Being On

The time between Mark’s death and his funeral was eight days. The reason for the delay was to allow time for our families, all of whom lived out of town, to get here, and for our favorite priest (who I desperately wanted to do Mark’s funeral) to arrive back in town from a fishing trip in Alaska. This priest had long left for an assignment in Belize, but came back to this area every September for some R & R. It was either a stroke of luck or something other worldly that he was able to be here when we most needed him.

In between those long and hard days I barely slept, lost a significant amount of weight, and was in shock. The night before the funeral I begged Mark to let me sleep, that I was exhausted and knew the next day was going to be brutal and I couldn’t do it unless he gave me a break. I did sleep that night but as soon as the alarm went off I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to be able to speak at his funeral but had serious doubts I could pull if off. Anxiety wrapped around me like a snake and fear incessantly pounded within me. As soon as I walked into the church, though, I felt at peace. It was an odd sensation, my first exhale since our ordeal began.

Even though we arrived early, we were immediately overwhelmed with a line of people waiting to offer their condolences. The line stretched on and I spoke to as many people as I could before it had to be stopped to begin the funeral. I read the piece I wrote about Mark before the actual service started on the advice of the church liturgist who thought that I would be more emotionally in control in the beginning rather than the end. I have done some public speaking before and have always worn reading glasses. One is because I need them, but, secondly, when I look up and make eye contact I really can’t see anyone clearly which helps with my nerves. It especially helped that day and I got through that public tribute to Mark with the faintest crack in my voice and somehow managed to hold it together. When I finished, Mark’s dear friend, Joe, spoke and then the kids joined me at the back of the church to walk up the center aisle together.

When we did that and turned around to face everyone, I could finally take in how many people were there, and that exhale I took when I walked into the church immediately got sucked back in. All those distraught faces looking at us, so incredibly sad and sorry and in disbelief. Friends, family, and acquaintances who flew in, who drove for hours, who rented cars and hotel rooms, who cut their vacations short, who took off work and their obligations to spend time with us to mourn. I wanted to crouch to the ground and sob for this loss that was breaking all of us. Instead I put my head down and started to cry, my son put his arm around me and I distinctly remember saying to myself, “You cannot do this now. You cannot fall apart.”

I cannot fall apart at my husband’s funeral? Eight days earlier he ended his life and I tell myself I can’t sob with the dearest people in our lives at the shock and horror of it?

So began the journey of me being on that has replayed itself over and over. My “don’t you worry about me, I’m going to be okay, look at me sitting here good as before.” I could laugh and tell a great story and have a glass of wine and be just fine. It was eighteen months of that switch being flipped over and over until Covid hit and I didn’t have to be so on because that isn’t required when the only place you’re going is the grocery store, Target, or a Zoom work meeting. Behind a mask became the safest place in the world for me.

But now everyone is getting vaccinated and things are opening up. There is so much more traffic than a year ago, and every restaurant I pass looks packed. The idea of returning to normal feels threatening to me, like I am about to lose my safe place where being on wasn’t a self-imposed requirement I thought I had to maintain. Mark and I were great storytellers, we fed off each other’s energy, it was never work to be upbeat, positive, and funny when he was next to me. But now it is, and sometimes I want to be the observer, to give myself the grace to relax and not be on, to take in a conversation and for people to not assume that because I’m quiet I must be sad and need a boost up the rungs of the happiness ladder.

Very few people in my life have seen the side of me that is not okay. I can write it, I can put my thoughts and sentences together to show that this is what death looks like up close and personal, that this is what we have been conditioned to look away from as if it is never going to happen to us. This is not a gift, it is who I have always been, someone who is comfortable sifting through layers and words to figure things out, but doing that on a computer screen is far easier for me than out in the real world. In the real world, tears and sadness make everyone uncomfortable and so I hide that. I tuck it down deep and pray it doesn’t burst out and take me and everyone else by surprise. That takes a lot of energy and discipline, but in this past year there has been a mountain of losses for everyone and suddenly there is plenty of company in the grief department. Maybe Covid has become our great loss equalizer. That this very hard year we have been through is telling us that it’s okay to cry over the big and small things that have slipped away, that we get to evaluate what matters and redefine our normal, that with loss comes gratitude for what we failed to notice when we filled our lives with busy, and that being on is a contest for which there are no winners.