All Saints Day

I awoke happy as always to be in my own bed in my own room, sunlight filtering through the lace curtains. But something was now different. Then I remembered. I retreated back under the quilts.  I simply couldn’t do this.

It was All Saints’ Day, one of my favorite days of the year, the anniversary of my ordination. Ironically, I had put together a lovely service of remembrance which I wouldn’t be able to do now due to the death of my sainted husband. I didn’t come out of my room until almost noon. All I could do was cry, write on Facebook, and write a couple lousy poems.

As I cried and wrote, I became aware of something giving way in me, like a boat that has slipped its mooring. Now that I was safe at home with no more details to attend to, I drifted out onto the sea of grief.

In the midst of writing a poem, I had to search the scriptures for some comfort, for some reason to go on,  before continuing it. It was Psalm 6 that enabled me to get up, rise, resurrect. The word for resurrect in Greek literally means to "stand up." Here’s how it came out in my journal--disjunct, a mess, raw and real:

A Keen


I want to die.
I want to curl up in a ball
and cry until my heart breaks
so that I can say to him
all the kind words,
all the affection,
all the love I have
that I didn’t say
that I should have
for these were more true
than all my voiced criticisms
of love’s past disappointments.


I want to die
not only for the loss
of my beloved
but for the loss
of my delusional pride
that has thought I was something
when I was nought.


I pushed him beyond his capacity
then criticized his lagging behind
threatening to go on without him
so he pushed himself
to tell me of his love
and I turned away, cold,
until he turned cold in death.

Psalm 6:
O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed.
My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long?
Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies' sake.
For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?
I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.
Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of all mine enemies.
Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the LORD hath heard the voice of my weeping.
The LORD hath heard my supplication; the LORD will receive my prayer.
Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed suddenly.


But I have to get up/
stand up/
anastasis/
resurrect
for the sake of my daughters,
for the sake of others
whose hearts are breaking
to whom I can now minister
with some measure of tender understanding.


The cat needs fed,
The dog his meds
The girls their education.
So I stumble to wobbly feet.


But know this:
I want to die.


Along with Auden’s clocks,
I want my heart to stop, too.
I want to draw Bryant’s
drapery around my couch in sleep
never to rise again.

And then there was this doggerel:


A Postmodern Elegy

Nevermore will I mock
maudlin Victorian elegies
for they are true
more true than
the sarcasm of this present generation
filled with death-dealing words.


A cord of light has been cut
that tethered me to the path
of this world.
I wander, lost,
as in a darkling wood
where coyotes howl
in the dead of night.
and I am afraid.


Only Thy Word, O Lord,
can be my lifeline
I cling to Thy promises
to see me through this storm.
Give me the strength to hold on.

After penning these words, I ventured into the kitchen where my mother sat. “There’s oatmeal if you want it,” she said.

I had to eat, so I put some walnuts in it and took my bowl to the dining room where I opened the paper. The standard morning ritual—breakfast and paper. The normalcy of this both comforted and disturbed me.

I wasn’t sure what was real anymore. I wasn’t sure I was real. I was moving through the world like a ghost on another plane of existence, not really connecting with the earth. I was trying to find my husband, hoping he’d meet me in the strange liminal space I found myself in, wandering altogether lost and disconsolate.  Though all may have looked normal on the outside, I was beside myself.

A Widow Sleeps Alone

We vegged on the sofa and watched TV with the shell-shocked look that had become our default mode until it was time to go to bed. The girls crawled up on my bed, and we did evening prayer, lounging and talking.

Was I ok to sleep alone, they wondered.  As did I. There was comfort in the hotel with them in the next bed; I won’t lie about that. Barb offered to sleep on the floor next to me on a pallet like we used to make up for her when she was little and she woke early and didn’t want to stay in her own bed. She’d come into our room and crawl down in her comfy bedroll and look at her books. This bought us an extra 30 minutes’ sleep in the morning. Sometimes when she got scared at night she came and slept there as well, and we got used to checking to see if she was there when we got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.  Now she was asking me if I wanted her to sleep there because I was afraid. 

Midas’ bed was now beside ours. “You can’t sleep with the dog,” I laughed.

Ariana teased, “You've replaced us with a dog, haven't you?”

I shrugged. She was mostly right.  Midas was to be our transitional object to ease us into the empty nest phase of life like a toy or bunny helps preschoolers say good-bye to their parents when they drop them off.

“I’m ok,” I said. “Go on to your room. Do you want me to come sleep with you downstairs?”

“No,” they said. “We’ll be fine.”   There were hugs and kisses all around.  And then we fell back into the  bedtime rituals we'd had when the girls were little and I tucked them in at night:
"I love you to the moon and back."
"I love you."  "No, no, no.  I love YOU." 
"I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always."
 "You're the best." to which the other responded,  "No, you're the best!" and then the other: "No, you're the best." Back and forth we went until we were caught up in profuse protestations of love that could hold them secure through the long night.
 These were games of love we'd played when they were little that we picked back up now without missing a beat. 

Only this time they tucked me in and withdrew. 

I slipped under the blankets. The last time I’d been here was with Bill. Now, nothing. Before, I’d been his wife, now I was his widow.

Widow. The word seems to embody what it is—a wide gulf between life and death and a cry of dereliction-- Oh! For me, the word conjures up an old woman bereft of what she had to live for, someone with unkempt gray hair who carefully counts out pennies at the grocery store and looks forward to joining her husband in death. Cats and shawls are also somehow involved, though I don’t know why, in my picture of what a widow is.

Yet here I am 51, blonde, vibrant, at the peak of my career making a professional’s salary, ready for my time now that my daughters are raised. And . . .  a widow. You go to bed a wife, you wake up a widow. How can this be?

With the gracious help of Ambien, I slept with the light on, the prayer book and Bible beside me with the tissue box on top, Midas breathing heavily below. 

The Midas Touch

Inside we were greeted by our new exuberant golden retriever named Midas that Bill and I had rescued from a golden retriever rescue club 200 miles away. Midas had been our 30th anniversary present to one another just two months earlier, and it had been a great weekend when we got him.

On the Friday night before our anniversary, we’d driven halfway and stayed overnight in a decent hotel in the middle of nowhere.  We enjoyed the comfy bed in every way, then got up and drove the rest of the way to meet Midas to see if we’d really be a good fit.

The moment we saw him bound out of the door we both knew we were in love with Midas. “Could this be our dog?” Bill had said, as though he couldn't believe that anything this wonderful could be for us.

“Yup, that’s him,” I said, confident that I had chosen well after months of searching petfinders.com for a big golden retriever with silky hair that wasn’t too cream or red with a friendly, well-behaved disposition. He was perfect on paper except for one thing—he chased his foster parents’ cat. After a flurry of emails, we still weren’t sure what he’d do with the bunnies we had. But having rescued another golden, I was sure we could handle him.  We finished fencing the yard and went to bring him to his new home, his fourth in six years. 

Midas loved Bill. They romped together every day in the yard and played a game of chase around the library table downstairs.  I think they were about the same age.  Bill had even managed to teach Midas how to fetch, though at first the poor dog thought he was having sticks thrown at him.  

Because the girls were away at school, they’d not met their new Golden. But he loved everyone who came to see him, so he promptly greeted them with vociferous tail wagging and a “Hrumph!” as he fell down for them to rub his tummy, grinning from ear to ear as they did. There in the entry, they, too, were in instant love, only this time in the midst of all the baggage.

Then, after greeting me with the same unending joy, he went to the door and looked out, then turned back to me with a look that asked, "Where's Bill?"  I knelt down and hugged his neck and tried to explain, "Oh, Midas.  Bill has gone to the happy farm to romp forever in joy.  But I know he misses being here with you.  Will you be my special buddy now?"

As if he understood, he attached himself like Velcro to my thigh and didn't leave my side whenever I was home.  Trying to maneuver my body with a new 95# furry attachment to my leg, I turned to greet my mother who was wiping tears from her eyes.   

Coming Home

We pulled into the driveway, like I'd done a million times after trips to where he and Ariana had been living after I'd moved to the new home, awaiting her graduation and the arrival of the family. 

It felt the same.  I'd left him behind in some other city and come home without him. 

In some strange way the two years apart helped me prepare for Bill's death.  I learned how to manage just fine on my own.  I liked the peace of being without him, of being able to do what I wanted without having to consider him. 

We'd had a hard time coming back together. 

We never had come back together well.  The year before we were married we were apart, and when I came to see him, he didn't rush to meet me with any fervor.  He held himself back, opening the door with an acknowledgment of my presence, perhaps a quick peck on the cheek, a rush to help me with my bags.  I'd gotten more excitement from my dog each evening than I did from him after being away from him for weeks. 

And nothing had ever changed.  After 28 years of marriage and living 400 miles apart he greeted me with a kind of punishing coldness, like Barb did when she was 18 months old and I went away to lead a week-long retreat.  She wouldn't have anything to do with me for two days after I came back, upset that I'd been gone.  When you only have a weekend, two days of trying to reconnect pretty much encompasses your time together.  So what time I did see him constituted struggle for reconnection, and it had done nothing to help the marriage.

In the three months he'd been living in this house, his presence was mostly that of silent hovering, standing behind everyone else watching TV on the couch, puttering around in the house or yard, tapping away on the computer.  It was like I had someone whom I had to consider in the house without really having anyone in the house.  Except that I no longer had the bed all to myself, which was both good and bad.

We were still trying to work the kinks out of coming back together under one roof when he died.

I yanked the bag Bill had packed for the weekend out of the trunk along with my own suitcase.  This was to be my life for the next months--carrying his baggage as well as mine.  In a sense, it was nothing new.

Through the Thin Veil

It was Halloween, I remembered as we drove the five hours back home in a kind of stunned silence for the first two hours.  Just a few days before Bill had helped me make an All Saints ribbon banner with a ribbon representing each saint.  Now he was one. 

I've read somewhere that half of all the bereaved experience the ghostly presence of their beloved.  It was All Hallow's Eve, the night when the veil between the living and the dead is supposedly at its thinnest.  Just as it was the last harvest, so, too, it was the time, according to Celtic tradition, when the souls of the dead who'd been wandering the earth were harvested and crossed over into the other world. 

I'm in the God biz.  I know my JEDP source material and that Christianity is a tradition that has grown in its understandings over time.  Ancient Jews did not believe in an afterlife; we're only alive after death as long as someone remembers us.  Once we disappear from historical consciousness, we're obliterated.  Some later Jews had conflated other religions' understandings of the afterlife with heaven, a place you go when you die, which Christianity continued.  I know all this.

But I wondered where my husband was.  Hoping I'd perhaps catch a glimpse of him through the thin veil, I watched and prayed.  I wanted to say, "I'm sorry.  I love you.  Why didn't you take better care of yourself?"  But he was gone.  He was in that long line of saints being gathered up into the Light of Christ, so I waved at the moon and whispered, "Bye, Bill.  I'm sorry.  I'll always love you."

Then we put in some episodes of "This American Life" that Ariana had downloaded into her ipod and sped on through the night of souls.



  

Viewing the Body

Another true confession: I actually took pictures of my dead husband.  I found I couldn't touch his body.  But I took several pictures, something I've always thought of as morbid.  I don't know why I did this, and I haven't looked at them since.  I think I took the pictures because my mind couldn't take in the picture of reality it was faced with.  I felt like one of those big Victorian cameras but with no glass plates.  I wanted to remember, but my mind had no film in it at that point.  I needed the help of a camera.

At the funeral home I remember chatting and even joking somewhat, as I am wont to do.  I remember sitting with Greg and the girls reading scripture.  But we sat across the room, away from the body.  There was a definite elephant in the room, but we weren't going to acknowledge it. 

Bill's hair looked better than it had in forever.  There was a little bruising across the bridge of his nose where they'd taken his eyes.  Otherwise, he looked just like any other corpse laid out in a funeral home, except he was on a guerney, not in a casket.  He had a heavy quilt over him so that with his jacket and turtleneck on he looked like himself--only dead.  The funeral home had done a terrific job.  The only thing I could have liked was perhaps a skirt on the guerney, but then he might have looked like a big cake on a reception table, which wouldn't have been good. 

My chest ached.  And I was still a bit shakey.  When Bill's mother and sister Sherry and her husband Mark got there, I was relieved to see them.  It hadn't been until that moment that I'd realized how isolated and closed to the world I'd been.  Bill's mother, Ettie, was frail but beautiful as she hobbled in with her cane.  Sherry was nervous, and Mark quietly helpful, as he'd been when my father-in-law died.   There was no wild emotion, just perplexed confusion, like that of victims coming forth from the rubble after a tornado.   

"How?" I gave them the details without the awful reality.

I'd always wanted to be holding my husband when he died peacefully.  That's a dream that's not likely to happen to anyone, I know now.  In truth, I was holding him--after he'd already died.  And I was trying to shake him awake, feeling instead the dead weight of limp limbs.  "Come back to me!"  I remember crying.  "You can't die.  The girls need you.  I love you.  Don't go!"   I spared his family the histrionics.

But he was gone.  And we were sitting around him discussing strange things.  All I remember is Ettie mentioning something about almost wearing her new blue dress instead of the beautiful brown suit she had on.  At the mention of a blue dress, Barb quipped that Bill Clinton might do more than just call her, as he had done during one Presidential campaign, if she'd worn that one.  "Yeah, be sure not to have that dry cleaned," someone said.   For all I know, it might have been me. 

Looking back, the conversation seems so callous, so trivial, even disrespectful.  But it's how we got through.  Pastor Greg looked on like he'd fallen down Alice's rabbit hole, but he, too, was shaken by Bill's death and, at one point, moved to tears.  He was soaking up our grief like a gravy mop, and he represented that a caring God was indeed our fortress in whom we could take shelter. 

When Bill's family got up to leave, I wanted them to take me with them.  I felt like a  lost puppy who needed someone to take care of her.  I was grateful for their presence.  For some reason, perhaps because this is the way my life had always been, I honestly figured I'd have to do everything alone and was pleasantly surprised to find angels surrounding me with the gifts of themselves. 

Maybe it's just me who wants to remove the dead and march on, not society.

At the last I wanted to be alone with the body, but I wasn't.  Like so many other things in my life where I'd had to move quickly, I only paused for a wistful glance back at the past before moving into the future.  I kissed the ice cold forehead of my husband.  Then I shut the door to the warmth of the funeral home to face the chilly wind outside alone.

Unreal

We arose the next morning rather late.  It was Sunday, but it didn't feel like the Lord's Day.  We did our own church service in our pjs. 

We were still in shock, though I'm not sure as I write this almost three months later that that's still not the case.  We were together, but each of us was encased in our own grief bubble, which we respected.

The girls went to the pool while I answered all the email and Facebook messages that were pouring in.  They, too, were contacting their friends by phone while sitting around the pool.

We were still moving slowly, as if in a dream.  I was pretty sure none of this was real.  It just couldn't be happening. 

Isn't it odd how the most important days of our lives seem like dreams?  My wedding day was like floating on  another plane of white-laced existence.  I was overwhelmed by all the emotion, with all the family and friends, and then saying good-bye and moving 500 miles away.   My ordination day I was so emotional I was numb, which doesn't make any sense.  I remember the excellent sermon, the heavy weight of hands being laid upon me in a sea of shoes, and long reception lines.   The days following each of the girls' birth were dream-like, too, as though I were moving on auto-pilot.  I moved into another world wrapped in light and sleeplessness as I cuddled, rocked, and nursed my babies.  I also recall stinky nightgowns I finally was able to shower out of, but the days are a haze of impressions, fuzzy like a Renoir painted in beauty filled with the smell of my babies' sweet heads and the sounds of their coos and sucking hunger and big eyes searching mine till I tumbled into eternity wondering about their preexistence and how I had come to be so blessed to be visited by such angels who'd chosen to abide with the likes of me.  The days of my dissertation defense, I sailed with my sister down a southern backroad with my nephew in his car seat while French South African protest songs blasted on the radio as we went to have high tea in proleptic celebration.  The next day I walked into the wood-paneled room outside the wall of windows looking out onto the magnolias in bloom, thinking, "This is it?  Eight years of my life come down to talking with a handfull of people around a conference table?"  Unreal.

The last day I visited my good friend in Hospice who was dying of lung cancer, I remember little except the way the light fell across the room in the blessing of that time together and her reassurances that it was all going to be ok as the big sister she was for me.   When my father-in-law was dying, I remember glances between us in which I knew a full three months before he died that he knew he was dying.  He was having body parts lopped off piece by piece, and it was too awful for any of us to deal with so we went into lala land even while we also knew he was dying.  We played the game that he'd need a wheelchair ramp to get into the house and had it built knowing he'd never use it, but he let it be built because he knew it would help his wife.  When my father died three months later, I retreated into a haze of poetry and took a week planning his memorial service.  I couldn't come out of the world of words.  When my mother-in-law fell onto her head at my father's funeral, reality was simply too much.  Though I called 911, all I could do was float between the front and the back of the church waiting on the EMT's to arrive.  I couldn't engage until she was bandaged with her diagnosis of a hematoma in the hospital later in the day.  By the time my grandmother died in the next three months, I was completely numbed out and don't remember anything of her funeral.  My grandmother was the single most important person in my childhood, and I can't even remember her funeral, though I was there.  All I remember was that she didn't look right lying in the casket with make-up on her face.  She never wore make-up, so she looked like a Hollywood corpse, an illusion, not reality.  Three months later I found myself sitting in the dean's office mesmerized by the colors of the hard candies in the crystal candy dish as I heard I would not be getting tenure.  All this loss simply couldn't be happening.

Yet another three months later I was sitting in another room with another two men talking about a job I had only dreamed about in seminary which I would be offered.   And in another three months, I had bought a dream house in a dream location and was signing the papers on a full-price offer on our other house just three hours after we'd signed the contract with our realtor to sell the house.  It was all a fabulous dream. 

All the deaths and changes in 2007-2008, though, had taken their toll on our marriage.  We were each dealing with our own griefs and weren't much consolation to the other.  We were too overwhelmed and numb with grief.  But I hadn't seen that at the time.  We'd been walking around like the girls and I were the day after Bill's death--together but separate, each doing our own thing without much consideration of the other.  Except the girls and I were kinder and more tender with one another. 

We needed to get something to eat and buy a veggie tray to take back to the Interfaith House after viewing Bill.  His family might be hungry.  So after going to the store, we picnicked on Panera in the car.  Then we made our way to the funeral home where we greeted our pastor friend Greg and filled him in on the situation.  He looked nervous, but we sat and read through scripture until Bill's mother, sister, and brother-in-law arrived. 

Yes, I Gave My Daughter Drugs

Yes, I gave my daughter drugs and offered them more than Ambien in the days ahead.  Don't judge me until you've been there.  They weren't illegal drugs, but it's not the normal course of action, to be sure. 

It had been the worst day of my life.  I had held prayer vigil at the bedside of dying parishioners and family members.  But I had never actually watched a person die before--let alone my own husband. 

I didn't understand my own reactions to the death.  It was cold, matter-of-fact.  I didn't wail.  I barely wanted to touch his body after trying to wake him up and finding only dead weight.  His body was like that of a dummy used for CPR practice, lifeless.  I knew he wasn't there in that body, so I found myself strangely uninterested in the body I so loved, the body I applauded each morning as he pulled back the curtain after his shower.  The head I shaved and butterly bandaged when he cut his head open on the shower faucet, the back I massaged, the shoulder I snuggled on, the stomach I patted with affection, the butt I loved to squeeze, the groin I cared for after his first heart attack, the fabulous joy stick, the knee I iced after surgery, the feet I soaked and massaged.  The body I loved to kiss all over I could not bring hardly myself to touch at all.

In fact, the body appalled me.  It was the object of betryal, both his and mine.  I wanted it disposed of because he wasn't there.  Bill was gone.  I was looking for his presence around me, for I can sometimes feel such presences in places, but he was gone.  And I wanted that thing out of my sight.  It was the source of too much pain. 

I was perplexed by myself at the end of the day.  I tossed in the comfy Hampton Inn bed where I laid pillows lengthwise beside me to simulate a husband who less than 24 hours before lay beside me.  I watched my beautiful daughters fall into the rhythm of sleep by the flicker of the TV. 

What was I going to do?

How was I possibly going to be able to afford the schools they're in?    Until three months ago, Bill and I had lived apart for two years while Ariana finished high school after I took the dream job 400 miles away.  After she graduated, he'd moved to be with me, though it meant he was unemployed.  But he'd found a dream job and was so excited about starting it the next Monday, All Saints Day.   Most of his salary, though, was going to pay for their education. 

What would I do now?   

I finally fell asleep somewhere in the middle of the Revolutionary War.

All My Chicks Gathered At Last

It was time to go pick up Ariana at the airport. Since I didn’t live in the area, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get there. I wanted to leave a half hour earlier than Google maps and my GPS said I needed to. I didn’t want to be late.

But somehow we didn’t leave when I wanted. Everything moved so slowly. Neither of us could think well about practical matters. Like someone with OCD, I kept checking to see where my keys were every few minutes. (I’ve been known to lose keys so I was a bit paranoid.) Then I’d forget where I put them so I’d remember them. Then I kept brushing my teeth as I rather callously tossed Bill's electric beard trimmer and toothbrush into the trash can.  I don't know why that seemed important at the time, but it was.  It was as though I had to get his personal items away from me because they were too painful to confront.  There was still too much life there, and I couldn't face the overwhelming incongruity of it all.

Finally Barb and I were on the road and sat mostly in stunned silence on the 45-minute drive, listening to NPR for a sense of normalcy, then turning it off to randomly comment about the day:

He didn’t take his salt restrictions seriously.


Do you think he really didn’t wake up?


I think he was dead when they put him in the ambulance, which is why they weren’t in a hurry.


I have no idea what life insurance he had.

Then Sherry called. She and her husband Mark were on their way to my mother-in-law’s, a seven-hour trip for them. They were going to spend the night there and then make the four-hour trip to us in the morning to view Bill before he was cremated.

I wasn’t sure about this. There was a part of me that wanted to keep everything very simple and controlled so it was just the girls and me. But I understood their need. I was worried, though, about how bad Bill would look. He looked horrible by the time we’d left him at the hospital. What would he look like the next day after having organs and skin removed? I prepared them for the worse.  They were coming.  Hell or high water, they were coming.

I was also concerned that my mother-in-law’s emotion would be too much for me. She overwhelms people with her emotions in normal situations. And she was from a place where people filed by and kissed the corpse as a regular part of the funeral ritual. Would she throw herself on him in grief and refuse to let go?  If so, I wouldn't be able to take it.

After hanging up and expressing some of these concerns to Barb, she asked, “Do you want me to call Greg, [a local pastor we both knew well], to meet us at the funeral home?”

Yes! Brilliant idea. It would be after church services for him. And having a stranger there would ensure that the family would behave. She made the arrangements.  I was relieved. 

We were within ten minutes of the small airport when Ariana called. Her flight was down early.

Drats. She might have to wait for us. Outside baggage claim where I’d pick her up curbside like a package or something. I wanted to meet her as she got off the plane, wrap my arms around her, hold her, and never let her go. I wanted her to know how much I love her and would do anything in the world for her.

Instead, we pulled into the terminal, and there she was standing all alone inside the terminal, looking out the window, talking to us on the phone.  She was in shorts, and it was 40 some degrees out.  Through the glass, there was something waif-like about her that was unsettling.  Yet she waved and smiled and came out to greet us. 

Barb and I left the car on the curb, got out and overwhelmed her with a group hug. I cried out of sheer relief in having her there.  Then we lugged her suitcase into the car and carried on.

All my children were now together. I could spread my wings and protect them as they nuzzled under my arms like they did when they were babies and I read to them each night.

We drove home through the beautiful midwestern landscape with the moon rising in the dusky haze of the day's demise.  It was a peaceful, glorious sunset, transferring into a full moon rising.  Bill and I shared a love of travelling through landscapes.  He would appreciate this, I thought, and the silenet tears began to flow again.

We filled Ariana in on everthing on the way back to the hotel.  Later, after soup and vegging out in front of the TV, we huddled together on my bed, and my daughters did nuzzle down in my arms as we opened the prayer book for evening prayer:

O Lord, support us all the day long until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.  Then, in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Then I gave half an Ambien to Ariana who rarely sleeps before 2:00 a.m., took the other half and finally went to sleep with the History Channel on in the background because we couldn’t bear to go to sleep in the face of dark silence.

Beautiful, Wonderful Words of Life

Here is a sampling of the beautiful words of hope and blessing from the church that I received, which I pass on to comfort any bereaved who might need them at the time they read these words. They’re simply too good to keep to myself, and if you ever need to give someone some condolence, steal some of these written mostly by pastors who deal with grief all the time:

May God's love shower over you in this time.

I ache with you.

Our prayers fly upward like sparks and outward towards you all.

You are a deep person and your grief will run deep, both assisted and perhaps magnified by your daughters' loss.


I remember you in my prayers for the Lord to annoint you with his peace and grace and lead you through this healing phase of your life. Remember God is still on his throne and in control, he will see you through.


The God who is with us until the end provides extraordinary people who come around us and love us through the worst pain. Though your individual journey is your own, know that your colleagues are remembering you continuously.


Love yourself the way you love all of us! Be kind to "you" and know that you are surrounded by love, support, and prayers!!


I am praying for all of you. Big prayers. Earnest supplication.


I do not know you, but may our Lord rock you in His arms and give you His peace. Praise be to God that [Bill] has achieved the victory!


I can imagine the pain you and your family must feel. But I do not want to. My mind quickly turns to words of promise and reassurance, resurrection and future hope. But those words are too easy. The joy of the hello determines the pain of the goodbye; and I have a feeling your hello with [Bill] was robust.


The intercessory prayers of others are the safety net between you and the abyss. Fall back into them; they'll hold you.


All you have to do is breathe and God will do the rest, working through those who are surrounding you with their love and prayers.


I have never had the opportunity to meet you. My name is [Matthew] and I'm a senior [where you used to teach]. I was just informed of the loss of your husband, [Bill], while I was reading [the school newsletter.] My condolences to you. I pray that God provides to you space for grieving, space for healing, space for work, space for recovery to mundane things. I wish that I could say something to make things better for you. I just want you to know that I'm praying for you. I pray for God's peace that the world does not know, the peace that the world does not understand. (John 14:27)


May those everlasting arms hold you here as they hold your husband in another way.


This morning's lectionary passage Ecclesiasticus 44:1-15 made me think of all those men and women, saints of the church, who never rose to eccesiastical heights but were intent upon their mission nonetheless. I never met your [Bill]. I regret that, but live and trust that the assembly does indeed declare his wisdom and the congregation proclaims his praise.


May the same Everlasting Arms that have welcomed him Home, also uphold you and your family in these days.


My wife and I will join others in praying for you. Each of us lost dearly loved spouses. We can assure that the Lord will help you to find your way.


May the God who walked with us in Nazareth and Bethany, Jerusalem and the upper room, be known to you and your family as the walking "with us' continues even now.


May the grace of our Lord wrap around you like a cocoon and keep you safe and strong.


I am so deeply saddened by your news. I can only imagine how sorrowful it is to lose a partner of 30 years--and so suddenly. Indeed, his baptism is now complete and the same Lord who brought him into God's family through water and the Spirit now receives him and presents him to God Most High. Even so, the pain and lament at this loss must be deep. . . . May the peace of the Risen Christ be with you and your family.

I lost my first spouse at age 51 also, and so I know the unimaginable sense of loss and the hole that is in your heart at the present time. While we do celebrate the new life promised in baptism, we still grieve our own loss of a loving companion. Be assured of our ongoing prayers for support and comfort.


I was shocked and saddened by your news. I can only imagine the depth of your loss. Please know that you are all in my prayers. I pray that you and your daughters would sense the presence of Christ leading you through this shadowed valley.


My heart is heavy with your sorrow. What a shock for you. I know God is holding you close and I pray friends and family are rallying to your side now. If there is anything I can do, I would stop everything to do it. Please know that your face is right before me and in my heart right now.

I knew this wonderful person really would stop everything to do whatever she could even though she is hundreds of miles away. Just knowing that is a beautiful thing.

The prayers and blessings, not just assurance I was being prayed for, but actual prayers like this were a huge comfort to me:

My prayer is, foremost, that you feel the presence of Jesus who said: "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." (John 14:18).


I'm so sorry! My prayers are with you & your family--that our loving God who shares all our hurts would just wrap His arms around you. Sending prayers..."


May you feel in the depths of your soul and around the woundedness of your heart all of our arms holding you close in the union and intimacy of Christ's incarnate love.


Oh Lord, touch her, uphold her, guide her through these the immediate hours and days ahead. Amen.

May you grieve as a woman of hope, strong in the knowledge that because Christ lives, we, too, shall live, both now, and in the life everlasting.


I am circling you and your family with prayer. May the memory and spirit of [Bill] ever singing in your heart and bring you comfort and peace.

God bless and encourage you!


“All creation groans” and we groan along with it. Praying for sustaining grace and peace to you and your family in the coming days.

You are being held in the light.


Dear beloved friend, 
     My spirit grieves the passing of your [Bill]. May God's everlasting arms enfold you and the girls, and other family members and friends who also mourn his loss, with comfort. And may God walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death. [Bill] will be sorely missed. But now he joins the eternal choir (Rev. 7), probably making suggestions. 
      May you hear the beating of unseen wings,
     [John]

I love it when people refer to “your Bill,” as my dear friend who wrote this and a few others did. Though I know Bill was never mine, the possessive somehow acknowledges the deep loss of the broken deep bond we shared. It somehow signifies an understanding of the truth that his death marks the end of our marriage. I like people's kind words about him and their memories of him, which many had. But the words “your Bill” touch a tender place with sweet consolation.  Weird, huh?  That's the way grief is.

I have another friend, whom I haven't known long, who keeps sending me little surds like this, which are like Underdog's secret energy pills: 

There are not enough tears to wash away the pain. And never enough pain to wipe away the love.

These words are a particularly wonderful gift I cling to, along with yet others that come from the same beautifully articulate friend:  This and the promise from Isaiah that God will not snuff out a dimly burning light keep me stumbling on when life is at its darkest.

The candle will go out many times ... but the darkness cannot overcome the light.

But two of my favorites, from two different people who don't know one another, were short and to the point:
That was really what I needed at the time—to know I am still loved. I know better, but somewhere inside I wonder if I'll ever be loved again.  There are times when I feel like I've received more love in my husband's death than I did when I was married to him.  So just receiving love is important. 

Love love love love love only love.

We’re sending you buckets of love.

As wonderful as all these words are, I am also comforted by the honest truth that caused preachers, people of words, to fall silent:

No! . . . . I can't even . . .

I quite simply don’t know what to say, or to write.

Words are poor vehicles for what is needed at such a time. Let me simply say that my prayers and love are yours in the days ahead. If it is any comfort, in your aloneness, you are accompanied by friends.

There are no words. May God supply you and your family with that special "withness" only God can provide in times of overwhelming loss. You are surrounded by many, many prayers.


I am so shocked...prayers, prayers, prayers.


I have no words, I am so sorry.


“Jesus wept.” . . . And so do we.


This preacher has no words, falling silent into deep prayer.

I read these and the other words I received over and over and over again. They are balm for my wound, precious ointment that has anointed my grief with divine compassion. The church literally blesses me in my sorrow, and I know myself to be blessed.  Very blessed indeed.

The Church Arises

I work for the church, so I’ve seen its dark underbelly. There are days when Christians make you seriously consider atheism. The church may be one of the few institutions that eats its young and then wonders where all the youth are. That’s how daft and deadly we can be.

But there is nothing like the church on earth when it’s doing its job and being who it was called to be. The church, the real church, showed up for us. The outpouring of love and support and blessings held me up in the days that followed Bill’s death, even by people who didn’t even know him. While he was well-known in artistic circles, only a few of his music buddies showed signs of support. But the church outdid itself. It shone forth as the body of Christ given for us.

I called my supervisor, Edward, who was in Europe attending an ecumenical conference with some of my other colleagues, to tell him the news. “I doubt that I’ll make it to the conference on Thursday” that I was scheduled to go to on behalf of the Office. Yes, I was seriously thinking I might still go at this point. Life goes on and all that stuff.

“What?” Edward said with shock in his voice. “Ah, don’t worry about that. What happened?”

Wow. That’s a real good question I'll ponder later, but I tell him the bare outline of facts.

He had the same reaction of disbelief: “No!”

“Will you please tell everyone else?”

“Of course.  I’ll be in touch. You just do what you need to do. Don’t worry about the Office.”

It was Saturday, but from Europe Edward called someone to find out what our bereavement policy was: four days off.

Now let’s just pause and reflect upon that for a moment. Four days off for the death of a spouse. Interesting. Sometimes I feel like I live in a survival-of-the-fittest world with the Majordomo of all Majordomos in charge. This, I have since found out, is not that unusual. Four days? Seriously?  Is life some kind of forced death march where we remove the dead bodies to the side of the road and just keep going to our own deaths?

Margaret Meade once noted that the first evidence of civilization is found with healed broken bones, which indicates that someone had to care for the infirm instead of just leaving them behind as fodder in the food chain.  Will there be evidence of healed broken hearts in our archeological strata of society years from now?

Edward called me with this information and then said, “Well, the official policy may be four days, but forget that. You take what you need. We’ll work something out between vacation and sick days. We’re here for you. You just tell us what you need.”  

These are my colleagues—civilized people in the national office of our denomination whom others in the church often think are heartless and godless. Nothing can be further from the truth.

When my father died, I was in academia. I received the news of his death, sighed, said a prayer, then straightened my shoulders to walk in and teach my morning class. I took the afternoon off. That was it. I had to be back in class the next day to finish out the end of the year. My sister took care of all the arrangements, which were minimal since his body was being donated to a medical school, and we agreed to do a memorial service later in the summer when we weren’t all so busy. It was all quite efficient. Remove the dead body, get back in step.

There was little notice, little condolence, less care in academia, as one might expect, except that this was a theological institution educating future ministers. Of course my students were terrific. They all wanted to practice their pastoral care skills on their professor, and, to their credit, they mostly did a good job.  My fellow faculty, not so much. Now, to be fair, part of this lack of care is due to my own private nature and the problematic relationship I had with my father, a story best left for another day. I didn’t want to talk about what had been happening to me with his care over the last five years because it was hellish and left me wondering if my family would be called to be featured on the Jerry Springer Show. That’s how bizarre that story was. I was ashamed of my family background, which was really all about me, not them. So I had a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” professional relationship with the academic institution that precluded receiving real care from my colleagues there. Though some indeed did show beautiful concern and condolence, they were the exception, not the rule.

Upon the death of my husband, then, I was prepared for the same kind of lukewarm response from the church--not the outpouring of love that literally came in from all over the world. Bill was being remembered in prayer in Alexandria, Geneva, Oxford, Cameroon, Copenhagen. People I didn’t even know wrote the nicest words on Facebook. My brothers and sisters throughout the United States and world were praying for us.

I am a part of the communion of saints, and it is a glorious thing.

The Majordomo Starts to Crack

Back at the hotel, we started making the necessary calls. I called my sister Shelley, the one person I called when I found out years ago that my husband was carrying on an email flirtation while I ran myself ragged trying to take care of two young children and work on a Ph.D. She was always there for me, more than I have been for her, lamentably.

So I have to leave a message on Shelley’s voice mail, which is just as well. She has just found out her own husband was doing much the same thing mine had done, along with a DUI and a night in jail for lying to the police. Warning: our family has had more than its fair share of what I call Jerry Springer material.

I wonder: did Jerry Springer ever do a show on why men are so freaking stupid sometimes? Or a month of shows? But I digress. I suspect we’ll return to the stupidity of husbands later.

I call my mother who has an impaired heart after two rounds of intensive chemotheraphy for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. “NOOOOO!" she wails.  "It was supposed to be me, not him!” I could hear her hyperventilating. Lord, now I was going to kill my mother. 
“Mom, just sit down and breathe. I can’t take you dying, too. I’m gonna need you to help see me through this.”

She quieted.

“Bill’s having his organs harvested right now, and he’ll be cremated later. Ariana’s on her way here so she can see her father tomorrow. We’re going to stay an extra day here. Will you call Louisa (my other sister) and let her know? I couldn’t get Shelley. I had to leave a message finally—an awful way for her to find out.”

Again, my Majordomo was in charge. Her precision, her organization, her lack of emotion can keep people at arms’ length. Which is probably the point. When people are nice to me, I crumble like stale wedding cake, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get up.

Whoever said, “There’s no shame in falling down, but only in not getting back up,” had not discussed this tactical plan with the Majordomo. For her, it’s failure to fall, so when I do, she kicks me and verbally abuses me for lack of strength. I hate her for this, but she’s useful, so I keep her around and let her run the show from time to time because she’s so incredibly efficient and effective. I have to watch her, though, because MacArthur had nothing on her. When she gets to be too much, I capture her with what she refers to as my “sissy spirituality” and tell her that she’s now a prisoner of war, which appeals to her on some level because it seems to earn her medals or something.  Then being a POW eventually pisses her off so that when she escapes, she can come back with a vengeance.  Yup, I have to watch her. 

These are two primary characters of my personality--my good angel and my bad-ass angel, as my grandmother would not have said but taught me as a child when she convinced me that the two bumps on the top of my shoulders were good and bad angels vying for a hearing in each of my ears. There’s yet another primary character, though, the Little Girl who’s depressed and overwhelmed and sits and cries a lot who just wants to be loved by someone. With these three parts of my personality, it’s quite the mental health circus in my head. No wonder my husband’s dead. The stress of living with Sybil-in-training is enough to kill anyone.

Now where was I? Oh, yes! The Majordomo is the one I often let deal with my co-dependent passive-aggressive mother. How she’s even living with us is something of puzzlement I shall save for another day. Suffice it to say that it’s God’s grace that I speak to her because she physically abused me as a child, trying to beat my high spirit out of me. I, however, proved to be more of a stubborn cuss than she could ever imagine a child being. And I survived her. By the grace of God and the realization at the ripe old age of 5 while sitting alone on the swing in the backyard that my parents were crazy and that was I was experiencing with them was just plain wrong, I survived, becoming emotionally self-reliant at too early an age.  I had to trust in something I did know was God at a very young age in order to survive.

After years of therapy, I am still in relationship with my mother, though my therapist counseled against her moving in with me.  But she has changed since she was born again and re-baptized at the Assemblies of God church she went to in the evening after going to her childhood Lutheran church in the morning. She’s now the mother I didn’t have growing up, packing my lunch for me every day when I go to work. But there’s a part of me that knows that other mother is still in there, so I will never trust her. I don’t let her get too close. I think this hurts her, and I feel guilty for it sometimes, but she has yet to ever really apologize for what she’s done. She makes vague references to it sometimes with regret and explanations founded upon her own Germanic childhood, which, to be fair, does explain a lot. But if I were to tell her how much of my life has been hamstrung by faulty thinking due to her abuse, I think she’d grow defensive, and I’d throw her out to fend for herself because I just can’t take all the dishonesty and butt-covering anymore. So we do a distance dance, much like the one I also did with my husband, who was way too much like her.

Did I mention I have issues with forgiveness? Yeah, well . . . I figure we’ll get there someday. I’m continually working on it.

But I keep losing the narrative here. A symptom of my wacked-out thinking. I could blame it on grief, but honestly, that wouldn’t be altogether true. I’m just weird--damaged, to tell the truth. Damaged. I’ve managed to hide it well all of my life, somewhat. But my husband’s sudden death has blown the lid off my desire to keep it under cover anymore. I have to write through all the shit that’s piled up around my life and get on with my life at last. I’m castigating folks for not taking responsibility for their actions here, but I’ve yet to really take responsibility for what I want out of life, blaming my problems on everyone else’s accumulated crap hemming me in.

Well, I’m letting everyone else deal with their own shit now. I’ve got enough of my own.
But first I have to call my sister-in-law, Sherry, whose husband managed to run up $80,000 debt in secret by cashing in their retirement without telling her in order to build their new dream home that’s being foreclosed after their bankruptcy lost him his job at the bank. Sweet Jesus! Maybe all husbands should just die and leave us alone. What’s with these guys?

But I can’t find Sherry's phone number anywhere. I don’t have it with me. Bill had just gotten a new cell phone and hadn’t transferred all the phone numbers over from his old phone. I can’t find it with directory assistance. Finally, I call Mom back again. Thank goodness she and Bill’s mother know one another and talk from time to time. “I need you to call Bill’s mom and casually ask for Sherry’s phone number somehow. I don’t want to call Ettie [Bill’s mother] to tell her out of the blue that Bill's dead. It’ll kill her.”

Mom’s Majordomo kicks in with subterfuge.  She may have liked this assignment because I've often thought that my mother would have made a great spy.  I learn later that she’s called asking for Sherry’s phone number because she wants to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner. “Sorry I can’t talk now, I’ve gotta go,” Mom says. Notorious for hour-long phone conversations, she quickly gets off the phone, which blows her cover somewhat.  But she passes on the intel.  Mission accomplished.

I call Sherry. Of course, she can’t believe it. Again, I recount the story. This is the part I hate because with each retelling it becomes more real. And I simply don’t want it to be real.

“What I’m afraid of, Sherry, is how to break the news to your mom. She’s just getting over losing your dad three years ago, and now I’m afraid this’ll kill her.”

“Yeah, it might,” Sherry says. “It’s got to be hard to hear that the son you think walks on water has died.” She says this without acrimony; it’s a family joke that Bill was the perfect Messianic son according to his mother, which also explains some things.

“I’ll call her family and friends to go tell her in person.”

“Oh, Sherry, thanks.” She’s the best sister-in-law a person could have in this situation. Caring, but take-charge.

Because the Majordomo in me is starting to crack, and I need someone else to be in charge sometimes.

Eat, Pray, Love

I’ve looked over the last two posts and realized that they’ve been about eating and praying. On the heels of the success of Eat, Pray, Love, it may be a coincidence that the next thing that happened was love. But I doubt it.

Love arrived in the form of the college chaplain who is simply amazing. She had come to work in a quiet place on her sermon for the next day and, to her surprise, found us by this time sitting on the floor with our laptops trying to find the phone numbers of everyone we needed to call. She received the news like all of us: “What? No!” Then she just sat and listened. She listened to the story so far, to the tears, to our gallows humor, to our silence. She embodied Paul’s teaching to “weep with those who weep" (Rom. 12:5).  But then she just didn’t leave us in the floor with good wishes. She prayed for us. Really prayed. She had heard the desires of our hearts that we ourselves had not yet heard, and she prayed the most beautiful prayer that settled like a comforter around our cold, shocked hearts. Wrapped in her love, with the assurance we were held by God within the communion of saints, we arose and went forth from that place refreshed and renewed.

Belly-Button Prayer and Resurrection Reality

Whether we ate lunch or not, I do know that on that first day after we visited the funeral home, Barb and I went to the house on her campus where various religious groups meet .  We went there because it was a clean, well-lit space. Barb knew we needed that peace and that it was there in that space. No one was around, and, as one of the student leaders of an interfaith dialogue, she had a key. So we went and sat in the room where the night before we had munched on cheese and crackers as we mingled with other parents whose kids went to college there.  Like my life, the room had transformed from lively conviviality into a place that was now deadly silent and still.  And like Barb, I, too, needed to just be still and sit in the sunlight.

We cuddled on the couch and cried some. Up since the wee hours of the morning, we were shakey and exhausted. Then I did something which I did about every two hours for the next week: I pulled out the prayer book . Yes, I actually had my book of daily prayer with me in my bag.  (I am a pastor, remember.)  Barb pulled down a Bible from one of the shelves in the room, and we did one of the daily offices. 

As I read aloud, I could feel myself drawing strength from the words. The familiar words held us. They held us together. As we prayed and read the beautiful words, it was as though we could feel the arms of God holding us, and I was assured that regardless of what lay ahead, I would be ok. Underneath all are the everlasting arms of God, as the psalmist says. I could feel the literal truth of this statement.

In the weeks ahead, I slept with my prayer book and Bible. It may not have been as good as sleeping with a husband, but they didn't take up more than their share of the bed.  And they comforted me as nothing else could, for those ancient words of promise and hope and lament were like a lifeline that a drowning person clings to knowing it is the only thing that will save. It was the only thing that had any reality for me. Real Reality.

In the days that followed Bill’s death, I had a clarity about life that is akin to a religious epiphany. I was in a liminal space where it seemed I knew profound things not in my head or heart, but in my spirit, in my gut, right below my belly button. I felt a sense of oneness with the universe I’ve never felt and a deep compassion with all others. This feeling is not like feelings based on hormones that fluctuate moment to moment, but more like a deeper intuition about the Whole, which comes from the spirit.

While exhilarating because I KNEW I wasn’t alone (I could somehow feel people praying for me during this time), this sense of unity with others had its down side. I couldn’t be around others’ suffering at this time because I felt it; added on top of my own pain, others’ suffering, particularly their anxiety, crushed me to the point where I wasn’t sure I could carry on.

Intercessory prayer, though, was something I felt compelled to do because, again, I KNEW it somehow feeds the Spirit that holds us all. There is an essential energy exchange that happens in prayer that is our source of life. As long as I prayed, I could make it. Without that prayer, I was in danger.

Now in my weird cartoon mind, this feeling of oneness is symbolized by the belly button itself, the reminder of our bodies that we are dependent upon another body for life itself, something we all have that connects us all in what Freidrich Schleiermacher, a nineteenth-century German theologian, said is our absolute dependence.

When preaching students asked me whether they should preach to people’s heads or hearts, I told them that they should preach to their belly buttons, that deep spirit within us all that connects to the Holy Spirit, the part that loves eternally and knows that love’s wholeness, justice, shalom is the deep desire of God and the way things are supposed to be. The belly-button, which is the source of both head and heart, is what we need to preach to--our common humanity as fellow creatures on the planet who are aware that they are absolutely dependent upon the grace of God just to exist, the part of us that knows we screw up and can't fix it, the part that also longs for what on this earth is utopia, but which God is at work to bring about--wholeness, harmony, love and care for one another, justice, peace, health, contentment.  This is what the story of Christ speaks to and satisfies in me. 

Belief that somehow all of what I'm going through is part of God’s dominion in some way helps me get through.  NOT THAT MY HUSBAND'S DEATH IS GOD'S WILL.  It's not!  But I believe that God's still in charge and that God’s Way of Life will prevail no matter what crucifixion Death may trot out to thwart us.  In Christ, we cannot be stopped.  We just keep living regardless of what Death throws at us.  Until we don't.  And then we're taken fully up into the Reality of God's Dominion.  I believe in the Resurrection.  With everything I am, I KNOW the Resurrection is true.

Dying of a heart attack in one’s sleep may be a good way to die, but I am here to tell you that it’s not so great for the person you're sleeping with.  So I need a God who's been through the valley and come through on the other side.  That's why I trust and love Jesus Christ in a much more profound way than I ever did before.  He understands the worst of human pain, went through it to show us what sin does to one another and life together, and conquered its death with the Resurrection.  As his Way of Life continued with people who were empowered by the Holy Spirit to live out his teachings in study, prayer, fellowship, and the breaking of bread, God continues to live and work in the world to bring all within Divine Dominion.   So I can just trust God to be God and do what I need to do to let that happen for and through me. 

If only it were that easy . . .

Appetite for Food and Life

After visiting the funeral home, we may have picked up lunch; neither Barb nor I remember. At the last minute before we left, my mother, who lives with me, had put in a big container of homemade black bean soup to give to Barb, a vegan. During the next two days, we ate this soup at the Hampton Inn when it dawned on us that we needed to eat in order to carry on.

Eating, practically a sport in which we gold-medal in our family, became something we had to deliberately remember to do, which is very unusual for me. I’m a stress eater, so when stressed, I eat. I was beyond stressed, though.

I was traumatized. Dealing with my husband’s death was too painful to do, and I didn’t want to do it. I knew I had to go through this, though, to live, which may be why I don’t necessarily want to live from time to time. It’s not that I’m suicidal; I just don’t care about much except that my daughters are ok. Otherwise, I think I’d be content to just slip beneath the rising waters of grief like Virginia Woolf walking out to sea with rocks in her pockets. Except that I don’t have the energy to fill my pockets with rocks or even walk into the sea. I just want the grief to take me under like a person who’s been clinging to a shipwreck for days waiting for rescue just wants to let go and let the sea take them.

This is why all the food coming in after someone dies is such a blessing. Without someone else feeding us, I think we’d have starved. Never a cook, the last thing I wanted to do was put a meal together. Besides, no one wanted a meal. We snacked. It wasn’t until four days had passed that I even knew what I was eating. I had absolutely no appetite—for anything. But when the cucumbers and hummus we were living on when we got back home ran low, I found myself in the grocery store and suddenly I wanted grapes, cheese, and bread—a meal Bill and I often had as we picnicked through Europe and in the days thereafter. That was one of our favorite meals.

In Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Gail Godwin describes the daughter’s mourning ritual as being one in which every day for lunch she ate the same last meal she had shared with her father before his death—lemonade and a cheese sandwich. I wonder if the grapes, cheese, and bread were Bill’s idea planted in my head as a way of staying connected. Or maybe it was mine—a kind of meal that conferred life out of the midst of death, much like the disciples gathering to break bread after Christ’s crucifixion.

Two days after we arrived home, a river of food flowed into the house, organized by one of the most wonderful administrative assistants on the planet. My co-workers were amazing. They wanted to know what food to bring, and I told them—fruit, bread, cheese, vegetables, and something for my vegan daughter to eat and my mother who's on a sodium-restricted diet--not exactly an easy request.

The kindness of food is a way of showing love and connection during a time of separation and pain that is hard to match.  The food others blessed us with wasn't just physical sustenance; it was like a downpayment of hope, an assurance that life goes on, and that when my appetite for life is gone, theirs and their faith in my future will carry me until it's back. 

One person cut up cheese and veggies and filled our frig with bags of fresh vegetables. Others brought crackers, easy to pick up and so appreciated. Some thoughtful soul sent paper plates. There was one gift that was a surprising kindness—gum, given by someone who’d been there and possibly knew that when you’re crying so much your breath isn’t always its best.  One beautiful soul made soup low in salt for my mother and put it in individual containers that we could take out of the frig or freezer in the days ahead.  What beautiful gifts these food offerings were to us, for which I will be eternally grateful. We got the best pasta salad I've ever eaten and a sweet potato and bean casserole that we got the recipe for and fixed for Thanksgiving. These gifts of love from my co-workers brought back my appetite. 

So God bless the casserole mavens and soup brigade!  They are messengers of life.

The Funeral Home Visit

The person who met us at the funeral home door was hardly funereal. I guess I was expecting the obsequious pale-faced plastered-hair funeral director I’d always known in one form or another in all the various places. Our funeral home contact person looked like a young Midwestern farmwife, plump with an open and honest face, warm and hospitable. She couldn’t have been much, if any, over 30. She walked us through the forms and asked us what we wanted done with the cremains.

Now that is one ugly word: cremains. It sounds like the creamy remains of something, like fluids coldly cleaned up after sex.

Some people like to put them in urns, she gently suggested. Did we want to look at urns?

Now I have no more intention of putting my dead husband in a jar on a mantle than I do of squatting naked in the town square. But my curiosity got the best of me. “Whaddya got?” So we go to see the urns. What else do we have to do?

While the rest of the town is filing into the stadium for the big college homecoming game, we file into a room filled with different types of caskets, which would have been pretty creepy had our pleasingly plump Pollyanna funeral rep not warned us beforehand what to expect. We pass all the body boxes, then she pulls aside a curtain, and there are the urns.

There were urns with all kinds of things on them—angels, anglers, and antlers. There was an urn decorated with an American flag. I looked around for a Velvet Elvis one, but was disappointed. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but this is worse than I imagined.”

Then Pollyanna mischievously tells us about having the cremains carbonized into diamond jewelry. “Oh, you have got to be kidding!” I laugh.

“Well, that puts a whole new spin on ‘Who are you wearing?’” Barbara quips. We all burst into laughter and can’t stop.

“I’m wearing my dog Fifi,” I mimic a British actress holding out her arm to show off her Harry Winston ring. “And my Aunt Ethel,” I say tossing my hair back to show off my imaginary earrings.

We calm down enough so that the minimal arrangements are made, as Bill wanted. We will get to see him tomorrow laid out after organ harvesting is complete later today. We have the turtleneck and tweed jacket he was going to wear to the ballgame with us. He won’t have on any pants under the blanket they’ll have on him, but then again, there’ll be PVC pipe in his legs and hips. Besides, Bill would like going commando into the afterlife.

I start laughing again as I remember standing with my little niece at the open casket of my grandfather. Knowing that children often get overlooked in their parents’ grief, I asked my six-year-old niece if she had any questions she wanted to ask. She looked at Papaw in his casket with the blue satin blanket over him, then looked up at me with earnest blue eyes and asked, “Where’d they put his legs?”

This whole death thing is surreal. Laughter and prayer seem to be the only way to get through it.

Death humor

They put us in a bigger room with a frig and microwave and stocked it with complimentary fresh fruit, bottles of water, sodas, and popcorn. It was a simple act of compassion that meant a great deal to us.

“This is why I stay in the Hampton Inn,” I tell Barbara. “They’re always good to you.”

Hampton Inn is where we ended up on our girls’ camping trip the spring before when we actually stayed through the night in a tent during a tornado warning. After we finally moved to the Hampton Inn and slept most of the next day, I awoke on Mothers’ Day and accidentally mistook an Ambien four times stronger than what I was used to taking (it had been Bill’s) for my Vitamin D pill. After an aborted trip to the ER during which I figured out what had happened, I awoke in the car in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn. The window was cracked, and there was a note saying that the girls had gone shopping at Marshalls. I’d been left like a dog in the car on Mothers’ Day. And we’d had to book another night at the Hampton Inn then, too. Bill had come to the rescue and stayed with me while the girls went home. It was a legendary family story.

“Yes, I can see the review on the internet now," Barbara said.  "‘Hampton Inn is a great place to stay when you accidentally take an Ambien in the morning and need to sleep it off or when your husband dies.’”

I started laughing, then cried. I felt guilty for laughing, then despaired that I’d ever laugh again.

I didn't have to wonder about this long because we visited the funeral home next.

"What? No!"

The phone rings. It’s Ariana. “What do you want? What’s going on?”

“We need you to wake up your roommate and then Skype us.”

“Why?”

“I know you hate Skype. Just do it, ok?” There must be something in my voice because she doesn’t protest, and it’s way too early for her to be cooperative. It’s nowhere near noon.

But of course she doesn’t wake her roommate. She takes her laptop into the lounge and Skypes in. She’s totally alone, far from home, a freshman getting ready to face her first finals, and we have to tell her that her father’s dead. In the few seconds after I tell her that her father had a heart attack and has died, I can see life step out of her. It’s as though everything has been put on pause for just a few brief moments.  Then . . .

“What? No!”

That’s exactly the reaction we all have to the news. "You're kidding me," a pastor friend says, his equivalent of "What?"  This just can't be true.  Over and over I hear this as I spend the rest of the day notifying everyone. “What? No!”

By now Ariana has an hour to get to the airport. By the time she gets back to her room, her roommate, a gift from God, is up and helps her pack. Security shows up to tell her what she already knows but can’t yet comprehend.

Ariana calls from the airport. She’s made the flight. But then she has a three-hour layover before catching the plane to us. She hasn’t had time to digest what’s happening, and about the time it hits her she’ll be in a strange airport . . . all alone . . . for three hours. Is she strong enough to do this? Is anyone?

Being a mother is the hardest thing in the world. But this was the worst day of motherhood even though both of my daughters are now technically adults.  When it comes to losing your Daddy, no one’s an adult regardless of what age they are.  And my girls are still young.  Too young.

Having to watch each of them wrestle with the grief of losing their beloved father just about killed me. I wanted to protect them, but I couldn’t. In my own grief, I probably added to theirs instead of helping it. 

After making sure Ariana was on her way, Recrimination took up residence with a messy bag of Cheetos on the sofa in my head and glared at my every move.  He put his feet up on the coffee table and wiped the cheesy doodle dust on his fingers off on my nice floral silk pillows. 

It was sometime in here that I began pacing the hotel room disconsolate, talking incoherently. “I killed him. I was always asking too much of him. He was upset over a fight we’d had in the car coming up. I don’t even know what it was about now. Just something I’d been trying to get resolved for years, but he always heard it as judgment and got defensive, caring more about his own image being tarnished than he did the pain I was in. And I didn’t want to let it go this time. He wanted to make up at bedtime, and I turned my back on him instead. I killed him. The stress of being married to me killed him.”

Barbara, a beige blob of her own shocked speechless grief, sat stunned and still on the sofa.

Thank God housekeeping called. Our new room was ready. And we were ready to go. 

Wonky but Intact

It’s now about 7:30 a.m. We have to tell Ariana, my youngest daughter in her first semester at college over 800 miles from where we are, that her father is dead.

She has to see the body because she won’t believe it otherwise. I don’t, and I was there.  But she doesn’t answer her phone. Of course, it’s 6:30 on a Saturday morning in her dorm’s time zone, so no one’s going to be awake.

It’s at this point that I realize how relative our consciousness of time is and how wonky my thinking has become. “I have some time,” I think. “Maybe I can just drive down and tap on her window, too. It’s only a fourteen-hour drive.” And I’m gonna do this in an hour of chronological time.

“I’ll check the airlines to book her on a flight out as soon as possible,” Barbara says.

Something has shifted. My daughter of 21 is taking care of me, not me her. And for once I let her. I’ll catch her later; she can catch me now. Thus the dance of grief goes on.

Finally, we have to call. I dial Ariana's cell phone. No answer, but sometimes I think she deliberately ignores my calls. So Barbara tries. Still no answer. We try a few more times, but then realize time is growing short. She doesn’t know it yet, but she has a plane to catch.

Why does it feel like I’m trying to swim through molasses? My brain feels like cotton is muffling its quick responses, and my body is slow and heavy. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to tell her. I just want Barbara and I to know. We can keep this a secret between us and just go on about our lives. If we tell others, it will become real. Somehow, the more we tell, the more real it will be, and I don’t want this to be real.

Finally I have what I’m trying to figure out: “We’ll call campus security to go to her dorm room and wake her and her roommate up. We’ll ask them not to tell her, just ask her to call home.” It’s important that her roommate be awakened, too, we decide, because she and Ariana have become good friends, and you can’t hear news like this alone.

We have to find the number for campus security. The familiarity of Googling is oddly comforting, an assurance that I’m still a capable person somehow. Or even a person. Somewhere I think I thought I would just naturally fly apart without my husband, but I haven’t. I’m still intact.

Intact. Like a male who hasn’t been neutered?  I'm still potent, powerful.  Odd thoughts like this are now common in my head. I can understand how personalities split, for I am quite aware of various tracks of thoughts moving through me simultaneously. One part of me, the Majordomo, is on auto-pilot doing what needs to be done calmly, methodically, precisely. Another part of me is having random bizarre thoughts, some of which are downright hilarious as though I'm in a sit-com or something.  I find myself saying inappropriately comedic things at times that crack Barbara up, and she, too, is experiencing the same dark humor.  All this while there's another part of me continually praying and reciting scripture.   I'm afraid that if anyone knew this about me that they'd heavily sedate me.

Another part of me, though, the lost little girl, is wandering above it all, looking for my husband, Bill, because he’s the one who always helps me through. But I can’t find him . . . anywhere. This part of me is in a panic, and, as always, this part of me is just ignored even though I’m aware the panic is never far from me.

Altogether, though, I continue to exist in liminal space in a swirl of rather disconnected thoughts, but not feeling . . . anything. Which is a blessing.

Crumple and Cry

We drive back to the hotel, and I stop at the front desk. “I was in room 214 with my husband. I had you call an ambulance earlier, but he died. Would it be possible to get another room, please? And I’ll need to stay another night.”

The young women behind the desk are shocked by my matter-of-factness, and tears of compassion fill their widening eyes. They come out from behind the counter to hug me. “I’m so sorry.” This jump starts my own emotions, and I start shaking again. There are tears again.

The hotel is full. It’s family weekend in the college town, but as soon as someone checks out, they’ll get us a new room.

We have to go back in there.

The room is in disarray with plastic from packages EMTs tore open. Clothes are strewn about.  The covers are utterly disheveled, and the bed is damp.

Why is the bed wet? Did he wet the bed? Night sweats? Did the EMT’s . . . No. . . .  It is just yet another mystery.  I don’t know. I just don’t know.

I go to the bathroom. My make-up is all out. Surely I didn’t put on make-up before I went to the hospital, did I? No, I’m pale as a sheet and look ten years older than I did before I went to bed. I brush my teeth to get the taste of death out of my mouth.  It was the first of at least six brushings that day.

I have to think, but I can’t seem to get my brain functioning. I need a shower. My hair’s a mess. I can’t go to breakfast with Barbara's friends on parents’ weekend looking like this. We can still go to the ballgame. That’s what I came to do—have fun with my daughter on parents’ weekend in this wonderful little Midwestern town on a crisp fall day.

Only I’m so tired. Maybe if I just lie down, I’ll go back to sleep and wake up from this bad dream. Or I’ll never get up.  Either way, it will all be fine.

Barb is texting her friends that we won’t be at brunch as planned with them and their parents.  "Don’t call," she texts.  "I'll explain later."  I wonder if she'll explain it to me, too.

I look at her, really look.  She’s not doing well, either.  For the next hours, it is as though we are ballroom dancing a long, awful slow waltz, with each of us taking turns holding the other up. Whenever one of us stumbles, the other takes over.

“Let me get you some tea,” I say.

“Go take a shower, Mom.”

A shower, yes. A time I remember my baptism and give thanks as the cleansing water washes all away.   But now my husband’s baptism is now complete in death. I crumple into the tub, wrapping my arms around my fetal position, and cry beneath the shower of tears.

After awhile I get up—a pattern I repeat for several weeks: crumple and cry . . . and then get up and go on.