Birthday

Today marks the 71st birthday of my husband, Doug.  Needless to say, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about him leading up to this day.  I’ve also continued to think about detours.

Just as I became used to being alone and rather enjoying it, another path was laid before me.  Quite unexpectedly, I met someone.  God literally dropped this wonderful man at my front door and we had a fairly instant connection.  We’ve begun a serious relationship which seems to not have an end.

Ironically, I met him five days before I left to go on a grief and comfort retreat for the weekend at a Presbyterian run retreat center in the Texas Hill Country. Back in December, the pastor at my church told me about the retreat and said that if I wanted to attend, the church would make it possible for me.  I enthusiastically said “yes” as I hadn’t had any opportunities to work on grieving in any sort of formal way.  I had been grieving more since the one year anniversary of Doug’s passing so I had been looking forward to getting away and learning more about the grieving process.

To say I was confused during the retreat weekend would be an extreme understatement.  There I was, working through a myriad of feelings and sorting out all of my experiences of the past year while, at the same time, receiving beautiful text messages from this amazing person.  I literally had one foot in the past and another in the future, looking forward to the possibility of a new life.  I spoke to the lead facilitator and, contrary to what I thought she’d say, she told me to embrace the new and enjoy the awakening feelings I was experiencing.

One of my friends told me that when a person has experienced a loving relationship like the one I had with Doug, they recognize another  when it comes again.  I recently went to the wedding of a dear friend.  The man he married was a widower.  I struck up a conversation with the best man who told me he was a therapist.  In the course of our conversation, I shared with him that I was a widow of just 14 months.  He told me something that stuck with me.  He told me that he really believes that some people are just made to be in relationship and that I am obviously one of those people.  Perhaps.  I didn’t think so before meeting my new love.  In fact, I keep thinking about what I told Lorie the morning Doug died.  I said “well, my life is effectively over.”  Apparently there were other plans for me that I wouldn’t have believed at the time.

What I know is that Doug’s love for me was so profound that I learned how to love and be loved for a long time. Thirty years.   I know that no relationship is perfect.  Doug’s and mine wasn’t  and this new one certainly isn’t without some challenges.  I also know how to work through those challenges and that the work is so worth it.  I credit Doug’s love for making it possible for me to love and be loved again.

Friends tell me how happy they are to see me smiling again.  Sometimes I feel like a walking sunbeam, finding it difficult to contain my joy.  I think of the e.e. cumming’s poem:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

To honor Doug in the weeks to come, I’ll be doing this:  Doug liked to ride  his bicycle on his birthday.  He would ride whatever age he turned. He had a route around our neighborhood and continued to ride his age in miles up until about the year he turned 65.  One year I remember some of my students setting up a lemonade stand and cheering him on with posters as he rode round and round and round.  I won’t be able to do 71 miles all at once but my bike is out of storage and waiting for me.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be on it, riding round and round as the past and future merge together into happiness.