To a Young Catholic Widow

You are reading this, perhaps, in the first excruciating spasm of grief.

Maybe you have hardly boxed up the little things in the hospital room—the wedding photo from his bedside table, the “I love you” drawing painstakingly crayoned by your child.  Maybe you’ve thanked doctors and nurses with a graciousness you did not feel, hating that they were about to go home to their families while you lingered here, helpless, in this gutted shell that has become your home.  And hating yourself for feeling that way.

Or maybe you’ve waded through a sea of horrific practical details, astonished at your own cool grasp of what’s required.   Arranging for the recovery of his pickup truck, since you have no idea what happened to the keys.  Checking boxes on forms to show that you know you’ll be kicked off of his insurance at the end of the month.   Filling in details for the state trooper who knocked on your door on what started as the last normal night of your life.

Maybe you’ve sat in rooms with sympathetic professionals and calmly picked out names of pallbearers, readings for the funeral…He would have liked this.  This reminds me of him.  Or maybe, even, this is what we planned out.  Choosing “Lord of All Hopefulness” because his “strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe.”  Thinking that one of these loving and strangely mundane actions is going to help just a bit…and maybe it does…for a moment…

But it doesn’t last. 

You are reading this, perhaps, at three ‘o’ clock in the morning.  Again.  Desperately hoping against hope that something you read is going to take the edge off, just a tiny bit.  Considering, with the mirthless humor that permeates your bizarre new world, how nice it would be to have a good friend in a distant time zone.  Because you don’t want to drag your mom out of bed again in the middle of the night.  She’s carrying so much of your pain already.  Maybe she, at least, can rest.

You are reading this, maybe, with your baby cradled in your lap, mechanically nursing, staring at nothing, wishing that you could die but knowing that it’s not an option with this precious little person who needs you.  But you ask anyway, to the extent you can pray at all right now: “Jesus, Mary!”  You can’t manage much more.  “Mary, Jesus…”

The walls stifle you with their silence, broken only by the mournful cry of another train whistle.  You straighten up slightly when the garbagemen show up.  Anything to crack through this intolerable monotony.  As the bags thud into the back of the truck, you stare at the flashing lights, absurdly grasping at the possibility that you aren’t utterly alone.  You mark each hour as it passes, your eyes stuck permanently open.

Somehow—though nothing makes any sense—the time crawls by…

Maybe it’s been a few months, or a few years, and that stealthy grief pads along beside you, noiseless and inattentive till it freezes you with its catlike stare.  The opening of a drawer booby-trapped with searing memories.  The chance meeting with a friend who asks about him, not realizing that he—

He steps suddenly through the window in a shower of cherry blossoms.  You pepper him with joyous questions.  Where have you been?  Where did you get that scar on your cheek?  He beams at you and folds his arms around you with a teasing explanation that he had to go check on his mother first…

And you open your eyes, conscious of your soaked pillow.  It was just another dream.  Here come the garbagemen, once again, on their interminable nightly round.

Maybe you’ve walked into a room packed with family members, each one flanked by a spouse, and you’ve walked right back out again.  Or you’ve gritted your teeth, flashing an Oscar-winning smile, mouthing “Happy Birthday” along with everyone else, while secretly asking, “Why me?  What have I done to deserve this desolation?”  Or you’ve hid in the kitchen, scrubbing a vast mountain of holiday dinner dishes, because it hurts less to be by yourself.  Maybe you’ve done all of these things…on the same day.

In a few years, you are watching your child playing alone in the park.  Maybe it’s too late now for the houseful of siblings you’d imagined. 

“Mom, do you want to watch me fly my kite?” he asks, and you grudgingly follow him, riddled with the sense of being second-best.

Jogging down the field, he flings it upward.  It struggles to gain altitude and then, suddenly, a wayward gust jerks it perfectly vertical.  The row of wide stripes billows against the wind—deep blue, safety yellow, emerald and scarlet.  You inhale deeply, pushing away the thousand little stresses and demands of the day.  This sunlit afternoon you are flying a kite…and the time is fleeting.

After a while, you help him disassemble the spars, roll up the sail, and tuck everything away into its plastic case.  “Mom, you’re quiet,” he says, with that deep gravity that is so soothing and yet so shattering.  “Are you sad?”

He has asked this question so many times over the years, and you have answered it without shying away from the truth.  You have been sad, and you are often sad still.  But just for now, maybe, you sense a spreading streak of something like oil rainbows on water.  You take a moment to get your bearings before answering him, and then you gaze down into his worried small face.

“No,” you answer softly, “Sometimes it’s better not to talk.  You just have to be there.”

His understanding look folds into yours, and the moment ascends like incense at Benediction.