What seemed to take forever has just happened so very quickly.
I’m at the end, tonight, of the 13 month-long buildup to a life-changing day for myself and my kids, having just experienced the single most intense day of my entire life. Without a doubt, nothing even comes close.
It was also the single most intense day of my 18yr old children’s entire lives, only, in comparison, they’re 18, and this was their mom. While I’m 60 and we’ve been separated and divorced for over eight years.
My father’s death was a surprise to me at 27. At the time, I was relatively removed and disconnected and did not know how to process it all in the slightest. Now, it’s likely one of the things I think about and write about the most. Life experiences did that. Having children of my own did that. And Linda brought those children into my life, wearing down my resistance over five years, lobbying against my defiant apprehension.
Their mother’s death today will likely take as many or more years and as many or more life experiences to take shape for them. Their respective relationships with her were as complex and complicated as was my own. Is that somehow unique and uncommon? I don’t imagine so, for even a moment. Everybody, myself included, has their own opinions and takes on their parents and childhood, irrespective of the perspectives their parents themselves had in parallel.
Linda and I had talked many times during our marriage about growing old and reaching a point where we would float out to sea on inflatable pool chairs with a set of his & hers needles. We also talked in-depth about what we each would want our final moments to be, were one of us to die before the other. We promised to ensure those wishes were met, yet we promised many things, actually, throughout 15 years of marriage. Until it became clear that we could not live up to so many of those promises as life’s illusions and realities collided.
When Linda’s medical team conveyed that she’d likely not make it through the weekend, I told her sister that my desire was to be there with her when she passed. As few as 12 hours later, her sister called me with the news that the same medical team had just told her that Linda’s time was running out more quickly than expected. I grabbed my keys, dropped off a work call, ran out to gather my kids, and we all rushed to her bedside.
This past year has been filled with angst, fear, hope, acceptance, confusion, frustration, love, caring, reflection and compassion. From all of her friends throughout the earliest days at home, through treatments, routine visits, dinners, ice cream marathons, all right down to that moment this morning when she took that last breath while our children kissed her forehead and cheeks, held her hands and told her she was loved. The promise I made so many years ago was the promise I am so grateful I got to fulfill today.
I’m operating in abstract shock and disbelief, even though this has been coming for months. As it played out this morning, I put all of my efforts into being fully connected and consciously focused on her and the kids while taking it all in. Although it felt and still feels like a dream, staying attached and present throughout the roughly 90 minutes we had left together and another 30+ minutes beyond her passing allowed us to say goodbye and give thanks to the moments throughout this life we shared.
What kind of promise is unbreakable?What kind of passion is hard to resist?What kind of man turns his back on the real and the physical?What kind of love is this?What kind of truth is invisible?What kind of future does not exist?And when things fall apart, and the center's not holdingWhat kind of love is this?Right now, someone is echoing the silence.Right now, someone is waiting for another pin to dropRight now, someone is praying for patience to go on livingRight now, someone is saying, "Just make it stop.”Too many words are unspoken.Too many moments and lives wΠ΅'ve missed.TherΠ΅'s a line to be drawn between endless and infiniteWhat kind of love is this?
Shame (Cry Heaven) - Tears for Fears