17. I Am Rich

"It is so curious:  one can resist tears and "behave" very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer...and everything collapses." 

~Colette

As we approach the dreaded anniversary of the day I lost Jon, I often find myself on edge and, at times, inconsolable, as I reflect on yet another year without my beloved husband.  This period of anticipation leading up to the date of his death is sometimes worse than the day itself, but I realize that there's nothing I can do to stop it, whether I'm ready to face it or not.  Time marches on, and sometimes it's a blessing, but other times it feels like a curse.  I'm so afraid that people will say "oh, 5 years is such a long time.  You must be over it now, right?"  Ah, if only they knew...


I think I've learned a lot of what not to do over the past five years.  I've made mistakes - both big and small.  I've burned some bridges and thrown away some opportunities.  I've strayed a few times from the path of what I believed in and I've kicked myself repeatedly for failing to think things through before rushing impulsively into several ill-thought-out endeavors.  I still don't have any of the right answers because there is no right way to deal with any of this.  But here's what I do know.  Grief is not an illness.  There are no shortcuts to getting through it or getting over it or accepting it.  Anyone who suggests any of these things in trying to reach out to those of us who have loved deeply enough to experience it belittles our heartache and ignores the inherent permanence of our pain.  There is simply no magic phrase that can provide comfort at the times we want the ground to open up and swallow us whole.  To suggest that "time heals all wounds" or that "you have to close the book on one chapter before beginning another," or, worse yet, the dreaded "you'll move on" flies in the face of all reason for someone who lives with a gaping hole that cannot and will not ever be filled.  My father-in-law claims he lacks a way with words, and yet the only rationale sentiment I've heard uttered over the past five years on the subject of grief is something he told me not too long ago.  He said that eternity is a very long time; the here and the now is all just a drop in the bucket.

"It" doesn't get better.  I've just had to learn, through much trial and error, to mask the pain and put on a happy face around people who don't get it.  There have been times when I've gotten as low as I think I can possibly get...and then the phone will ring and I'll pick it up, and when I hear myself sound incredibly normal, I'm honestly quite impressed.  "Wow," I think, "considering the fact that I was literally pleading with God just seconds ago to end this misery and take me now too, I guess I put on a pretty good show."  Kinda funny how you can long for this life to be over one moment and then jump into autopilot mode of "oh hi, how are you?" the next.


On the day of my wedding, my mom, in mourning the loss of her first-born baby to marriage and a life away from home, lamented to me, "that's the last time you're going to say that," and "that's the last time you're going to write that!"  The "lasts" that occupy my thoughts now - like what Jon must have been thinking and feeling during the last few moments of his life, without ever knowing that they were, in fact, his last moments - redefine the meaning of the word "last."  Was he thinking about the work he had to do when he got back to his office?  About what he would have for dinner at the chow hall that night?  Maybe about trying to call me when he got back to the FOB since I'd missed his call - his last call - the night before?  It seems so cruel, so unfair, to think that one second he was sitting quietly and unsuspectingly in the back of a truck...and the next, life as he and I knew it changed forever.  I wish so much that I could have been with him and held him close to me in his last few moments.  I wish I could have somehow willed him to live with my commitment to the vows I took to love him, and only him, forever.  I wish he had just been injured...or at least that he'd lived for long enough for me to tell him goodbye.  I wish I could take his place and give him his life back.  He had so much good left to do, so much promise and potential for the future.  The world is a lesser place without him in it.  


And therein lies the most important lesson I've learned throughout all of this:  I've learned that there is no "replacing" someone who is, in a word, irreplaceable.  There will be many other people who will undoubtedly come in and out of my life, but there will never be another Jon.  I am rich, and not because of any form of financial wealth - I am rich because of the memories I have of a man who made me who I am and loved me for everything I'm not.  I am rich...because I knew someone who was so hard to say goodbye to.