Every month, right about now, I start to hyperventilate just a little. My desire to hear Eric's voice becomes more intense. That's because I haven't heard his voice for nearly seven months now. I think it's perfectly normal I would miss it.
How I would negotiate the next few days is becoming more familiar. The peaks and valleys follow a repetitive, irregular pattern - an oxymoron - but I know what it looks like. I can feel it. I anticipate and recognize them all. By now, the pattern and I are intimately familiar with each other.
My dear friend Scobie gave me a book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön, after my incredibly difficult time negotiating the 6-month anniversary of Eric's death on August 15. Without hesitation or embarrassment, I called that night my meltdown, because that's what it was. Things fell apart. I started reading my book very slowly. After nearly four weeks, I barely started Chapter 3. There is so much meat in it.
"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come ogether again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy...Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all."
I profoundly appreciate her calling out candidly that things don't really get solved. The way to negotiate my grieving pattern isn't to rid the pain; it simply doesn't go away. Things come together; things fall apart. True healing allows room for things to come together, then fall apart, then come together, and fall apart. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. It's profoundly complicated, yet plainly simple.
When I experienced my meltdown last month, I needed my sense of abandonment and devastation acknowledged. I wanted somebody to acknowledge that despite those "remarkable progress" I have been making, it came with a hefty price - I paid full price, in cash, for it all. And that I was spent. I wanted somebody to simply recognize, without giving me an ounce of advice or solution, that I felt completely abandoned and alone that night. I didn't want any advice. Any solution. I didn't need any. Some things cannot be solved. Things don't really get solved! The most important thing I wanted was somebody to simply acknowledge and accept that despite all the devastation and the pain Eric's death had caused, I love my husband. Singularly. Unwaveringly. Stubbornly. In spite of it all.
Time, introspection, openness, and meditation is the most remarkable natural remedy for the broken heart and soul. In the last month, I have eventually realized and reached a pivotal moment, perhaps I will call it clarity. “Eric is very much in my mind, but he is in my past. I am most certain, unequivocally, that he loved me, and I loved him. Knowing and believing that is ENOUGH. That was where we parted company. Past tense may be difficult to grapple, but it is the most honest, and what is true. Always side with the truth. And so it shall and needs to be: Past tense."
My pivotal moment of clarity has arrived: It's time. It's time to let Eric go. It's time to start using past tense.
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