So I am incredibly cranky today. I’m pissed. I’m pissed about everything. Everything seems to be setting me off.
I normally direct my anger about being a widow at God, or myself (I usually feel like one of us screwed it up, somehow). Today, I have a new one. I’m mad at my husband.
How dare he? How dare he have the audacity to go ahead and die in his sleep? Without first throwing away his own baby teeth? Maybe being a little organized with where the title of his f-ing truck is? He was pretty good at taking care of me in life; he really sucks at taking care of me in death.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what it would be like if the roles were reversed. It seems so random, the way he died. So it seems like it could have so easily been me that died in my sleep, and left him here. I’ve been thinking about that this morning. I often think, “Would he be dating by now?” or “What stuff of mine would he have kept and would he be driving my car?” So it’s been funny to think about “What would have pissed him off?” This is actually making me laugh. Probably my closet (I keep WAY too many clothes that I don’t wear).
Oh, I loved him so much, but he was not perfect. Even though he’s dead he can still make me crazy.
This is actually really encouraging to me, and I'll tell you why: so often, we want to idealize those who have died. They are perfect in our memories, or at least we want to believe them so, and we never ever want to speak ill of them.
ReplyDeleteHow false and unfaithful to their complexity and human-ness! When I was mad at Blake, I knew I had rounded some invisible corner and I was going to be okay. It's hard to describe, because I certainly wrestled with anger at God (coming back to lamely declaring, "But You're God, and I'm not, and that's what really matters. And I still need you desperately."), with anger at others who did it all wrong and still have their husbands, with anger at the unfairness of it all.
Reminds me of a Mindy Smith song: "And I been crying / trying to make sense / of all this shit / he left me to tend / I'm just wondering / I need to ask / is my sweet man coming back?"
I really like to emphasize the word SHIT when I sing it.
I love you. When we get to see them again, I firmly believe we'll sucker punch them in the gut, then hug them tightly around the neck for about a hundred years. Both things will feel really really good.