been able to find many.

And so I’ve written them.

I’ve written about the love me and John had and continue to have.  I’ve written about what it felt like to have met him and why it mattered so much. I’ve transcribed the events that led up to the night he died trying to get out of his plane during a routine landing.  And I’ve written at length about how my life has unfolded since.

Writing has served to cauterize the deepest and most gruesome parts of this experience, as well as to illuminate the  incomprehensible moments of re-connection that I’ve been blessed with since the accident.  My writing has connected me to so many others whose journeys run parallel to mine, and I believe it will find its way to people who need it down the line.

My writing has helped me, and so I’ve continued to write.

My writing has also led to many of my closest friends and family earnestly telling me the one thing that almost everyone who faces a tragedy hears at some point:  That one day, I should write a book about all this.

(Believe me when I say that I take this as a compliment).

People have urged me to write a book about the life I had before John.  My relationship with him.  And the healing I’ve undergone since his death.  Almost every widow I know has been urged to do this.

Some do.  Some don’t.  But all our stories, untold or not, really would make for great reading.

I, speaking for myself, find the task deliriously daunting.

Maybe at some point in my life, I will be able to pluck out a single thread in this Gordian Knot of an experience, but until then I think what I want to say most is this:  that my life… this life that would make a great book…I truly wish I did not have it.

I wish it so very much.

I wish my relationship with John didn’t have to be described as “epic.”

I wish I didn’t learn first hand how death can open people’s hearts, only for them to realize that it’s too late for it to do anyone much good.

I didn’t want a life where I watched one of the kindest humans anyone has ever known die.  And I didn’t want a life where I learned that I could survive that kind of pain.

I most definitely did not want a life where some people think I’ve lost my mind because I can see John’s love manifested in dreams and cell phone glitches and balloons.

I did not want to be a seeker. I did not want  wisdom.  I did not want to be an example of strength.  I did not want any part of this life. 

No one would.

I wanted what almost everyone else I know wants…the norm.  I wanted a benign life, yet I was given this one.  And I know people want to read about it because I probably would too.

I suppose the easiest thing to read about are the difficult lives people lead.

But I don’t want a book about me and John because between the romance, obstacles, tragedy (and eventual magic) that our relationship carried with it, I feel we were really more the “fairy tale” type.  I don’t think many people could disagree.

I want our stories to be told in times where immediate comfort is needed, even if that means our names will eventually get lost to time.

I want people to hear about us so they fight for and forgive those they are lucky enough to love in this life.

And I hope, at some point, the story of the time John sent me quarters makes its way to a grieving person who needs to hear it.  I want people to hear about “some pilot” who shows up in kids dreams because he really wants to talk about planes.  I want people to look at red balloons and think, for just a second, that maybe there is more to this life than what meets the eye.

I want nothing more than for these stories to be shared and told…so I will keep writing.  I want nothing more than for people to find hope and re-connection after they lose someone, so I will keep writing.  I feel like it is what I was meant to do, so I will just keep writing.

But I also wish with all my heart that I was the one hearing and reading these stories, not the one writing them.

I don’t want to be living through the difficulties that make for easy reading, no matter how great the book would be.

You wouldn’t either.

 

A Few Words For The Newly Widowed

My newly widowed friend,

I write to you knowing how hollow words sound right about now.

I know “this” feels impossible.   Whatever “this” is, does not feel survivable.

“This” feels like dying.

Contrary to what you may think, there are words for what you’re feeling, but they aren’t the right ones.  They don’t fit.  Language falls short of what “this” is.

You can try to put some sentences together, but don’t be surprised if they come out jagged.  Truncated.  Cut off at the knees.  Disfigured.

Best you stick to simple words.  Words like anguish.  Shattered.  Dissolved.  Faded.

I know it feels like your brain has been dropped in acid.  And the circuitry that once ran clearly is now smoldering.  I know the air you’re breathing feels clotted.   It doesn’t seem to carry sound.  Or warmth.  Or light.

I know that breathing feels like choking down glass.

And while your brain is dissolving into itself, people are asking you impossible questions.  Questions like: what do you want to eat?  Are you thirsty?  Would you like to put a movie on?  …Are you okay? 

The questions are horrifying.

And I know that if you could figure out how to make your brain tell your mouth to open and then tell your lungs to breathe in and then contract while your vocal chords squeezed together…if you could figure out how to make your brain do that, you would start screaming.  But you can’t.

So you sit there. And shrug.  And nod.

You sit on a couch.  Feral. And do what you’re going to be doing for a long time: you mimic a human.

People are coming to see you.  They talk at you.  You don’t understand how they can’t see that they’re talking to a husk.  

You’re pretty sure this is how animals live:

Stimulus. Response. Stimulus. Response. Stimulus. Response. Sleep. Pain. Repeat.

People tell you that you, “sound great.”  That you, “look better than expected.”  And the air carries the sound their mouths are making.  And your ears take the message to your brain. And your brain is maybe making your body do and say things which makes people think you’re, “doing well.”  But you can’t really be sure.  

But I know you’re starting to be sure of something…

You realize that the “spirit” is very real.  And very different than the body.

I never believed in the “soul” until John died.  But if you’re like me…you can now, somehow, feel your soul twisting inside you.  Violently.

You can feel it hurling itself wildly against the cage of your pathetic, useless body.  You sense your spirit retching inside of you.  Convulsing.  Squirming. Begging to be let out…to go…to be free.

You feel it clawing. And whimpering.  You sense it trying to break through your bones and carve its way out of your flesh so that it can just…go.  You want to help it by cracking the shell of your body open, just a little bit.  Maybe you can just dig your fingers into the skin above your collar bones and rip off a bit of the casing your soul is stuck under.

But you don’t.  Because your brain reminds you that humans don’t peel themselves.  And right now…you’re mimicking a human.

My newly widowed friend,  I know that you’re thinking all these things and you’re feeling these things, and that people are smiling at you and telling you that, “you’re being really strong.”  And that they believe it.

This dumbfounds you.

The fact that people think that they’re talking to the real you astounds you.  That people think the real you showed up to work…that the real you is smiling in pictures and telling  stories at the funeral and going grocery shopping.

My newly widowed friend, I know the real you hasn’t done any of those things.  I know the real you is stuck inside a body.   A body that spends its time looking up things like the average life expectancy of a human… and then subtracting its age from the number… and then crying at the double digit number of years it statistically has left.

My newly widowed friend, I know the idea of living makes you sick.

And I know you’re probably reading these words from the floor of wherever your body lives.  The floor of a bedroom or bathroom. The floor next to a bed you didn’t leave for  four days; a bed that now smells a little like damp socks.

My newly widowed friend, I often wondered why I spent so much time sitting on floors right after John died…and now I think it was my body’s attempt to keep my spirit as grounded as possible.  As close to the Earth’s density as it could.

We sit on floors.  And we mimic being human.  We make the sounds we’re supposed to.  Our faces do human things.  And we eat human food.  And we mimic.  This is what newly widowed people do.

I know you’re probably reading this while you’re hunched over.  You’re probably alone now, so you don’t have to mimic as hard.  You can sit crooked.  Misaligned.  Your breathing can go back to being labored.

It’s just you and me now.  So I want to say some human words to you that I know you will not believe because you have no reason to.

But hear me out anyways, please:

My newly widowed friend, please know that right now, mimicking a human is your only choice.  All you can do is mimic.  And breathe.  And feed your body.  And drink water.  All while your spirit hemorrhages inside you.

My newly widowed friend, please…sit on as many floors as you need to.

And say all the things people say you shouldn’t.  And be angry at people who don’t deserve it.  And let text messages go unanswered.  And watch as people use your person’s coffin as their own personal soap box or stage.  And let your spirit wail.

Please sit down as long as you need to, and mimic the human you used to be and keep breathing.  Breathe those breaths.

Breathe glass.  Breathe pain.  Breathe unfairness.  Fuck life.  Fuck people.  Fuck “this.”  Fuck the world. Stimulus. Response. Pain. Repeat. Mimic. Human. Mimic. Fake. Pain. Pain. Pain. This. Pain. Just. Keeps. Coming. Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe…

Just keep breathing until one day…you actually take the first real breath you’ve taken in a long long time.

And you’ll know it.

Because the air around you will thin out.

And you’ll feel the sun.  And music will make you want to sing along.  And you’ll realize you’re actually breathing.  And you’ll smile.

Those days will come, and when they do (and you may not like this part) I need you to take the deepest breath of your new life, because I’m going to need you to get up.  And start moving through your life.

And I need you to pick up your pain, and I need you to take an even deeper breath because I need you to start talking.  Because you’ve got so many stories to tell.

You have to tell us stories about your person.

The world needs to know who they were.

How did you meet?  Tell us about the time they made you so angry you almost left them.  What’d their laugh sound like?  Did they take forever in grocery stores?  

Who. Was. Your. Person?  

I need you to talk about them.  I need you to take the deepest breaths of your life and tell their stories.

I need you to stand up and walk out the door and go out into the world because there is joy waiting to find you.  Real joy.  Real smiles.  New memories that are clamoring to be made and people who need you in them.  You need to tell bad jokes.  You need to make people laugh.  You need to be a part of so many other people’s stories.

There are people who need your voice to be a part of the soundtrack of their life, so once you’re breathing… start talking.  And start feeling.  And start connecting.

But to do that, you have to keep breathing those painful breaths.  And it hurts.  And it isn’t fair.  And, my God, I know some people are so uninteresting, but, my God, others are sure worth meeting.  And you need to meet them.

And I know you don’t feel like “you” anymore, and you don’t feel like you’re bringing much to the world around you, so I need you to hear this one thing above all else:

The good their love did for you cannot be undone by their death.

The world needed them, you needed them, but then they died.  And it isn’t fair.

But, my widowed friend, we still have you, and you are what no one else on this entire planet is:  The only end result the world has of their love.  What did it mean to be truly, deeply, romantically loved by your person?  Only you can tell us.

The world needs love stories.  Stories about epic love.  Tragic love.  Steady love.  Love-you-then-hate-you love.  Love that was almost right.  Love that was always right.  The world needs stories.

So, my newly widowed friend who is sitting on the floor, reading this from a smart phone that has dozens of un-read messages on it that say, “let me know if you need to talk.” Please, when you’re ready, if ever that time comes: get up, take a deep breath, stop mimicking… and start talking.

And above all else, my friend, when you’re ready: struggle, fight, clamor, try…and try…and try…to live.

 

 

I Was Never Meant to be “His Wife”

After John died, safe to say, I lost sight of who I was and what I meant to him.

Though he had told me hundreds of times how he felt about me when he was alive…without the formal titles and celebrations of a wedding or marriage, after he died, I found myself diminishing the role I played in his life.  And I also found myself floundering under the weight of the fact that I was, “just his girlfriend” when he died.

Sure, when he was alive, if one of his friends asked him what our future held, his answer was an unequivocal:  She’s the one.  

Sure, before his accident, whenever he talked about his future career moves, I was always included in those plans.

But then he died.  And I was left here with the living.  And there was more of them than there was of me, so eventually, their perspectives began to color my own.

I was left listening to a wide array of people who somehow found ways to mention that John thought all of his girlfriends, at some point, had been, “the one.”  His friends didn’t doubt that John loved me, because… well… according to them, John was always “all in” with every girl he dated.  His friends had seen how much he loved his ex-girlfriends…so they were sure he must have loved me too.

His family, who never approved of me, felt the need to tell me that they, “had no idea,” John was so serious about me…because, according to them, John was “serious” about all of his relationships prior to ours.  And all of those relationships ended, so his family had no reason to believe this one would be any different.

And even though his parents included me in the memorial and funeral services in a genuine effort to “make up for lost time,” when John’s personal items were sent to them, I was told, that his things: his shirts, his sheets, our chessboard…all of those things were “for the family” to go through.

They were sure I’d understand their decision.

And I did. I understood what everyone was telling me:  I was just John’s girlfriend.  And if John hadn’t died…I might have lived to see the day where I ended up as just another one of his ex-girlfriends.

I don’t blame people for thinking this.  When John met me, I was brash and fiercely independent. I didn’t mince words, I was reactive, and ran head-first into conflicts John would have typically avoided.  John, on the other hand, was always much more composed than I was, and he was much more of a people-pleaser.

I began to see, after he died, how terribly mismatched we had been.

I began to realize why John’s family had doubts about “his girlfriend.”  I could see why his friends, who had seen us fight and make up several times, probably also had doubts about “John’s girlfriend.”  That girl, who I was when he was alive, his girlfriend…wasn’t perfect for John.  Wasn’t perfect for his career.  Wasn’t good for his family.

So I, subconsciously, decided that I’d step up my game after he died and become the woman that everyone else would have wanted John to marry.  Simply put, I tried  to become “John’s wife.”

For months, I attempted to bury my own pain to help other people with theirs, just like John would have wanted “his wife” to do in the wake of his death.  John was always able to paste on a smile, no matter how hurt he was…so I found a way to make crutches out of the broken parts of my spirit, and pretend that that was the only support I needed…just like I imagined John would expect of “his wife.”

After he died, I checked in on his family, like John’s wife would’ve done.  I checked in on his friends.  I tried to bridge the gaps and overcome the hurdles John and I would’ve faced together if he was still alive.

I had one goal: to live out my life like someone I felt John would’ve loved to be married to, and that woman happened to be a very, very diminished and muted version of myself.

And John’s people, so many of his people, loved who I was.

But then, after nearly a year of swallowing my anger, and choking down my pain, and putting on a brave face, something occurred to me.

I realized a sobering fact:  John didn’t fall in love with an even-tempered, ever-forgiving woman who smiled for the sake of others, though she was broken and angry inside.  He didn’t fall in love with someone who turned the other cheek after she was mistreated over and over and over again.  He didn’t fall in love with someone who avoided conflict.  He didn’t fall in love with the woman I believed everyone would have wanted him to marry.  Not even close…

John, when he was alive, fell in love with me.

Me.

My stubbornness.  My tenacity.  My, at times, fanatical dedication to talking about the things people found too difficult to discuss.  He didn’t like me all the time, but he sure as hell, fucking loved me.  His girlfriend.  His last one.

That’s what I was meant to be.

John trusted me, his girlfriend, to be his home in this world.  No one else, when he died, was closer to him.  No amount of time, of experiences, of genetics makes up for the vulnerability and trust we shared with one another: I was the person he called when he was frustrated, when he was lost, when his friends let him down.  I held him whenever he was overwhelmed and couldn’t find the words to articulate his disappointment in something or someone, even if that person was me.

Had he done this with girlfriends or family in the past?  Maybe.

But I was the last girlfriend who got to hold him when he cried.  The last woman he wanted to face the world with.

John would make the four hour drive to get to me after a twelve hour work day, even if he knew I’d be asleep when he got there.  He didn’t do that for some idyllic woman, he did it for me.

He fought for me.  For his girlfriend.  John, who, when I met him, considered family the backbone of his life, went to bat for me when they struggled to see past how different I was in comparison to the “ideal match” they had always prayed for.

John fought to have all of me, his girlfriend, in his life.

He threw himself against the barrier of people’s disapproval for a year. He listened as people told him he was tearing his family apart.  He listened as he was told there was no chance of a future where the family accepted his decision to be with me.  He listened as his brother, who heard through the grapevine that John was going to marry me regardless of what anyone thought, voiced his disapproval.

John shouldered all of that…for me.  As I was.

John listened as some of his closest friends advised him to cut ties with me for the sake of his own happiness because these friends didn’t believe John could ever be happy with someone so different.

And John disregarded them all, and still drove the hours to see me, and still made plans with my friends, and still hung out with my family, and still made plans for the one day where he would eventually marry me.  His girlfriend. The girl who no one else, besides him, believed was worth all that damn trouble.

And who knows…maybe I wouldn’t have been worth it.  Maybe the tension with his family would’ve gotten to be too much.  Maybe I would have hated military life.  I would’ve found these things out if I’d ever gotten to be John’s wife.  But I didn’t.

But now, looking at all the things that have happened since he died, I’m beginning to think that focusing on the person I never got to be for John was a mistake.  Because I’m missing out on honoring the person I was and and can be.  The person he fell and stayed stupidly in love with. The person who wasn’t perfect for him, but he knew, somehow, was right for him.

I’m not sure if I was really ever “meant” to be his wife.  To be dutiful.  To be mindful around people who could make or break his career.  I don’t know.

All I know is that I was meant to be his last girlfriend. And I lost sight of how unbelievably special it was, and is, to be the last woman John left it all out on the field for.

Was he happier before he met me, his girlfriend?  I don’t know.  But I do know that he was better and stronger after loving me.  And I am better and stronger for having got to love him.

Some people may disagree with that, but…they didn’t know him like I did.  No one did.  No one could.

I wasn’t meant to be his wife in this lifetime.  And I won’t live that way…tethered to the ghost of a life that never was and never will be.

I wasn’t meant to be his wife, but I believe I was meant to be his game changer.  A malady and remedy in one.  I was meant to tease the final drops of life, and passion, and frustration out of him in his last few years, so that when he died, he died the fullest possible version of himself.  A version not many people got to experience.

Because of me, he died a man who stood up for what his heart wanted.  He died a man who had cut ties with what he had always known so he could carve out a path of his own.  A path he could have walked alone, beholden to no one.  But a path he chose to walk with me.

Because of me, his last girlfriend… he died his own man.

And because he died, I get to live my life as my own woman.  A woman who, for whatever reason, got lucky enough to be John’s last girlfriend.

 

 

Grief is a Liar

I think I know why Death wears a hood.

It isn’t, like many of us think, so that we fear him.   Or so that he is able to keep his face from being recognized too soon.   I don’t think the hood has to do with either of those things.

I think Death wears a hood for reasons that have nothing to do with us.

I think he wears his hood so that, when he approaches us with his arms outstretched, he doesn’t have to see us look at him in disbelief.  I think he wears a hood so that when he carefully and gently takes the hand of our person, he doesn’t have to see what it does to us.  So that he doesn’t have to see the pain.  I think he wears his hood so he doesn’t have to watch us drop to the ground with our hands over our faces.  He wears it so he can muffle out the sounds of screaming.

Death wears his hood so he doesn’t have to listen to anymore pleas for “one more hour. ” For one more minute.  For one more second.   It’s so he doesn’t have to hear people who used to shrink from him…beg, for the first time in their life, to go with him.  To ask if they can follow him.  To ask if he would be so kind as to take them instead.

He wears his hood so we can’t hear his voice break as he whispers, “I’m so, so sorry.  I don’t understand this either,” as he leaves.

I bet he wears his hood because his job breaks his heart.

And I would bet, that as he slowly walks away from us, Death pulls his hood up tighter so he doesn’t have to look Grief in the eye as she strolls past him towards the ones left back in life.

And I bet, with all my heart, that Death shuddered and hid even deeper under his hood once he looked over his shoulder six months ago and saw Grief crouching next to me.  And I bet he watched with a heavy heart as she leaned in and began to whisper the first lie she tells us all:

That she is here on behalf of Love.

Grief whispers that where there was great love, there must now be great pain.  She says this many times, so eventually it begins to make sense.   And we naively begin to accept that, for the rest of our life, this love will always have to hurt.  Because it should hurt.

And with this, we begin to trust her… so we lay at her feet with our hearts open, and ask to hear more.

So Grief tells us a bigger lie.  She tells us that what happened…the accident, the sudden heart attack, the cancer…that it was personal. That what happened to our person doesn’t actually happen to anyone else.  Not like this.  She tells us that our tragedy was designed specifically for us and us alone.  That these things “don’t just happen.”  They happen to us.

She tells us that Death comes for our person because the world has a personal stake in our unhappiness

This is where the anger, like a fever, begins to settle in.  And grief, stoking the flames continues and says quietly:  “You should be jealous of everyone else.”  

This is the lie that turns the spark of anger you had been holding back, into an inferno. 

It’s the lie that makes us look at other people’s happiness and say: They don’t deserve what they have.  They don’t really love one another.  They will never have what I had.  They will never understand.  

This lie turns us against the world around us and tries to lay waste to the friendships and relationships that had always sustained us.  And the anger feels good.  Because Grief knows that righteous anger always does.   

And after Grief begins to chip away at the relationships you still have here, she turns her sights on your relationship with your person.

And asks one simple question:  What makes you so sure they loved you? 

She brings up the fights you got into. The words you threw at one another like weapons when you were arguing.  She brings up the times you chose to get off the phone early for no real reason.  The times you rolled your eyes at them instead of giving them the hug you know they needed.  The times you thought you might be happier with someone else.  The times you thought that they would be happier with someone else.   She reminds you of all the time you wasted.

She makes you question your worthiness, your goodness, the happiness you brought them.  She makes you minimize the good times and think only about the bad times.  You can’t remember the love you gave them because you’re too busy replaying the pain you know you caused them on a loop in your head over and over and over.

And she doesn’t whisper her lies anymore, she shouts them at you over and over and over again until, with your back against the wall, you finally start doing her job for her and, looking Grief in the face, you tell yourself the biggest lie of them all:

That they’re really gone.  

That all you can do when someone dies is grieve them.   There is nothing more.  Just a cold, growing, empty space between your life back then with them, and your life right now without them.

You tell yourself that there is nothing more of them left here for you to love.  Death took it all.  And all you are left with is Grief who will walk next to you in your person’s place.

And Grief nods.

So you take Grief’s hand and begin to walk forward knowing that, yes…this love will always hurt.  And suffering will always find you.  And Grief sits silent for the first time and smiles.

But in that silence comes a voice from a lifetime away.  It’s so quiet at first, that you’re certain you’re hearing your own thoughts inside your head.  The voice, unlike Grief’s, doesn’t sound real.  Couldn’t be real.

But it seeps in somehow… from the cracks of the most broken places of your heart that only one person…your person…knew about.   Because they were the only person who you ever allowed to see those dark and broken parts of you.      

And it’s from those broken places that your person, after trying for so long to be heard over Grief, is able to finally get their message through and say…

My love, she’s lying. 

Death didn’t take me;  Death doesn’t take any of us anywhere we don’t want to go.  He simply explains that just as we made choices in life, we can make choices in death.  So I chose to stay with you.  How could I choose differently?

Why would I leave you here? Can’t you see that everything that has ever happened… happened to get me to you and you to me.  Stars were born and stars died.  Continents shifted, oceans froze, mountains moved so that one day we would be here together…even if just for a few years.  How could death take that away?  

I’m sorry.  I couldn’t stay in that body.  But I’m here.  Don’t let her walk in my place. Please: don’t listen to her.   I’m right here.  

And that’s when the landscape shifts.  When Grief feels you loosening your hand on hers, and she, for the first time, looks confused and says:  you can’t let go of me…that isn’t a choice.  If you don’t grieve them, you never loved them.  

And on hearing that, you realize for yourself, plain as day, that Grief…Grief is a liar.

You Weren’t Allowed to Do This

There were rules, babe.

You said it yourself.  Time and time again… Whenever someone at work was acting up, or whenever someone in their personal life was doing something idiotic, you’d shake your head and talk about “the rules” in life:  The things people are allowed to do, and the things they aren’t.

We didn’t agree on everything, and that was part of the beauty of what we were, but we always agreed on “the rules.”  We lived by the same ones both in our lives, and in our relationship.  Simply put:  we knew what we were allowed to do and what neither of us were allowed to do.  The rules were very clear.

And as the years went on, I’d like to think I got more liberal in my allowances.  I think we both know I started off pretty…rigid.  But I think towards the end there, we were really getting it right.  By the end, after loving you for so long, there were a lot of things that I would have happily allowed you to do:

You were allowed to forget to call. 

All those times you would fall asleep, phone in hand, and wake up to 17 angry missed calls from me…were totally allowed.  Though I said otherwise at the time, all that anger…all that irritation… would disappear the second I saw your name appear on my screen the next morning.

I’d listen to you frantically explain what happened: how tired you were from work, how you fell asleep watching a movie with your roommate, how sorry you were for not calling.

And I’d tell you to never do it again because it worried me…because your job is dangerous and whenever you didn’t call, the worst case scenario would explode in my head… and you’d swear it’d never happen again.  But it always did, because it was allowed.

You were allowed to fight with me. 

And man, did we fight.

Those knock-down drag-out brawls where we’d be set on nothing short of complete and utter annihilation of the other person’s point (or feelings)…those fights were allowed.  The fights were allowed to be ugly.  They were allowed to be ruthless.  They were allowed to hurt.

Truth be told, I loved fighting with you; honestly I did.  Because, no matter how bad they got, every single fight we had  would lead us to the same realization time and time again: The realization that the bottom was never going to fall out on us.  That we were never going to give up on one another.  Never not have each other’s backs.  Even if we needed days, weeks, months to get over something.

To give up on one another…that…simply was not allowed.  Ever.

You were even allowed to leave me. 

You were allowed to decide that you needed something else in a partner.  You were allowed to meet someone else and be happy with them.  I would have allowed it.  Because I’d still have been able to have your back, though someone else would have your heart.

You were allowed to find someone your family liked, someone who loved themselves more, who didn’t press you so hard on every…single…stupid…thing.  You were allowed to do that, babe, if it made you happy, because at times, I certainly didn’t feel like I made you happy.  And you deserved nothing short of that.

You weren’t allowed to die.

Not even a little bit.  It wasn’t even something to be discussed.

You weren’t allowed to leave me here and not take me with you.  We had adventures planned…together.  I wanted to go everywhere with you, and you went to the one place I can’t get to, and to say that that completely breaks my heart is the understatement of a lifetime.

And I can’t talk to you again, and I can’t call you again, and I can’t see you again, and I can’t figure out what exactly you expect me to do because you’re not here for me to ask you, and that wasn’t ever allowed.

You’re gone.  You stopped living.  You broke the rules.

But I didn’t, so I still have to follow the rules we set for one another: I have to be tenacious.  I have to be honest.   To be a better version of myself every day.  I have to walk outside everyday in a world you’re not in anymore and continue to try to be a good person.  And I have to do it without my best friend, my wing man; I have to do it without my heart.  And I have to pretend that it isn’t utterly exhausting just to keep breathing sometimes.

And sometimes, it’s too much, and I just miss you.

And I know…I’m not allowed to fall completely apart.  Or to give up on myself.  Or give up on people.  I know that because you made those rules very clear over and over again when you were right here next to me.  You believed in me.  Always.

I know I’m not allowed to turn into a person you wouldn’t be proud to know.  I’m not allowed to turn into a person you wouldn’t recognize.  I’m not allowed to turn into a person who stops showing up for her friends or family.  And I won’t .

I’m not allowed to let the space in my heart that held all of the joy and happiness you brought me turn into a sanctuary for bitterness and anger and resentment.  That place is only allowed to be filled with goodness.  With you.

And even though you were way better at following the rules than I was…I’ll finally say what I never said during any fight we had, and that is: Ok, babe…you win.  I’ll follow the rules…some days more so than others though, but I’ll do it.

But one rule I need to make absolutely clear to you is that I am allowed to keep loving you…forever.  And I will, babe.  Every day.  Without fail.

The Word “Widow” Doesn’t Cut It

The other day, someone asked me whether I would consider myself a widow.

I know that people need labels, but honestly I haven’t thought much into what I would call myself.  Things have been confusing recently.

The amount of times that question has come up has caused me to really have to ask myself what John and I were.  What was he to me and me to him?

Was he my  “boyfriend?”  No…the word itself sounds so trivial.  The word “partner” seems to fit, but doesn’t seem to capture the gravity of our relationship.   So then there’s “husband” or “spouse,” which for some reason seem to be the terms that carry the most legitimacy, but apparently, John and I missed out on the paperwork and fees that those terms require.  So…oh well.

But when I sit and think about it, even if he were my husband, and I was his widow…those words just, frankly, seem to fall flat.  There’s an emptiness to them, a vagueness in regards to the journey and path that our relationship carved into who we were and who I am.

What is the emotional difference between a boyfriend, partner, and husband?  And why does it matter so much to people?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I guess people need to make as much sense out of senseless events as they can, and the labels help.

But I can’t help people with that. I don’t know if I would consider myself a widow for one simple reason: I didn’t lose my husband.

John wasn’t my husband, not even a little bit.  He was so much more.  He was a part of my spirit.  He was a soulmate.  I lost the person who made me…me.  As someone else put it so perfectly, I  lost the echo of my life.

Is there a word for that?

John wasn’t my husband, but I would listen to his heart beat for fun.  Forty-two beats per minute.  It was the slowest…heartbeat… I had… ever… heard.  When we were lying around together, bored on a weekend,  I would ask if I could listen to it.  It fascinated me…how I could fit two of my heart beats into his one.  How even our inner workings seemed to balance one another out.

He wasn’t my husband…but I enjoyed hearing him live.  Literally.  That slow rhythmic beat that told me I was not alone in this world.  That I was his and he was mine.  I didn’t lose my husband, but I lost that.  What is the word for that?

He wasn’t my husband, but we would talk about the future.  The real future.  Not about the wedding and dresses and engagement rings, but of the struggle that would come with married life.  The arduous nature of military life and how he would miss out on the kids’ birthday parties because of deployments and how he would have to cope with the inevitable moments where I might feel resentful that I had to give up everything I knew in order to support his career.  We would talk about it.  The struggle of a life together where we knew we would have to fight to make each other happy and recommit ourselves to each other every single day.  I didn’t lose my husband, but I lost the promise and chance of a future with someone who would fight with me and for me.

A friend of mine once described the nature of relationships and said that people start off as squares, and that life chips away at us until we are whittled into little jig-saw pieces.  And at some point we meet someone who just “slots” into those pieces that are missing from us.  And that person makes you not fully whole…but makes you just a bit better.  They make life a little less scary.  And they make you a lot more fearless.  I lost that.

John told me once that I “helped heal the broken parts of him,” and he did the same for me.   And he died.  Even the word “died” doesn’t seem to fit:  He was ripped away.  Wrenched out of my life.  And for a while there, my life felt like it was meant to feel like punishment.

He died.  He wasn’t my husband.  He was not my spouse.  I am not his widow.  But that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to fight for me and our love in ways that I simply cannot explain.

We never got married, but I know that my phone will ring with only his name flashing on the screen and no way to hang up on the call and no record of it after I finally have to turn off my phone.  I know that my five year old niece started saying phrases that were shared only between me and him.   I know that the one time I needed four quarters to fill my tires up with air, a student of mine randomly walked up to me and handed them to me and said: not sure if you need these, but here.

He wasn’t my husband but I know the first time that I sent him a voice note a month after he died, I asked if he was proud of me.  And when I got home that day and opened my apartment door, a red balloon floated in from literally God knows where and nestled at my feet.  What is the word for when someone dies, yet they keep showing up for you?  What’s the word?

I know he’s dead.  Not my husband…but my partner.  My best friend.  My hype man.  I know’s he gone, but I also know that he’s found ways to make sure that even though I’m struggling with emotions that range from agony to grotesque indifference, I’ve never had to deal with feeling lonely.  Because I somehow still know he’s here.  Whispering.  And guiding.  And loving.  And honestly, spooking me out a bit, which I’m sure he is absolutely loving.

I know he’s dead and people need a way to refer to me, so the best thing I can come up with right now is that I’m not a widow…because I’m still very much his girl.  His person.  His best friend.  In heart and body and soul.  Because those are the only labels that really ever mattered.

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