Hallowed Ground

During the five years Mark and I lived in Maryland, we became more keenly aware and interested in the history of the Civil War. Brutal battles had been waged on the ground beneath our feet, and for a history buff like Mark, it was an opportunity to explore these places. Mark was especially interested in the Battle of Antietam – the single bloodiest day of the Civil War.

Antietam was less than an hour away, and so on a Sunday afternoon we loaded a very new baby into the car and drove there. Much of it I don’t recall except for standing in a field named Sunken Road. Two rows of wood rail fencing delineated the North from the South, an expanse no wider than the distance from my driveway to my next door neighbor’s, and it was shocking to imagine that a hail of bullets and cannonballs were fired in such close proximity. It was unfathomable that anyone could survive that, and while we like to think of wars being fought by men, boys as young as middle school were also sent from home to join the fight, often to lose their lives. On that hot, summer day, Mark and I would have the same reaction to what we were seeing. As the wind blew against the manicured blades of grass and dandelions sprang from that bloody earth, we both knew we were standing on hallowed ground. Our drive home was somber and quiet.

Before we left Maryland for a new job opportunity for Mark, we took a trip to Gettysburg, and that time we would load two kids into the car and drive to Pennsylvania. While also incredibly moving for its historical significance, it lacked the feel of Antietam. Tourist shops lined the town streets where you could get a dish towel with the Gettysburg address on it and a shot glass with Abraham Lincoln’s profile. Disappointed by what we’d seen, Mark would say on that drive home, “Why’d they have to go and bastardize the place?” It was hard to comprehend how two historical places where war was waged for the same thing could evoke such different reactions.

The struggle I have had ever since Mark’s death is for a meaningful life that I do not know how to remake. The person who gave me the confidence to do most anything is no longer here, and during my other times of doubt Mark would cock his head, smile, and say, “Oh Kath, I wish you could see in yourself what I see in you.”

Shakespeare wrote, “Everyone can master a grief but he who has it,” and those words certainly ring true with me. I am always bewildered that someone with an intact marriage and a very living spouse seems to know what I need to catapult me out of this grief. Advice to “just focus on the happy times” makes me flinch. There is a reel in my head of a 40 year relationship with a man that I deeply loved that has played non-stop since last September. There are thousands of happy times in that highlight reel but sadness touches every part of it now. The movie lacks half the participants to share in the highs and lows, and if there are any coming attractions somebody forgot to queue them up for me to watch.

Moreover, being told “don’t forget you have those great kids and grandkids,” makes me want to simultaneously burst into rage and laughter. Throughout my lifetime countless women have passed through my days, and I am positive I have never known a single one that has forgotten the children they carried, birthed, adopted, and raised, or those children’s children that made her a grandmother. How could I forget them when I fell in love before I even met them? And how is it possible for them to be responsible for my peace since their dad died when they are struggling with the same thing for themselves?

Everyone in my life desperately wants me to be happy and I am thankful that I am loved enough for that to be the case. They would like to look in my eyes and not see the pools of my sadness reflected back at them. If only they could see the times that I can still laugh at the dumbest stuff like Mark and I always did, that those kids and grandkids of mine and Mark’s do give me moments of joy, that the sound of my husband’s name makes my heart flutter with gratitude, that the point of this journey is to lead me to a destination of Whole not Happy, that they may think they know how fleeting and tenuous this life is but it is a very different thing to live that truth, that I reached it before them but they, too, will find themselves there one day.

For now grief is ever present in my life and I long for the day when it requires much less of my heart and head. In order to get to that place, I need to feel every part of what I had that tragically slipped through my fingers, and that is a painful place to be. Grief also demands not to be rushed and I have reluctantly come to terms with that.

But when the day does come that my eyes dance with renewed hope, and flowers grow where there used to be barren ground, I will still wish for the same thing that I wish for now. That what can be seen in my eyes is the entirety of Mark’s life and death, and that you know it is and will always be my hallowed ground.