Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Window of grief

Well, it's a new year. Full of promise, expectation, wonderment, opportunities...and yet I sit here overwhelmed by the stiflingly stagnant state my life has been trudging aimlessly in over the last while. Now, I haven't been unproductive or retrogressive in all aspects of my life. I am still blessed to spend each day with my beautiful T, whose perpetually budding personality has provided me with countless moments of hilarity, enjoyment, and sentimentality as she shares the many facets of the incredible girl she is growing to be. I have had no end of rushes of gratitude and love swell within my heart as I nurture, teach, play with, and listen to my child. She is, always, the silver-lining that redeems even the ugliest and most foreboding of clouds.
I still have many wonderful friendships that enrich and uplift me and provide me with opportunities to serve as well as bestow me with innumerable blessings and gifts of service. I have, especially through this last year, received an absolute outpouring of help from dear friends, old and new--many of whom have become more like family to us in their kindness, service, and attentiveness. From helping out with T while I have been sick, hospitalized, had procedures done, through late night ER trips, to providing T and me with opportunities to see and do things that we would not otherwise have been able to do, we have been (and are) so blessed.
It is not these things, though, that are weighing so heavily upon my heart right now.
I know that there is an unspoken window of time wherein grieving is looked upon with sympathy and care. The thing or person being grieved plays a large role in defining the time span of acceptable mourning. Sadness over being laid off from a part-time job has a smaller window of time than being laid off from a long lived career, which has a smaller window than the death of a relative or close friend. While everyone grieves differently and at varying rates, at some point, it is assumed that the mourner comes to a place in the process where the traumatic event ceases to grab at every breath and taint every smile. At some point, others would like to hear you talk about something other than the loss that you "should have" gotten past by now. It is for that reason that I hesitate to share the burden on my heart. I fear that I have exhausted my allotted window of grief and that my sorrows will be met with eye-rolling annoyance and not comforting words.
Two years ago, December, the man I wanted to spend the rest of eternity with placed a ring on my finger as he asked me to be his wife. Two years ago, I planned for the temple wedding I was sure would come within weeks. Two years ago, I dreamed of my little boy, Ethan Asher, and began buying little outfits here and there for the sweet little son I knew was to be ours once we were sealed. Two years ago I felt my life coming together. Every burden, every struggle, every trial, heart ache, heart break, loneliness, and tear had been worth it to see this moment finally arriving. Four months later, he was gone. No word. No email. No text. Nothing. It was weeks before he finally returned a text, stating that he wouldn't give me back some treasured remembrances of mine because he "wouldn't do anything to signify that this [was] over." And so I held on and waited. Suffering in the silence he left me in--left US in. T loved him as the only daddy she had ever known. She missed him, asked about him, begged to look at pics and video we had with him. She didn't understand why her daddy went away and why her mommy cried so much.
The weeks turned into months. Months of nothing. Near Christmas ('10), we came home from church one afternoon to find that he had used his key and left T a giant teddy bear with a bow. No note. At first I thought it was sweet that he had left a gift for her, but then it only made me angry. "Sure, leave her a huge bear. She won't notice she doesn't have a daddy anymore. Great idea, jackass!" I put his sweatshirt on the bear. Bear's head barely fit through and I had to roll up the sleeves, but it seems to suit him. Lots of times I'll just hold that bear and cry into his sweatshirt, hating the man who should be holding me as I cry, who should be wearing that sweatshirt, who should be loving me and T.
In March, days before my laparoscopic surgery, he came by unexpectedly and unannounced. I opened the door and barred his entry. I told him that if he walked in that door, he had better be planning on being in our lives. T still knew him and loved him and missed him and I didn't want him giving her hope and then hurting her, and me, all over again. He said it was fine and to let him in. He offered to give me a blessing and I told him I only wanted a blessing from someone who actually gave a damn about us. He said he had to leave, but that if I wanted that blessing, to call him. That was the last time I have seen or heard a single thing from him.
The most difficult part of it is that I made promises, I made covenants, I planned a future and a life with him and I can't just walk away from it. I keep hoping he'll come walking in our door with an excuse that makes sense and will fulfill all of the promises he made to me, all of the plans he made with me. As it is, I feel stuck. He left it so open-ended. I have no closure. He said he wasn't going to give me back my things as that would signify that our relationship was over, but doesn't abandoning your fiancee and the child you took as your own say that it's over louder than the returning of any item?
I ache with missing him. I miss being loved. I miss being treasured. I miss how he smells. I miss the warmth of his arm around me. I miss him so much it hurts.
So, what now? Do I hold fast to the promise he last made me and wait for him to return? If I do, what if I'm waiting for something that will never even come? If I don't, what if he comes back for me and I miss the love of my life because I didn't have enough faith in him to wait?
I want my Ethan. I want lot of other yet unnamed babies. I want my little girl to have a daddy to dote on as he also dotes on her. I want her to know a father's love and to have the blessings of the priesthood in our home. I want my husband.

2 comments:

  1. Maybe your questions were rhetorical...but I will offer my 2 pennies anyway: Don't wait. You and your cutie little T are worth WAY more than sitting around waiting for some guy to decide he's going to love you again. Two years is a long time...and I doubt you want to look back at yourself a year from now and be in the same situation you're in now. So...no more waiting if you ask me. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I gladly take any cents you want to throw at me :) And, I'll gladly take any awesome dates you want to throw my way, too!

    ReplyDelete