I have had some really interesting conversations recently
regarding the words “closure” and “journey”, so regularly used when discussing
the state of my widowed positions. I’ve used those exact words myself many
times, casually flipped out there like a business card to anyone who is
interested. Just for the sake of conversation, I looked up the Merriam-Webster official
descriptions of these two heavily over-used nouns:
Closure: a feeling that a
bad experience (such as a divorce or the death of a family member) has ended
and that you can start to live again in a calm and normal way
So, umm, let me think for a moment … my wife died after we
were together for 35 years (yup, a bad experience, her dying that is, not the
35 years), so while her being next to me ended, my memories and her impacts on
me will never end. I haven’t stopped living, in spite of Bunny being gone, and
living in a calm and normal way? Truthfully, I have no idea what the hell that
means.
Calm and normal was when she was alive and healthy. Calm and
normal would be me coming home from work to find her sitting in her studio
working on one of the designs, a dog on her lap, the TV blaring, with her
talking on the phone to who-the-heck-knows and then me getting shoo’d away when
I kissed her on the top of the head because I was interrupting this delicate
balance of work, yakking and the nightly news. After 35 years, that was calm
and normal. So I can’t go back to calm and normal, no how, no way.
Now, just about two years from the start of the really
significant decline in Bunny’s health, when the whole world went to crap, I can
say that I’m calm. Or, calmer than I was when she was in trouble and fading.
But it’s not a calm in the way that it’s suggested in that casually flipped out
phrase. It’s entirely different.
And normal? There will never be the normal that I knew for
well over half of my life. That ship has sailed away and will not return.
Normal now is a completely different set of parameters than it was in the past,
not necessarily better or worse, but most definitely different.
So, do I have closure? Nope, not by that definition …
Journey: an act or instance
of traveling from one place to another
Bunny’s death wasn’t any type of journey. It was getting
full body slammed by the entire defensive line of the NY Giants for the 4th
time, directed by her nemesis, cancer. There was no trip, no longer any forward
progress, just a huge F-U by a seriously pissed off group of cancer cells that
were sick and tired of her beating them down. Her “journey” stopped with the
proclamation “stage 4 metastatic cancer”. Stopped dead in its tracks.
My journey? I guess when actually thinking about it, I’ve
always assumed a journey implied something with a bit more positive ending than
“I’m sorry for your loss”. How about the word “detour?” Now that might bear
some fruit, because I’ve rarely taken a detour that wasn’t shitty in some way
or the other. It always slowed me down, made me late, pissed me off and
generally was not a positive thing.
All of that being said, I think I’m giving “closure” and
“journey” the old heave-ho from my daily lexicon. While I generally try to look
at a poor circumstance and seek a way to not get stuck in the quagmire of
whatever the bad stuff might be, I’m very sure that there will never be any
closure for me with my wife dying. Period. I’ll learn to live with it but it is
not closure in any way.
Bunny’s journey instantly imploded, stopped right in its
tracks. I’ll continue to live, moving forward and living out my life. But it’s
not a journey; it’s a whole brand new trip. I’m lucky to be able to have found
another partner to travel with as we explore completely new things. She, too,
had a journey come to a screeching halt … “sorry Miss, it’s the end of the
line, the journey is over” and will have no closure, either. But together we
can go in a whole new direction and we’re taking our departed spouses with us
every step of the way, grateful for the many years we had and equally grateful
for the new opportunities that await us.
For me, getting bogged down in platitudes like closure and
journey do a significant disservice to both the wonderful 35 years I had with
Bunny and to the possibilities that await me as I start my next chapter. I’m
finding that thinking of my existence as a series of chapters in an on-going
life more accurately describes how I view the world and aids in my ability to
get past the bad stuff and keep on living. I can look for closure or I can go
on to the next chapter, where the next part of my life is awaiting me. So I’m
turning the page, excited to see what is in this next chapter, but remembering
every detail of the story line that I’ve already read.