"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you will never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up...It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."
~Anne LamottGone. Such a sad word. It's a word we can't really comprehend until it's staring us straight in the face and we have no where left to go to hide from its finality. Gone doesn't mean "absent for a little while" or "I'll be back - just be patient." Gone is gone. When the cold, hard reality of "gone" hits me on some days, I physically have to stop in my tracks because the gravity of it takes my breath away.
Recently, there have been a few precious moments where Jon almost hasn't seemed quite so gone. While sitting in church the other day, I went to reach for his hand...until seconds later when I realized I couldn't. And as I sat alone and awake the other night hours after the rest of the family had gone to bed, I picked up the phone to call him. It's been a while since I last did that. I don't know how many different phones I've had over the past few years, but every time I go through the tedious process of transferring over my address book from one phone to the next, "My Babes" is always among the names of my contacts. You would think I'd realize by now that he's not going to answer. ("But why not! What good is all this technology if you can't call a deceased loved one? Who cares if you can buy movie tickets and bid for antiques online if you can't dial up your dead husband?" - Good Grief, by Lolly Winston). It took me back to several years ago when I finally terminated Jon's phone line after happily paying the extra charges just so I could call his voice mail and hear his voice as often as I wanted. A month or two later, I called the number I knew and still know so well to see if it still belonged to him. It didn't. The realization that someone else now had my baby's number was another one of those crushing moments. Breathe in, I told myself. Breathe out. Sometimes that's all we can do.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been here at Fort Bragg where Jon and I spent many happy months together. It's the place we got engaged, where I said goodbye to him before he left for Iraq...and where I was notified of his death. Truth be told, it makes me a little nervous to be here on an installation again - I guess I should have remembered what it's like when tens of thousands of military families are all crammed into too small of a space with too much to think about and too much to worry about on a daily basis. They complain about military life, talk incessantly about their kids, and there's always a reminder of the fact that so many families are fortunate enough to have what I'd do anything to get back. I can't seem to win here - when I'm isolated and far from a widow-support network, I feel very alone. But in order to be surrounded by that support, I have to return to where it hits home the most. Heck, in two years, I'll have to go back to working day in and day out on an installation as an Army lawyer. Sometimes I question if I can do it. I can't take the complaining and the whining and the women who openly express their dismay at the fact that they "accidentally" got pregnant again while their husbands aren't home to help. I want to grab women like that by the shoulders and look them in the eye and ask them to please imagine how they would feel if it was physically impossible for them to ever have children by their husband. Realistically, which option would they really prefer? Which one??? And does the fact that Jon and I didn't have kids because we never had the chance make his death any less tragic? Good Lord, forgive us for trying to plan our future and being so ridiculously responsible!!
This evening I heard back from my Soldier who lost her husband last weekend - she thanked me for reaching out and expressed her gratitude at my willingness to offer my help whenever she feels ready to talk. At the time of his death, she was also deployed to Afghanistan and just arrived stateside after accompanying his casket home from overseas. As I read through the encouraging messages friends and family sent her over this past week, my heart sank. The truth is that I have no idea what to tell her. That it doesn't get easier, even after five years, because you still reach for his hand and pick up the phone to call him until you realize with heartbreaking finality for the millionth time that you can't? That you lie in bed alone each night and wish with every fiber of your being that you could feel his arms around you just one more time? That the tears still come and won't stop whenever anyone mentions his name or when you hear of another poor woman who has just lost her husband because you know all too intimately of her inconsolable pain? That he's still gone and that no matter what you do or how hard you pray or wish for it not to be so, it's the one thing you can't change? It literally makes me sick to my stomach as I think of how she must be feeling at this moment; I live and breathe it, and yet I can't take away her burden or ease her sorrow. Only she can walk along this path that every one of us hopes to avoid at all costs. Only she can figure out how to wake up each morning and find some peace each night and reconcile her current reality with the fact that the world without her husband is a less meaningful and far emptier place. "Gone" is simply one of those few exceptions to the all-clouds-have-a-silver-lining rule: the loss of a good man and a beloved husband, son, and/or father doesn't magically morph into a "good" experience from which you glean oodles of life lessons and endless wisdom. Does it make you grow up awfully fast before you're ready? Yes. Does it hurt like hell in a way that nothing can possibly prepare you for? Hell yes. So when it comes to what to tell her, I don't want to lead her astray or put a big bow on something that can't be neatly packaged and made to look pretty. I don't want to sugar coat reality and I don't want to do the very thing I resented when people would try to look for the "positives" in my situation, like "well, at least you have lots of happy memories" or "at least you are young enough to rebuild the life you lost." I guess I'll tell just tell her what a fellow widow told me: that you must find a reason to smile, that being a widow is a title you should be proud of, that you must make mistakes and forgive yourself, that you are simultaneously imperfect and amazing and shouldn't worry so much about what other people think. And last but not least, that life is short...but love is eternal.
This evening I heard back from my Soldier who lost her husband last weekend - she thanked me for reaching out and expressed her gratitude at my willingness to offer my help whenever she feels ready to talk. At the time of his death, she was also deployed to Afghanistan and just arrived stateside after accompanying his casket home from overseas. As I read through the encouraging messages friends and family sent her over this past week, my heart sank. The truth is that I have no idea what to tell her. That it doesn't get easier, even after five years, because you still reach for his hand and pick up the phone to call him until you realize with heartbreaking finality for the millionth time that you can't? That you lie in bed alone each night and wish with every fiber of your being that you could feel his arms around you just one more time? That the tears still come and won't stop whenever anyone mentions his name or when you hear of another poor woman who has just lost her husband because you know all too intimately of her inconsolable pain? That he's still gone and that no matter what you do or how hard you pray or wish for it not to be so, it's the one thing you can't change? It literally makes me sick to my stomach as I think of how she must be feeling at this moment; I live and breathe it, and yet I can't take away her burden or ease her sorrow. Only she can walk along this path that every one of us hopes to avoid at all costs. Only she can figure out how to wake up each morning and find some peace each night and reconcile her current reality with the fact that the world without her husband is a less meaningful and far emptier place. "Gone" is simply one of those few exceptions to the all-clouds-have-a-silver-lining rule: the loss of a good man and a beloved husband, son, and/or father doesn't magically morph into a "good" experience from which you glean oodles of life lessons and endless wisdom. Does it make you grow up awfully fast before you're ready? Yes. Does it hurt like hell in a way that nothing can possibly prepare you for? Hell yes. So when it comes to what to tell her, I don't want to lead her astray or put a big bow on something that can't be neatly packaged and made to look pretty. I don't want to sugar coat reality and I don't want to do the very thing I resented when people would try to look for the "positives" in my situation, like "well, at least you have lots of happy memories" or "at least you are young enough to rebuild the life you lost." I guess I'll tell just tell her what a fellow widow told me: that you must find a reason to smile, that being a widow is a title you should be proud of, that you must make mistakes and forgive yourself, that you are simultaneously imperfect and amazing and shouldn't worry so much about what other people think. And last but not least, that life is short...but love is eternal.
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