Unconditional Love

Love seems to come from some innate place, one that is not controlled by rational choice. Sure, the beginning of most loving relationships is usually initiated by a conscious decision excepting perhaps a child’s love for a parent, but as it grows, love becomes instinctual, intuitive, involuntary. A force of its own.

Does that mean humans don’t distort love, misuse or even abuse it? No, of course not. There will always be the dark side of humanity. But the best of our human capacity to love is when we offer it benevolently and even unconditionally.

For a long while I thought unconditional love was reserved for parents, responsible for bringing their children into the world in the first place. At this point, I have been a parent for a long time and I have experienced how intense the love for one’s child is, right from the start. The feeling of your newborn transferred into your arms - all slippery and awkward and loud - oh, HERE you are, little love. I would do anything for you.

But it’s not all roses from there, is it? I know firsthand that unconditional love for children is a real thing, but not one that is easy. When your child struggles in any way, you want to fix the problem and the awful truth is that some things are not fixable by another person or, in some cases, at all. Further, this kind of love involves being the bad guy, the punching bag, and still giving another chance to hit the reset button. Still, I love those kids with all of my heart in a way that they can’t understand, for no child can truly grasp the specific and vast nature of her parents’ love.

I think quite a bit about how Chris included a promise to love me unconditionally in his wedding vows. When he shared them with me at age 26, it made a big impression and gave me pause. Did I really deserve unconditional from Chris? After all, I have many flaws… 

Colby, that line of thinking was missing the point completely! Unconditional love means the beloved does not need to deserve or earn it, or for it to be deemed fair. Remember the “un” in unconditional…

Fast forward to now, the present time in which I feel approximately one hundred years old after everything that happened. Through all of his burdens and challenges, Chris was faithful to everything he promised on our wedding day. He did indeed love me unconditionally. We rarely argued, but when we had our moments, he always saw the good in me and offered me his best self. He was shiningly proud of me and my accomplishments that were separate from him. He always believed in me.

For my part, I loved him back just as unconditionally. It doesn’t mean I knew what to do all of the time. It means I was proud of him, enjoyed him, supported him, laughed with him, listened to what he needed to say. In the hardest of times, I honored him as a person with dignity, and fought for his care and wishes. I loved him to my core, and I still do.

Even though I still have desperately difficult days when it is hard to set aside the hollowed out missingness to dwell in gratitude for Chris, I do not claim that his love is gone from my life. It is still here. I just have to work to get out of my own way to find it now without his physical presence. I am learning to listen for it in my memories, to see it in my home, to feel it when I need him the most.

Yes, I can still draw on that love even though he is not here. It allows me to forgive myself as I remember the mistakes and my regrets from the late stages of his illness, for there was not one single thing I ever did that Chris did not forgive. His gentle, steady love is still with me now as I explore and create new things, as I guide our children alone, as I struggle and stumble and wonder what on earth to do with my life. His love is very much here as I continue to muddle through, now two years past having him at my side.

Reflecting tonight as I wipe away tears from missing him, I am humbled that my life is full of rich relationships and love. Chris, our children, my family, his family, my dear friends old and new… I have so much love in my life.

Additionally, I have shared a special kind of unconditional love for two years now. Some might find it silly, but my pup Phoenix loves me with incredible abandon. Even after I’ve driven her to hide under the table because I raised my voice, even after I have chased her down and lifted her into the bathtub to wash her. She loves overtly and enthusiastically, with whole-body wags, up on hind legs hugs, and exuberant, persistent doggy kisses. She prefers to sleep with me for the duration of the night, and sometimes resting next to me is not close enough - she must sleep with her head and neck draped over me. Funny enough, even considering her tendency to hog the bed, her sensitive stomach, that awful howling, and her terrible jumping habit, I love her back just as unconditionally. There is nothing she can do that I won’t excuse just for the chance to scratch behind her silky ears and draw her slender head to mine… The absence of a shared spoken language heightens every nonverbal interaction. This love is a luxurious love, and a pure one. She has saved me in so many ways.

There is so much love in my life, offered and given unconditionally. How lucky I am. All is not lost, far from it.

Unplugged

Yesterday was a typical March day, warmish and light past dinnertime, yet a cold wind made the air feel more like winter than spring. I needed a run. Desperately. Quarantine, lockdown, whatever we are calling these days one year into covid19, has made me restless. I spend too much time in my home and in my mind, tortured by the “would’ve-could’ve-should’ve-if only-he was sitting right there-he said this-why didn’t I say that” thoughts that are always running somewhere in the background. Physical activity is my only reliable strategy for reframing, for relief.

I set off, purposefully leaving my phone charging at my bedside. I wanted to deny myself the distractions I so often seek – music, podcast, any auditory stimuli – and silently breathe in the air while moving my body. I wanted to hear the birds proclaiming change is on the way.

It was infinitely harder to be unplugged…

My route starts out on my street, running past a dozen houses before hitting a busier street that leads to longer loop. Unplugged, there are landmines within thirty seconds, even before the intersection with the main road. That nice family up the street, two working parents with a kindergartener girl and a younger boy, is converging at their home base after a day of separation. The father has been playing with the kids, the mom arrives home with grocery bags. My throat constricts as the dad watchfully ensures that the toddler boy stays a safe distance from her vehicle as she slows to a stop. The unabandoned joy of the girl running to meet her mother’s car touches a nerve. The domestic, everyday simplicity is familiar and beautiful, but it breaks my heart.

Why? Why are those days over for us? What did we do wrong? They aren’t so different from us, what did they do right that we messed up?

Running with a mask is uncomfortable under the best of circumstances, but a crying jag made it unbearable. I felt like I might not be able to continue as I gasped for oxygenated air and wiped snot on the inside of my mask.  

I focused on breathing slowly, trying to make my exhale longer than my inhale, a trick I have heard will steady one’s heartrate. It didn’t work. I felt like I might suffocate, so I looked around. Seeing nobody else walking or running, I lowered my mask below my nose and mouth.

Sweet freedom.

I steadied my breathing. I looked up. I saw barren tree branches against the clearest of clear blue skies. The intake air caught in my throat again as I remembered Chris’s hope for me, for all of us, articulated by Dar Williams:

Here’s wishing you the bluest sky

 and hoping something better comes tomorrow.

Hoping all the verses rhyme

and the very best of choruses to follow all the doubt and sadness,

I know that better things are on their way.

 

Here's hoping that the days ahead

Won't be as bitter as the ones behind you.

Be an optimist instead
And somehow happiness will find you.
Forget what happened yesterday
I know that better things are on their way.

 

I just can’t. I just can’t see better days and I will never forget. I can’t do this. I am so tired. I am a pessimist.

 

Most of my running route was ahead of me and this was a decision point – give in or bear down. I chose the latter despite the leaden feeling in my legs. I banished all thoughts and listened to my feet on the pavement, tried to block out the aches and pains of my body, the thoughts of my slow pace, my graying hair and middle age. My inner cheerleader piped up:

 

Just keep going. Something is better than nothing, any exercise is better than no exercise. You’ll be happy when you are done.

 

One mile turned into two. As I turned the corner near the train station, memories overcame me again. A cold, slushy, winter day when I picked Chris up from the commuter rail train after an appointment at the hospital to go over the most recent brain imaging tests. We discussed the radiation oncologist’s interpretation of his latest MRI while lingering in the parking lot, just across the street from where I currently ran. It had not been good news. There was some kind of T1 FLAIR on the scan. Maybe that’s not the right terminology, and I wracked my brain for what had been mentioned in the radiologist’s report. It doesn’t matter now… It had been terrible news and we both knew it, and then the worst came to pass in the months that followed that day.

 

I hate myself in the present moment for what I didn’t know then, and what I didn’t know then was what to say to Chris. At the time nearly three years ago, I had absolutely no idea what to say. I could not offer any comfort, no words of assurance. My own brain had been full of a static white noise indicative of panic. All I could think was You are actually going to die soon and how is that going to go? What will I do without you? What am I supposed to do? I only knew it would not be helpful to verbalize those thoughts, so I left them unsaid. I cannot remember what I said to him; I am only certain it was inadequate. He probably knew what I was afraid of anyway.

 

The truth is, I still don’t know what to do even after everything that happened after that day passed. I admitted this as I ran past the place where Chris and I shared that painful moment, though experienced it differently.

 

I hate this so much.

 

“This” meaning I hate myself for everything I failed to do and say back then. “This” meaning I hate my current life. “This” meaning I hate myself for hating that I am alive, living this terrible, empty, less-than, privileged, stuck in the mud life while Chris is dead.

 

I feel ashamed because “this” is not what he wanted for me. “This” is not living my best life. “This” is trauma. “This” is waking up day after day without the person you were so close to you thought you couldn’t live without. “This” is not what it means to be truly living at all.

 

“This” is why I am constantly seeking distraction. “This” is why I desperately need the pandemic to be over, for me and the kids to be out of the house five days a week. “This” is awful, tortured, looking back, willing to trade anything for getting to go back for even a minute, even to the hardest days when he was alive. “This” is why I run with headphones pulsing music or pumping someone else’s story through my ears. “This” is why I am jealous of the neighboring family coming home to an ordinary night, free from the drama of a terminal brain tumor.

 

The unplugged run still did me good, it was still better to have finished than given up. The exercise tired my body, it brought the tears that frequently (yes, still) need release.

 

Next time, I’ll return to my old habits and allow myself the distraction of being plugged in. After all, there must be a reason that grieving people are advised to get up and take a shower when they’d rather stay in bed, go to work when they’d rather stay home. Distraction serves a helpful purpose.

 

 

 

 

Little Things, Big Things

 It was just a small part of the day, a quick trip to Target. The dog was in the back seat of the car after a walk in the woods so I could not aimlessly wander the aisles. This stop was all business - dog food and shaving items. My son needed a men’s razor and shave gel.

A few days earlier, my oldest child turned fourteen. He is now decidedly taller than me with little trace of his toddler plumpness. He and I have noticed quite a bit of peach fuzz on his face, and I mentioned that whenever he wanted to shave, we could tackle that. He didn’t say much, so I left it there except to acknowledge that it would be strange without Dad. I told him we could easily find resources just like I do when I’m faced with a task Dad used to do. YouTube, of course. In fact, I had learned of a guy who made videos for just this purpose – to help boys whose fathers weren’t around for any reason – and I mentioned that to my son.

A few weeks went by, and then my son said he thought he should shave. He worried out loud that he would never learn without Dad. It was one of the only times he has voiced that kind of concern… My heart felt a stabbing pain for his loss. For Chris’s loss. My mind’s eye traveled back in time to other moments, where a father took absolute delight in teaching his son to use tools. To ride a bike. To fish.  

I don’t know what to say in the face of pain related to Chris’s death that isn’t mine. If I try to dive into the feelings too much, it goes nowhere and feels forced. I know that instantly relating back to my pain is doing the other person a disservice; I think it might be worse than saying nothing, so I try to avoid doing that though the urge is strong and well-intentioned. As in so many other unfixable moments of this experience, first with Chris and later with family members, I listened in this case. I did not want to say nothing, so I simply said I was sorry, that Dad would have loved to teach him. We let it go again.

Later, I found out that my son had privately searched for the YouTube man’s channel after our conversation. Sure enough, there was a video tutorial on shaving and he had watched it. Turns out it didn’t seem so hard and my boy was ready to try. We looked in the bathroom closet. There was a plastic case of six razor cartridges and Dad’s old razor. I had thrown away the used blade on the razor a while back, closing my eyes as I buried the dulled cartridge in the trash, but I saved the handle for just this moment. That act had reminded me of discarding Chris’s electric toothbrush head a few days after he died, I had forced myself to do it while swallowing bile.

The razor handle seemed to be missing a piece to fit to the blades in the refill pack. The scientist in me pulled out my own razor and replacement blades to examine the mechanism for snapping together, and still I couldn’t understand the six cartridges in front of us. The blades obviously needed another piece of plastic to fit to the razor handle. Perhaps I had unknowingly thrown that critical fitting away with the last blade Chris used. It was clear that there was no way for our son to affix the new blades and reuse Chris’s razor handle with the supplies I could find in our house.

It was another disappointment, but I didn’t say anything about that to our son. In fact, I don’t know if using Chris’s razor and blades would have been meaningful to him or if it would have been a burden imposed by me, or just… a means to an end - shaving for the first time in that minute.

Thus, my trip to Target. I tried to make it easy on myself by limiting the time so I couldn’t lose myself in memories and wonderings, the “he should be here, he should get to do this” thoughts. Unfortunately, I spent considerable time in the shaving aisle out of confusion. I saw the same multi-pack of blades lacking the plastic fitting that we had at home, and I didn’t see any razor handles that could use them. I felt stupid. I looked at new razors that came with two replacement blades, seeing the same handle that Chris used but blade cartridges with a plastic fitting. All the while, my brain was working overtime remembering the countless times we ran simple errands together. First it was just us, then it was our family of three, later it became our finished family of four. We preferred to be together whenever possible, even for the mundane stuff, even when a toddler and six-year-old in tow tried our patience, even when I was convinced said six-year-old had lice and I was close to hyperventilating in Target. It was always. Always. ALWAYS safe and comfortable and life-affirming to be together.

Come back. We need you. Please come back.

I swore to myself that I would not cry in Target over this. One more minute in the men’s hygiene aisle and I would, aching for my husband and in disbelief that our boy was becoming a man without his father, so I just grabbed a new razor packaged with two replacement blades. There were too many options for shaving cream and gel, so I forced myself to pick a can without overthinking the choice. I made a beeline for the self-checkout lanes and escaped.

It felt sad, yet good at the same time, to casually present the purchases to my son. He had a need. His dad would be the most natural person to help him, but he’s dead. So, I took care of it in the best and only way I know how.  

My son put the new shaving supplies in “his” bathroom. The lower-level bathroom. The bathroom that Chris arranged to be remodeled and painted himself in the cheerful blue color we chose together. The one the males in the family used for a couple of years, and now just my boy does.

Later, my son shaved for the first time in the privacy of his bathroom. Chris wasn’t there. I was not needed in the room. Apparently, it went quite well without either of us supervising. Just one tiny cut. I provided some advice - put a little piece of tissue on it. The blood will draw the tissue to press against the skin, sealing it off. Miraculously (from my son’s point of view), that worked. Believe it or not, I do know a thing or two.

I am all that my children have now for their daily care, guidance, and ultimate launching into the world. I worry that I am not enough. Still, I do the best I can because there is no other choice. Similarly, the children are forced to be self-reliant and mature beyond their years. That last point may not be all bad, but the tradeoff is terrible. How I wish it were not so…

This was just a small event. Something that my son and I handled. But it was a big reminder that the things Chris lamented he would miss are now happening. Time has passed and the children are growing up. Two years past his death and these kids are entirely different people, much farther down their personal trajectories toward adulthood. Without a doubt, Chris would be shocked by their stature and delighted by their personalities.

Why am I the one still here? Why did I draw the long straw? Why am I not filled with joy at being able to witness this?

With respect to the latter, it is because my heart is full of loss. Surviving and coping require so much, it is still hard to feel any joy. And yet, I am uncomfortable with my selfishness. I have been so focused on my personal pain that sometimes I cannot imagine what others feel. The kids miss Dad even if they don’t talk about it much. Chris has missed so much time with them, so many accomplishments and such growth, and he will miss so much more.

Chris knew and fully understood what I am only now beginning to grasp. Oh, he clearly and deeply knew just what he would miss. At the time, when he talked of disappearing and not getting to see how the kids turned out, I didn’t know what to say. I tried to listen. I tried to be present and not turn away out of fear. I tried not to burden him with my own pain of facing a future without him. I hope I did the right thing in those moments; I hope it was enough. I did the best I could.

I miss him.

We miss him.

He should be here.

This was just a little thing, a blip, but the little things in life are what make it so special. The little things are really the big things, and Chris is missing them all.