November 13 2008
About 2 1/2 weeks after we arrived back in the states, we went to see Ruth’s sister.
One awkward thing happened the day we went to the State Fair. Actually the whole day was a little strange, because we weren't sharing that day with Ruth. She loved this stuff.
Since Ruth and Esther are sisters, they do share some similarities. And there was another Asian college friend with us as well. So...
At the midway, a barker was enticing us to play his game. We were going to anyway, so he didn't have to work so hard. Anyway, he said to the kids..."come on, you guys know you want to beat your mom at this game!" Of course there was no response from our part, good or ill, in fact. So he tried harder. "Hey you guys know you want to beat your mom, like she beats you at home."
Really awkward.
No telling what he was thinking about us. ‘Tough crowd’ maybe.
Things like that are going to happen, and they will be easier to deal with, maybe even humorous, but not that day.
We all had a small wry smile about it in the car on the way back, not really a good laugh, but a little strange ‘funny’.
The fair incident was awkward. A friend used the phrase 'huge hole' to describe what was going on. I completely agree. I'll explain later.
It's so hard to get a handle on this grief thing.
It looks different all the time. It's the Cheshire Cat of emotions. Like the weekend after the fair, grief looked like cargo shorts and darth vader t-shirt, with tears riveling down an 11 year old face behind a backwards cowboy hat pulled down to hide the pain. An 11 year old face, but a heart much older.
He is growing up too fast.
The hole is not a wide chasm. (I sorted this out the day of the fair. I hate not being able to put a label on an emotion. Once more I find grief elusive.) The hole, I found, is smaller across than I thought, but unfathomably deep. Like the hole in the yard where the tree used to be. You know it's there, but you forget exactly where until you step in it and it breaks your ankle.
We can be going along, making jokes and enjoying one another, then one of us will get that far away look I've grown sickeningly accustomed to. The look that sighs, "I wish...".
It's the guilt that gets me. Feeling guilty for having fun without her. Laughing when it seems incongruous with the feelings we 'should' be feeling. Wow, that 'should' opens a whole conversation on propriety and moving forward through the grieving. And I can hear people saying things like,
"She wouldn't want you to feel guilty..."
The truth in that statement doesn't change the feelings. Much like the truth about engaging in spiritual disciplines doesn't change the feelings of "I really wish I were doing something else right now".
A caring friend who carved some time out of an incredibly crazy busy schedule just to meet with us for breakfast taquitos at Whataburger was trying to reach out and console, and he succeeded, but he rethought many things he said after we had a chance to hash things out. He said it must be like half of me is gone. Well...
It's different than that.
See, what had happened is that through the last three years or so, Ruth and I had built a close friendship as well as a marriage. So when she was gone, I had lost a wife, a best friend and something else. The whole mystery of two being one entails the development of a third personality. There is me. There is her. There is us. Can't completely explain it. I've tried. I guess if I could, it wouldn't be a mystery.
So I lost her, and we, and a best friend. Wow, I just now realized something else while I was writing this. I lost Us too. For 11 years we have been "8 Shoreys". Now we are 7 Shoreys.
Us is a different number. In the car. At the table. At the movies. At the restaurant. In the pew.
Andrew and I share many things, one of which is the feeling of settledness we experience when all 8 of us are together. It is valium. It feels like placing the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Turning in grades. Kissing the last child goodnight.
That's why the hole is deep. Layers of loss. Bottomless doesn't begin to describe...
But there are 7. That is our new number. We live with it. As long as we live. As long as we live.
I choose to live.
New traditions must start, we certainly can't do things just like we used to. Christmas is daunting, but that baby in the manger will be born all over again. And stockings will be stuffed like before. Wonderful stockings we will touch with new appreciation. Because the hands that made them loved the hands that touch them.
But it will still be a celebration. We will sing again. And do silly things that will become inside jokes. New may be hard, but it is still good.
New defines us.
But I’d do anything to bring back the old days. And not just the good ones either.
Kevin
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