I am continually in awe of how time keeps progressing before my eyes like one of those time-lapse videos. I wonder to myself often if something in your death changed the very substance of time itself for only me.
Even so the loss- still jarring and inconceivable- really does not retreat. I find on a day when I send Audrey to sleep over my parents- in the rare case that I actually have a few hours to myself- even though I’m busy shopping for the things for our new home- all of it surfaces- replays again and again still. I am driving to IKEA and I am remembering the feeling of sitting in a black limo behind a hearse with your photo staring back at me. The utter aloneness I felt as I sat there with your family- silently- the pure “wrongness” that screamed inside of me while I sat motionless, silent.
In IKEA- I am remembering somehow different trips there when we last moved together- and around each corner- there is the spot where we chose our desks- “I really want you to get a nice one so you can write…” you say as I push my cart around that one. And there is the register where I ordered the chaise in the linen color because they were out of the gray- while you pushed Audrey around in the stroller. There you are walking towards me, dragging your feet- holding your cup of coffee in the restaurant. I sip my own with tear-filled eyes while I sit alone at a large table for 8 in the restaurant- eyeing families everywhere- thinking about how magical it must be to have your complete unit- wondering if any of them understand how lucky they are- and then continue on with my to-do list for the new house.
I think a lot about whether or not our relationship is also dead in its entirety. This is because I feel something in me still trying to connect with you. It’s because I often sense your hands on my shoulders when I’ve had enough- and it’s because I sometimes laugh about these inside jokes we share- new ones- not old ones from when you were alive. It all makes me sound kind of crazy, I realize- but in reading a book about an anthropologist’s objective study of the evangelical’s relationship with God- (that happens to focus on the same movement/branch of Christianity Dan and I were involved with for years) it seems the “relationship with God” that evangelicals talk about so much- the words spoken by God in their minds- are not so different from the narrower- yet expanding relationship I often experience with you.
Two friends send me the same info on a new book coming out in a week or so written by a neurosurgeon about his own near death experience. It even made it to the cover of Newsweek this week. I read Christopher Hitchens’ last book and notes before his death entitled just “Mortality.” He referred to his final days as living dyingly. I relate to this phrase at first, but decide I will not live like this.
Sometimes I’m disgusted at the way my own crisis of faith following your death- though I’m not even sure that is the right term- can appear so superficial and childish from an outsider’s viewpoint. As if I knew suffering existed before and believed in a benevolent God- but after it struck me- I became angry like a teenager having a tantrum. Actually, it’s more like Lewis says- you don’t know how strong a cord is when you use it to tie a present- but when you’re hanging from a precipice- then you find out how strong you think that cord is. And also though, I realize- it’s because of the fact- that until one has suffered – it is possible to not believe suffering exists even though you are aware of it on a conscious level. I have always been extremely sensitive and empathetic- feeling others’ pain deeply even when I myself really did not know the depths of it and thought I did- but I also think, now, looking back- I subscribed to a philosophy of Solipsism. Sometimes I would sit and literally think really hard and realize in this moment of pure isolation- that my entire world – life itself- has been in my mind- and maybe the whole world is in my mind. Once I even articulated to myself that maybe I could reconcile the intense suffering in the world by other people with a good God by believing that not all people were real- or as real and that perhaps some had been “planted” by God to teach the rest of us things. I knew this strange breed of Solipsism was incredibly egoistic- but I guess I was desperate to explain away some of the pain.
Now, not only do I find I’m doubtful of the cord’s ability to hold as I dangle here- but I know that suffering is real because I know you were real. I still feel as if the existence of the external world is unresolvable- as is my internal world- but I am less alone- less trapped by my own consciousness- my own reality. As I have said before- the existence of this immense invisible pain I had never tasted before gives me great hope in other things immense and invisible.
“Mothering and making a home- it all takes so much energy…” a good friend who was widowed at around my age many years ago writes to me. It does- and I suppose that’s partly the reason for this strange pairing of a trip to IKEA with the realities of the universe. One simply has to believe in something in order to keep expending so much energy – in making yet another home- in mothering a child lately prone to tantrums – amidst this seemingly domestic themes- why buy a new heart-shaped doormat, hang up a coat rack, why hold this screaming child calmly instead of screaming back- amidst all this- one is always staving off existentialism- always wrestling with the liturgy of what writer Kathleen Norris calls, “The Quotidian Mysteries,” and why it’s worth getting up to do again tomorrow.
Yes…you will do it again tomorrow.
Remember…not too much pressure on yourself. Keep on "keeping on" my sweet friend. Thank you for sharing.