Honor Your Husband

PART I

Post 5

Something happened today that sparked this writing. Actually two things sparked it if I am honest. I was talking about my husband to my very dear friend the other night and she said that I should share some of it in my writing. I began Letters to Linda by actually writing letters to Todd. (If you are just joining, please refer to blog 1 on the Linda/Todd correlation :)) I think about him nearly every second of every day and very often I dream of him. I also dream of my Jake and my father with whom I have interactions with in my dreams. This did not occur immediately after their loss. I mean, the interaction part. I dreamt of them all fairly quickly after but it seems that as time has gone on I am frequented by what feels like visits when I wake. I do feel that way with Todd but our interactions have been fewer and strange. I vividly dreamt of him last night that I could call him. It was like… duh, you can call him whenever you want. I don’t know who else believes in the magic of dreams but I believe they can be very powerful. At least with my experiences I believe that I am allowed time with them still somehow. I also believe that there are good things for us to take away from dreams. I am not going to go so far as to say that I can foresee things or otherwise but I believe that if something good or powerful comes to you in a dream then I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. So many weeks ago I began writing letters to him so that I could “talk” to him. I started this blog so that I could actually share this outlet with others. I have not actually shared the letters yet… but when it fits I feel confident that I will. So I think what I am saying is this- I have not had to write him letters as of late because I feel that I am visiting him at night and that he is letting me know things as I sleep that let me know that he is listening to me. So I suppose my letters have become sidetracked into a blog about my emotions and feelings to you ABOUT him. About Life. About Grief and Surviving. Today, I want to talk about WHY.

So, growing up I was raised by a STRONG MAN. Strong willed, strong minded, strong perspectives, strong principles, strong back… strong. He was the definition of a MAN. The strange thing about that is that he made me want to be LIKE a strong MAN. It was a very perplexing dynamic I had going on in my head. I idolized him yet I rebelled (somewhat) against him. I didn’t like his rules but I wanted to be like him. He was also old fashioned. The boys learn man work and I was to learn “women’s work”. UGH. Oh how I hated “women’s work”. Looking back I really got the better end of the deal I know because I was watching Bugs Bunny and Smurfs on Saturday morning eating cereal while my brothers were breaking ice at the barn and feeding the cows. But I thought housework was stupid and bless my mother’s heart, I was not much help. What I did learn was how fast I could make a house look clean in the time it took his truck to get from the bottom of the driveway to the top. Fast forward to my first marriage. *I am focusing on the WHY right now and not the details of getting there but suffice it to say that my first husband and I were very young and both equally strong willed. We made our share of mistakes and I am beyond thankful that he and his wife and I and my husband have shared some of the best times in my memory bank together. But sort of the same as with my mother, bless his heart too- as for who was going to wear the pants, well, I probably wasn’t much help there either. For whatever the reasons I have always wanted to be as strong as my father was as a man. I love being a woman. I loved being a girl. I love being a mother. But I just had to be tough. I thought by learning “man things & man work” that I would become strong like dad. So I taught myself to shoot a gun, drive the truck, back a trailer, pick up hay, drive a tractor, butcher meat, hunt-once a year, drink bourbon (Maker’s Mark), drink beer and smoke a cigar. You know… “man things”- at least they were in my fathers world anyway. The list continues but you see where my emulating is going. I did not get pushed around and I did not take shit. I pushed back and sometimes too hard. I had a sharp tongue and a sharper temper. I was stomping my way through life in my favorite high heels. I mean, I knew what was what and that was that. I was a single mom now and trying to make a way. I was strong MANwoman. I know I just made that up in my head. But my marriage of 14 years to my children’s dad didn’t work out and I was now getting to put all that “training” to be my dad to use. I felt like a baby deer learning to walk but by gosh I was gonna do it. Even though I got into a “relationship”, no man was ever going to be my priority again. I had sworn off marriage and “relationship” or not, I was leading this bandwagon. I had no intention of ever depending on another man (ok, outside of my brothers) again. I was on a mission to teach my daughter all about being a “strong woMAN”. I made her learn all the things her brother could do. I made her think about things that way. I was relentless. Maybe to a fault.

Then one day, life exploded and that strong man train derailed into oblivion. It put an end to everything. EVERYTHING. I lost my son. Nothing mattered anymore about being tough. Nothing mattered anymore about the pettiness of life. All that mattered was that could I try and salvage some sort of “fair life” for my daughter. What else was there to matter? All I could think about was that she deserved to try and get a semi normal rest of her childhood that had just become shattered beyond recognition. So two weeks after losing her best friend and brother I made the decision that we would give it a go and we both went back to school. The long and short of this story is this. I could not be the tough man that my father was to us as kids to my daughter now. Everything in the universe had changed. The childhood I wanted for my kid no longer existed and neither did the person I had thought I was becoming. In the blink of an eye it was wiped from the slate and there was absolutely nothing left on it except this green eyed girl of mine and God who was the slate.

From that moment on I felt the bond between Carleigh and me grow deeper and deeper. I was viciously protective of her. I was also humbled to my knees. I milled through life trying my best to make it through nursing school and not be too much of a drag for a teenager. We were each others backs. Sounds unfair for a teenager to aid her mom through such a time but she did in as much as I could allow of her. She also became viciously protective over me as well. It was just us. Me and Carleigh. Figuring it out and how we were going to do this together.

Jumping forward again through my graduation, her graduation, my career and her managing college- life was clicking right along and we were both the woMEN I had kind of envisioned years before. It was about that time that life had taken on a new definition and we had gained a sense of normal again. It was then that I started to realize something. When I heard my father say that I was the strongest girl he knew something clicked inside of me. I had become the “man” I hadn’t known I WOULD NOT want to be. Do what? In some way, I became a stronger man than my father. I had buried a child. I helped HIM through to the other side by helping myself. What you discover in such an extreme violation of the rules of the world is that there is no one on Earth that can resolve this for you. It is between you and God. It’s not much different this time either with that honestly. When a natural death occurs in the “orderly plan” of grandparents and parents, etc. it feels easier to reconcile it with God. We knew this would come one day. But the loss of Jake and Todd were against the order of the universe. There are moments “this time” that I recognize from having been here out of order before that have helped me like understanding the part about having to go inside myself with God. I have found that this time- only occurs during my alone hours. I have been feeling very reclusive more and more and this is why, I believe. I am being alone and letting God. I remember being in school at Milligan studying Mepkin Abbey Monastery in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. You can go there and stay as a lay person and join the Monks in worship and their daily life. They spend so much time in pure silence and prayer. While I am not to that level by any means, I am learning so much during this time of quiet solitude. It is during this time that I am finding peace. I feel when I am out of this time I am fighting against what it is I think I should be feeling. One of the most difficult things about grief is figuring out what the hell you’re “supposed to be feeling” — because whether we like it or not, life keeps on going. But we are not ready. But life doesn’t care. Everyone must carry on. I think we have some ridiculous definitions on grief that are not written ANYWHERE and no one in their right mind would dare even say them out loud. But they are there and if you are grieving you can feel them. Are there different depths of grieving? Are there different degrees? Does someone have more “right” to feel than another? Is someone expected to move quicker than another? The answer to all of those questions is NO. But if you are grieving… you feel it. It is unjustified. But you feel it. So the differences in my grief vary in extremes. Losing a child is at the top of everyone’s #1 worst list. And while I agree it is insufferable, I always felt guilty when someone would lose a parent and say to me “well, I know it’s not the same”. No, none of it is the same but loss is loss, right? There are so many unwritten, unsaid and unrealistic notions in grief. There are so many books on it but not one manual anywhere. We are all just wandering blindly through the forest aren’t we? We feel guilty for not moving forward and guilty for moving forward. We feel like we have to “put on a happy face” because we feel it makes others uncomfortable sitting with our grief. We resent the happy face because all we want to do is cry but we don’t want to run off the people still willing to tolerate us in our misery. It’s so complicated isn’t it.

I shall finish the rest of my story… my WHY in a continuation of this blog. Part II of Honor Your Husband…I hope you will come back later for the best part!