A few days ago there was a post on Facebook that read something along these lines:
“Have you ever missed someone so much that even the thought of them made you burst into tears?”
It made me stop. And smile. And think.
A loss, especially a sudden loss, makes for some powerful memories. These memories never completely go away. And occasionally they will bring a tear or two, even after many years.
I offer this analogy:
Dig a hole in your backyard. A deep hole. After a while you decide it’s time to fill in the hole, but you discover the dirt is gone. So you cover it with some wood, put new sod down, maybe plant some flowers. Eventually, everyone who looks will see only what you want them to see. Grass and flowers and everything is fine.
But the hole is still there. And it always will be.
Any loss can be devastating, but an abrupt, unexpected loss can be very traumatic. A heart attack for example. And then there are those where the body remains, but the mind is forever changed, the brain injured beyond repair. The person you once knew, gone forever.
A different person left in her place.
It’s been many years since this happened to me and my family and I’ve written about it numerous times. Writing about it now, the old familiar ache way down deep in my gut, is there again.
AKA, the hole.
I consider myself fortunate, because throughout the years of taking care of Susie, and getting to know this very changed person, I discovered I’d fallen in love all over again. And so had she. It only served to reaffirm something I’ve written many times:
“If we’d been born in different countries, we still, somehow, would have found each other.”
Having said that, every now and then, I desperately miss the girl I married almost 35 years ago, occasionally to the point of tears.
She was the beautiful, sweet and mostly innocent 17-year-old girl next door when we met in 1979. I was the older man in a military uniform, home on leave after two and one-half years overseas. I was smitten, but she had a boyfriend. He drove a Volkswagen and I had a Peugeot.
It was almost too easy. Eighteen months later we were married.
The next 21 years was a mixture of just about everything. We were a smorgasbord of life and matrimony. Some of the things I did made her mad, and some of the things she did …
Okay, it was mostly me.
Ultimately, we developed into a team. We lived together, worked our drycleaning business together and built a life that was comfortable and happy and rarely had a dull moment.
And then it all changed.
But I’ve covered up the hole that was left when her heart stopped for just a little too long that day in September of 2001. She has certain limitations now, and that makes me her caregiver. I try to make her happy. I work very hard to take care of her and make sure the rest of her life is as wonderful as she made mine the day she married me.
Of course, when I think about it, it’s always been that way. I just wish I’d have shown it more before …
Well, before.
I have the Garth Brooks song “The Dance” on my iPod. For those of you who just crawled out of a cave and are unfamiliar, the gist of the song describes my life, almost as if he is singing to me, or about me.
Susie and I danced for almost 21 wonderful, glorious years before her heart attack.
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end
The way that it would go
Whenever it plays, no matter what I’m doing, I stop and listen, just as I did yesterday. It brought back the Facebook post. The hole in my heart is uncovered, and my eyes moisten, once again. While the song plays, I dance with her in my mind and in my memories, and I long to dance again.
Even after nearly 14 years.
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss
The Dance.
Written by Rick Jacobs. Contact him at rick45@aol.com.
