Instantly upon my beloved’s suicide, our home fell silent as an empty recording studio, a familiar sound-proof space in my career where even the roar of a hundred low-flying elephants can’t penetrate.
The quiet I’m speaking of, however, was not so much in the home itself as it was in me. Some fraction of my life would be still forever. The chime of my heart’s delight, for instance, whenever Dear entered my sight. Or called me on the phone. Or left me a love note, which was really any note. Or said something funny, a regular occurrence.
But with the loss of that thrill a fresh one appeared: the familiar thrum of her spirit in my every cell amplified by the might of unprecedented silence.
Friends, loved ones, and surely the world at large, in their struggle to articulate the inexpressible, are often stuck employing the euphemisms that I’ve “lost my wife,” and they are, of course, “sorry for my loss.” The intention is lovely. It’s the language that’s incomplete. But useful. Since I wonder: Just what have I lost? And what have I not?
My beloved isn’t riding shotgun any less than she used to as I write these words. Just different. She still improves every thought I have.
Instead of accessing her loving wisdom via email or other more traditional media (like small talk while snuggling), connection today occurs solely by attunement to a part of her that, for years, has shaped my hunger for expansion.
The question isn’t whether her divine horse sense is still available. It’s whether I’m gentling my heart enough to hear it within me.
Meanwhile, the feel of her butterfly kiss on my lips is gone forever. The heartbreak of all that that represents may have no bottom.
The work of freeing the burden of self-importance can no longer rely on Dear’s killer wit in real time. A few years ago I mentioned I was approaching ten thousand days of sobriety. Queen of the Quip said, “It’s beginning to show.”
It’s more than loss. I weep at the unfathomable enormity of feeling. Just as I have in response to certain movies over the years. “The Deer Hunter” and “Schindler’s List” are two. Or pieces of music, such as Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight.”
Tears flow from springs I may never discover.
Don’t ask when, but I will learn to live gracefully with and without all that. How do I know? As I was being conceived 77 years ago, the universe whispered in my ear: Everything is a gift, and the business of life is discovering how come.
The part of Dear not lost grows in conspicuousness. How can I tell? The feeling of gratitude for being both heartbroken and joyful at the same time.
Well said, friend, well said!
Thanks buck
I’ve been missing Dear lately….
I love you
That was really beautiful. Thank you.
Your experience of the journey through what is commonly known as grieving is a window to the wisdom of the soul. Grateful for your choice to share the view. much love my friend.
Thank you for this. I recently had to speak to myself of the fact that, in a way, I no longer NEED Dear physically in my life, since the ever growing pile of important lessons she had to teach were so thoroughly installed in me by her during our long relationship. I miss her presence in my life as someone I could see and speak with, sometimes/often terribly, to be sure, but she ensured that I don’t NEED her any longer, as I possess (or have within my grasp if I choose) everything she ever gave to me.
Beautiful.
What a beautiful sharing, Steve. My heart resonates. Thank you.
I love this
Phil
Perhaps odd to here mention a film… The Snow Walker. I wonder if you’ve seen it.
Steve, I cherish this and its/your resonance. I cherish you.
Yess!
My college roommate hanged himself several years ago. I still grieve, when I’m not angry at him for what he did. I have found solace in a passage from Proust, after the death of his mother:
“When you still had Maman you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power … that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.”
Thank you