Love Persevering Part 2

One of the last photos that Jim took of me as I waited worried in his hospital room after they tried unsuccessfully to desensitize him to the chemo drugs.

But what is grief, if not love persevering?”

—Vision in WandaVision

A year ago this week I blogged about this quote from WandaVision, and painting, John O'Donohue, and our cultural dismissal of grief. It's difficult to believe it was a year ago. Jim's death and his cancer have changed my perception of time—it moves ever so slowly and then without warning, all too fast. Much like the slow healing of my hand which had to be re-broken just a little over a week ago in surgery in order to begin to heal properly: yet my cast was off in 4 days and I've begun PT. In that time, two snowstorms behind us, today feels like spring. I counted over 30 robins in my yard as I picked up the debris last night's March winds tossed across the neighboring lots.

Love caught between two worlds.

It's astounding to consider what has happened both personally and globally in the last year. Who would have guessed that Europe would be at war or that Covid would never have an end date? Anxiety seems to have settled in permanently. I try to tell it to back off as I'm also trying to determine directions for my life constrained in part by global forces: do I move, do I stay here, do I continue to work, or do I find something new, what exactly am I supposed to do now? Questions I thought I resolved 17 years ago when Jim and I married and we chose to live in Vermont.

One of the things I've taken to during this slow time is putting together puzzles. Like the metaphor of my re-broken—repaired ring finger, the metaphor is not lost on me. Each piece put into place feels like finding an answer, uncovering a possibility, and moving towards some sort of next.  Last year, I couldn't do a single puzzle—my mind so fragmented. Puzzles have become a visual meditation for my soul.

Some things can be repaired but never are the same again.

Who am I now? A woman with a broken heart and a broken hand. I see me a bit slowed down but I'm still here under the black and blue. My heart still beats out, "life's purpose is to love and be loved". Jim's love, our cancer journey, and his death have taught me the beauty and importance of being “authentically alive”, of taking in the pain and the joy as one. Words and phrases that now sound shallow and misleading to me are "adulting", "wellness", and "balance". Brene Brown in her latest book, Atlas of the Heart holds forth this lovely truth:

"The brokenhearted are the bravest among us—they dared to love."

I remember just after Jim and I had been married a bit, I asked my Mom, "Mom, why didn't you tell me marriage could be like this?". I'd been married before—for 20 years—but that marriage was nowhere near the ease and joy of my marriage to Jim. I was surprised by what a true marriage was—or that marriages were as different as snowflakes—and now I recognize so is grief. Our marriage was a gift wrapped version for me of  John O'Donohue's "Anam Cara".

Photo taken and rediscovered by Stephen Mease

Last year, around the same time I wrote about WandaVision on this blog, I also wrote the following in a private journal to Jim. Rereading this today, during this time of Lent, and during the ups and downs of my current life, reminded me of that truth. You see love does persevere. It opens up eternity even as I embrace my single life and acknowledge Jim's death. 

Oh Honey,

I just watched the remainder of WandaVision and suffice it to say that I'm now in tears. She didn't get to keep Vision in the end or the little world she created in her grief to include their two sons. It feels like me. Here I am in this little cocoon of mine surrounded by the artifacts of our life, of your life, and yet I can't keep you. And like Wanda, I'm left behind, feeling so alone.

To go from our deep love, your deep love for me, and now to have that so gone.

I miss you so much Honey and I really don't know what I'm doing in my life. I guess surviving as they say and hoping someday to be with you again. I just feel like the only choice I really have is to believe that, to believe our love, in God's loving existence. It seems ever so illogical but I do know that I've experienced God, I feel the momentum of God in my life and in the world. I know what I witnessed with your dying. I need to trust in that divine grace holding me up now.