all the tender places

I wonder how many times over the past three years I hollered up the stairs or rapidly texted the words: I'm coming! Mike, I'm coming, just wait a minute, I'll be there. When he couldn't speak, he rang a bell upstairs. Or texted me. And I'd be washing dishing and talking to one of the kids, and not see his message for ten minutes, and feel awful when I finally looked and saw three terse texts in a row. Are you there, Meagan? I'd run up the stairs, hands dripping, chest tight, to see what was wrong.

When he was in the hospital, and it was time for me to pick up the kids or head back to work, I'd always tell him when I'd be back. And I always seemed to be running late, both to the thing I had to leave him for, and on the way back to him. I'd scramble into the car and quickly text him: I'm coming, I'm heading to the hospital now, I'll be there very soon.

Often I felt pulled to shreds. There was always a child who needed help or attention, and a dinner that needed making, and a job to show up for, and always, always Mike, especially over the last few months - spiking another fever, manifesting symptoms that I needed to call the on-call physician about, needing me to bring him water or set up his IV meds. I hated that I was always coming and so rarely simply there when the need arose.

When my clockwork tears started up at the end of savasana this past Friday, I succumbed and let my mind go to all the tender places it wanted to: the warm, smooth space between Mike's shoulder blades, how it felt to settle my cheek there when he was curled on his side, the smell of his skin, the sound of him sleeping. The clearness of his eyes. His square short fingers, his surprisingly hairy forearms, his perfectly shaped forehead - all the exqusite contours of his beloved body. Maybe that's why it occured to me: the cemetery. I can go to the cemetery. I had about 45 minutes before I was supposed to see a house that was for sale.

My mind and my body, silently yet powerfully, came together to say Mike. I'm coming. 

It wasn't with the old anxiety and worry, nor the bands of fear tightening around my heart. It was with relief. Mike, finally, I'm coming, called out my whole expansive, hurting, broken self.

So I drove all the way down Prince Street, past St. Mary's where Mike's funeral was, past bodegas with handwritten signs taped up in the windows and pregnant moms holding toddlers by the hand on the hot sidewalk and the Water Street Rescue Mission with a line of people outside waiting for some unknown yet necessary service and old men sitting on the corner. I drove through the cemetery gates and pulled over on the ill-kept gravely road and walked up the little hill to Mike's grave.

I cried and cried there in the blazing sunlight. I heard myself telling Mike through sobs how hard this was, how much I wished he could be here. But then as my crying quieted, I heard myself talking to Mike just the way I used to, which is a way I haven't inhabited for over three months.

I told him about the kids: Shakespeare camp, farm camp, friends visiting, the kittens. About the house selling, and the house buying. About the stupid credit card canceling itself on me, just because he died, about plans for Frances's birthday, about how there are so many decisions to make all by myself. About how all the money stuff that he used to manage is really hard, but it's okay. I talked to him without the piercing tightness that usually accompanies my attempts to address him; I talked to him from a place of settled sadness and intimacy.

Mike wanted to be buried, and he wanted to be buried near us. He wanted me to bring the kids to his grave; he wanted them to feel comfortable there. I don't think he thought very much about me visiting his grave in my own right. I guess I didn't either. Friday was the first time I'd ever gone alone. It was such a surprise, to feel myself slipping into my side of our old way together, sitting on the grass next to his plot, looking out the fields and woods, listening to the birdsong. Who else could I possibly give a report like that to? Only Mike. It wasn't the way I talk to myself. (And I do). It was the way I talk to him.

I didn't think Sunday would be that big a deal. I had somehow gotten through Mike's birthday, and our anniversary. But Father's Day just wasn't that important to Mike. It'll be fine, I thought.

I started the day going to church alone, and crying through the service. Then we went out with visiting friends and my mom for a lovely lunch, and I coulndn't help but notice the many families there out with fathers. I innocently checked Facebook and was bombarded by photos of women friends' husbands and fathers together. The two best dads in the world! And oh, with what pity and tears did I feel the absence of the two best dads in my world, who never had the chance to share a photo frame, but are now buried side by side.

A beautiful book was delivered at the house, and it contained a sheaf of notes from the nurses and chaplain at the hospital, people who had walked with us for so long and knew Mike well. They must have known it would arrive on Father's Day. And then I ran into a very old friend at the grocery store, someone I hadn't really talked to in years, and learned about a great sadness in her life standing together in the freezer aisle. Through it all I cried on and off with increasing frequency (and increasing disturbance for the children) until when our dear friends called and invited us for homemade sushi, I said yes, oh yes, and can I drop the kids with you and go to the cemetery first?

What a relief it is to be in that quiet green place, to sit on that hill and tell Mike how sad I am.

And while I don't feel the same fear and urgency on my way to the place where his body is buried - I don't need to fear the high fevers and breathlessness anymore - when I have to get up and walk back to my car, it hurts. It touches the rawness and pain of every goodbye I had to say to Mike when he was hospitalized. Every time it was the same; I hated to leave him. I'd linger on the other side of the heavy door; I'd cry all the way to the elevators. Sometimes a kind nurse would find me and give me a hug. Or I'd channel it into advocacy superpowers, and hunt his nurse down and review all his meds for the night and find out when the shift changed and make sure everyone had my cell.

So even though now my husband and I have been parted by death, to get up and leave the cemetery feels too much like those exhausted, sorrowful nights on 8 Lime in Lancaster and 7 Rhoads at Penn. It's an additional separation. Oh, how I hate to go.

Such a strange balancing act, to yearn for a past that can never be again and to look ahead to a future with my family that I am only beginning to imagine. To bring home kittens, to plan for summer trips, to think about buying a house, to return from the cemetery to a joyous house full of kids and friends making sushi and welcoming me with open arms, all while the deepest parts of me call out for Mike. Mike, Mike, how can we keep going like this, without you?

The only way it seems possible is if somehow he comes along with us. How can I know what God had in store for Mike, how God is faithful to us and honors our love? He is making all things new, all the time, and I don't think that can mean untethering us to our great loves and deepest anchors. Surely it means transforming all of it, the living and the dead, the past and the present and the future, the spiderwebs of love that bind us with sticky, unbreakable threads.