Mike and I went to Belgium for an academic year shortly after we were married. We lived in a tiny two room apartment that was really two dorm rooms whose connecting flimsy wall had been knocked out at some point. It was by far our most spare and intimate living arrangement, furnished by a small unfinished wooden table and two chairs, a loveseat/futon, and a bed that we had fashioned from two wooden twin frames that were in the apartment when we arrived. Our big purchase was a double mattress to throw on top of them after we pushed them together, kindly delivered by a new Belgian friend who had a car and knew where to buy a cheap mattress in the outskirts of Leuven.
Our tiny dwelling had a hot plate with two burners, a mini fridge, and a sink. It had two bathrooms (from its days as two separate student rooms) so we used one as a pantry/beer cellar. (The beer! That's when I learned to enjoy it. We would buy a case of Chimay or Leffe at prices that astounded our American sensibilities and store it on the cool tile floor of the shower). I loved the market and accessibility of things that had felt like splurges only justifiable on special occasions in our previous life: beautiful cheeses, the best chocolate, briny olives, slabs of smoked fish. So we cooked often at home, and sat at the wooden table situated below the apartment's one decorative flourish: an enormous leaded window broken into diamonds in shades of green, yellow, and rose, listening to the music we borrowed from the fantastic collection at the local library and talking about everything we were reading, doing, seeing.
Mike had a Fulbright to work on his dissertation. It was for married students, and I wasn't supposed to work while we received it. So I did what you might expect: sat in on a couple of classes, found myself an intership in Brussels, tutored some sweet Korean children whose parents worked at a branch of Samsung in Leuven. Mike and I borrowed beat up gearless bikes through the university program and joined the throngs of cyclists clogging all the city streets. I called mine the Pink Lady (before the apple of the same name arrived in grocery stores) and rode her to the university gym, and the train station on my way to Brussels, and to the university library I favored, where I the English literature and psychology books were housed.
I had a lot of time to myself. So did Mike. He had his own spot in the philosophy library, and took classes with a philosopher that showed him that it was still possible to truly think - not just think about the thoughts of philosophers gone by. He was also a believer, and his example was a gift then to Mike, who was struggling with a sense of pointlessness about academic work, his own uncertain faith path, and what it would mean to become a father. We knew we wanted to get pregnant when we came home. We figured the soonest we could have a baby was after I graduated from my social work program (I was taking a leave of absence that year). Frances was indeed born three weeks after I finished my degree. That year in Belgium was our pregnancy pregnancy; our preparation for the move into parenthood. It was a chapter set out of regular life that offered open expanses of time for all the quiet, conversation, solitude, reading, cooking, walking, and gentle adventuring that a person could want who was preparing to be changed forever.
Mike was also depressed. He had been depressed before, but was always unwilling to name it that. He did not want to be managed; he did not want to be labeled. He resisted, as Elizabeth Gilbert describes, not only the feelings but their reality as well. We didn't use the language of mental health to talk about his indecisiveness, his bouts of social withdrawal, his irritability, his relentlessly demanding and unsatisfied attitude towards himself. Depression is so tricky, because it is interwoven with who you are. But I knew, and he knew, that it was also suppressing who he was, dampening his bright spirit. We just didn't talk about it that way.
Until he did. That year in Belgium was a time of hope and newness, despite the heavy gray sky and similar mood that would overtake my husband. He was finally able to name his experience, and came up with a distinction of his own: he was depressed, not despairing. He was connected to faith, hope, and love - perhaps more strongly than ever - and he was having a really, really hard time staying afloat emotionally. But those two things could coexist, and for this realization he was grateful. He could become a Papa, and a good Papa, because despair could never sink its talons into him.
No, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee.
Depressed, not despairing. That opened up a new space for Mike.
In time, he walked right through it. Some of his happiest and most fulfilling days were with baby Frances. He contentedly listened to audio books while pushing her around town on long walks, and avoided other parents, and shoved her into my arms when I came home from work. He woke up before the sun to write his dissertation, he planned a garden, he began work on a mural in the dining room. He saw a therapist and a psychiatrist. He developed a disciplined Centering Prayer practice. He started the Lancaster Film Society in our living room with new friends. It was a time of creative, joyful engagement with life. Sometimes I stood back and marveled. Sometimes I felt a little uneasy. What happened to this guy?
Becoming a father made Mike's light shine that much brighter. Why didn't we do this earlier? he'd say. Why don't we have five more?
(He didn't always want five more; things changed, that time passed. But I kind of did. One of the things I mourn, that cancer took away, was the possibility of a fourth child. Maybe I wouldn't have longed for another baby if my beloved husband wasn't so sick, if some doctor hadn't told us to sign right here and promise you won't have any kids while on this clinical trial, if the choice hadn't been taken away. But does it matter? I loved having babies with Mike. I can't anymore, and it hurts.)
A friend asked me recently if I ever worried about myself. If I looked around with my clinical goggles on, took stock, and thought: geez, this non-normative grief thing is really messing me up. Things are pretty bad. Time to check in to the sanatorium.
I told her that I'm devastated, but not disconnected. So no, I don't worry. Many times a day I'm laid low by feelings matched in power only by those I felt falling in love with Mike. The sorrow makes my knees buckle, my chest tighten; my whole body aches. One can only submit. The alternative seems much worse to me: an isolated, walled off cave, disconnected from myself, from Mike, from everyone.
Though I suffer, I feel part of this world. I am loved and loving. I am surrounded by a community of people whom I adore. I want to tell them about what is happening now, what happened then, all of it. Miraculously they are willing to listen.
(I usually cry when I write one of these posts. This morning, it's the awareness of so many people's faithful presence, their repeated invitations and welcome of my tears, my fountain of words, their generous acceptance of the essentially self-centeredness of this dark season in my life, that has me weeping now.)
Easter arrived a little over two weeks after Mike died. I remember saying, why can't it stay Lent? Why can't it be Lent all year? The kids felt the same. Spring? Resurrection? Lilies?? Nah. We'll just sit here in shadowy winter for as long as we can stand it, thank you very much.
And though I have complained, this rainy cold spring has been a gift to me. It protected me from the gorgeous weather and happy families in the park and a general awareness of boisterous, irrepressible life celebrating itself all around me that typically arrives earlier than it did this year. It delayed an encounter with the insistent joy of green, growing spring.
But earlier this week, the rain stopped. I brushed layers of pollen off the seat of my bike which had been neglected on our porch for months. I carried it to the sidewalk and headed off to meet an entirely new friend for lunch. Someone who didn't know Mike, or our story, but wanted to listen. Gabriel had borrowed my helmet and left it somewhere I coulnd't find so I could, in good conscience, feel the cool wind blow my hair around as I coasted down James Street.
The sun was shining, the air was gentle, I was suffused with that marvelous mix of calm and quiet excitement in my body that only an easy helmet-less bike ride on a cool and bright spring morning, heading towards an unknown and somewhat risky experience, can provide.
A little part of me drew back, noticing, a bit disturbed. Meagan, can you really feel this way? Is it allowed? What about the devastation? What about Mike?
I arrived at an intersection where there was some road work. A young slender man stood in the center ready to direct traffic (I was it, at the moment) with his orange flag. I slowed to a stop and asked, is it okay if I go this way?
He looked at me and smiled broadly. His eyes were bright. Then he said,
You can go any way you want to.
Okay, I smiled back. Thanks.
As I rode away I heard him call after me, just be careful!
So there was my answer. I can feel this way. I can go any direction I want to. Each moment presents itself, and all come with dangers. I'm okay with that. I accept. Destroyed, not depressed. Devasted, not disconnected. Never, ever despairing.
Michael, Michael. I cry for you. I cry for the beauty and light of this world that penetrates all darkness. You taught me so much about that. How could I turn away from it now?
2 comments:
It is miraculous how you can create such beauty and truth with a few well-chosen words. All my love always.
Living. It's one of the hardest things you'll do in life.
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