Loving is “being still” while the person is talking. Our biggest hindrance to listening is ourselves. We are our own most significant problem in our attempt to love others. When person number one tries to love person number two, he will ask a question and then wait for person number two to answer. The problem is that person number one is anxious and wants things to fit into clearly defined categories, so he has some sense of control. With all this emotion going on, combined with a desire to “help,” a great deal of pressure is building up in person number one. Person number one feels pressure to resolve the situation inside him. Solutions pop out, perhaps more forcefully than they should, with generic solutions picked from a hat, “You should pray more,” “You should exercise more,” and my favorite (which is a self-contradictory statement), “Don’t let anyone tell you how to grief.” It kind of feels like person number one could give these statements to any human being who is still breathing. It’s like these statements could be read off a billboard.
With grief, there is no clear answer. No resolution can be reached. It’s a problem that can’t be solved. It’s just plane pain (which is hard to say out loud three times fast). Still, number one wants to help, so “solutions” pour out of person number one’s mouth. Lots and lots of solutions, a few Bible verses, and a longer than necessary story about the time their dog died when number one was only eight years old. Now, person number one is crying, and person number two feels obligated to comfort the guy trying to comfort him. This creates pressure on the person who just lost his spouse/parent/child. If person number one would just shut up and listen to person number two, everyone would be happier.
(The above is a true story; the numbers have been changed to protect the innocent.)
Please love us, widows and widowers. We want to be loved. Just allow enough space for us to answer each of your questions. That’s all we ask. Say less, listen more.
Loneliness
And then there’s the loneliness.
I have fought this unwelcome guest all my life. I think it started in junior high and has squirmed around inside my chest since I became aware of other people (think of Terminator 2 when the computer first became “self-aware” – same thing). The fear of being “alone forever” is in the back of my mind, tumbling up to the front of my consciousness when the mood strikes it. I thought this feeling would fade away, kind of like Ed McMann and the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. But when Deb died, all that pent-up loneliness came from their hiding places. The unresolved emotions I’ve hidden under my bed for decades came back to life.
I want to belong. That’s how God made me. I can’t live on bread alone. If I did, I’d be very lonely and all bound up (a lose-lose situation). Fearing loneliness is not a weakness to be ashamed of; it’s part of my DNA. It’s the third week since she’s been gone, and I still want to go into the other room to talk with her. She was my “go-to” person. Like my refrigerator, she was always there and dependable and offered me good things. I went to her automatically, without thinking. My feet led me to her with a, “Hey, hon, I was thinking…”
To be clear, she wasn’t the size of a refrigerator. She was relentlessly dependable. I don’t have her now; I’m just broken.
To be clear, my refrigerator still works. I’m just not sure I’m working.
How do you define “well adjusted?” My life is new. Different. But I lost my standard. She was my guardrail. Part of me is afraid I’ll do something outrageous now that she is gone, like go off and join a monastery in France, even though I don’t speak French and am not particularly fond of large cement buildings without working plumbing.
No one is home, no one greets me, and no dinner is made. There isn’t even a thought of dinner because I didn’t think of it. I keep eating frozen leftovers from my friends, but I know there will come a time in the near future when I will have to plan, buy, and cook (or at least buy and cook).
I’m afraid to admit it, but I want someone to swoop into my life and remove all these problems. I secretly want someone to make my food, pay my bills, find where all the bed sheets are hidden, and still talk with me at the end of the day. A part of me that wants to grab a woman and make her fill this infantile desire of mine. But that would be a shameful thing to do. I’m not sure if I want a wife or a mother. Either way, bringing a woman into my mess would be a terrible injustice to her. I can’t do that. That would be the opposite of love (see above).
The word “death” means to separate. And that’s precisely how I feel right now: separated. My first wife left me after nine months (that’s a whole story by itself), so I know rejection. When Deb died, she didn’t do it on purpose, but I still feel abandoned. I feel disconnected from myself. I am so ambivalent that I’m unsure I can get out of bed sometimes. In the J.R.R. Tolkien world, Worm-Tongue voiced my fear when he suggested I could “be alone, evermore.” I’m not positive what the word evermore means, but it sounds Gothic, like those cool gargoyles at the tops of those old stone buildings that are not located in my city. No one uses the word “evermore,” unless they read from Edgar Allen Poe aloud. All the same, the word fits my feeling of eternal abandonment. Not logically, but emotionally.
I’m grateful for the love of my children. I love how my oldest had stepped into the practical role Deb used to fill. She is so wonderful to me. It’s like getting a life preserver when I’m in the water. She is a ray of sunshine to me, figuring out passwords and bills, all while improving my grasp of what spices are.
Then, when she’s gone, and I’m alone again, I slip back (just a little) into despair when I pat the other side of the bed where her bum used to be. There’s nothing there. Well, there is a blanket, but no bum. I would give everything I have to hold her in my arms again.
I find myself getting jealous of couples holding hands, casually touching each other, or kindly picking the link of one another’s back. I was there a few weeks ago. Now, everything is different. I’m trying to be the man God wants me to be, but I’m not at all sure I can do that. I’m filled with doubt, and I’m not sure if I have lint on my back.
I can honestly say God has not abandoned me for a moment. Loneliness beats my body in waves, but he pulls me through with his steady hand. I’m recalibrating life on life’s terms. I’m surviving. It’s a small success. It’s a good thing I have a good God.