And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (21 page)

You’re free, butterflies. Do your beautiful butterfly thing.

We were on a late-night ride to pick up a friend from the airport. Jammies on almost everybody. I was banking on them falling asleep. A few miles down the road, one of my sons asked, “Mommy, why did daddy die?”

“Because he got really sick really fast, and the doctors couldn’t save him.”

“Yes, I know that part.” He has heard this answer before.

“But why, Mommy?” His brother joined the inquisition with solidarity. “If God is powerful, why didn’t he save our daddy? If doctors couldn’t heal him, why didn’t God save him?”

An important question, my little men. When children have encountered this degree of tragedy, they are not assuaged by simple, pat answers. “I don’t know, guys. I really don’t know why God didn’t save him.”

“Did God want Daddy to die?”

Okay, God. I’m going to give this my best shot. Please speak through me. Only you know the answers. And my kids are asking.

“Honey, God didn’t want Daddy to die. I don’t think God wants anybody to die. I think he wanted us to live in a perfect place where nobody gets sick or dies. He created a perfect world. Do you remember who lived there, in his perfect garden?”

“Mary and Joseph.”

A good guess. “No, it was Adam and Eve.”

They pipe up to tell the story, their words and impatience tripping over each other. It’s hard to differentiate who knows which part of the story. “And God forgot to tell them they couldn’t eat from the tree, and the snake said they could, and all snakes are bad and want us to do bad things, and they ate the apple because Eve said so.”

Um, sort of. Give or take a few important details.

“Well, guys, God didn’t forget to tell them not to eat from that tree. He told them. And he asked them to obey. But the snake tricked them, and they chose to eat the fruit even though God told them not to.”

“They didn’t obey, Mommy.”
Ah! These are terms we understand.

“Right, kiddo. They didn’t obey. And as soon as they took a bite of the apple, God’s perfect world wasn’t perfect anymore. Sin came into the world when they disobeyed, and sin has been hurting people ever since. Daddy didn’t die because he sinned, but he died because there is sin in the world. Sin makes us sick. It makes us sad. It makes people die.”

“Did sin make Jesus die?”

Oh, these questions. Where is a theologian when I need one?

“Well, Jesus died to rescue us from sin. But God didn’t save Jesus from dying, and he didn’t save Daddy from dying. God let it happen.”

“And two other men died with him,” someone adds from the backseat.

“With Daddy?” I’m not sure if we’re talking real time or Bible times right now.

“No, with Jesus.” Someone has been looking closely at the pictures in Sunday school, I see.

“They did. And one of them said right then, right before he died, that he believed Jesus was saving the world. And Jesus said, ‘Okay, then, I’ll see you soon. When you die, you’ll be with me in heaven.’ ”

“And so that man is in heaven?”

“Yes.”

“And so is Daddy?”

“Yes.”

There was silence in the car.

“Okay, Mommy.”

Thus concluded twenty questions that countless people invest their lives studying.

All while I had thought the little boys would fall asleep.

All single moms are not the same, and yet somehow they are. There are women whose husbands have died. There are women whose husbands have left. There are women who don’t know the father. There are women who asked him to leave. There are women who are safer
on their own with their children. There are women who never married, who chose from the start to do it alone. There are women who are married, he is present, and yet she parents all alone.

There are stigmas with each category. Some women are favored as heroines, courageous and valiant; others are stigmatized with a scarlet letter. Some receive an outpouring of grace and resources; others are left to fend for themselves and do their best. But here’s the deal: single moms are moms. And that’s hard, selfless, valiant, courageous, constant work.

I have been deeply supported from the moment I took on the unwanted title. Truthfully, this deluge of presence continues to carry me through. It has been my saving grace, my safety net, and my beacon on many nights. I ache and wonder for women who wear a different mantle, those who travel a path that does not warrant help, support, empathy, or grace. How much harder their road must be.

Single moms are single moms. Different and yet the same.

Stan called with another monthly installment of wisdom.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you’re one lucky girl. You had ten years of what most people don’t get twenty minutes of. You had love. You had friendship. I could see it in your eyes every time you talked about him. You had it. And that’ll carry you another fifty years, kid. Fifty years.

“I don’t know if you’ll get married again, but you know what I say? Who cares if you do? Who cares if you don’t? You had it once. That’s a pretty great gig if you can get it.

“If you do get married, it won’t be because you need a man in your life. It will be because someone sees your strengths and your skills, and he comes alongside you. You know what I mean by ‘alongside’? I mean,
alongside.
Together beside you. Not pulling you along or dragging you behind. Alongside.”

What has this journey meant to me? I am still in it, but I see the end, and I see the turn of the calendar bringing new experiences. I want to say I have learned nothing. I want to say Robb’s death was without meaning, these months have been empty, and I am bitter and angry because I got cheated out of everything I had planned for the rest of my life. I want to say these things boldly, with the strength that comes only from vindication. But those things are not true. I have learned much; these months have been sacred. I have long said, if I tell this story, I will tell the truth. So, here are my thoughts.

I have lived one whole year of winter. There were sunny days that peeked through on occasion, but my heart stayed cold, bundled, protected. Still, there are things to enjoy only in winter: good books, shorter days, enveloping blankets, and isolation. I have relished these. In January, when I began speaking to God again, I made a deal with him: if he would get me out of bed and safely to Starbucks, I would visit with him there. I might not talk, but I would listen. My mornings became my sacred hours; Starbucks became my sanctuary. God met me there. My journals are filled with schizophrenic psalms, from temper tantrums to triumphant praise. His companionship has been nearly tangible, certainly a presence I could feel strongly enough to
know I wanted more. In reading the psalms again and again, and again and again, I let the psalmists cry out on my behalf when I had no words left.

There’s a reason why Psalm 88 made the cut into the Bible’s final manuscript. It is pure heartache, hard questions, and raw anger. Yet God said, “Keep it in the book. I’m okay with that.”

I have learned that there’s no one way to be a perfect mother. But there are a million ways to be a good one. And, with God as my witness, his grace as my strength, I have been a very good mother.

I have been willing to learn. I have trudged ahead with my eyes open, insistent that this wrenching pain would not be wasted. I have written words as they have come to me, unafraid of anything that might show up on the page. I have found honesty and the beauty of saying things out loud.

A friend of Robb’s recently wrote to me. He said, “Tricia, when Robb talked about you, he always said you were an amazing woman who could handle anything.” My precious husband … he knew me well. I never imagined the strength inside this frame. I have learned firsthand that love is greater, stronger than the grave. This journey has been the closing chapter of our marriage: I honored him even after death parted us.

If I were to describe my first year without Robb in a few words, I would choose these:
Shocked. Terrified. Blind. Numb.
I was in shock emotionally and physically. I spent months not believing that this was really real. I spent nights writhing in panic and disbelief, the freezing sweat of remembering. I was terrified for more reasons than I can
name. I was blind, walking forward without a map, never ready for the next blow. And there was always, without fail, another blow. I was numb because that’s what the body does when one must survive. It stops feeling.

Shocked. Terrified. Blind. Numb.
Those are four big, bold words. With those major players on the roster, there wasn’t room for sadness. She needs a space all her own. The second year has become a different journey altogether. I am no longer shocked; these facts have become my life. I am no longer terrified; I am actually unspeakably brave. I am no longer blind; I have lived through one full calendar year, and even if I don’t like what’s coming next, at least I know I’ll survive it. I am no longer numb; I’m starting to feel.

Frostbite doesn’t hurt when fingers are frozen. It’s when those nerve endings start to warm up that frostbite cuts like a knife. I’m starting to feel. I’m starting to cry again. I hadn’t in a long while. But these are different tears, warm and healing. Perhaps the first year was for my head; perhaps this second year is for my heart.

I am not naive enough to say this next year will be a cakewalk. In fact, I have heard and expect that in some ways the second year is harder because the heart begins to thaw, the soul begins to feel, and one begins to wake up all over again. But in the past year, I have woken up each day and wondered how I would do it, get through it, make it back to bed at the end of the day. The year’s holidays stockpiled against me, one on top of another, threatening me with their mocking dates. I don’t have to worry as much about those, because I’ve met them once already. Now I know what to expect in the way of
Valentine’s Day, birthdays, anniversaries, and seasons. This doesn’t mean I love it. It means I’ve smelled the dragon’s hot breath, and I can withstand the heat.

And now I know that every single day, the best and the worst, lasts for only twenty-four hours.

I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked.… I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid.

I was working too hard to be afraid.

—Cheryl Strayed,
Wild