It was both at once delicious and utter heartbreak as I crossed a line that was going to change the rest of my life. I was a willing participant, aware of each footstep taking me away from the life I’d had. As I write this I’m grieving not having that depth of lucidity during my life’s most rendering experiences. I would have savored the moments in slow motion, frame by frame - my first kiss; losing my virginity but changing if I could the circumstances of my first time because I was fifteen, he was sixteen and did me like a rabbit, fast and hard, and afterwards I felt shame. I would have cradled, inhaled and played with my children, in awe as each pixel was created. And I would have basked in my parent’s love for me, and pondered what they said because I know now how quickly beautiful things can end.
I got married and had babies and it was easy, but also difficult, because I never took the time to listen to my heart, or my husband’s heart. I was too busy just “doing,” all the while moving and making and patching; too young or not truthful enough with myself or others to know how to repair what was broken.
Two years ago my husband and I watched our youngest child slip from the world while we held his small hands. We two as his parents knew how it felt to love and lose that sweet kid, and for that you would think we were forever bonded together. But our history of dysfunctional crap, the stuff that kills relationships, didn’t die with our son.
It had been years since I liked my husband. He knew it because he would say, “You’re going to leave me someday.” Surprised and provoked by his sad face I told him, “It’s a jinx on a relationship, to make such a statement!” And if he really felt that way then why didn’t he try to fix the BIG things that were wrong and obviously bothering me enough for him to think that one day I was going to leave him? It’s ridiculous and humiliating that my husband and I were back at it again, tearing apart our marriage after suffering such a horrible loss.
After our son died I spent a lot of energy trying to figure out how to run from the massive pain in my chest. Anger for losing my son and how much the poor kid suffered chewed on me. Our anguished, but stoic, 18 year old son couldn’t speak a word about his little brother but I heard him crying at night. And I don’t blame him for never wanting to be at home. I didn’t want to be there either.
My crossroad came in the form of another man. His beautiful hands remind me of a teenaged boy I dated but who in his exploration of my body was as clumsy as this man is adept. I was married for 20 years and wasn’t a virgin the first time I slept with my husband but I had never been touched quite like this.
“I’m wet, I should wipe.” I murmured our first time. I was soaked and embarrassed by the wetness between my legs. If I got this way with my husband I wiped myself with a towel.
“No, no. You’re beautiful like this.” His fingers slid along my curves.
I was used to sex hiding behind my eyelids. It was unnerving that he watched me while he played my body like an orchestra, taking me to a crescendo that blew my mind and disintegrated every crazy thought.
For a while I wanted to throw up and laugh at the same time. Half of me was sick with guilt for cheating on my husband. “A bitch in heat,” my Catholic aunt would call me if she knew. And the other half wouldn’t be anywhere else but here and doing this with him.
It was a few days before a long weekend last summer when he drove his truck into the driveway. I was in the yard loading the camper for a trip. It was my husband he would be looking for.
“He’s gone to town. Just a sec.” I darted through the open garage door to grab the camp stove and he followed me in.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
I hadn’t seen it coming, so wrapped up in my grief, but when I looked at his face it was like the lyrics from that song by ‘Trooper’, “…heart on my sleeve, hat in my hand.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Eventually I hoped I would always feel the pull in my belly when I saw his amazing mouth smile at me.
We lie on our sides facing each other. His shoulders are not that much more broad than mine, but he is long limbed and lean. His skin is smooth and unblemished. He is soft and hard at the same time under my hands and lips. I’ve known him for years but he looks different now. They say people have a place and time in our lives. He smells like home.
For a while he makes me forget. He is the drug that eases the pain. He knew there was a storm behind the door, but he opened it and walked through. I’m amazed and grateful that he stays.
Over and over again I consume him, filling my endlessly empty space.
My husband would say the few times I tried to cuddle, “Don’t, you’re rubbing the skin off of me.” Unless it was for sex that just happened without any anticipation, tedious in its sameness and lacking sincerity on my behalf. I begged him for one more baby but he said “replacement child,” he was too old, and it wasn’t what he wanted. We grieved our loss alone, not able to lean on one another, neither strong enough, our broken hearts in cutting pieces between us.
This man lies pliable under my hands as I stroke, taste and smell. Our bed is our “nest” and we go to it early in the evening and it is hours before we sleep.
Unlike my previous life I’ve become an aggressor in our coming together. He is just as eager but more subtle while I remove my own clothes, then his, taking him to the bed or couch. At times he shapes and bends me like “Gumby,” the pliable rubber doll I played with as a child.
My husband has been left behind along with the life I had. He called me “selfish.” It’s true. What I’m doing now is all about what I need. I’m an addict. My body hums for the need of him. The physical pleasure temporarily silences my demons. I’ve found something that allows me to climb on top of the pain and push it under the surface. I’m a failing swimmer in rough seas fighting to keep my head above the water.
I go to work. I have conversations. Some are quick to judge me, or give advice.
They don’t have a freaking clue.
I’m good at lying, pretending and fooling people. It’s easier. They don’t really want to know what goes on inside my head. Sometimes I even wish I could forget that I had a child who died. But I don’t want to lose the loveliness of his life.
I’ve become slim, but I needed to lose the weight from sitting a year beside a hospital bed. Thoughts jab me with bony fingers, making me jumpy. I smell hospital odors and hear childish screams. I’m at home in front of the television watching grainy black and white footage of prisoners of war during Hitler’s siege. Two naked people walk away from the camera. Their bodies are skeletons with coverings of skin. One looks back with empty and hopeless eyes sunk into his skull. I’m sucker punched with a vision of his wasted, cancer- eaten body. Behind a blurry waterfall of tears his little-boy face smiles, as if telling me he’s OK now.
Grief is a heavy pair of concrete boots.
At the end of each day I fall through the front door and onto my knees. It’s like needing to vomit but loathing the act. So you fight the urge until you run to the bathroom, mouth full, stomach heaving, your body has taken control. Each day I lose the battle and lie on the floor in a snotty heap, wailing, and the noises I make sound freakish in my ears. I wonder how my broken heart continues to beat. It hurts to breath.
“I just miss him sooo much!” I howl.
He’s on the floor beside me, his hand on my cheek. “I know you do.”
I got married and had babies and it was easy, but also difficult, because I never took the time to listen to my heart, or my husband’s heart. I was too busy just “doing,” all the while moving and making and patching; too young or not truthful enough with myself or others to know how to repair what was broken.
Two years ago my husband and I watched our youngest child slip from the world while we held his small hands. We two as his parents knew how it felt to love and lose that sweet kid, and for that you would think we were forever bonded together. But our history of dysfunctional crap, the stuff that kills relationships, didn’t die with our son.
It had been years since I liked my husband. He knew it because he would say, “You’re going to leave me someday.” Surprised and provoked by his sad face I told him, “It’s a jinx on a relationship, to make such a statement!” And if he really felt that way then why didn’t he try to fix the BIG things that were wrong and obviously bothering me enough for him to think that one day I was going to leave him? It’s ridiculous and humiliating that my husband and I were back at it again, tearing apart our marriage after suffering such a horrible loss.
After our son died I spent a lot of energy trying to figure out how to run from the massive pain in my chest. Anger for losing my son and how much the poor kid suffered chewed on me. Our anguished, but stoic, 18 year old son couldn’t speak a word about his little brother but I heard him crying at night. And I don’t blame him for never wanting to be at home. I didn’t want to be there either.
My crossroad came in the form of another man. His beautiful hands remind me of a teenaged boy I dated but who in his exploration of my body was as clumsy as this man is adept. I was married for 20 years and wasn’t a virgin the first time I slept with my husband but I had never been touched quite like this.
“I’m wet, I should wipe.” I murmured our first time. I was soaked and embarrassed by the wetness between my legs. If I got this way with my husband I wiped myself with a towel.
“No, no. You’re beautiful like this.” His fingers slid along my curves.
I was used to sex hiding behind my eyelids. It was unnerving that he watched me while he played my body like an orchestra, taking me to a crescendo that blew my mind and disintegrated every crazy thought.
For a while I wanted to throw up and laugh at the same time. Half of me was sick with guilt for cheating on my husband. “A bitch in heat,” my Catholic aunt would call me if she knew. And the other half wouldn’t be anywhere else but here and doing this with him.
It was a few days before a long weekend last summer when he drove his truck into the driveway. I was in the yard loading the camper for a trip. It was my husband he would be looking for.
“He’s gone to town. Just a sec.” I darted through the open garage door to grab the camp stove and he followed me in.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
I hadn’t seen it coming, so wrapped up in my grief, but when I looked at his face it was like the lyrics from that song by ‘Trooper’, “…heart on my sleeve, hat in my hand.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Eventually I hoped I would always feel the pull in my belly when I saw his amazing mouth smile at me.
We lie on our sides facing each other. His shoulders are not that much more broad than mine, but he is long limbed and lean. His skin is smooth and unblemished. He is soft and hard at the same time under my hands and lips. I’ve known him for years but he looks different now. They say people have a place and time in our lives. He smells like home.
For a while he makes me forget. He is the drug that eases the pain. He knew there was a storm behind the door, but he opened it and walked through. I’m amazed and grateful that he stays.
Over and over again I consume him, filling my endlessly empty space.
My husband would say the few times I tried to cuddle, “Don’t, you’re rubbing the skin off of me.” Unless it was for sex that just happened without any anticipation, tedious in its sameness and lacking sincerity on my behalf. I begged him for one more baby but he said “replacement child,” he was too old, and it wasn’t what he wanted. We grieved our loss alone, not able to lean on one another, neither strong enough, our broken hearts in cutting pieces between us.
This man lies pliable under my hands as I stroke, taste and smell. Our bed is our “nest” and we go to it early in the evening and it is hours before we sleep.
Unlike my previous life I’ve become an aggressor in our coming together. He is just as eager but more subtle while I remove my own clothes, then his, taking him to the bed or couch. At times he shapes and bends me like “Gumby,” the pliable rubber doll I played with as a child.
My husband has been left behind along with the life I had. He called me “selfish.” It’s true. What I’m doing now is all about what I need. I’m an addict. My body hums for the need of him. The physical pleasure temporarily silences my demons. I’ve found something that allows me to climb on top of the pain and push it under the surface. I’m a failing swimmer in rough seas fighting to keep my head above the water.
I go to work. I have conversations. Some are quick to judge me, or give advice.
They don’t have a freaking clue.
I’m good at lying, pretending and fooling people. It’s easier. They don’t really want to know what goes on inside my head. Sometimes I even wish I could forget that I had a child who died. But I don’t want to lose the loveliness of his life.
I’ve become slim, but I needed to lose the weight from sitting a year beside a hospital bed. Thoughts jab me with bony fingers, making me jumpy. I smell hospital odors and hear childish screams. I’m at home in front of the television watching grainy black and white footage of prisoners of war during Hitler’s siege. Two naked people walk away from the camera. Their bodies are skeletons with coverings of skin. One looks back with empty and hopeless eyes sunk into his skull. I’m sucker punched with a vision of his wasted, cancer- eaten body. Behind a blurry waterfall of tears his little-boy face smiles, as if telling me he’s OK now.
Grief is a heavy pair of concrete boots.
At the end of each day I fall through the front door and onto my knees. It’s like needing to vomit but loathing the act. So you fight the urge until you run to the bathroom, mouth full, stomach heaving, your body has taken control. Each day I lose the battle and lie on the floor in a snotty heap, wailing, and the noises I make sound freakish in my ears. I wonder how my broken heart continues to beat. It hurts to breath.
“I just miss him sooo much!” I howl.
He’s on the floor beside me, his hand on my cheek. “I know you do.”
