When I first sat down to write this book, I struggled. A lot. Mostly because going back and re-thinking the past doesn’t work for me. In fact, I try really hard to stay in the present because I usually think ahead five years. But here I was, wanting to go back, and afraid to do it at the same time.
On August 17, 2000 – almost ten years ago – my husband died. Being twenty-six and newly pregnant complicated my grief, and in some ways I felt like I didn’t even start mourning him until after my son was born. I knew at that point I wanted to write about my experience – my journey through grief. I wanted others in my place to not feel so alone in their world when they read my words. And also I knew something about the cathartic and healing power of writing, having journaled for years. So I was committed to writing about that time and tried, however, without success for more than eight years.
At first my grief was too raw. I spent my days staring at the living room wall, and – when I did go out – avoided friendly strangers at checkout counters and swim classes, people who didn’t know he was gone and asked about him. I called credit card companies to cancel his cards and gave away some of his clothes. But I couldn’t throw away his toothbrush or the pregnancy test stick I’d peed on that evening before he died.
I couldn’t write about it then, so I waited and tried again later. I tried again when I’d moved out of state and bought a new house. I purged my emotions into wet clay vessels, and my roommate watched my then two-year-old daughter and six month old son while I ran around and around the block in my Saucony sneakers. I watched the sun flash out from behind trees and counted the seams in the sidewalk. The air was nippy and I composed words in my head to write later.
But later was always later. The words, when I wrote them, weren’t what I wanted. They didn’t express how I found myself holding my breath for no particular reason. They didn’t articulate how it ached when I had to call my mom to tell of my infant’s first laughter because I couldn’t tell my husband.
And then I fictionalized it. And a door opened. I wrote of someone else’s pain and mine lessened somehow. But I wanted to tell my story, so I stopped.
I needed to begin again. It was time. Time to write our story. But I had to go back to do that. I needed to re-open the wounds and examine the pain in all its concrete sensory detail. And I was afraid.
I was afraid of the pain that I knew must accompany that trek. Afraid of how I’d be with my family while I was excavating my memories. Who would care for my children while I was in the past? Who would be a companion to the man I was married to now? Wouldn’t it hurt him to see me crying over Rob? How would me going back to Before affect my relationships in Now? Would it threaten the serenity and happiness we had?
My two year old is eleven now. She’s learning Japanese, stays up too late at night reading, and draws when she wants to express herself or be alone. She’s in a ballet class now, but will go back to swimming and riding horses this summer. She loves magic, music, nature and American Dolls.
The baby I found out I was pregnant with, the night before Rob died, is nine now. He whoops when he walks and is an expert scientist, especially regarding sharks and snakes. He loves the ocean -- and all the creatures in it – ninjas and sandboxes with running water nearby to make trenches and waterways. He hates people who litter, loud noises and taking his supplements or trying new foods.
Paul -- the man my children call “Dad” -- fed my son formula in bottles, changed his diapers and played “Tickle Monster” with him. He cradled my daughter in his lap when she was little and read to her at night and they both called him “Big Hairy Guy” for laughs.
So, would it be worth it to go back? Could it shatter the Now? Those questions plagued me and stunted my writing. I couldn’t even start.
This is perhaps why I have not written the story before now. The potential for hurting the people that I cared about was so monumentally in front of me.
Because what would happen was this: I’d remember a flash of memory and go to write it down. While I was there I’d fester and cling to shards of recollection and agonize over not the way things used to be but the things that would never be. And this was where the present got tricky. How did I stay pleased with my life and my new marriage while I lamented over my dead husband never walking my daughter down the aisle at her wedding?
And then digressions bleed through, like, I struggle over saying “my” daughter. I want to say “his” daughter. Rob’s. But then flash to “our” daughter. But that couldn’t be right because the man I’m with now, Paul – the one that has raised her since she was three years old – has adopted her. So she’s our daughter – Paul’s and mine. Not my late husband’s. Not anymore. But how can I say that?
Even now I have to ask: Where does he go in my life? Where can he fit? He must be allowed to stay in some form.
And so he does. A black and white photo of him feeding my infant daughter hangs on our upstairs wall; a flower he gave me and I pressed long ago is framed and holds a place on our living room altar; and he lives on in my journal, my dreams and my memories. And that is enough. It has to be.
So now that I’ve finished the book, I feel like an epic section of my life is over. I still have days where I miss Rob. In fact, I just went to the Azores on a recent vacation (a place he had visited as a teenager and where he still has family) and I got teary-eyed thinking how I wished we could’ve gone there together; or when I went in one of Lisbon’s huge cathedrals during that same vacation, I lit a candle for him and cried, knowing he would’ve loved seeing it.
My “Grief” days, or “I Miss Rob” days, aren’t overwhelming anymore -- or honestly very often anymore (a statement which at one time I would’ve been loath to say.) And despite those days, my life is rich and full.
I remember him with fondness and love. I cry at movies when the husband dies. I write about him. I dream about him. I tell my kids stories about him. We talk to his mom every week by phone, and we fly to visit her every summer. He is still very much in our lives and sometimes we still cry about him, but those times are fewer and fewer between.
It didn’t hurt those around me to write this book. Turns out, it even brought us closer.
I hope you enjoy the book and that, somehow, it makes a difference in your life.
Namaste,
Valerie
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