in the chute

 

It's a snowy day here, and the kids are off school. I'm at work where meetings were canceled, and so had a bit of time to think about Beatrice's upcoming birthday and look at her Amazon wishlist, which she has been curating whenever she gets her hands on my laptop over the past couple of weeks. 

I never use that feature of Amazon. I scrolled down through K-pop albums and bells-and-whistles water bottles until I hit something just below Star Hair Clips/Y2K Snap On Hair Barrettes that stopped me up short: a book called Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird, who was (and apparently still is) on the faculty at Villanova when Mike was in his graduate program there. And below that? The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. Family Happiness and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy. The Sources of Christian Ethics. And quite a few more titles in the characteristic theology and Russian literature veins...until I hit the very first thing that had been added to this wishlist, in June 2017. A burr grinder. That made me smile. Mike was on a perpetual mission to perfect his morning coffee. 

The Laird book, the last thing Mike put on his wishlist, was added on February 8th, 2018. One month and four days before he died, just as the cancer was beginning to come back after his transplant. Five years and 360 days before today. 

It's that time of year, observed my boyfriend as I cried exhausted tears last week, thinking about my dad in the midst of an AEDP training weekend that, as always, centers attachment in the therapeutic work. My beloved dad who gave me the gift of secure attachment, of feeling safe and loved, and who was taken from us far too soon, leaving me with an enduring envy of everyone I know who has a father that happens to be alive.

He's right. It's that time of year. I'm in the chute. I'm in the chute and I can't get out until March 13th, the day after Mike's deathaversary. It happens every year. I get more brittle, more weepy, a bit more anxious and angry in defensive gestures against the grief the stirs and lurches within. This time six years ago became more traumatic and painful with each passing day, and my body cannot forget. 

I fantasize, as I did this morning on my snowy walk to work (even the brilliant white tree limbs couldn't deter me!), about snapping at someone who complains about child care on snow days, or having to manage things on their own because their partner is away at work, or even (god forgive me, the latest person on the planet) in response to a colleague with a living spouse who arrives late to work just because. I want to say: are YOU a widowed solo parent with three children getting to work everyday, even when it SNOWS? NO?! You're NOT? Okay well just TRY DOING THIS LIFE for a couple of days and THEN talk to me. 

When Mike was sick, and even before then, he confessed to a fantasy: a stranger would walk up to him and hit him in the face. Because then he could hit back! Hard! Justifiably! It would feel amazing to hit someone for a good reason. 

So, Mike, same. It would feel amazing to FREAK OUT on some innocent person who doesn't have to live this reality and stumbles into triggering me. I would love a tiny reason to inappropriately rage.

But it's been six years, you say! That's a long time, right? Will you ever stop talking about your grief? In some ways, yes, it is very long. I'm so far from my identity as Mike's wife. So far that I often feel like a different person, like I can barely recognize the woman I used to be. (That's a grief in and of itself, even though I like the woman I've become).

We're used to it. Sort of. The kids and I are used to this new life we've made together. It's a good one. But then sometimes, like on my walk to work today with my head down against the snowflakes blowing into my eyes, watching my thighs do the work of walking along the slushy sidewalk, already deep into the chute, I think to myself: 

I'm a widow. I'm alone. 

And it feels just as absurd and unfathomable as it did on March 13, 2018. 

How did I get here? How am I alone in making every decision, caring for every sick kid, navigating every day off school and every tearful bedtime? How did this become my life? This is crazy! 

So I'm used to it. And deep down, beneath that, I'm never used to it. 

How old are the cats? asked a beloved friend while we chopped vegetables together, surrounded by our families on Sunday night. 

The cats have been alive as long as Mike has been dead, I said casually. We think they were born two or three weeks after he died; we adopted them when they were so tiny. They're almost six. 

I say these things out loud, to make bridges between my life now and my life then, between my inner life and my outer one. But sometimes it feels like I'm shouting and shaking the shoulders of the people around me. It's real! It happened! It was terrible! 

It's been six years; it's been six seconds. And six seconds is not very long at all.