Being in love with a grieving person has to be similar to being in love with a crazy person. I suppose I feel somewhat qualified to make that call, as I have been a grieving person several times over, and I once dated a man who ended up in a mental hospital. Oh, my twenties.
I often wonder where I would be in my grieving process had it not been for my wonderful husband, who we'll call P for the rest of this blog. I'll ask him this sometimes, usually at the end of a particularly rough crying jag, beating myself up about not being able to handle this on my own. "Well, you don't have to handle this on your own, so it doesn't really matter," P always says. But the part of me who was taught to rely only on herself by a single parent, the part of me that forgot that lesson and let my ex-husband steer me onto the brink of financial ruin, my survival instincts have said "Don't trust that guy. Adorable curly hair aside, he might be shady."
The day my mother died, P and I were on vacation. Thankfully, it was a "stay-cation," and we were taking advantage of the long weekend of July 4th. Adding two extra days off, we had about a week to do the things in our city that we hadn't managed to experience yet. A full list of restaurants, a few pairs of theatre tickets booked, we were ready to relax. "Part of me just doesn't want to do anything," I told a work friend my last day at the office.
Our first day off was Friday, July 1st. We got up and had breakfast and went to an antique store. The store had a couple of those frames with butterflies under glass. I remember lingering there, and remembering the one my mother had hanging in her bedroom, for years, in all of the houses I had ever lived in. I had always loved it, amazed at the beauty of the wings. Standing in the antique store at 11am that day, I thought that I'd like to have my mom's frame one day for my own home. Of course, "one day" is the euphemism our death-scared culture uses for "when that person no longer has use for it because they are no longer alive."
Next we had lunch at a restaurant we had never tried, and over our meal, I told my husband the story of my parent's courtship, and my dad's childhood. Then we went home, I saw that my mom had called, and her message said, "Don't bother to call me back, I know you guys are on vacation." But I did. And I'm so glad I did.
The next phone call I would receive would actually be seven phone calls. We were sitting in a park near Lake Shore Drive, watching a movie on a large inflatable screen. Sitting in a sea of strangers all spread out on blankets, I simply wanted to check the time. When I pulled my phone out of my backpack, I saw that I had missed seven calls. In about an hour. My mom's cell, my step-father's cell, his daughter's cell. Something was going on.
Since I made that phone call back to my step-sister, since I stumbled back to our blanket and told him that my mom had died, P has been the strongest man in the world. I practically fell down onto our blanket, still barefoot for our summer night in the grass and said, almost like a question, "My mom is dead?" He sighed sharply,and it was as if a switch flipped. He instantly gathered all of our belongings--two pairs of shoes, snacks, backpack--and wrapped them all in the blanket. "Let's get a cab home," was all he said. But I demanded to walk the short distance back, thinking the worst thing right now might be sitting in a hot cab with a stranger driving, even if only for five minutes around the block. We maybe got five feet out of the crowd when I collapsed, wailing, a barefoot crying woman in a dark park with a man hovering over her, trying to pull her along. People probably think he's trying to kidnap me, I thought.
He sat down with me, got my shoes out of the blanket, and put them on my feet. He waited until I could stand, helped me do it, and we began walking again. He called my adoptive fathers and made sure they could take our dog. He didn't tell me to calm down as we walked past others, me sobbing, asking into the city night, "What am I going to do?" He got me home, and as I raced into the bathroom to throw up, he bought bus tickets to my hometown. For two.
What I have to remind myself right now is that at this point he was just a boyfriend. One who was living with me, but just a boyfriend all the same. But he made it clear that this journey I had just been thrust into was not mine alone. The next morning, after having not slept all night, we sat on the el heading downtown to catch our bus. Two stops in, an obviously mentally ill individual stepped onto the train and poised to punch me in the face. I was so out of it, I literally just stared back at her. P stood up, and gently pushed the woman to the other side of the train. When we finally reached the bus, he worked out a ticketing snafu with the driver as I banged my head against the bus door. When we boarded, he chose seats, situated my belongings, and held my hand. When the bus doors opened again in my hometown, he alighted with me, entering this strange new world by my side. He helped my step-family, people who I don't even know really, make food, find legal documents, make phone calls. He got all of my close friends there. He tried to get me to eat. He reminded me to shower. He laughed with me at my inappropriate macabre humor, and let me cry and throw legit toddler-like tantrums.
If it hadn't sunk in yet that we'd crossed some kind of threshold in our relationship that weekend, that came the night before the funeral. I come from a family of only children. It's not big. We were already pulling step-family men to act as pallbearers. We needed one more. It had crossed my mind to ask P, but it's a strange thing to do."So you don't know these people. Fuck, I don't either. And I know we haven't really talked too much about where you and I are headed together, but would you help carry my mother's casket?" It's a lot. But I didn't have to ask. Because he offered.
Shit gets real when you see the man you love literally and actually carry your mother to her grave.
I realize now that P was actually one of the last people to see my mother. He was the one out of the two of us to see her for the last time before her casket was closed. I looked at her, and then I was ushered outside to the waiting car. He and the other pallbearers stayed as the casket lid came down, and then they carried her out. After she was placed in the hearse, he came over to stand with me and my step-father. "Thank you for doing that," my step-father said. "It's my honor," P replied.
I watched him carry her up the precarious stone steps to the church she loved, steps I had walked with her when she remarried there in 2005 and I was her maid of honor. I followed him as he carried her down the center aisle of the church. I laid in his arms in the front row after giving my eulogy, crying like a maniac for the rest of the service. Yes, I was actually laying down in the pew.
I followed him as he carried her out of the church at the end to the waiting hearse. And when we got to the cemetery and I watched him bear the weight of the woman who raised me one more time, as I held a close friend's hand I said to her, "If I don't know now, I never will."
Two week after we got home, I proposed to him.
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