I went to visit the cemetery by myself today. The weather was perfect - as perfect as it can be in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on a late afternoon in November following one's return from a beachy family Thanksgiving in south Florida. The sun was bright and even though my hair was still wet from a slow Sunday shower and my jacket was light and I'm a total wimp about being cold I could comfortaby sit on the grass next to Mike's grave with nary a shiver.
As soon as I got there I spotted an incongruous ladybug crawling along the rim of his gravestone's birdbath. A sign! A lucky ladybug. A greeting. As I watched its arduous course along the stone lip, I realized that it was approaching a second ladybug. Oh Mike, I said. Did you send them? It's you and me! I think you sent them. Thank you.
Those ladybugs broadcast the particular tender welcome I often feel at the cemetery. Come, sit down, spend some time with us, with Mike, with the trees and birds and cornfield beyond. Look for more signs; you'll find them if you do. You belong here with us.
Sometimes I talk to Mike, but in the midst of a challenging day it usually takes the form of an exasperated yelp, a plea for assistance, a shout of pent up sorrow. I hear myself say his name aloud often: Mike. Depending on the situation, I might go so far as to say Mike, I don't know what to do. In bathroom stalls, in the car under my breath, in my office between clients, I say things like Mike, I'm a mess. Please help.
But the only time and place I feel like I can really talk to him is at the cemetery, alone, where it's just us. What does that mean exactly? I couldn't say.
The thing is, I spend a lot of time feeling fretful about how our lives are moving on, how I make large and small decisions all by myself now, how the kids are learning to manage life with one living parent. The future keeps unfolding. Is he still with me? Am I doing the work of taking Mike with us? How do I keep him close - feel his difficulty, his difference, his power - when in the blur of a regular grief-cast Tuesday with a job and three children it's hard enough to make space for my own thoughts and feelings, let alone his?
So the comfort I feel at the cemetery is profound. I don't know if I'm doing anything right. I don't know if I'm honoring Mike in my day to day life choices (though I pray I am), I don't know how to keep leaning into this strange widowed parenting future. But to see those ladybugs, the drifting clouds overhead, the crows lifting en masse from the bare branches of the tree into the bright sky, the beautiful headstone full of clean cold rainwater, to feel a resistance-less sinking into sadness and connection? Being there, part of me (Mike?) whispers that it doesn't matter if I'm fucking everything up. There's no doing it right. There's only showing up, arriving, again and again, broken and smiling and crying, unmoored yet somehow staying in the harbor.
I like to talk out loud about everyday things to Mike at the cemetery. The kids (same old worries), updates on family and friends, things I've been reading or thinking about. Today I heard myself complaining about something - and then I hesitated, like, should I bring Mike this kind of crap? - and then I realized something. I don't have to worry about protecting him from anything. He doesn't feel agitated or judgemental or pissed off about small and basically unimportant things anymore.
Because how could he? He's made the passage, he has died to this version of life. Mike must see with transformed vision now. It hit me: Mike has changed, and I have too. I can't re-enter our relationship in the same way, because we have been forever transformed by his death.
Later I told him I'd been feeling old, unattractive. Worried about my sad and achey body. I quickly added that I know, I know, he'd love a tired old aging body. Beats the alternative, as they say. You'd think after walking our path together I'd be all gratitude and light, all cured of any residual body image fretting, immune to the tyrannical consumerist wellness culture that Mike found mildly oppressive as a healthy person and acutely oppressive as a cancer patient. But here I am, without his ballast in my ship, sending an embarrasing amount of money to artisanal organic skincare companies and debating how to handle my thinning and increasingly graying hair.
Again, at first I confessed these worries to Mike with embarrassment, with anticipation of his exasperated response. But a minute later, again I realized he wasn't exasperated at all. Mike is a new, unknowable being, but I do know that in dying he let go of many things. So much fell away in the process, all the small irritations and judgements, the insecurities and fears, the leftover anger and worries. The spaces left behind gradually filled with love, even though he was frightened and suffering.
How could the person I held as he passed into death possibly care if his wife dyes her hair, or doesn't dye her hair, or worries about dyeing her hair?
At the cemetery I told him I felt bad about how I looked; in time I knew his only response was tender compassion.
Later in the evening I took the children to try out a contemplative mass at our new church. I was nervous, worried that it would be a lot of serious, silent adults annoyed by the presence of whispering children. Well, maybe they were - I don't know. But we did it. The gospel portion of the service was lectio divina, a practice of close, contemplative listening/reading to a short passage of the Bible. Mike often used this approach to prayer. Father Leo, the Catholic priest who did Mike's service, encouraged me to try it in the panicky sleepless weeks after Mike died. (I did, though couldn't stick with it).
Not surprisingly, we listened - three or four times - to Matthew: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
They neither toil nor spin. This phrase stayed with me.
Neither toil nor spin, Meagan. I looked up at the illuminated painting of Jesus on the cross in the chapel as I stroked Beatrice's hair, her head resting on my lap, feeling grateful for her patience in this strange silent room, and for the first time it occured to me: Jesus had to go through the dying process, too. He was also human, and knew he would die, and had to say goodbye and let go of his concerns about things like what would happen to his disciples and his mother, to Judas, whether or not he had completed his work, what he would eat and wear tomorrow. Dying is becoming like the lilies of the field.
We are all dying, all the time, but only those who are facing their death in a visceral and true way know what it is to be stripped of all the unimportant worries and preoccupations that tether us to yesterday, today, tomorrow.
Jesus died for our sins is a slogan that has always left me cold. What does it even mean? How can it provide any comfort? I hear that sentence and I think, please, Jesus, don't do me any favors. Don't put this on me. But something about connecting Jesus's experience on the cross tonight with Mike's experience in the hospital opened a space in my heart. God became flesh, and He didn't just die - because no one just dies - he went through the process of suffering, of dying. He became like the lilies, like the ladybugs, stripped of worry, of anxious busy-ness, all presence, all fullness. All love.
Does it sound too tidy? I guess it is. It's so hard to put language on some of this disoriented, light emanating from around a dark corner I cannot quite see, sorrow-laden stuff.
I realized today that I cannot be inside my old relationship with Mike, I cannot carry that forward, because it died when he did. He was transformed, and in a smaller way, I was too. What I feel grateful for is the peace this realization brought with it. I don't know who I am, or who he is, or who we are now that he has died. But miraculously, tonight anyway, I don't feel anxious. If Jesus could approach and pass through this terrifying door alongside us, then maybe it's okay to not have a clue.
Neither toil nor spin. At first I heard Meagan, chill out, it's okay to leave some dishes in the sink, it's okay to let Beatrice watch crappy shows on Netflix while you get something done, it's okay if the kids forget to change their sheets. But then, in time, I heard it in a deeper way: Meagan, it's okay if you don't know what to do. It's okay if you cry a lot today, and not at all tomorrow. It's okay if you're messing up life without Mike. Just keep showing up. Keep turning towards to sun.
Thanks, Jesus.
