Big Stories & Little Moments

Sometimes I wonder if I am going through life now with a sign on my forehead that says rock bottom. I’ve never hit rock bottom before but this feels close enough to qualify for some sort of signage to warn others. Most days it’s a struggle to care about anything, and if I’m in the midst of a conversation about something mundane I probably don’t do a very good job of suppressing a loud sigh.

Oh but the other conversations? Well, I might as well have another sign that says the doctor is in because I have been on the receiving end of some unexpected confessions. Behind the scenes of social media, where fifty photos are taken to have one good enough to make the Instagram cut, is a world of deeply hurting people. Each one of these conversations have been nothing extraordinary until the struggle behind the scenes is revealed, and this person I have known for ages suddenly looks sad and vulnerable. In every case I don’t think anyone is telling me about the mountains they are climbing to make me feel better about my situation, but rather to say they understand what deep cracks in the heart look like. Like a neighborhood game of tag, I think I must feel like safety. The place where one can go to catch their breath from the constant appearance that all is just fine.

In trying to work through the pain of Mark’s death, I have many flashbacks. It isn’t hard for my mind to travel to and relive that Tuesday afternoon when everything broke. I am practicing forgiveness for not knowing what I didn’t know or how it was going to end, but in doing that I have to make recurring trips back to a difficult place. There are memories, though, of happier times that are starting to bubble to the top.

I wanted to landscape the house and it took a lot of years and money and time. We would do sections at a time every spring and it was probably ten years before it was completely finished. Mark thought a roof over our head was sufficient so he didn’t share my enthusiasm for prettying up the yard. He went along with my plan, though, and after he got home from work, had dinner and was probably dead tired, we’d be cutting beds and amending the soil. One night when we were outside working it started to rain and we ducked into the garage. We thought it would be a brief shower but it turned into a downpour, so Mark pulled up a cooler from the back of the garage and we sat down amidst the bikes and lawnmower and watched the rain. “We should have a beer, don’t you think,” I said and he ran into the house and brought back two. We toasted to getting a reprieve from manual labor for the night while our kids were screaming inside the house. Then we laughed because they couldn’t find us and we weren’t about to tell them. It was such an uneventful memory, but in the midst of all the work we had done and was still ahead of us to do, we were forced to stop and live in the moment.

Years later when Mark had a chance to attend a conference in Spain, he came home and told me I was going with him. I kept coming up with excuses (the money, the kids, the everything) and one day he walked in the door from work and said he’d booked a flight for two. His mom came to watch the kids for the week and off we went. We would be shocked both coming and going to find out that our flights had been upgraded to first class. It was all rather magical from there and one afternoon when he came back to our room for the afternoon siesta, we both fell asleep. I remember the sliding door of our room being open, the breeze on my face, the curtains moving ever so slightly, and Mark’s arm around my waist. Mostly I remember how utterly peaceful it felt.

I have never thought that the purpose of Mark’s death was supposed to teach me some life lesson where I pass wisdom around like Halloween candy. In those many years with him I never stopped being grateful for the life we built together, so if that were the case it was a badly executed plan in the growth department. If there is any wisdom to share it is no different than anyone else has said thousands of times and in thousands of ways.

Tread ever so gently on this earth because all around you is unseen and unspoken heartbreak, the kind that would bring you to your knees, and take note of those seemingly uneventful moments that softly breathe in and out of you like your own beating heart.

You will discover that one will soften you and the other will rescue you, and you will learn to be grateful for both.