Healing

Dear Mike,

Tonight I was reminded of the song by David Ruffin, where he sings:

What becomes of the broken-hearted

Who had love that’s now departed?

I know I’ve got to find

Some kind of peace of mind

Maybe.

These days it’s hard to believe you once loomed larger than life. That my every thought and story waited to be told to you. That a fact was not fact until I shared it with you.

That you once bore witness to the vast majority of my moods and feelings.

That my days were not complete until I had debriefed with you.

That my battles were often fought with you behind me, if not beside me.

That comfort and relief came in the form of your hug or your hand on mine.

It is remarkable that now I sometimes wonder if I had dreamed you up. Your voice seems more like a whisper my ears strain for, and not part of my life’s soundtrack.

Your laughter is sadly no longer one I seek to evoke, although there is not one sound I wish to hear more.

I am now used to the silence and space in my days that you used to fill.

You feel like an idea, an image I have conjured.

I have grown accustomed to your absence from our bed, but I still leave room. But not necessarily for you anymore. It just seems too much to claim all of that space for myself.

I no longer avoid landmines because the pain of missing you is something I welcome now. It reminds me of how much I have loved you.

I was told to lean into my grief, to do the “grief work”, but sometimes I think maybe all this work has worked too well.

I think I have healed quite a bit, even if the loss of you, having scabbed over, sometimes bleeds from having been grazed by a memory.

These memories have changed in quality recently. Not so much painful as sweetly sad. Not so much a stab to the heart as much as a dull ache. And as dull as it is, I can always name it: You.

You, who is lost to me. A sad whisper of a thought, and not a silent scream for which I do not have the voice.

What has changed?

Our daughter told me recently that she thinks you are too overwhelmed by the presence of God to miss us. That we cannot expect you to feel as we do, if we believe that you are truly in heaven.

Which I do.

(How did she get so wise?)

Gosh, that statement hurt to think about. Because God knows how much I miss you. It felt unfair that you would not suffer, even a little.

But I have since given it a good think.

And I realize now that I am really glad for you if this is the case.

And hopeful for the rest of us.

Because heaven wouldn’t be heaven if you missed us in the same way that we miss you.

So there it is: I have learned to be okay with you not missing me.

Also? I decided to stop asking questions in the dark: Am I still your wife? Do you know how much I love you? Do you still love me?

I have decided that these are pointless to ask of a person who is now concerned with things greater than our life together. Greater than our love.

As hard as it is to give up these things, it has also been easier than I would have thought.

Because this is what my faith has been trying to teach me, and I am grateful to our daughter for the reminder.

Our parting of ways was like a bad breakup without anyone dumping the other. In teen vernacular, it would be as if you "ghosted" me. (Interesting double entendre, in our case.)

A breakup where I don’t have your new phone number and address. And darn it, your location is not on any GPS tracker. Sometimes I wish I could stalk you, but even Google cannot deliver answers.

Here's at the heart of my grief these days: Although I have gotten used to your absence, my love, I have yet to get used to not being able to give you my love.

My days are sometimes filled with activities designed to release all of this energy, and I am finding myself loving everyone I love harder. Because you are not here.

But it is not the same.

Really, our life together now often feels like one long, beautiful dream I wish I had never woken from. Or a deeply moving film I watched a long time ago. Sweet and heartbreaking.

But mostly sweet.

The thing is, you are still my sweetheart, even if I am now just a part of your past life. I have come to accept that.

I still cry (as I am doing now, while I am writing this), but my tears are not the same.

I think, perhaps, I have come to a peaceful place.

I love you.

Me