Never Better

Single Again, and Rediscovering Joy

 

Last year, constant pain defined the month of March. A strange tingling rash had morphed into an intense pain radiating down one side of my body, and within a few days even the slightest touch brought fiery flashes. My primary care physician confirmed my hunch—shingles.

The month passed, the pain subsided, and no longer was my body the enemy. Early treatment had prevented lingering neuralgia. And time healed my physical wounds.

That March marked both my husband’s birthday and the first anniversary of his death. For thirty-seven years, “Married” had been the box I casually checked. And the anguish of my singlehood reappeared each time I needed to describe my new status: “Widowed.”

Another year and another March. But this year I took precautions. First with a flu shot and then with the newly introduced shingles vaccine. With these defenses in place, the question became: “What to do with my heart?”           

Shortly after my husband’s, passing I had written: “The death of your lifelong companion, lover, and friend is a shock beyond understanding. In the face of such eternal loss, joy and opportunity seem gone forever and even unseemly to contemplate. Happiness, beauty, laughter—these are gifts to be shared with your partner, the one who owns a special part of your history and your most cherished memories.”

I found it hard to turn off the vow to love “until death do us part.” Fidelity is not erased with a simple stroke. And half a lifetime is not wiped out by separation in time and space. In fact, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning stated, “Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose / I shall but love thee better after death.”

My husband’s gifts of enduring love still adorn my ring finger. They belie the marital status I must pencil in. Gradually, though, I am accepting that, in the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

In my life now, happiness, beauty, and laughter are seeping back in and lightness is returning. A two-hour road trip with a repaired car radio, for example, revived my childhood enjoyment of country music. The tunes of Rodney Atkins, Josh Turner, and George Strait reignited the ashes of my crush on American’s first singing cowboy, Gene Autry. And in my home, music infiltrates quiet moments. Dancing with the Stars, American Idol—in fact, any musical program—I eagerly anticipate.

Humor, I find, is also making inroads. The written reflections I have used to ease my sorrow have begun to brighten. An unexpected gift of an iPod at Christmas motivated me to mull over my resistance to technological innovations. The approach of Valentine’s Day led me to indulge in chocolate-coated musings. And a bad hair day motivated me to write about my enduring reluctance to cut my hair. To my amazement, this latter writing exercise emboldened me enough to throw caution to the wind. “Why not,” I thought. That week I turned my hairstyle over to the hands of a hairdresser. My locks were lopped, and my demons, exorcised.

As for beauty and joy, two baby boys have helped fill the void left by one wonderful man: Jack, seven months, a preemie who almost didn’t make it onto our family tree, and Brendan, three months, Jack’s cousin and the product of a textbook pregnancy and delivery.

Longfellow once said: “Into each life some rain must fall / Some days must be dark and dreary.” Emerging from the darkness of those days has been my challenge these the past two years. And I’m making it, with the help of family and friends and a newfound creative outlet.

The latest research on grieving indicates that pining for one’s loss is common and normal. Feelings of longing and lamenting, researchers say, tend to peak at six months but they continue over the years, emerging suddenly and unexpectedly. Knowing this gives me comfort.

The words of Kahlil Gibran give me hope for the future: “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

March madness did not strike this year, and the curtain is rising on a promising future.

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All rights reserved. Sally A. Connolly 2007.