MAY 15
Letting Go
Letting go is a theme that keeps showing up in my life. Various blogs, books, religious articles, and life advice.
There are things, memories, items, ways of being to let go of and it can be good advice to let go, to release, to learn a new way of doing, of being.
But, on the other hand, holding on to people, some things, memories, photos, music. The list can be long, and it is important. There are treasures that are worth keeping. That we need to keep and cling to when life gets uncertain, the ground feels shaky, we feel lost or afraid.
So, finding the balance seems to me to be a lifelong task, a journey, spiritual, heroic, or literal.
In the last set of years, I have had to let go of much. My husband died without much warning. Being tired and having back aches is not something surprising or unusual for a man who has a stressful job and a stressful commute. He’d dismiss my frequent requests for him to get a medical check-up. What are they going to say? That I'm tired? I already know that.
This foolishness from a very intelligent man. Maybe the keyword there is man. For some reason, and I don’t have statistics, just years of anecdotal chatter, a man is likely to ignore symptoms his body is sending. And pleadings from his wife, by the way.
So, all of a sudden, I was a widow. Letting go? Not willingly. Kicking and screaming, at least on the inside. Sobbing, stunned, in shock, my life stalled with his passing. He was always strong and steady and the rock of our family.
We had a division of labor, which most marriages develop. He takes care of these things, I take care of those things. All of a sudden, I had to take care of the things he had handled for decades.Talk about a learning curve. Especially since I was stunned and my brain felt like I was stuck in a fog and could not see one step in front. If it weren’t for friends, (Mark and Brenda) I don’t know how I would have straightened out all the financial details that Gene always handled. Not because I was totally incompetent, but because I couldn’t focus, couldn’t wrap my mind around these things. Yes, important, but still, I was a long way from finding my new self.
Letting go seems rather a cruel concept when all you relied on, without really knowing that you relied on, millions of things, have disappeared. How you start each day—with a smile, a kiss, a cup of coffee, a look of love on his handsome face to greet me each morning. That’s a pretty big thing to have to let go of.
Conversations. All the things we could talk about—our long, shared history, our children, and grandchildren, our plans for the weekend. Everyday conversations. Every day laughter or worries. Every day a remember when bit of recall. —
Meals. Cooking. I couldn’t cook for a very long time after Gene died—I cooked to please him. What would Gene like for dinner? Of course, I wanted to make something he would enjoy, that we would enjoy together. Shared meals are vital to life. The word ‘companion’ means breaking bread together. Luckily, I had grown children nearby and friends to share meals with on occasion. Luckily. Blessedly.
Letting go of all that? That’s asking a lot.
Letting go of his work suits was easy, mostly because he was growing weary, deeply weary, of his corporate job. He needed new suits, but he didn’t feel like getting any in the months before he died. Perhaps that was a sign. He was letting go—looking for a way out. In the days before he died, he said to me at our usual routine of kisses before he left for work, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this”. I pleaded, “Then stay home. You look so tired.” “I can’t, I have a meeting.” He said this on Friday morning. Sunday morning a heart attack took him.
His sense of responsibility is a wonderful quality in a husband and father, but taken too far, given his level of exhaustion. He was letting go, but not in a way I hoped.
So, I was left. Not quite alone, I had friends and family, but my better half was in a Columbarium at our church, what was left of his physical remains—his ashes. He was clear that he wanted to be cremated, so at least we were able to handle that in a dignified manner.
The pain, the ripping away of my beloved, left me dizzy. I felt like I was in an echo chamber. Sometimes I went a bit deaf because I had to tune out the noise, pull inside, like a turtle, I suppose. Pull inside and hold on. Hold on to memories, to moments, all the millions of moments that made up our lives, that made up who we were, together, yes, but separately too.
I realized over the years that we had confidence and a sense of ourselves not only from our intrinsic gifts, but from the gift of the love and support we freely provided each other. The entire support system of the faith and love we had for one another. A lifetime of love was a wonderful thing to stand on. So, I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t let go of that.