And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (7 page)

On a brave afternoon I strolled the sidewalks of our neighborhood. I took our after-dinner route. I walked alone. Memories danced around me. Our family of four, with our dog on her leash, walking the paved path with the mountain view. Years ago only two of us. Then we added a stroller, which we later traded for a double stroller. Then we upgraded to a wagon. And most recently we all walked together, and everybody had a buddy. Molly, our chocolate Labrador, peed in every yard while Robb tugged on her leash, embarrassed and hoping the neighbors weren’t watching. Tucker collected rocks, tossing and
trading them for shiny shapes he liked more. Tyler’s energy and interest never lasted the entire stroll. He always landed on someone’s hip or shoulders. Sometimes we skipped or sang. Sometimes the boys ran ahead. Often, Robb and I held hands.

This afternoon I walked slowly, alone, my head down, my heart heavy with remembering. Sometimes I walked faster, wanting to finish, my heart racing with remembering. I walked in the shade, a grief cold and mean. I walked in the sunshine, a warm and gracious sadness. Sometimes I stopped just to breathe. It is good to cry with my face to the sun. It feels sacred and promising. One step at a time.

Once we were a wagon, and now we are a tricycle.

There is an invisible community that has become mine, people who heard my story through a friend of a friend of a friend. People who read my words and, by God’s grace, want to read more. I receive dozens of e-mails a day. I love them all. I bask in other people’s words, especially when I can’t find my own.

People have told me that they are learning from the transparency of my journey. Some have said, “By showing us what you think, you’re letting us as close to grief as we dare come. We don’t have to experience the loss ourselves, and yet you let us know what it’s like. You’re living our greatest fear. You’re showing us what a girl thinks after her young, healthy husband dies. You’re showing us what it looks like: the good, the bad, the ugly—the real, the true, the painful. We don’t have to feel it ourselves; you let us carefully join you.”

A friend e-mailed me recently. She is neither anonymous nor invisible,
although she is far away and dearly written into my life’s earlier chapters. She wrote, “Tricia, this sounds silly. I wish I could ask it in person. But is suffering scary?”

Her honest question drew me to look closely at my fears. What scared me about this? As soon as I step out of this moment, fear creeps in to fill the space. Suffering is not scary; worrying is. I haven’t yet found a moment I couldn’t make it through, but I’m nearly always very, very afraid of the next one. But when I’m there, in that place—or perhaps I should say, when I am
here,
when I am in
this place
—suffering isn’t scary. It’s simply this moment.

I had listened to axioms such as “God gives you the grace when you need it, and not a moment before.” In essence, wise people told me, “You can’t imagine living your greatest fear, you can’t imagine surviving, because you don’t have to right now. But if you needed strength for that crisis, if you needed wisdom in that moment, God would give it to you. His grace isn’t just about where you go after you die; it’s about living this moment the way he wants you to. He gives you the grace when you need it. Not a moment before.”

Turns out it’s true.

I find myself thinking,
Wow, God. You said you would do this. You said you wouldn’t forsake me. You said you’d carry me. You said you’d protect me, provide, and show me the way. And you are. Here you are. You really are. You said you would, and now you are.

Now, let me also say this: there is fear. There’s a lot of scary. As soon as I think outside this moment, I feel terrified. I think about the
day I will agree to receive his ashes from the mortuary. I think about vacations we wanted to take. Will I take them? He was my tour guide. Can I do it alone? I think about the house we planned to buy or build in the next three years, our “one more move” into the house we hoped to stay in. The one with a three-car garage for him, a writing studio for me (lined with bookshelves, naturally), a backyard for the boys, and a finished basement for our someday-teenagers to freely host their friends. I wonder if I can sell a house, choose a house, buy a house—without him. I wonder if I want to. I wonder if I should. Ever.

I think about my professional life without him beside me, about the decisions I would rather have made with his thoughts combined with mine. I wonder what I’ll do when the boys need to learn to shave. I wonder if a single mom should go to grad school, even if she always, always wanted to. I wonder about the days that will be harder than today, the nights that will be more sleepless than the last. I wonder how hard this will get.

I have a heaping handful of women who never left my side. They were the first on the scene when Robb died. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know what to say. But they came. They’re the group of women who knew in those early weeks that just because a person wants to be alone with her grief doesn’t mean it’s a healthy choice. They said, “We understand you can’t leave your house. We understand you want to be alone and you’ll probably go to bed by eight thirty. But we need to be in your home, in your space, where you are.
So we’re coming over. You can go to sleep if you need to, but we’re coming. And we’re bringing coffee. And dessert. Always dessert.”

They came on a Tuesday night in January, and they never stopped. We’ve been gathering once a week for more than one hundred weeks as I write this. They became known as the Tuesdays, even when we switched to Wednesdays. That disparity only gave the name more charm. Now they are my “Tuesdays on Wednesdays.”

Let me tell you about my Tuesdays. Jenno has the kind of beauty that catches your breath. She’s older than the rest of us, and she thinks that matters, even though we couldn’t care less if she’s older or younger or if her hair is gray or silver or chocolate brown. Jenno is gifted in mercy. She feels for the underdog. I mean, she
feels.
She sweats on behalf of other people who might be nervous. She can cry on anyone’s behalf, her story or theirs. We say she has an inconvenient gifting; she can’t turn off her emotions or keep herself from carrying anyone else’s. She has a gentle disposition, but she has an untouchable ferocity that emerges when she needs it, like a secret weapon. This ferocity equipped her to deliver her second son on the street when she couldn’t get to the hospital in time. She seems like gentle vanilla ice cream, but don’t be mistaken. She’s a tough cookie.

Lisa is pure spunk. When she was a teenager, she used to flash her sister’s boyfriends to spite her sister. She is attracted to dangerous men with tattoos, a backward baseball cap, dark eyes, and cigarettes. Lisa’s committed to her mascara nearly as faithfully as she is to the Lord. “No face without it,” she says. She gestures with her coffee cup, using it as a security blanket. She takes a sip when she is about to cry, she
holds it closely when she’s listening hard, and she stirs her beverage when she knows we’re asking questions she’d rather not answer. Lisa has an eruptive cry; she’s like a little volcano. Her tension and emotions build and build until they spill over the top with an ugly cry that contorts her whole face. But it lasts for only a moment. Then she dries her eyes, blots her mascara, and grabs her coffee cup.

Melissa is the fighter. It’s not that she’s an angry person. It’s that she can carry a torch of righteous indignation more fiercely than anyone I know. She’s a cussing theologian, which I believe is the best kind. She is an expert in spiritual warfare and biblical history, she’s our go-to with all questions of faith, and she can drop the most colorful words in the most appropriate moments. She keeps us on task when we get sidetracked by meaningless conversation in lieu of the hard topics. She teases me for saying “in lieu of” (“Who says ‘in lieu of’? Say ‘instead of’ or ‘because of.’ Whatever. That’s ridiculous. You speak in paragraphs and bullet points. Go on with your story, but that’s crazy.”), and she asks the hard questions. She has a fearless, tender heart, she’s never without her lip gloss, and she’ll stand in the front lines of any battle, her ringlets bouncing with indignation.

Melody envies the rest of us for our hair. She says second-day hair is a spiritual gift. If she goes one day without washing hers, she says she looks homeless and vows we wouldn’t recognize her. Melody is a dental hygienist, and the rest of us feel compelled to apologize to her when we don’t floss or when we skip our child’s dental checkup. She’s always ready with the quick wit and the right word. We often point to her when we’re stuck. “What word do I want, Melody?” She always knows. She always has it at her fingertips.
Yes, that was it. That’s what I was
trying to say.
Melody is an activist, ready to change the world, even as her children are small and everyone tells her to wait. Her passion is fierce and contagious, and she leads us to think bigger. She’s “Make It Happen” Melody. When any one of us is in trouble, we call Melody. She’ll know what to do.

Of course, I’m the widow. But the girls would add more to my description. They’ll tell you I have the best pair of boobs at the table, and they don’t buy my insistence that it’s about a good bra. I process my thoughts through the pen or the keyboard, unless I’ve had two sips of wine, at which point I will lose my words entirely. (I get this dull ache above my left eyebrow, and just like that I can’t finish my sentences.) I talk with my hands, and I’ve obsessively maintained a perpetual manicure for more than twenty years. I love a mug of coffee, but I don’t always finish it. I see the big picture and let the details sort themselves. I would rather text than call, play than work, and eat out than cook.

To look at a picture of us around my dining room table, you would likely believe we are a group of easygoing women, chatting and laughing with ease, caring only about silly things like hair color and lip gloss and cup size. But for the women at this table, the cares have been deep, shattering, and all encompassing. One husband died. One husband left. Two babies died; a baby boy lived for twenty-two days, and his little sister lived for fifty-four days. (The Tuesdays wrapped those babies in a lifetime of love.) There has been divorce. Bankruptcy. Unemployment. Epilepsy. Chronic health concerns. Sensory integration disorders. Learning disabilities. Brain lesions. Breast lumps. The sudden death of a parent. The list continues. We don’t carry a light load. But we carry it together.

Jana is my therapist. She is a gracious, compassionate woman who is smart and confident. She can follow any rabbit trail, remember where I left off, listen carefully, and show heaping amounts of empathy and righteous indignation. She takes no bull from anyone, least of all me. She is perceptive and intuitive and calls out my every fleck of body language. I might as well sit there naked. Good thing I trust her with my very life.

Plus, she’s five foot ten and wears sassy heels without apology. This, I love.

“You know what you remind me of?” I asked her. “When Robb and I took our childbirth classes, I remember the nurse saying to all the men in the room, ‘Gentlemen, listen to me. If there is someone your wife does not wish to have in that labor and delivery room, that person is not welcome. And it is not your job to guard the door. Your top priority is your wife. Keep your focus on the woman in labor. If there is someone whom she doesn’t wish to include—be it her mother, your mother, her sister, your sister—tell the nurse. She’ll keep them out. Labor and delivery nurses are bulldogs with lipstick. We look demure and put together, but nothing gets by us.’