Sh*t People Say.

The night before my husbands memorial service, one of my oldest and dearest friends called.  He had seen his share of loss over the years,in particular, the loss of his partner, the love of his life.  He wished me all the strength and courage to get through what would be one of the most difficult days to navigate.  He gave me pointers on how best to manage the blur of faces and the stand still of time.  He passed on regret he would not be able to attend.

You are going to need someone by your side when people say and do things you will not be able to believe.

He was right.

I am grateful my brother never left my side that day.  I am also grateful he showed immeasurable composure as some who attended the service said and did things that stung and left us both speechless.  I kept quiet for a long time-only letting out my hurt and anger in a closed therapeutic setting thinking this was part of the process of death and funerals, and how people behave when someone dies.  I was wrong. People say and do weird shit.

I have never been one for funerals.  Never liked the sounds and smells, and the formality of death. And why is it the inside of funeral homes always look the same? Fake flowers and chintz.  Fake flowers at a funeral home.  Go figure.

In the blur of planning the day after my husbands death, I opted for a casual celebration of my husbands life. No funeral of any kind.  Something informal to focus on the things he loved. I focused on the man I knew- and not on the man everyone thought they knew- or the man everyone wanted claim to.  I focused on shedding light on the dis-ease of substance abuse attached to unresolved troubles of the soul. I wanted people who knew him best to focus on the living. I wanted those to attend who sat with him in the circles in the rooms where weakness is embraced and strength is encouraged- where each day is just that.

One day at a time.

My daughter and I collected pictures from the mantle, from the bedside, from the boxes of family memories and chose the ones that showed our family of three before we were three and all the years in between. I made decisions in honor of my husband. For him, in his death and to honor the life in him I came to know in 18 years.  He was not religious. Nor am I.  As a result our wedding many years ago was not particularly sanctimonious, however, it was filled with ceremony and love.  Safe to say he would have never wanted a religious service, a sermon, a speech, or even the Lord’s prayer at his funeral.  He would have wanted people to take a moment and be in silence. Let that be the prayer. I asked for that.

The Lord’s prayer was recited anyway.

People do strange things at funerals.  People do things at funerals for themselves and not for the dead.

I have seen enough death to know how quickly it comes, how peaceful it can  be  and how death can bring out the worst in those still living. Death has a way of making the unknown known and death can shine the light on love just as brightly as it can guilt, shame and regret.  Death does not care how you interpret anything- death leaves it all up to those who get on with the living.  Or not.  My brief time working on a hospice inpatient unit taught me two important things:

Death does not discern.

Get on with the business of living.

When the time comes by choice or by circumstance to draw your last breath, it is just that for us all.  The very last breath.  You will inhale and you will exhale. Just like that.

In these 11 months living with the death of my husband, living with the day in and day out, getting on with the business of living, I have come to understand things that could have never been learned from a book, residency, internship or hearsay. Add the complexity of suicide and a whole other layer of  getting on with the business of living is complicated. Extremely complicated. In this time of peeling back the layers of my husbands life and peering into the depths of what he kept hidden has given me an unexpected strength.  Having read through many of his journals and notes he made in work books, I came to realize I knew him better than I thought.  He trusted me with his past within a month of meeting him-after being with him for so long, I came to realize he also trusted me with his present and his future.  He trusted me with his failures, he trusted me with the secrets. He trusted me with his truth.He trusted me enough to know I could do this thing of surviving, for me and for our daughter.  He knew this.  Some days I do not.  I did not know the weight of all this until just now.  I pried into what he could not say, but felt. I read through the shame he lived with, the denial he kept at bay, and the years upon years of conflict and regret.

He’s got demons ya know?

Yes.  I know. I knew.  They were not demons. He did not invite them in.  And he had a heck of time letting them go. I read about past relationships, a marriage, divorce, his mothers illness, and his quest to be more than he was.  I read about the man I had come to know on a soul level, have loved through the years more than I ever thought possible and now must let go of as life moves forward.

So to the woman who dated my husband some 30 odd years ago, showed up at the service, on that most sacred day for me and my daughter, got drunk, hugged me and claimed,

can you believe we dated the same guy??

Fuck you.

You can buy a landing strip, a star, a crater on Mars, sell a necklace with a “portion of the proceeds going towards my daughter.”

But I read the truth. I know the truth.

Tend to your own life.

For those who felt it necessary to display pictures of my husbands first wedding, at his funeral-and to send pictures of our daughter to his first wife throughout the years,

That shit is creepy.

How do you think he would have felt about that?

I read what he felt.  I know what he felt. I know the truth. My daughter knows the truth too.  It  meant that much to him. To us.

To those who said to me in the days that followed my husbands suicide,

What did you do?

What did you say to him?

HOW DO YOU FEEL?

What could you have done?

Why didn’t you? Where were you?  This is your fault.  His fault. 

I did not fail.  I did not fail him.  I know this now.

The grief is undefined and at times dreadful beyond compare.

However, I do not feel guilty.  This I know.  I did not fail.

I know the truth. I lived it. I am living it.  I am slowly mending a broken heart. Each week for an hour I sit down and piece together more of the truth and in particular more of the love we had for one another. Each week I embrace more of the sadness.  For me, for my daughter. For my husband.  I have come to understand more of the love my husband had for me. For the decision he made to love me.

Because you are you, he would say.  Because you are you.

I have come to know more than anything the love I had for my husband. More than anything this is what I have come to know. He loved me more than I ever knew.  More than anything.  Especially our daughter.

Was it perfect?  No.

Did we struggle? Yes.

I think back on the service, that day dedicated to honoring my beloved and wonder what his take would have been?  I know what he would have embraced without question, and I know what he would have been uneasy with throughout the day and with the months that have followed. I have done my very best to wrap my arms around his memory and show him the same integrity in death I showed him in life.  I have been fearless in putting the puzzle pieces together that led up to his life and his death.  I have been patient and kind with myself through the firsts of  this year in the life of death. I am dreading September 2.  I have bled tears. Let anger flow and learned to be silent with strength. With knowing.  I have allowed the space of quiet to move between my daughter and myself.  I am learning to get back on with the business of living.

I treasure his words he left for me.  More than his records, more than his tools, his tractors, the stuff I had to move, the books, the artifacts of an uneasy creative mind at play. Yes, more than any thing  he left behind- I treasure the words he left for me to read.   I will weave them into the threads to mend this broken heart.  I will repeat them as needed when my daughter wants to hear them-and one day I will pass them along to her when she wants to know more about the answers that will never come to be.