There are some things that can’t be imagined in advance.
Before I got married the first time, I thought I knew what I was getting into…until I took my first step down the aisle, looked at my fiance beaming back at me, and realized I had made a huge mistake. A mistake that would take two years to fully unravel.
Before I went into labor with my first child, I thought I could anticipate what labor would feel like…until the first contraction hit. Despite taking childbirth classes, talking to other women, and having experienced extreme pain in a car accident earlier in my life — nothing had fully prepared me for the intensity of labor.
Before I lost my father last month, I would have told you I was prepared for the death of my parents, whenever it might come. That I had done enough “work” on whatever issues I’d had with them. That I was complete.
Until the moment when the funeral home representative came to the hospital room to collect his body.
I had been there 14 hours that day, gathered with my mother, my brothers, their wives, one of my nieces. As we acknowledged together that it was time to let him go. As he was removed from the medications and machines. As his breathing and his heart gradually wound down.
I couldn’t bring myself to leave the room when the rest of the family left. Couldn’t leave him sitting alone in the bed. I secretly hoped it would be hours before they might get around to removing him to the morgue. I played Rickie Lee Jones on the little CD Player I had brought in weeks before, when he was first admitted. And I waited.
On some level, I knew that life had suddenly changed — more dramatically than I could have anticipated. I knew that when I left the hospital for the last time, I would be in the after. I would be making arrangements, figuring out what to do with all that he left behind, supporting the family, grieving.
I had done those things before. My father-in-law died while I was married to my first husband. My best friend’s father died several years ago. People have been getting married, getting divorced, having babies and losing parents since the dawn of time. People close to me.
And yet, this time, just like all those other times…I was not prepared.
Not for the heaviness I felt in my chest for weeks. Not for the profound silence that would come over me. Not for the stillness I felt inside myself. Not for the lack of oxygen in my lungs. Not for the lack of words, even in private places, let alone these public places where I generally share openly and fully.
And certainly not for the razor-sharp clarity I suddenly felt. Priorities that I had struggled with became much clearer. My tolerance for the ridiculous behavior of other people became almost nil. And my resistance to doing the things I most wanted to do in my life fell away.
Much as our mind tries — it is ultimately our body and our spirit that rules us. It is figuring out how to take the next breath…and the one after that…and the one after that. How to get up out of the chair, turn off the music, shake the hand of the funeral director, and let him take away the body of the man you’ve called your father for the last 33 years.
I am still early in this journey. I am sure there is more to come. All I know for now, is that it was a watershed experience. Clearly an ending and a beginning rolled into one.
I no longer have the hubris to think that I can anticipate what might come next. That I can prepare. That I can know, in advance of a moment, how I might feel.
There is a freedom in that. And a confirmation that this is, truly, a sensual life that we live. A life of opening by experience, of knowing through feeling, of being through our humanity. An unanticipated life. Which it appears, from my current vantage point, is the only kind.
So very well put. I lost my Mother almost four weeks ago. The emptiness is completely shattering. I also thought I would be OK. It happens to all of us. It’s normal fact. She doesn’t suffer this life any more. Bah! I find every day a painful ordeal. But you have put it so well, I find solace in your words.