A Form of Homelessness

Marriages come in all shapes and sizes. The marriage I had with Susan was such that everything I did was in service of that marriage.  To paraphrase mystery writer Raymond Chandler  about his marriage "She was the light of my life, my whole ambition. Anything else I did was just the fire for her to warm her hands by. That is all there is to say".  Think about your very best high school friend, someone you hung around with all the time, shared your deepest and darkest secrets. your bad jokes, your music and so on.  Now imagine being married to that person, and having all the wonder of that high school relationship wrapped in the intimacy and love of a marriage.  That is what mine was like. 

I was recently away for a couple of weeks, and was constantly reminded of the fact that there was no one at home waiting for me to show up.  It is a daunting thought after 20 years of togetherness. 

Susan and I regarded each other as 'home'.  Home is a state of mind more than it is a place. And we were home to one another.  Susan used to say that we 'did good home' for ourselves and our kids, and indeed for anyone who came by.  It was a place of safety, warmth and love, and everyone could feel it.  

So what are you when that is gone, blown to smithereens by the viciousness of cancer? I would submit that in a very real way, those of us who have been widowed, are homeless. And the challenge is for us to figure out how to rebuild that home and create a safe haven for ourselves. 

I will be exploring that challenge in the next few posts, so stay tuned. 

Suffice it to say that while I have a perfectly serviceable roof over my head and have all the basic necessities of life, not only do I miss Susan with every fiber of my being, but also miss the essence of marriage, which at least for us was that we served as witnesses to each other's lives.  I miss that the most.

 

Mothers' Day

This is my first Mothers' Day without Susan. We are coming up on six months, but this is the first significant "day of celebration" without her.  My sense is that this is a biggie because she was so involved in being a mom. She loved her kids and her kids' sweeties with immense passion and regard. And because of her huge commitment to motherhood, I learned to be a pretty good stepfather, an honor I would not trade for any other thing of value in my life to date.

I am also thinking of my own mother, widowed at the age of 36, and how horrific it must have been for her at a time when little was known about grief and how it works.  She was expected, as were we all (I was told time and again at the age of 10 that 'now I had to be the man of the family') to just pick up and move on. Infinitely easier said than done.

So to Susan, my beautiful princess, mother extraordinaire:Happy Mothers' Day.

And to my own mom, who did the very best she could under awful circumstances:my undying gratitude to you for giving me those things you did. An appreciation of beauty, of art and literature and science; a skeptic's curiosity.  Happy Mothers' Day to you as well.

I will be blogging here from time to time about grief and related issues.  Thanks for reading!