The Angels Among Us

When you’re deep in the well of grief and just trying to survive, something comes along weeks and months later called secondary losses. These are the unexpected ripples from a death that can come in all forms. It can be financial security, confidence, intimacy, the loss of a once active social life, future plans and dreams, loss of memories, loss of traditions, and loss of purpose.

By far the most unpredictable thing about secondary losses is the people you lose. In my case there have been entire chunks of family and friends who have disappeared with little to no contact after Mark’s funeral. Despite ongoing weekly therapy, there is nothing that could have prepared me for the pain caused by people I never imagined would vanish. Mark left his goodbye via a letter, and what I wouldn’t give to have looked in those pools of blue-green eyes of his at the end to tell him that making a life with him was my greatest joy. To say please don’t leave me. To say I promise you this will get better. To say that you are loved by more people than you can fathom. To say that your shame has had a grip on you for so long and with the right help you can let it go. To say thank you. To then lose people who have been in mine and Mark’s lives for decades without a farewell seems like a cruel blow on top of a death I will never understand.

As unpredictable as the losses so are the gains.

There have been so many people who showed up for me when I was at my worst, when I could not eat, talk, or sleep. They showed up at my door in the cold of winter with soup. They left gifts on my porch to cheer me up, they invited me over for a glass of wine and then got up to get Kleenex when we both started crying. They raked my leaves, cleaned my gutters, spread mulch, replaced a ceiling fan, fixed my dishwasher, shoveled my driveway. They asked me over for dinner, they bought and planted a tree in the backyard in memory of Mark, they meet me once a month for breakfast and happy hour. They have been the Red Cross of my personal crisis.

Often when I am down, I want to ask the others why they left. Why when my life collapsed did they flee? Other times I not only want to burn those bridges behind me, I want to toss grenades over my shoulder and implode everything.

Grief isn’t only sad, devastating, confusing, and lonely, it is often quite ragey.

On a Saturday afternoon a few weeks after Mark died, an old friend of his from grad school called me. Mark would run into Tom every so often at meetings and they had seen each other in February of last year. They loved to make each other laugh and easily fell into the most outrageous behavior when they were together. When I answered Tom said, “I wanted to call you sooner but I was too chicken.” I laughed and said, “Well, Tom, I adore you for saying that because it’s the most honest thing anyone has said to me in the last three weeks.”

For those who have knocked on my door and said, “This is for you because I don’t know what to say or do to make any of this better,” I profoundly admire their bravery. One of those unexpected knocks came a few weeks ago on Thanksgiving weekend. A friend of my oldest daughter that she met in 1st grade had something to deliver. It was from a Secret Santa who wished to remain anonymous but wanted me to know that, “You are seen in this community, you are loved by this community, and what you are writing is making a difference.” Inside a holiday shopping bag were 25 wrapped presents for every day in December until Christmas.

Like all of the unanticipated gifts that have been delivered, it made me cry. Who did this? Who knew what I needed when even I didn’t? Who went out and bought these things and then spent hours wrapping them and numbering them for me to open every day?

It is my nature to want to get to the bottom of such a mystery, to figure it out for my own curiosity, but like the many unknowns on the day Mark died, there are some things that I will never learn. I have chosen to not pry into this and accept it as the anonymous gift of love as it was intended. Every day when I open another gift I am moved that someone sees my pain and wanted to do something to diminish it.

The loss of Mark has shattered my heart and patching it back together again is a job that will last me a lifetime. In these last 15 months, I have discovered that there are angels among us who swoop in delivering love in every form imaginable, and as I daily straddle what I had and what is before me I cry in gratitude, longing, and fear.

But I do not cry alone and that has made all the difference.