A bit about my better half

I lost my truest friend and dear life mate last night. It struck like a thunderbolt from afar, and now he’s lying in some strange, cold room.  It’s just not right. But it’s our human way, for some reason that suddenly makes zero sense. “Part of life”, our friend told me today. But he hasn’t had this one part thrust upon him, yet.  I’ll talk to him when he knows it for himself, that arrow in his heart. I stumbled through the day, with the arrow sticking out of my chest. I can see it, why can’t everyone else?  It’s like cotton in my mouth, stopping the words, making the silence all right.  There are no words for it, right now.  Just a pit, bottomless. I fall, and fall, and fall.  Impact would be a blessing right now.  Just to feel something, besides the cold.

After the EMTs, the kind policemen, the funeral home fellows left with my beloved in a rubber bag (pleaseGodNO), I slept without dreaming. I woke with a start to our superpuppy Frank’s frantic kisses on my hand, before dawn.  For an instant, I did not remember that my husband is dead, now, and I was happy to greet the day. Then, I remembered and every fiber in my being screeched ” NFW!!!” Fat lot of good it did me. He’s still gone.  Cursing the fickle, faithless gods of chance, mutiny and heartache, I got up to face the ugliness of the world, and that word – “widow”. The sun shone, but today it was dim. Aided by my SuperNiece who showed up on my doorstep at 10:15 so I wouldn’t be late, we smoothly schlepped over to the funeral home. I put on a fine show (nobody bought it but me, and that’s OK, too) of being the SuperFunctional bereaved person.

Today my niece was a miracle that I didn’t even see. She was for me the earthly representative of the purest form of love, love-in-action. She saw my need and met it, she offered  aid to me, a woman drowning in a grief that’s shaping up to be so intense, so tsunami-like that I don’t even taste the water in my lungs. Not yet. It’s a’comin’, though. Real soon. I hear that surf roaring, my worst nightmare, to be swallowed up by water. Here it comes. Just for me. Yee-hah.

So I curse this mind-muddle I’m going to have to start calling life.  Make it go away, you feckless, heartless God. I’ve ripped up my contract with you and I want my MONEY BACK!  The price of love is always heartbreak, the only safeguard against sorrow is not to care at all. And so I  care, and care, and care, and here I am. Broken up, sleepless, head pounding, heart still beating.  Why still his heart, but not mine?  So much for Divine Mercy.  Another lie they told me to get me to sleep at night.

So now I know what my mother knows, what my aunt knows, and I am feel just plain cheated,  to be hustled willy-nilly into the silence of  the bereaved. Today, I was at least a walking zombie. I babbled like an idiot, propelled myself forward with my true friends, the double trouble twins: caffeine and nicotine.  I know my sisters are out there, I’ve read your work, felt your soul crushing grief.  Now I join your ranks silently, and bid you good morning. I am with you, and we survive it, don’t we?  It was worth the caring, wasn’t it?  I need your affirmation, I ain’t got none left for me, or anyone, right this minute.  I’m living for his children’s comfort (they are on their way here), for my puppy’s kisses and the sad stare of my Happycat, Papa’s favorite jet black cat.  Lilybit, my little Lilybug, inspiration for my blog name, she is full of silent support. She gives me the loving feline slow-eyelid blink every time I look her way. They know, and they give. Their love humbles me, so I can cry, finally. Unfreeze. I just can’t do the obituary, not right now.  Then the levee will break.

My cats and dog will teach me how to mourn with some kind of dignity. And I’m happy to take a lesson, because right this minute, I’m a major mess. And I’d be worried about me if I wasn’t.