The night we didn't meet

Nineteen years ago tonight, I laid eyes on my husband for the first time. Sounds auspicious doesn't it? It wasn't. Far from it actually.

After finishing up coursework for my master's degree -- working full-time and going to school full-time -- I was ready for just about anything, socially speaking. So when a friend told me she was two-stepping, I was interested. Country dancing had taken hold across the country not just in Texas. I had wanted to try it. While athletically inclined, I have no dancing skills and line dancing was my last chance.

I met Julie and her sister-in-law at the dance hall. We took over a small table with four chairs by the dance floor. In no time, this tall lanky guy sauntered up (he actually walked, but were in a country bar so “saunter” it is). He was wearing a short-sleeve checkered shirt, blue jeans and boots. He didn’t look much the cowboy. No hat, and his close-cropped dark hair looked more military than country. His smile and ease in talking with Julie and her sister-in-law let me know this wasn’t the first time he’d been at their table. I didn’t expect him to ask me to dance, but he didn’t nod or even glance my way much less give me a “Howdy M’am.”

 

I didn’t exist.

 

After a few pleasantries with the girls, he and Julie headed for the dance floor.

  

A few minutes later, the two were back at the table just long enough for Cowboy Joe to ask the sister-in-law to dance – again without a look my way. On and on the evening went. Was this some sort of line-dance initiation? I waited for one of the “all dance” dances -- the equivalent of cotillion or a bad sock hop. The men form a ring inside; women outside. Dance with a partner and rotate onto the next. It wasn’t much, but I was out of the house and I’m was out with men.

Between going to school full-time and my daytime career, I had been too exhausted to date or do anything else. My big treat was doing laundry on Saturday nights, watching the TV show “Sisters,” and missing my only one in Tennessee.

During the months of graduate school, I could only think of how pitiful my life as a single woman had become. I was moderately successful in the work world, but my love life seemed an abysmal failure. We’d gone through two presidential administrations in the time since my last real relationship. The President of the United States was dating more than I was – and he was already married.

I spent most of my first night at Cactus Annie’s as a spectator except for the “all come” dances. The tall guy kept coming back and asking my two friends to dance, with hardly a glance at me much less an invitation to dance.

“What a tall, rude man,” I thought.

Yep, that summed up my first impression of the man who would become my husband.

Terrifying Grief

I’ve been trying to open myself to the idea of really remembering my marriage.

There's a problem that I only realized in the last week or so, maybe I don't want to remember. It's too hard. It's too big. I'm afraid my heart or head will explode if I really look at the life I had. Every now and again, it's as if I open a door just an eighth of an inch and the light of what was my marriage – my life -- is so beautiful, it's blinding. It’s glorious and excruciating at the same time. Really looking at it and remembering is frightening. What if I open that door and go in and the pain of the loss is so great that I can’t take it?

A week after Gene died, I had a dream. I was standing outside what appeared to be a mountain that had a small opening like the entry to a cave. I wouldn’t go in. I wouldn’t take a step toward the opening. From where I was standing, I could hear sounds from inside and could see glimpses. I was being drawn toward the opening. It was as if I knew I was supposed to go in.

 

I can’t remember what I saw or heard, but I remember being terrified of it. It seemed to be some sort of hell with all of the ugliness, excruciating pain, fear and darkness.  I was afraid that if I took a step in there, I might never find my way out. And then I woke up.

I knew right then that inside that doorway was my grief, and if I had gone in there, the grief would consume me. I would freeze in fear, unable to breathe or to move. Then how would I ever get out? It was the most terrifying place I had ever heard or imagined.

Now, a year later, I am stronger but am I strong enough to face grief and enter the opening? To look at my marriage, remember – and feel – how wonderful it was? To truly experience that loss?

 

I want to. I want to remember. I want to feel. I want to appreciate all that I had. I already do appreciate it but there’s a level of appreciation I haven’t gotten to – the level that lets you smile at the memory instead of cry or just block emotion altogether.

I know I have to go through this. Gene wanted me to really live my life, and I’m not. I suspect this is the only way – to enter the cave/mountain of grief.

 
I think I’m strong enough to enter. I just wish I knew what happens after that.

A little background to get started

June 7, 2012, my husband, Gene, died of cancer. He was the light of my life, my best friend, my soul mate. My Everything.

I'm seeing a grief counselor every now and again. Sometimes once a week. Sometimes once every six or eight weeks. Just whenever I need to talk. And yet, most of the time I don't even know what to say. Grief has robbed me of the words. There are no words. But the counselor lost her husband, too, and she gets it. All of it. The weirdness, the confusion, the lack of interest, the blah that life has become even though life is really quite good. The inability to enjoy life.

I can't even enjoy the memory of my marriage because I can't remember it. I still can't hear Gene's voice, although the other day I thought I heard it faintly for the first time since before he died. I can't remember his laugh. I can recall memories of our life together but they come to me like facts. There's just no feeling behind the memory. Sometimes, it's as if my 15-year marriage is a distant memory, like high school.
 

Happy beyond words

But I do remember one thing: Once I was happy beyond words.

I woke up every day with a smile and went to bed the same way. I literally thanked God every morning and every night for the life I was living with Gene.

No matter what else went on during the day that might rattle me, at the end of the day, I went home to the man who made my life safe and complete. I went home to my better half -- the other half of me.

Gene was my port in the storm. When I was with him, my heart was home. And now my heart is lost or at least being held for ransom. And my life is that ransom. I get my heart back when I die? But I don't want to die – at least not anymore..

Forgetting = self-protection

The fact that I can't remember my marriage is bothersome, frustrating, and sad but it's also OK. Because I can't remember, I have been able to function. I'm on my feet and have been since the day Gene died. And that's probably the biggest shock so far. That grief isn't what I expected. For a while, I thought I must be doing it wrong. I mean, how could a person love beyond a depth she ever believed was possible and then just poof, go on with life? Eat, sleep (at least some), brush her teeth, go to work, go to the grocery, out with friends. Do things that seem like life is normal when it's anything but.
 

Before Gene died, I had semi-arranged for  a friend to take over paying my bills if Gene died because I truly thought I would be in the fetal position for weeks, unable to eat, shower or work. But that didn't happen. I paid the bills, I took care of all of the important documents and papers I had to file. I rearranged banking and investments. (Gene kept a cursory list of stuff, but we never discussed it in depth. We never wanted to "go there" and discuss "what if" because we wanted to believe he could still beat the disease.)

And yet through all of that I just marched on. Sad at times, crying at time but not nearly as much as I expected.

Time to remember?

It's a year later, I know I've made progress. I feel different, and yet I feel no different since the day I lost him. My life is good by many people's standards. And while I see the colors of life, it's as if I'm living in black and white. Although I guess that's an upgrade from the earlier months when I felt like an alien on this planet without Gene.

The counselor has been encouraging me to write "our story" -- Gene's and mine. She thinks if I write about one memory, it will trigger another and another and so on, and I’ll be able to remember the great life I had, grieve its loss and have it remain a wonderful, comforting memory.

In our first meeting, the counselor told me, you can't go around grief; you have to go through it. Sooner or later. Maybe she's right. Maybe it's time to write -- and remember.