Loss and Possibility

 

This is where I am here in June.  I have experienced a loss, a great loss, and yet I am so very aware that there are all sorts of possibilities before me.  It's a weird balance to walk between grief and joy, between old identity and new unformed self, between now and a future that is so vast and unknown before me that it scares and thrills me all at once.

As I came into May, once I began to be aware of life still life-ing all around me, it was hard to remain in the fog of grieving on a permanent basis.  Oh, there is still grief and it comes upon me unexpectedly at some point in most days, but it's not devastating.  It's not consuming misery.  It's just an awareness that there is a huge void in my life, that John's presence was large in my life.  I was happy to sit on the sidelines for the most part, to observe quietly and share what I observed with him.

I tested the waters by going over to the mountain alone in early May. I'd tried a picnic at a state park with a lake I used to visit with John and that went quite all right.  Honestly, it wasn't that different than the many other picnic meals I'd taken in the old cemetery with Elizabeth Slappey's grave as my sole company.  But I'd never been to the mountain without John. 

I confess I felt very unsure of myself.  Not because I thought I'd lose my way.  I knew how to travel there well enough.   But suddenly the world before me, viewed from my high perch on that mountain, was so vast when seen alone...And that's how the future feels now, vast when seen alone.  

The mountain side was a place where we were very intimate in our conversations with God, which we spoke aloud as we sat together, so the intimate moment was a fully shared experience.  We had so many experiences there together that stand out.  The day we were praying for God's covering and the wings of a hawk's shadow flying overhead fell across us.  John came home and wrote a great song about that.  And the days we met perfect strangers and had wonderful deep conversation with them about different griefs, that of children growing up and parents passing away.  And then the many others we met, far more casually than the couple just mentioned a moment ago, but still we met people there and we spoke and admired the view, and we all shared a certain comradery that was lovely.

So yes, it was hard to be there alone, just by myself without even strangers.  It made me feel a bit shaky, as though I was out of balance somehow and lacking in confidence.  As though I'd been cast adrift like a balloon floating and had someone come to a familiar place to be still for a moment before I drifted further.  

It was odd.  It was different.  It was familiar.  It was exactly as much of my life is now.

But that day also brought to light a world of things I realized I was now free to do.  Possibilities bloomed in that vast world before me...

For instance, I've longed to travel.  I have wanted to go just anywhere.  See the surrounding counties, the state, the southeast, the United States, other countries...I've been an armchair traveler my whole life.  I avidly watched movies and drank in foreign landscapes, travelogs, read books with descriptions of foreign markets and customs that made my heart fill with yearning.  I look at maps and state atlases and trace my finger along roadways, imagining the towns named along the way.  I yearned to see them all.

And even local travels.  In our previous home county, I'd travelled nearly every road in the county.  I have never fully explored my current home county.  I know a few backroads but there are far more i don't.  I have a real hunger to travel, and it doesn't have to be the world. I truly would like to go just anywhere.

John had traveled a little more than I.  He'd lived in other states and in foreign countries as well.  But he preferred home.  

He loved going to St. Augustine, but he felt very uncomfortable with travel overall.  He was far too anxious for it.  I'd been urging him to take day trips with me about our general area, around the mid-state...But he just couldn't bring himself to do it.  He preferred the known, the tried and true.  The truth is that he hated getting lost.  One wrong turn and a trip could either send him heading home right away or at the very least create a few tense hours as he dealt with the aftermath of anxiety that came from being lost however briefly.

In that I was his total opposite.  I don't mind getting lost.  I just got anxious about his level of anxiety when we got lost together.  

On this day at the mountain, I had this sudden realization that I could do all sorts of traveling.  That I could stop at the roadside antiques stores, wander into the tiny little historic towns that once thrived and bustled, explore the highways and roads that crisscrossed the state...  And then my scope changed to not being just limited to my own home state.  I could plan to travel further afield.  Out of state.  Perhaps even out of country now and then.

There were other things I've always wanted to do. I want color on the walls of my home.  John insisted that painting was too expensive...and after we painted the kitchen, I confess that his method (hiring someone to do it, although he also added in a few necessary repairs), it might appear that painting is expensive.  Certainly, the cost of the paint for the kitchen was a shocker...but we also have a five-gallon bucket leftover.

I don't mind painting myself.  I just need a ladder and someone to do the cutting in on the higher parts of the ceiling.  Leave all the rest to me!  I can do it all except those bits that are higher on the vaulted walls.

And I always wanted to landscape the place nicely.  I'm not talking pricey stuff.  It's just that John repeatedly said he didn't care about planting around the house.  He didn't like heavy shrubs and neither do I, but I couldn't convince him for anything that a pallet of landscape blocks, some mulch and a few low growing plants would change the house for the better.  

Well, I might have to hire some help for the heavy stuff, but I know there's no one fighting me on that score.  I can make my house pretty inside and out.

I don't by any means want to sound as though John held me back.  He did and he didn't as we are all holding one another back somehow in even loving and healthy relationships. We make certain compromises and do the things that both agree are more acceptable.  Sometimes one of us compromises more than the other in some areas but then the partner also makes compromises in other areas.  For instance, John longed for a recliner. I didn't want one of those monster chairs.  I wanted a nice, well proportioned, trim looking recliner.  And they were expensive.  So, he settled for a comfy chair and an ottoman.  So, I didn't landscape.  He didn't get a recliner.  Compromises are right in those circumstances.  But I've realized that my compromises now must be a consideration of my physical ability, my finances.  Not of my partner's likes or dislikes.

 I could paint walls and landscape and travel to some degree.  Only I hold me back at this point in time.  And that realization both shook me and sort of thrilled me at one and the same time.

Does that mean I will go full bore ahead and do all of those things?  Oh, the temptation is there to be sure.  But so is a certain awareness of my financial responsibilities prior to doing the fun things.  For instance, I know that in the future I'm going to need to replace my car, evidenced by two repairs in a week's time.  I know that my heat pump is now 15 years old...and the refrigerator is 18 years old.  Odds are those things will need to be considered at some point, too.  I have to weigh my wants against the obvious needs that might well present themselves.  I need to be a little cautious...

And yet, there is room for possibilities...