And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (20 page)

And so I attend Christmas pageants and sing boys to sleep and teach Christmas carols and shop for gifts and hang stockings and fold laundry and live and breathe and do this thing. But I’m not really thinking about it at all.

I made an iPhoto slide show, photos of Robb at Christmas. I paired it with Sarah McLachlan’s “Wintersong,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and “Song for a Winter’s Night.” These are the lyrics and melodies of my heart this season.

Dozens of pictures. Robb hugging me in falling snow. Robb teaching Tucker how to unwind the lights to hang outside. Robb giving them their Christmas jammies that Santa always brought early. Robb holding Tucker in the BabyBjörn carrier while he ironed the red satin bows for our Christmas tree. The Christmas when Tyler was the bump inside my belly. Tyler with a big red bow on his noggin. Robb teaching Tucker how to run the remote for the Christmas train, the one that circles our tree this year. A picture of four Starbucks cups lined in a row, our treat last year before we drove around town looking at lights. Robb playing his trombone at our church’s event last Christmas, days before he died.

I showed it to the boys tonight. I wanted it to matter to them. My expectations were perhaps unfair. They wiggled and squirmed. They had the attention spans of a four-year-old and six-year-old. Imagine that.

“Look, boys. Look. Look. Look!” I became exasperated as I watched pictures go by—one of Robb helping Tucker play the trombone, another one of him and Tyler wearing matching Santa hats.
Please, boys, look. I want you to know that this happened.

“Mommy, are you crying because we were so cute?”

“No, I’m crying because I miss Daddy. I miss him.”

“Mommy, I want my hot chocolate.”

“Mommy, I want my blanket.”

“Boys, I don’t want to talk right now. I don’t want you to talk. I want you to watch. Please watch.” I wanted them to see the proof. I am terrified they are forgetting. I want them to know it happened. It happened, boys. He was here.

The photo show finished. I was furious. Furious that they didn’t watch, furious that my heart spills into my lungs and makes it hard to breathe, furious that he isn’t here. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I held a tissue over my face to hide the “ugly cry.”

“Mommy?”

“Yes, Tuck.”

“I love Daddy. And I miss him.”

“Me too, Tuck.”

“But, Mommy?”

“Yes, Tuck.”

He whispered as if he were telling a shameful secret, “I’m not sad right now.”

Well said, my little man. I understand that. “It’s okay, buddy. You don’t have to be.”

Tyler brought me the painting of the panda Tucker had made in kindergarten art club. “Here, Mommy. This will cheer you up.” I set it on the coffee table, amid my wads of tissues.

They didn’t need the movie tonight. I did. They didn’t need the reminders. I did. They are not forgetting him. We talk about him every day. They haven’t gone a year without looking at him. His pictures line our walls. He is alive in their minds. Very alive in their
minds. Someday that movie will be a keepsake for them. Proof it really, truly happened. He was really, truly here.

A preschool dad approached me as we dropped off our children. “I’d love to meet you for coffee sometime. We should share our stories,” he said. His wife died one week after their daughter was born. She left behind a two-year-old son, a newborn daughter, and a husband reeling and gasping for air. He’s remarried now, he and his new wife have had a child together, and his daughter is in Tyler’s class. She’s darling.

And so we met over a coffee cup. He cried as he listened to my story. He cried as he told me his. I listened carefully. In the course of one conversation, he spoke with joy about the life he lives, the woman he loves. And his eyes filled with tears as he told me about the woman he first married and the day he lost her. He could embrace joy with his new life and still deeply miss the former one. He showed me that one thing—one life, one love, one story—doesn’t replace another one. His heart has the capacity to hold both.

At home once more I looked at my wedding bands, three separate bands soldered into one. One square solitaire, princess-cut diamond, cathedral setting. The one that said, “Will you make me the happiest man in the world?” One channel of baguette diamonds, the ring that sealed the deal. The one that said, “I do. Our chord of three strands is not easily broken. You are God’s plan for me.” One more channel of
baguette diamonds, sandwiching the solitaire, the one that said, “Hey, baby girl. Merry Christmas. I still do.”

Two diamonds have fallen out. Like missing teeth from an otherwise straight, sparkling smile of orthodontia. The part of me that will forever be a young bride, naively in love, believing in a fairy-tale story, says, “Run to the jewelry store. Replace and renew. Fix it. Fix it all. And hold tightly.”

The part of me that feels broken in a world of whole, the part of me that knows how the love story changed, says, “Leave it be. It tells the story.” Tattered, gapped, broken, sparkling, shining, beautiful.

I took off my wedding rings. I felt like the time had come. Wearing them no longer encouraged me; it felt like a memory. It felt like the last thread of something I was holding on to, carrying it just for the sake of carrying it. It felt like a lie. It felt like pretending, I was playing a role. I took them off, polished them, and put them away.

Then I got them back out. Then I put them away.

And I got them back out again.

I haven’t been without them for twelve years. There is an indentation on the ring finger of my left hand. I wonder how long the line will remain, like a reserved seat. I wonder how long my thumb will reach for the rings, like my tongue used to search the gap in my mouth when I lost teeth as a child. It’s a trio of gifts tied into one: the day he asked me to marry him, the day we said “I do,” the decade’s anniversary of thousands of every days. They are so beautiful, especially after the gentle polishing. They are the most beautiful gift Robb gave me, figuratively and literally. They are the token of our vows, the memory of
our marriage. I decided to put the rings back on—my right hand this time. The bands look lovely there. Perhaps I’ll put a different ring on my left hand. Maybe I’ll buy myself a new one. For now, it feels best to let that ring finger breathe for a while. It’s another absence to accept.

I remember the day I stopped caring about my wedding dress. I bought it a year before we were married (and ever since that long wait, I have not encouraged long engagements), and I loved it as much as a person can love an inanimate thing. Perhaps more than a person should. The bridal boutique held it in storage for me, and I visited the dress every few weeks. In fact, the store clerks eventually told me I needed to stop putting it on or it would need to be cleaned before its actual debut at the wedding. I was a little over the top in my affections.

I remember thinking,
I can’t wait until it’s mine, in my hands, in my house. I’ll wear it whenever I want to, because it will be mine, all mine.
Somehow I pictured myself, the married bride, traipsing around the house and playing dress-up in this giant ball gown. Even now, that sentence seems ridiculous to say. Probably about seven minutes after we were back from our honeymoon, I realized, with shocking surprise, that I really didn’t care about that beloved wedding dress anymore. Not really at all. We were married, the day had been perfect, and we had the “rest of our lives” to look forward to. I suddenly realized there was so much more to be happy about than a silly dress.

I feel this way now about my wedding rings. I loved them, I still love them, and now I don’t need to wear them. There is so much more to our story than the rings.

I love him, I miss him, I love him, I miss him. I can’t possibly say those words enough to convey the depth of their anchor in my heart. If I can’t have him, if I can’t wear the rings on the third finger of my left hand, then what
can
I do with this next chapter?

If I must let go of that dream, that plan, that life, then what may I embrace?

For Tyler’s birthday I gave him a butterfly garden. We ordered our caterpillar larvae, which were rerouted when they couldn’t be delivered on a windy day when nobody was home to receive them. Mail carriers are picky about live creatures. Finally they came. Five little caterpillars, charming little guys. The boys named them: Tricia (I was deeply honored to make the list), Sunshine, Harry, Wilbur, and Lois. But then, after some debate, Lois was renamed Thor.

We watched them so closely, studying them every day. The boys checked on them first thing in the morning, and they said good night to them before going up the stairs. We watched them climb to the top of their jar and dangle from the top like hanging apostrophes. We watched as each one grew the chrysalis, perhaps my favorite stage of all. I thought their cocoons would be hard, grayish white, but they are iridescent like the scales of a fish, shining and glittering in the sunlight.

I became wordless with symbolic parallels; the most beautiful part of the cycle was when the butterfly was held captive in her cocoon, when she couldn’t see the sunshine, when the greatest challenge lay before her. Somehow, in retrospect, I loved that even more than
her grand emerging, her careful wings unfolding. So much happened when she was tucked away, hidden from us. We watched as the butterflies sensed us near them, as their cocoons wobbled and shook to ward off predators. They didn’t know we loved them so much. They didn’t know they were safe.

We watched them emerge—three of them, then four, and finally five. Each with painted wings and a flittery-fluttery courageous spirit. We lined their garden with flowers and leaves, and we sprinkled sugar water to feed them each day. I didn’t foresee that this gift to Tyler could be such a gift to me, to watch five versions of the same life cycle unfold in my living room. I watched closely too, right alongside the boys, all three of us budding scientists. Of the whole transformation that happens inside that glittery chrysalis, I was most fascinated to see the difference in the butterflies’ legs. As caterpillars, they had pairs and pairs of creepy-crawling feet, but when they emerged as butterflies, they had six long, sturdy legs to stand on—and taste with. I had no idea how much could happen in there.

I used my happy voice as I began to talk about the day we would set them free. “Won’t that be a special day, guys? Won’t that be beautiful to set them free and let them fly wherever they want to go?”

Tyler was skeptical. “No. That will not be a happy day.”

I know, buddy. I’m just trying to talk it up so we can let them go, let them be free, instead of holding them inside our home until we have to watch them die.
I counted them each morning. “Three, four … and … aha! Five.” Whew. I was always afraid one would die overnight. They only live for a couple of weeks after they emerge, so I knew we had a limited amount of time. Still, I couldn’t let them go on my own.
They belonged to the boys. And one boy in particular was pretty attached.

“I think we should set them free today, Mommy.” I dropped everything I was doing and followed his lead. We set their garden on the sidewalk, and we took turns reaching inside, sliding a finger so carefully underneath a butterfly, letting her climb onto our fingertips, and then bringing her out to freedom. It was so great. So, so great.
Great
is the word I use when I can’t find a better one. This was even better than great.