Wow. More than a year since I last posted. It was a really hard year - to ask me to say more is asking a lot. If you follow me on FB, you know that the past seven months have been the worst of my whole life so far. It's been so bad that "so far" feels like a necessary qualifier. Jesus knows how I feel about this, and I'm not sure He disagrees. He's not arguing with me as far as I know.
On February 29, on my first morning home after major surgery, My Gift From God kissed me goodbye on his way to coffee and asked me if I wanted anything from the store. An hour later a stranger used his phone to call me and tell me the EMTs were trying to revive him. Ten hours later I told the doctors to stop trying.
What can I say about these seven months? The first two or three months are a fog. I remember the whine of the defribrillator as it recharged. I can hear it so vividly it still wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes. I don't remember who visited me. I barely remember the funeral. The only thing I remember about it was how mad it made me, and I am still mad. Covid isolation. Lawyers. Physical therapy. Grief counseling. Burning through money. Real friends.
When people ask me how I'm doing, I know that some are just being polite and don't really have the time to listen - and I know that listening too often can wear other, kinder, souls out - so I have taken to responding, "'One flesh' is a real thing." Some people know what I mean and those who don't can Google it and get religion.
There are the people who feel obliged to comment clever things like, "Aren't you afraid to live out here by yourself?" ("Gee, now that you've mentioned it, do you mind checking the bushes for ax murderers for me before you run off?") My answer is always no. I used to be afraid when MGFG went off on a trip and I stayed here alone, but since the day he died, God removed all that fear. I am fine here, because everywhere I put my foot, every cupboard I open, every window I look through, when I change the temperature on the thermostat, when I mow the grass - all of it is here because MGFG put it here himself and he did it for me. It's like living in a hug.
I am better now, but it seems like it was was actually better when I was in a fog of pain. Even though I was terrified that I would never feel better again, it was the intensity of the pain that kept me connected to MGFG - like trying to grip someone's hand at arm's length and feeling the stretch as they are being pulled away by a current. Now that the days aren't so unrelentingly painful, I miss it, because nothing has taken its place - he has slipped away and there's nothing to hold onto. There is no point in swimming. There is no land in sight. All I can do is float and try to keep breathing.
Lately I've been watching a subscription series about a woman commander of the first mission to Mars. She has left her husband and daughter behind on earth for the three year round trip. Halfway there, the water system aboard the spacecraft fails and the crew has to go on reduced rations. Soon everyone is suffering the effects of dehydration: muddled thinking, clumsiness, irritability, fear. They rally a bit on the morning that they are expected to land and meet the supply ship that's supposed to be waiting on the surface, only to learn that the space center has lost contact with the supply ship and they are uncertain if it landed safely. Their only choice is to go ahead and land, and face the possibility of certain and slow death if the supply ship broke up on landing; or to abandon the landing altogether - the focus of their adult lives and within sight of the pinnacle of their careers - and turn around and head in the opposite direction to dock with a second supply ship and then return to Earth. The last episode I watched had the commander gazing out a window into the inky blackness of space, at that moment less a commander than a helpless passenger, encased in a metal box hurtling at 30,000 mph in an uncertain direction, waiting on coordinates and instructions from the Space Center on Earth.
When that episode was over, I turned off the TV and went out on the porch before locking up and going to bed. I was struck by the blackness of the night sky and it felt like I was part of that fictional dehydrated crew in all of their muddled, irritable clumsiness. The night sky always makes me feel small, reminding me that I am just a microscopic speck of dust, living on a microscopic planet in a vast universe, a helpless passenger hurtling in an uncertain direction, waiting on Someone Else to send me coordinates. The supply ship is delayed and the round trip could take years.
"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" Ps. 8:4
