Two things happened this week: Change.
Yes. I mentioned only one. However, this one thing shifted a whole season of my discontent. It was painful. It is painful. And yet.
And yet.
I am moving forward. It is arduous and slow going. It is heavy in the body and in the soul. I think I know now how a tree must feel season after season after season.
Let us all be trees that survive the winter. And spring, and summer, and fall.
It is one thing to cry. It is entirely a whole other thing to wail, and weep and moan. Knees buckle, muscles tense, and all at once that what your mind took in to process on every sensory level is there again, in full force. There are sounds and aches and pains that go back to that very second. That second when everything changed. Everything. There are sounds that emerged from my very being the day I discovered my husband had taken his life. I gave it up to the heavens. I pounded my chest. I fell to the earth. I grabbed on to the ground and froze.
Take this please. Take this all away.
This week I was gently reminded of time.
Rather, my skewed perception of time and how I have wrapped expectations and solutions into this block of time.
16 months. That is all. 16 months.
But?
Sixteen months.
We humans have such a strange relationship with time. We fall back. We spring ahead. And still, we can not change time. There is no remedy. Time is the consistent change.
Turn and face the strange.
I can do anything. I know how to make things happen. I know how to survive, find solutions, joy, love, peace. I know how to stretch a dollar, and how to make one. I know remedies.
Just as I was gently reminded about time this week,rather my perception of time, I was also gently reminded this is the one thing I can not change. There is no remedy to erase that what is now with me-and will be for the rest of my life. There are remedies to soothe, to comfort, to care for and tend to. But, this? This one thing….
This I can not change.
I can not change the deep sadness my husband carried with him- though I know I was ferocious and unconditional with love, compassion and caring for,providing all we do when we love deep. I loved loving my husband.
I know it was not enough. I could not change his own sense of being trapped-rather, locked into a story he could not rewrite- though I know he found freedom here and there along the way. Though I know the deep sentiment our family of three provided-I know it gave my husband a sense of purpose and belonging when his purpose was lost somewhere in the mix of his life. It is a paradox to love a man with such capacity to love, hold onto such a container of pain. It is a great sadness for me I can not change. I am deeply sad for my daughter, I am deeply sad for that which will never be, but more so, more than anything, I am deeply sad for my husband. There is no remedy for this.
Well. Maybe.
Time.
I have struggled this week. Struggled with my limitations, with the answers that will never come, with the slow going and skewed process of change. I have questioned every single thing. I question everything.
Except one.
I am no longer questioning myself.
I removed that burden. I tended to the pain that was sitting to my right-for these past 16 months. There on my right, sitting on my shoulder. Weighing down my heart, my lungs, my gait, my stance. The pain has been intense at times- searing, wretched pain.
It is called the “wing of the heart”. My scapula. My broken wing.
Each time it was stretched and pulled, tugged and smoothed away, I cried a little bit more. Each time, the tangled mass of soft tissue was prodded to ease up even more, I cried even more. I have not been the same since then. Since the unraveling. Since the un-knotting.
Let go. Give in. Let it leave. Let this change.
Today, I am sore. Very sore. Change is painful. Smoothing out the rough spots and tending to the broken is deep and everlasting. Damn straight it is painful.
Two things happened this week: Change.
There is a softening-there is more room to breathe.
I am repairing my wings.