Perspective
She drives home from work, carefully slipping her car into the large, double garage. She turns off the engine and squeezes out of the car door. Her car is in it’s place, parked next to his truck.The truck that has sat still, empty and cold for far too long. Its doors are now stuck shut from not being opened for so many months. She carries in her purse, a bag of corrections from school, and some groceries that she picked up for another make shift meal. Cooking isn’t fun. Putting one less plate on the kitchen table for every meal, knowing that there will always be “one less plate” for every meal to come, makes her heart pang for the thousandth time that day.
Once inside, she gives her kids the same directions that she does every day. “Hang up your jackets, and make sure you don’t leave your shoes in front of the door.” They ignore her, as they almost always do. She sighs and tells herself that she can remind them yet again at mealtime. She busies herself with putting her own things away in their proper places and then decides if she should begin making supper right away or tempt fate by sitting down for a few minutes. A few minutes of sitting always seem to stretch into hours, and there was much that still needed to be done before she could just sit and find a distraction from life for the rest of the night.
She got busy browning the hamburger and putting a large pot on the stove to boil. Then she remembered that he liked this meal. A simple meal with a long family history, but he wasn’t here and that was another knife to her heart. As the meal became ready, she set the table. Mealtime and one less plate had arrived. She called the kids to the kitchen, told them to put their things away, and sat down with them at the table to eat. The food had no taste, but nothing really did anymore. The kids seemed pleased and ate until they were full.
She cleared the dishes and wiped down the kitchen cupboards before retreating to her chair to watch a little television. All alone, she watched her shows, fighting the need to deal with the schoolwork that required her attention before work the next day. “Just one more show,” she told herself “and then I will finish what needs to be done for the day.”
Pulling out the papers from her bag, she settled into her paperwork routine while the kids fought and ran around the house. It didn’t matter anymore. It took too much energy to reprimand, to parent, to care. They will stop eventually, she thought as she packed up her finished schoolwork and began to think about which distraction from life would be the best choice tonight.
Hours later, after the kids had gone to bed and while the moon had finished most of it’s trip across the sky, she finally went to her bedroom. Their bedroom. His pillow was still there, bed neatly made beneath it, there had been no one to disturb the covers for such a long time. She walked to her side of the bed and carefully pulled the covers free. Climbing in, she checked the alarm clock one more time to make sure that it was set correctly. There would be no one to serve as a warning should she oversleep. The bed felt light, the room quiet, but the silence was deafening as her heart pounded slowly. Alone.
Now I pull my own lonely car into the garage and park next to HIS truck. I cook HIS favorite meal and set one less plate at MY table. I struggle to complete MY schoolwork that needs to be done before morning. I battle to stay as present as I can for my children. I devour distractions from life until the day and night have ended and the new day is upon me. I feel the lightness in MY bed. MY ears ring with the deafening silence of each night. It is MY turn to walk in almost the exact same path that she did.
My mother was 41 years old when my father died. He was 48. Forty-eight. A number that has haunted me my entire life. Good friends suddenly died and how old were they? Yes, 48. I would read a story in a newspaper about a tragic event that occurred when the person was how old? You guessed it…. forty-eight. I have had a lifetime of hating and dreading that number. When my husband turned 49, I took a deep breath and moved into that day noticeably more calm than I had been for the 365 days prior. Then, suddenly it was my birthday and I turned 48. What would happen, I wondered? Would I be ok? I could never have dreamt that in less than a month after turning that dreadful age, I would lose my best friend, my North, my protector, my love, my heart, my soulmate. Now it is my turn to walk in almost the exact same path that she did.
John worried about that. My mother was not always kind. She wasn’t abusive, and I didn’t lack for things, but she could be hard, even cruel. I remember one day when I was a teenager, we sat together eating supper at the kitchen table, just her and I. It had been quiet for awhile and then, out of the blue she said flatly, “You know, having kids was your father’s idea, not mine. And now…..where is he?” Her words took my breath away. What had I done wrong? I replayed everything that had happened that evening in an attempt to figure out if I had done something wrong. Those words have burned in my heart and my brain forever since that day. Years later, when I excitedly told her that I was expecting my first child, she looked up from her needlework and very plainly said, “Why would you want to go and do THAT?” It was hardly the reaction most expectant mothers get when they first announce a desired pregnancy. But I realized a long time ago that she had done the best that she could with what she had at each given moment. It’s all any of us can really do.
My mother was a teacher, but she wasn’t passionate about children. She explained it herself when I asked her why she had chosen the profession, “When I was in college women had three choices for a career. They could be a secretary, a nurse, or a teacher. I couldn’t stand the sight of blood and a secretary didn’t sound like a good job to me, so I chose to be a teacher. I thought it was the easiest choice.” she reported plainly. “I’m sure glad I did because with your father’s health as bad as it was, at least I had a good job that could provide for us after he died.” This was all true, but hardly the passionate calling towards teaching that I had felt myself.
My mother always described me as, “Strong. Independent from the crib. Hard-hearted Hannah,” she called me. “Nothing can make her cry,” she told everyone if ever she was asked about me. “Kristyn? No one can force her to do anything,” she said, all of her words making me feel like they were more insults than praises. To this day, I hate being called, “strong”. My mother, like me, was a caregiver to several people who died within a fairly short period of time, leaving her as a single parent without any parents of her own to help her at a rather young age.
And here I am. In the same place that she was. Fighting to NOT be her while now finding myself understanding her a lot better. A few months before John died, we were both crying at the reality of his future which seemed like it would be a lot longer than it actually turned out to be. Through sobs he cried, “I worry about leaving you alone with the littles. I don’t want you to end up like your mother.”
So now I have another battle to wage. And I hold up each of my actions, each of my phrases, and each of my thoughts against the ruler that judges if I am her – or me.
If you, or someone you care about is dealing with grief, here are some tips for coping with grief from people who are dealing with it themselves!
