Where There Is Love...September 3, 2009

Last night before bed, I wandered my new home and sat or spent time in places that I haven't been using! It felt a little like expanding my world. Before bed a title came to me that I knew I needed to write about. When I arose this morning, I wrote to match the title without knowing what the length or outcome would be, and what emerged was an essay with an ending that surprised me. The part of me that is very proper wants to apologize for the title, but I'm going to let it go and just invite you to read it. I also expanded my world a bit this afternoon with a small devotional meeting at Roger and Shirley's home. I cried a bit when the music and readings moved me, but it was good.

Love,
Susanne

Where There Is Love, All Farts Are Forgiven
Susanne M. Alexander

I suppose I’ve forgiven him for his farts in public, and of course any other more important misadventures, but I’m not sure I’ve forgiven him for dying. But there…I’m ahead of myself in the story.

I remember before we married looking at my approaching middle-age body and stray hairs and blemishes and being concerned that he’d find me wanting. It turned out to be totally irrelevant. He was always much better than me at looking on the inside, not the petty faults that traipsed around in everyone else’s vision…or my own.

Marriage is an intensely physical experience. Making love. Bumping hips in a tiny kitchen. Sharing the newspaper. Drinking Mandarin Orange Spice and Country Peach Passion teas. Cooking endless meals. Back rubs. Bubble baths. Digging in the yard and planting lilac bushes and bright red impatiens flowers. Yes, impatience…always we wanted to get on to the next activity, the next goal…and yet we also regularly paused for sunsets over the lake.

Oh I know that marriage is also intensely spiritual…we’ve prayed enough together and done enough spiritual things together for me to know that, too. I suppose without that right now, the insanity of his absence would actually make me feel insane. But, the absence of his physical presence is the crux of the grieving. I’m farting alone…so to speak.

Even though he’s with me spiritually, he can’t feel the sand that’s between my toes, the sun that’s on my face, the donut in my belly. He can’t massage my back for me and feel the slippery peach lotion between our fingers. He can’t smell the chicken and sweet potatoes cooking in the oven. He can’t pee, poop, or fart. He can’t wipe the tears from my eyes. Or from his own.

I carefully arrange my new home without him as if each pillow placed or trinket adjusted matters. As if he would care even if he were here. In fact it’s exactly the opposite of what would make him comfortable, he who had to be reminded to wipe his feet at the door…repeatedly.

If the spiritual is more important, why do I long for the physical? Why do I grieve the loss of the sights, touches, smells, and sounds? Why does the feel of the pain in my heart matter?

He’s flying and I’m stuck on the ground, mired in the muck of confusion and illusion. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are moments since he’s flown on that are happy or even sublime. It’s just that it’s all so different and unreal and he’s gone. He’s out of his cage and I’m still contained in mine. He’s gone where I don’t belong. And I want to throw a five-year-old tantrum that he’s there without me. And then I’m grateful that it’s not yet my time.

I look at the stars and wonder does he see what I see? I dance on the rug and imagine him dancing with me, but does he? I do the dishes he used to do and wonder does he miss the suds on his hands that I insulate with bright yellow gloves? Does he know that they’re yellow? Does he care? No, of course not. He answers that in my head before I even write it.

It’s as if this person that I’ve lived intensely with for all these years is now someone I don’t quite know anymore. He’s doing and experiencing and living in ways that I can’t completely envision and growing in ways I can’t see. I’m angry and sad and happy and mad and struggling with envy and greed. The road to acceptance is paved with lumpy pillows and soggy tissues and lonely cups of tea.

Would you like a banana with your cereal for breakfast? Do you want me to wash your gardening jeans (please!)? How about some intimacy tonight? You’ll laugh at this comic! Will you play your flute for us tonight? Can you open this jar? I’m sad, can you please listen to me and hold me tight? The rhythm and pattern of life lived together is shattered and trampled under the weight of his leaving. And I can deny it if the picture is straight on the wall and the flowers are arranged just so.

I’m slowly straightening my body that locked in fetal position from the shock, protecting myself, figuratively going home to my mother before husband and marriage were even glimmered or dreamt. I stretch and feel pain. I walk and feel pain. I sleep and feel pain. It reminds me I’m here and he’s there or there and here both…sort of. Life is confusing and squishy…I cry in my shoes…that wander and wiggle and blend in the flow of the days.

My place in the world is confused and uncertain. Where to be, what to do, who to be. Just being is unfamiliar and at times annoying. He reminds me of our early mantra: patience, detachment, and flexibility. Important concepts that sometimes make me want to pound on the bed or shatter the china.

Does he see the sunrise, the sunset from a place without time? Does he see the beauty of the ocean and clouds in my eyes? Does he still see the beauty in my soul far better than I do? Does he know I still love him? Yes, I suppose he does. And where there is love, all farts are forgiven and so is his death.