outside in it

When a shirt or pair of pants intended for wear is stubbornly "inside-outted," my children will bring it to me, asking if I would please outside in it for them. I've outside-inned more items than I could count over the past twelve years. Frances must have coined the phrase as a toddler, then Gabriel picked it up, and now Beatrice uses it exclusively, as the other children do their own outside-inning these days.

I've looked, and there are precious fews pictures of me and Mike together. Most of the time one of us was the photographer, and Mike wasn't big on the selfie. So there you have it. Not a lot of outside-in views. I took the above picture last winter. It was a relatively better time health-wise, and Mike had promised the kids he could make it to the sledding hill. But once we got there, the wind was terrible, and he was just so sensitive to the cold. He didn't feel well; we both knew it was a bad idea. So we documented our arrival on that freezing hill as proof - you see, Papa did come! - and then Mike quickly went home to warm up under the covers.

I've always held that being on the inside of a relationship can be ulimately lonely, because no one besides the two of you can really know what it is. If you and your partner are alienated from one another, it can seem that there is no one in the whole world with whom you can connect about your struggles. No one can really understand; no one but him.

I rarely talked about Mike. He was a private person; it seemed a distasteful betrayal to talk about him, good or bad, in his absence. Besides, it didn't appeal because it would be utterly futile. How could I communicate one piece of what we are, who we are, and expect anyone else to really get it, without access to the entirety of the thing? Any effort to explain or share about him, and me, and us, seemed pointless.

There are a tiny handful of friends who love and know us both well with whom, during Mike's years of illness, I would sometimes talk. They are people who supported us both unconditionally, knew our flaws, and could empathize with me without making an object of Mike. So that felt safe. I needed to push at those privacy boundaries sometimes; Mike simply wasn't able to talk through things with me in the same way and we were beset by the hardship imposed on us by his rare illness. But even in those moments, I worried. I might vent in the midst of sadness and anger, but my friend won't know about the goodness that followed. She will carry around the wrong idea. She will think our lives are always that messed up. Ugh.

It's as if I thought we were in a spaceship. And that every couple is in their own unknowable spaceship. And we fly around together and notice each other, comment on shine and shape and speed, and sometimes one member of the crew will step out and complain about the other's predilection for dim interior lighting whereas she prefers it bright, but you can never have a clue about the truly important stuff that goes on in there.

But something interesting has happened since Mike died. People send me cards, and sometimes they share memories. They share their impressions formed outside the ship. Much of the comments about Mike are comforting to read, and consistent with what we all knew about him: his kindness, his humor, his sensitivity and intelligence. How he was "staggeringly handsome," a phrase that someone from Swarthmore who knew Mike and lived in the same dorm during their freshman year used to describe him in a card she wrote me and that I continue to treasure. Exactly. Simply beautiful, up until the moment he died, with his clear eyes and delicate, perfect cheekbones and jaw, his boyish face. When he taught at St. John's, he was often mistaken for a student. Sometimes I found that irritating (why do you get to be so damn youthful and good-looking, while the man at the wine store takes one look at the dark circles beneath my eyes and knows I'm buying this wine to console myself with after the children are in bed?) but mostly I felt proud of my staggeringly handsome husband.

Sometimes, more rarely, people share memories of us. And this is a very great and nearly always surprising gift to me. A friend remembers seeing us walk hand in hand on Main Street in Annapolis. (Us? Hand in hand? Mike, who was so boundaried physically and rarely showed affection in public?). She said she was shocked when I once shared with her that we were fighting because we just didn't seem like the kind of couple who fought. Another remembers how delighted I was to see him when I walked in a room and found him there, how I lit up in smiles, how visible was our love for each other, just in the way we looked at one another. Another wrote about how everyone could see how deeply Mike loved me.

Really? He did? You could? Are you guys just saying all this to comfort a devastated widow? Could it really be true? Could you see us - and could you see things about us that we were too mired in everyday life to notice ourselves? Life is so full, sometimes overwhelmingly so. In our old pre-cancer  Annapolis lives we had little ones and school and work and always so much to do: water in the basement, visitors coming next weekend, a babysitter who just backed out, laundry piled on the couch. It was all trees most of the time. Did other people who stood beyond the treeline see a more beautiful and majestic forest?

I wrote earlier how I had to realize that I wasn't trusting Mike enough to tell him when I was hurt or upset; I wasn't trusting him to love me no matter what. I think I often struggled with that; with not trusting his love for me. His own challenges, before and during his illness, sometimes made it hard for him to express it. But I learned, and know now, that it was always strong and true. Still. It's an old habit, a part of me that doesn't quite know how to release it's hold on that scratching doubt. So when people tell me something I already know - that Mike loved me, that they could see it, that it was real - that fearful doubting part of me sighs and sags in relief, saying, oh thank you, thank you, thank you. Say it again. Let it be true.

My mind goes back to the hours before and moments during Mike's death all the time. Every day, many times a day. When we knew he was dying, that there was no way around the fact that soon he would not be able to breath, he looked at me. A moment. His eyes, so very beautiful, so very him. He gave me a little wave that felt unbearable - that was how he acknowledged that we both knew this was our goodbye. He typed on the iPad: you know how much I love you.

He knew about that small sad part of me and he knew it was getting tinier with each passing moment. I told him I did. And that he knew how much I loved him. It was the truth.

But how extraordinary, that I keep on learning about us, in this time of sorrow and weight. I like to hear about us from the outside in. It affirms all the yearnings of my heart. Let it be truer and truer still.

I persist in tree mode with Mike. Each significant moment - Frances's choir concert, the arrival of our two new kittens, a terrible conflict with one of the kids - is an opportunity to miss him afresh. To feel the strangeness of his absence, and to anticipate his response to the situation. And the thing is, a good sandwich is a significant moment. So is a beautiful flowering tree, or learning last night that our old Annapolis contractor is caring for his wife who has a rare brain cancer, or going to the New School art show and watching various kids we know perform, or finding ants in the kitchen. Again. Oh Mike, can you believe these stupid ants?

If you pay attention, what moment in your day isn't significant? And so he is with me, and not with me, all the time. It's sadder than I can properly say.

It's also disorienting. Sometimes I feel that I don't even know what I like, or what I do, or what I think, without him to hold onto or push back against. The kittens? I know I wanted them. Mike would say I have enough on my plate right now, feel a little protective of me in this state, suggest I slow things down, not take on new responsibilities quite yet. I'd say well, they are a lot of work, but we are so sad and they bring us joy. And then he'd say, okay Meagan. And give me a hug, still thinking it was a little crazy. And be sad with me.

I'm the one who overextends; he's the one who withdraws. I'm the one who loves to cook and eat; he's the one who's more ascetic. I'm sloppy, he's neat. I have the worst sense of time, he arrives three minutes early. What to do when you no longer have your one to understand yourself in relationship to? Am I actually the way we thought I was? Can I keep our family intact without Mike's complementary and balancing influence? Even when he was so sick and I was doing everything, which was for quite a long time, I still could hear him upstairs in bed thinking it was past Bea's bedtime, and that helped me to get a move on. Now he's not there quietly noticing - or not noticing - my lax parenting on display and I can't get anyone to go to bed. In fact everyone is sleeping in my room and chronically tired. Our room. Mike was so good at bedtime routines and consistency, at keeping the kids in their own beds! I used to boast that was the only thing we were really great at as parents. But now I know Mike was great at it, not me. I just followed his lead.

When you tell me what we were like, and what I was like, and what our family is like, it's a sturdy handhold for me. Even if it's about the past, the distant past - like Mike being a staggeringly handsome eighteen year old. It validates and secures my slippery reality. It helps me understand where I came from, which surely must help me tolerate the uncertainty of my path going forward.

We do love each other? We did endure with faithfulness and love through a terrible time? Our kids are alright? They won't resent me indefinitely? They do know how Mike treasured them? We did take good care of him?

Our marriage was real and true and loving and good? I loved him well?


Oh, my friends. Keep outside inning this, please.