I haven't had to disentangle myself from a weeping child who can't bear to be separated in a long time. It's misery. Especially the part where I have to stay calm and reassuring and proceed with the parting as if everything is okay, when inside I want to cry too, and my mind is quickly running through improbable scenarios that make no sense at all: could she watch movies all day long and not make a sound in a nearby office while I see clients? Could I call everyone I know, pleading for a babysitter? Could I take off the rest of the week?
I knew none of those options made much sense, and I knew that my in-laws are more resilient and peaceful than I am in the face of these situations and that eventually everyone would settle in and have a fine time. So in the end I smiled and waved them off in the yellow evening light.
Then everything was quiet, and still, and I felt wretched. What now? I found some scissors and cut down Beatrice's shriveled birthday balloons that had been hanging from a string tied around the porch railing for almost a month. I pulled in the recycling bin from the curb. I stood on my porch, empty.
When Mike died, I comforted myself with reminders that we had had the chance to say everything that needed to be said. There wasn't anything important that didn't get articulated; I felt we were together, transparent, united. I told him he was the very best husband for me, and he knew it was true. He said you know how much I love you just before he died, and I did. I do. But now it turns out there are so many things that are important to say to him, and to hear from him, and I can't. Was it the right thing to send them to your parents this week? What should I do about Beatrice being so quick to hit when she's mad? And how should I handle this phone business with Frances? Is it okay that I let Gabriel run the neighborhood til the evening, and sometimes he's late coming home, and I don't make a big deal out of it?
And the sweetest thing happened this morning, snuggling with Bea. And I feel overwhelmed at work sometimes and I'm not sure how to get on top of all the documentation. And what do you think I should do this summer to ensure time for myself, for writing, for remembering who I am?
And also, Mike, who am I, exactly? Would you remind me?
This year has been an exercise in tolerating disorientation, in mucking haphazard trails through mud. March's gray days and raw weather exacerbate it all. My dad died in March. Mike died in March. Mike's Aunt Joan, his godmother, died nearly two weeks ago; I went to her funeral last week and sat alone in the pew, missing Mike's arm grazing mine. I was able to visit her in the hospital the day before she died, for which I am so very grateful. But it's one more tether snapped; one more precious person I can no longer see and no longer be seen by. What roots me to this singular life? It's bewildering.
I had no idea how completely I had lived as part of a unit until Mike died. I thought I was so independent! But there wasn't anything that I didn't take him into consideration before pursuing, or rejecting, or working around. The rhythms of his speech, the turn of his thinking, his particular style, the things that made him uncomfortable, his outrageously good sense of humor. These reached out towards me and met my own thinking halfway, so that I was never in free fall - for better or worse - but always rather in conversation, even when nothing was said aloud or explicitly discussed. We didn't always agree - in fact, in more recent years, we disagreed more than ever - but it isn't about a unilateral vision. It's about a kind of receptivity and awareness that is so intimate as to be part of one's own internal landscape.
And now? Now I have lost the cadence we used to share. Literally. I know I have. A friend used to always comment on it - a little funny way we both had of speaking. Without my partner to reinforce the rhythm it no longer fills my mouth.
I find myself looking back to the time before I met Mike. Who was I then? There is a lot I don't like about me at nineteen. I could be so fearful, so tentative. I yearned for authenticity of relationship, ideas, expression, but I didn't trust myself to act on those ambitions, or be able to fulfill them. I danced, uncertain of my right to claim space in class and onstage. I was beginning to practice yoga. I missed my dad terribly; it marked me. Sometimes I wrote a good paper. I loved reading always, and found myself most easily in stories. I liked being a religion major. My friends and my family were the most important thing; I delighted in cooking for them, feeding them. I wasn't good at being honest when there was even a whiff of conflict involved. I was already pulling away from my Unitarian Universalist identity, though always (and still) grateful for the nurturing community it afforded me. In those days I yearned for the lush green forest of my UU camp in North Carolina all year long.
So it's interesting that I've been taking ballet class and taking the children to see dance performances. And hoping to claim time for writing this summer. Dreaming of Gabriel's birthday cake. Planning a trip to North Carolina. I do love those things, still. I encounter them now in a way that is different than I would were Mike still alive. That's uncomfortable, necessarily touched by ambivalence, but one continues reaching for things that are good and true anyway.
And it's not like it's all misery in this mud; I had a great time on the big slide at the park with Beatrice before dinner tonight, we saw friends in New York over the weekend, I love my work and laugh with my colleagues over lunch. There's room for joy. Plenty of joy! But also, one year later, it seems worth pointing out that time heals nothing. The wounds just keep gaping. I think tending to them, and living with the strangeness and discomfort the pain of them brings, is the best we can do. The tending might eventually - one hopes - have a healing effect. With sustained tender attention, the wounds might not gape quite so raw and wide, such that every passing snag won't rip them open all over again.
So when will I write about something else? Honestly, I don't know. Feeling and voicing these feelings seems like what I have to do right now, even though it's a discouragingly self-centered enterprise and often I'd just rather not.
My oldest child is in Europe, my other children just drove away, and instead of the thrill I had anticipated - time alone to do with as I like! - I feel a quiet terror. Without them, the disorientation threatens to overwhelm. I realize how much I need them to remind me of the part of me that has been consistent and present and unfailing since the day Frances was born nearly fourteen years ago. Even without Mike, even in the grip of grief, I will always be their mother. Thank goodness.
Beyond that? It's all gaping wounds and brilliant evening light, loneliness and gratitude, gray days and stubborn daffodils. March mud, as far as the eye can see.
