The Couch

"I realize there is something incredibly honest

about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting

things go." 

Jeffrey McDaniel

Dear Lloyd,

Yesterday I met Tiffany for lunch.  As we talked she told me I need to replace the couch.  I told her I could not really afford it right now having just spent such a large sum waterproofing the basement, but she knew better.  She said she thought perhaps the reason was because of you.  I assured her that was certainly not the reason, but as I rode my bicycle today I admitted to myself that she is probably right. It is a hard admission as it seems to reek of weakness and vulnerability and an inability to accept reality, but it is what it is.

We needed a new couch for a few years before you died.  As you know, love,  your illness had made you sloppy, spills had stained the fabric in places,  use had worn the cushioning, and cat claws had not helped the edges.  I resisted getting something new while you were alive, though, knowing you and how badly you would feel when you spilled on it and knowing that having the "perfect" living room did not matter much to either of us.  It was the "living" in that room, the people that mattered.

Replacement just did not seem worth seeing your shame.  The hand that was so steady and strong now weakened and shaking.  How our bodies betray us, and how the betrayal brings us shame despite the fact there is nothing we can do to stop the ravages of age or illness.  Were you ashamed to die and leave me?  Since the stroke stole your speech, I will never know; but I pray that you were not.  Why, I wonder, are we ashamed of things we cannot help:  the growing presence of wrinkles, the weakening of once strong arms and legs, and so on..... all the price of life and living.  Still I have shame that I could not save you, shame that I made the difficult decision to let you go not trusting in a miracle, shame that I did not recognize what happened sooner.

Things should not matter so as long as we love and are  loved, and loved deeply, as each of us has been born to do and deserves to be.  Still, they DO matter.  Your weakness did not lessen my love any more than your other faults, though I suspect that I could have let them.  I chose, instead, to concentrate on the things I loved about  you.  I know you did the same with me. In the end, love, the wonder of love and a relationship is that we are loved despite our faults, not because of our perfections.  Our faults, perhaps, give us character, whether good or bad.  And what we cannot help is not, perhaps, a fault after all.

Every morning after awakening, I sit in the same spot that you sat in each day in a house now strangely empty of you.  Oddly enough, it brings me comfort, as if your arms were once more wrapped around me.  In my minds eye I can see you there, a cat on your lap or a book in your hand. It is the spot where we put the hospital bed when I brought you home to die, moving the couch further along the wall.  It is the spot where you passed on to your new existence. There are times I turn from the computer still expecting to see you sitting there, but of course you are not and never will be again however much I want to deny it. Getting rid of the couch is surrendering myself yet again to the realization that you won't ever sit there again, that you don't need a couch. And there remains a part of me that denies the reality that you will never use it again, that you truly are not ever coming home again and I will never hear or feel the lovely sound of your voice wrapping itself around me like a shawl and making me laugh or feel safe or even cry.

The trees were mostly bare during my ride today, stark sentinels against a blue sky, a reminder that everything changes.  Mr. McDaniel is right, they are experts at letting go, experts on seasons and the cyclical nature of things.  Perhaps I need to learn from them in their wisdom and let go.  Perhaps our daughter is right and it is time to buy a new couch.  But not just yet.  Maybe tomorrow. And never think, love, that I don't appreciate what you gave me.  I miss you more than most will ever know.  Until we meet again, love, rest easily.  And I will let go if only because I know it will bring you peace. 

Love, Melissa

Lloyd's Birthday

"You will lose someone you can't live without, 

and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad

news is that you never completely get over the loss

of your beloved.  But this is the good news.  They live

forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up.

And you come through.  It's like having a broken leg

that doesn't heal perfectly....that still hurts when the 

weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."

Ann Lamott

Dear Lloyd,

Happy Birthday, love.  I know that you know that I miss you.  Getting through these "first times" is difficult.  Recently a friend I know who tragically lost a child during a vacation assured me that while it never goes away, it does get easier as the "first times without you" pass. I think he was telling me what I already know and what Ms. Lamott knows:  "You learn to dance with the limp."  (Lamott).  His kindness in light of his own tragedy, much greater than mine, is a balm as I think how our experiences temper us.  May your loss help me to be more compassionate with others.  First times, I fear, are not limited to the first year however, but I assume there become fewer and fewer of them.  Age brings us more negative firsts, but it has hopefully tempered us to be stronger and better prepared to handle them. 

Tiffany took off of work to be with me on your birthday and I decided we should get out of town, so I bought tickets to a play in Indianapolis and booked a room at a hotel with a  swimming pool and hot tub for afterward.  You know how sweet this child is, taking her own vacation time, unasked, to comfort me, to watch over me.  Little does she know that watching over her and her brother is where much of my strength comes from, that age old mothering instinct so necessary to the survival of the species and so necessary to emotional development on both sides.

Normally on your birthday, I am busy cooking your favorite things:  fried fish, unsweetened corn bread with stone ground corn meal from Spring Mill State Park......things I didn't normally fix following your quadruple by-pass in  my vain attempts to keep you with me at least a bit longer.  But not this year.  This year I will not be home, no less cooking. 

I bought tickets for a play I know is off-Broadway: "The Nether."  What I didn't know is that it would be so disturbing involving child molestation and murder.  Engaging?  Yes.  Thought provoking?  Absolutely.  Tiffany and I were still talking about it and sifting through our thoughts and emotions the next day.  Uplifting?  Certainly not.  Then we leave the theater to find that someone has smashed in the side window of my car as well as that of the car behind me.  My bag was left behind, but Tiffany's bag is gone.

While we were able to buy some clothing for her, no swim suits were to be found this time of year.  By the time we waited close to two hours for the police, shopped, and got to the hotel, we were too tired and hungry to do anything but order pizza and prepare for bed.  I slept fitfully, waking at 4:00 a.m. unable to return to sleep.  And it was then that I cried for you, that I gave in fully to my longing for you, for the warmth of you, the part of you that always knew what to do.  You always seemed to make things better, or if not better, more bearable.  Did you ever get tired of being so strong? Was it selfish of me to lean on you?  But deep down, I know you leaned on me too, and that you liked it that I thought what you had to say and what you thought was important.

I know you would not want this weeping, and I am determined to make lemonade with the lemons I was handed so I stop the tears.  You are in a better place, a place where you no longer suffer so. And after all, nobody was mugged or physically hurt.  It is just another unexpected physical expense.  As you would have told me, mere paper.  And I think how much you live even in my thought processes.

When Tiffany gets up, I suggest we go to the zoo before heading home and that we walk the mile to get there and take the few things of value in our purses.  We do only to find that starting today, it closes on Mondays throughout the winter months. Tiffany is feeling so badly, as if every effort to cheer me or distract me is a failure, but I am beginning to see the humor in the situation as you would want me to, and I giggle and then break out in a giant laugh.  As I explain to her why I am laughing, I am also thinking of how odd you used to think it when I would wake at night laughing at times.  But life, while tragic and sad at times, has its funny side, its ironic side.  And as I explain to Tiffany, her gift of her presence is more precious than anywhere she could take me or anything we could do together.

When we get home, Tiffany returns to her life and I head out on my bicycle, the Lynskey. The weather remains amazing:  November yet in the 70's. Suddenly it came to me that there was no better place to be to remember your past birthdays and to celebrate as well as mourn your life.  I think of you carrying Tiffany in the oat bucket when you went out to feed the horses when she was still small.  I  think of us going to Tennessee to buy my bicycle and what a wonderful day we had despite your illness and the pain pills you had to take to survive the car trip.  I think of how you would wrestle with Jeff on the living room floor and of the warmth and love that filled our home.

No, love, you were not perfect.  Many women would not have stayed with you.  But I am glad we weathered those storms to create the life we had, and  I miss it.  Happy Birthday, love.  I miss you and I wish that you were here, but I am learning to dance alone, and there is beauty in that limp, the same beauty you see in the eyes of old people who have weathered life and become wise, the beauty seen in endurance and overcoming obstacles while all the while appreciating the opportunity of life. I will survive the firsts, love, and I will not only survive, but I will use them to hone my appreciation for what is, this I promise you. And I WILL dance.

Love, Melissa