Sweet Grief

This afternoon I came home hot, tired, and feeling weak.  We had a busy day driving here and there gathering what we needed for Arthur's first birthday party tomorrow.  The stores were extra crowded, it being July 3rd.  The babies dealt with the heat better than us grown folks, and Charlie, the champ that he is, maintained order in the backseat for us as we dragged the children from one place to the other.  We ended up staying out far longer than we anticipated.  Both Sylia and I found ourselves completely drained from the heat, the walking, and the wrestling with two toddlers all day.  By the time I dropped her off, we were both ready to crash; then I remembered a dinner date.  Michele's birthday dinner at Kanpai was at 7:00 and it was already 6:00 when I dropped Sylia off.  I quickly traded shoes with her, put on some fresh makeup and headed out the door.  By the time we reached the end of the driveway I got a text that Michele wasn't able to get to dinner, so I decided I would not go either--I couldn't have made it on time anyway, and without the birthday girl, what's the point?  So we grabbed some drive-thru grub and came home.

As Charlie and I unloaded the car, I noticed my neighbor, Nell, on her golf cart up by her garden.  (She's also the landlord, although our relationship is much more friendly than business.)  I came inside and gave Charlie an envelope filled with the rent money and asked him to run it up to her while I finished putting things away.  In a few minutes he came back, short of breath from running and said, "Nell wants to talk to you."

"About what?" I asked.

"I don't know." He said, "I think she wants to know if Senior Action is closed tomorrow."

"Okay," I siad. "I'll run up and talk to her."

As I approached I took in the sight of her, in her mid-80's, she looked, at a distance, strong and able bodied as she hoed away at the weeds growing up around her tomato plants.  My mind flashed back for a second, to my daddy having us kids hold back the plants while he used the tiller to destroy the weeds growing up around his squash, cucumbers and melons.

"Who put you to work?" I asked, teasing her as I approached. She didn't hear me.

When I finally reached the edge of the garden after tromping through high grass in the back yard, she stopped her working to ask me the schedule for this week.  I told her we'd be open again on Thursday as usual.  I always know, deep down, that when Nell calls for me to come, I am going as a vessel.  I can try to give her friendship, comfort, even rent money, but on days like today all she really needed were some ears, willing to listen, and a heart that could sit with her and hold her grief for just a little while.

People need to tell their stories.  They need a safe person in their lives to tell those stories to-someone who won't brush them off or change the subject or start talking about when their great uncle's wife died in some freak accident.  Nell often needs to walk through her yard and remember her husband. She needs to keep him close somehow and her story--her grief story is one way she's able to do that.

I never knew Bud.  He and Nell were the best of friends from what I hear.  Their children all grown and moved away, Bud died on the afternoon of his brother's funeral.  Nell had only turned her back for a second. When she turned around he was lying on the ground where she last saw him standing. She believes he was headed for the porch swing, but never made it. She turned him over, and seeing his face, knew right away he was gone.  That image of his face remains etched in her memory, a stark reminder of how instantaneous loss can be.Traumatized by that image, her dreams prevented her from his visage for months afterwards. She dreamed of him often, and longed to see him as he was in life, but her mind only let her see him from the neck down.

She turned and sat down on the seat of her golf cart as I leaned against the front of it.  I listened as she spoke from her heart, while I brushed fire ants from my feet, trying to look unfazed by the stinging bites.

"I am half alive." She said to me.  "What I really want to do is go curl up in a corner and cover myself up and just be alone.  But I know I can't do that.  I push myself to get out and do things because I know that's what he would expect me to do."

She told me about a conversation Bud had with their daughter a few days before his death.  "If something ever happened to me, I know your mama would be alright." He told Sharon.  "She would go on and she would take care of you kids and make a good life for herself despite me being gone. But if something happened to your mama, I wouldn't make it."

"I can't quit on life because I know what he expected of me." She said, a far off look in her eyes as she gazed across the vast field--land she owns, among so many other worldly possessions.  I think she would give it all just to have him back again.

One night after a particularly rough day, she said she had a very realistic dream that she and Bud were getting the kids ready to take off on a long road trip somewhere."I remember in the dream, telling the kids to hurry up so we could get on the road early.  Then I went into my bedroom and I could hear Bud in the
 bathroom.  I opened the bathroom door and he was standing there, wiping his hands and face with a towel and I finally was able to see his face. I threw my arms around him. I laughed and cried and just hugged him so tight, and it seemed so real, like I could just feel him in my arms.  I asked him, 'Please tell me this is real, that it's not a dream. Please tell me you are really here with me.'"

"He didn't tell me it was real, but he looked me straight in the eyes and said, "I am always with you."

"Back then there was a towel bar in my bathroom, and I always kept a hand towel hanging there.  He would use it and he'd always leave it hanging there crooked.  I fussed about it all the time, and I'd go behind him and straighten it back up.  When I woke up that morning and went in my bathroom that hand towel was hanging there crooked, just like he'd been there."

Goosebumps popped up on my arms, and tears welled up in my eyes and hers. It seems God gives us sometimes, these little gifts of comfort in the most unexpected ways. I really believe it to be true.

I've listened to her tell his death story many a time, but every time there's something new she has to say.  We talked about how difficult her life became when she lost him, how even 23 years later, she has to push herself and will herself to live.

And I suppose that's what we all do to some degree.  We live with the pain of our losses, carrying them always close to our hearts, perpetually only half-alive without the presence of the ones we've loved. We always hear people talk of "moving on," but today I learned that most of us just carry on as best we can.

The truth is, out of all the emotional experiences life throws at us, grief is the one that sticks to your soul with all the strength of the love we held in our hearts for the ones we carry on without.

Best friends.  Partners for life.  That's what they were.  Through good times and bad, they were a team.  "When you've had the best in life, it's hard to live with something less." She said to me.

"You were very lucky to find a love like that." I said to her.  "Most of us spend a lifetime just dreaming about it."

"I know I was." She said.  "I was very lucky."

Grateful to be her confidant, I stood with her a little longer and listened.  She is teaching me, with every story, that some things in life transform us.  Grief is a pain that doesn't ever really expire, but even so,  it must not define us or prevent us from living.  We often treat it like a race to be run and finished, when it's really just a river that ebbs and flows through life.  We revel in the beauty of our memories, and ache at the pain of our losses, never really knowing or understanding why or when the waves of emotion will rise and fall.

What I've learned best, is that the stories of our losses make up the stories of our lives.  We memorize them, detail upon detail.  The memories keep us close to he ones we cherished, and the aches we feel at their absences become in some way, all we have left of them.

Love sometimes dies, joy often gives way to despair, happiness is always fleeting, but grief?  Grief is ever present.  It never, ever dies.  It just lies beneath the surface, tied to the best and the worst of our memories, memories that even death can never take away.