“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving until I didn’t have to anymore.” -
Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
Sorrow
How do you put into words what it’s like to lose your soulmate? Your person. The one you traveled through a storm-ravaged life to meet someday. I recall trying to describe it to my good friend. I said, “It’s like you are now a member of the walking dead, in costume. Looking quite normal on the outside, but you feel like you are functioning only because a switch has been flipped to auto. Anything that is out of the structure you have built to get through the day - wake, eat, work, eat, sleep, pitches you back into the hell of losing one of the only things in life that you viewed as a magical gift from a loving God. A God who decided it was time for you to know true love, the kind that is safe, nurturing, trustworthy and sacred. At least that’s what I thought when I met him. And, I was intensely grateful. Now, most days it’s like navigating through a suffocating fog, nerves dangling outside your body so that anything or anyone that touches even the tips trigger outbursts of anger along with a feeling of utter hopelessness.” She looked at me, concerned, and said, “You have to let people help you.” I nodded but knew I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t able to let anyone else in. I was too fragile to take that risk and see their eyes filled with pity, thinly veiled in empathy to hide their own fear of losing one so precious. I hung his wedding ring on a chain around my neck like a necklace of garlic, just to ensure everyone stayed away. It was there for a long, long time.
The early days of my grief, I found myself lying on the bed, very still, barely breathing, a mountain of heaviness crushing the center of my chest. Heartache is a real condition. Mine felt like a big, ugly boil, swollen and throbbing. I just knew if it would burst, one of two things would happen; I would feel better or all that poison inside of it would slowly kill me. Maybe both. So, I would lie there, like a small child, making a wish, eyes scrunched closed in concentration, my mind's eye imagining my heart pumping; thump, thump, thump. I would lie there for hours, trying to slow its pace until it didn’t beat anymore. I wished hard, and prayed to this vengeful mean God; please make it stop. Let me just slip away, and move into a state of oblivion. I did this for days, weeks, even months. Eventually, losing all hope and belief in my wishes being granted, I decided God didn’t deem me worthy of taking me out of my misery in a quiet manner. No, the God I had come to know a decade earlier as a loving, life-saving being; the one who rescued me from the pits of generational alcoholism, was truly a sadistic, mean-spirit and just breathed life back into me so He could torture me for decades of sin that mostly weren’t mine to own. He seemed to be missing from so many of my life-altering terrors? Where was He when I was a powerless child? I thought Jesus loved the little children. Where was He when I had nowhere to go? Where was he when he stole the breath from my young and finally, newly sober mom, barely giving us a chance to know one another? This was my reward for years of hard work, humility, acceptance, and forgiveness? I felt childish thinking these thoughts and a rush of both fear and shame coursed through me, making my skin hot and my crushed heart which was scattered into every pulse point in my body, beat faster. A sliver of sanity intervened. Maybe these thoughts weren’t so bad after all. At least they weren’t getting buried deep again, encased in a concrete and steel tomb of shame and secrecy. I must have learned something about being real and getting honest, even if it was with the Creator of the Universe. The old behavior of stifling what I felt and trying to out drink, out work, outrun it, had just cut me off from not only authentic connections, but acceptance, peace, and ultimately healing. I reminded myself: feelings are just energy, better released than left to form a toxic soup of nuclear rage exploding onto innocent bystanders.
At some point a small voice inside whispered, “It’s okay to feel betrayed. I am bigger than your limited definitions of Me.” “Liar,” I snarled at the voice. I felt entitled to berate a Creator that could give with one hand and take it away with another. That kind of God was far too human for me to respect let alone trust. I wanted to hurt Him. The Old Testament God of my childhood came roaring back, and He reveled in watching me suffer rather than smiting me and putting me out of my misery. He'd drowned most of the earth's population in a flood, turned a lady to salt, why not me? What choice did I have but learn how to live with this seeping boil on my heart? Abandoned. Again. I now deeply regretted opening up even one chamber door a decade ago inviting in vulnerability, trust, and love. I should have known better. It isn’t like you can pick and choose what flows in. It was true, I did experience incredible love and joy, but when I flung my heart so wide open, I left it vulnerable to pain and suffering too. Pain. Suffer. Those were such tiny and tame words to describe the way my mind, body, and soul felt.
Somehow I did manage to crawl off that bed. But, for the longest time, before I left the safety of my house, I donned my armor and strapped on my sword. I felt protected in there. I was an accomplished one-man Army, christened early on in surviving in a cruel world that seemed hell-bent on toying with me and bringing me to the brink of joy only to laugh in my face.
A year later a proclamation made by the other love of my life changed everything. My daughter, came to find me at work, pulled me aside and said, “Mom, you are going to be a grandma.” I laid down my sword, took off my breastplate and let the mask drop. I didn't want to scare our new baby. For the first time in a long time, I encountered the caress of light and a familiar flutter that felt an awful lot like hope. Or, perhaps it was the shadow of a present God who never really left. It was when this tiny baby girl arrived, I fully saw His face once again, reflected in her perfection, beauty, and innocence. As it always does, Love and Light, and new beginnings can heal even the most crushing cruelties.
Hold On Pain Ends.
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