I just did the math. It's been 680 days since I held Mike's hand and looked into his clear eyes.
So much has happened since then.
In the months after he died I entered a kind of freefall. I was part of a finetuned, intricate system for twenty years, and on March 12, 2018 half of the machinery was suddenly and irrevocably yanked out of it - and not just on one discernible half, as you might expect - but rather a hidden gear in this corner, a series of cogs in that, a wheel in the very center of the operation, all violently removed - tiny bits and big pieces, all of them essential to keep the old me humming along as I once had without giving the miraculously complex nature of it all a second thought. Without Mike I could imitate my old gestures and impulses, but they felt empty. Absurd. Like a robot full of busted machinery masquerading as a human.
How did I do any of the things that I did then? I sold our old house, I bought our new house, I brought home the kittens, I got us through holidays and birthdays, I got us all the way to the one year mark. We all took the day off and volunteered, baking cookies at the local food bank and being so loud and obnoxious about it that after a few dozen the staff did everything short of beg us to leave to gracioulsy usher us off the premises. Much of the time it seemed I was hanging on by my fingernails. And I bite my fingernails! I worried the kids would hate me. I worried I was letting Mike down. I replayed his death in my mind many times a day. I said the word 'widow' aloud as often as possible, to try to make myself believe it. I continued to feel like a busted robot.
In the summer after the one year mark, I redid our kitchen. The new floor looks like a watermelon rind; the cabinets are so white they glow. I gardened a little. We had friends over and sometimes I didn't cry; I always laughed. I began to look around, and for the first time I felt proud of myself. That's my garage, damnit. I drove us to North Carolina and back without incident (and with adventures). That's my full time job that supports us with a decent salary and nice benefits. And I even like it!
I went to California all by myself to visit a dear friend. While basking in the desert silence I missed a flea invasion at home and I didn't feel guilty (though I definitely felt grateful to the family and friends who battled those nasty bitty beasts in my absence). I felt content with stillness on that trip. Something was starting to shift, imperceptibly at first. But I think the first clue to the shifting was that I was able to know in my bones and through my tears that I was pulling us forward, into and out of the very worst thing imaginable, and at least for now we were okay, and sometimes even more than okay. Sometimes we were kicking ass.
Somewhere around day 615, maybe 620, the shifting began to feel more like a rumble. And that's kind of where I am now - rumbling. I am leaning into and fumbling around the open spaces in my robot panel chest, and the cold air and lack of jagged metal edges is rarely about panicky disorientation these days. Instead those spaces feel like beckoning potentiality, like something I want.
Wanting! That's what I do now. I want things. I want things I could never want if Mike were alive, or at least not within the system we were together before and up until he died. What's more, I suspect I want things I could never want if Mike and I had not gone through his cancer together, and if I had not had to suffer the unthinkable loss of him. Add that to the list of goods we now enjoy with the strange, melancholy awareness that we have them because we don't have him: a full life in Lancaster, a trip to Jamaica, the naughty cats, and now all this wanting. I am able to admit to and even revel in wants I have never been able to articulate to myself or anyone else until now, 680 days into widowhood.
I want to write a book. I want to not anticipate and facilitate other people's wants. I want to assert my authority. I want to hold your gaze and not look away. I want the exhilarating responsibility of claiming my own desires.
(That's a big one. After Mike died I had no fucking clue what appeal various aspects of the world held without anticipating his responses to them. It was just me, all alone inside, and I was at sea.)
What else? I want to take up a lot of space.
The other day I slid unexpectedly on the ice and caught myself just before I fell. Sorry! I said breathlessly to the air. There was no one else there.
So, yeah. I want to stop apologizing. And to admit my mistakes with courage.
I want to be held. I want to hold. I want to tell the truth. I want to feel my wildness and ambition without any shame at all.
I want to treasure this brokeness within me, touch and see every last shard, and then give it all away.
