I Don't Know If I Can Live With That

I've decided there is no use in pretending that I am better, getting better or will get better. It is too exhausting to keep it up. I'm just worn out with it.

I'm good at hiding behind a shield of work and busyness. I don't think much as long as I'm running on full speed ahead. But it is there, that looming darkness that I keep shoved behind the door, beneath the desk, under the bed, in the closet. The effort involved in keeping it at bay is just overwhelming.

I sat tonight and wondered how badly I really want to even deal with this anymore and realized I don't. I'm tired and sick of dragging myself through this house.

I talked to a nurse today at my Reumatologist's office. Her mother died in October and she said she was so angry at people who were happy. I told her I understood. We chatted for a bit on what she was going through and comparing our experience.

I, on the other hand, am bitter. I was happy once. I had all I ever wanted. A family. My children and my husband, our home was all I ever wanted. Only in the last six or seven years had things begun to really just fall apart. Jerry lost several jobs. He was sick. I was sick. The boys were insane. Mike's marriage broke up. Dave ran away from home and brought back a wife. Mike lost his disability benefits and can't find work. Dave can't keep a job. Sarah sick all the time. Just everything piling up until Jerry just broke under it all. I am caving under the final onslaught.

This woman has no other family. She is alone in the world with only one child and no husband. And I knew that the weight of that must be so horrible for her. I wanted to cry for her. I have this terrible fear that something will happen to my sons or Sarah and I will have nothing left at all. My whole life will have disappeared. It will all have been lived for absolutely nothing. A lifetime lived for nothing! It won't mean anything at all. Pointless. It will never have existed.

That is probably the most horrible consideration of all. That everything was meaningless. All the struggles and stresses and successes, grief, heartache, pain, and even joy will have been to no purpose and there would be no reason to have ever done anything or struggled so hard to survive. We could have sat back and done just whatever we wanted and not worried about tomorrow at all. We could have spent our lives taking whatever enjoyment we wanted. None of it would have mattered anyway.We could have lived much happier lives and probably longer ones because of not worrying so much.

Death is a leveler. He smooths out the bumps and wrinkles, and cracks in the field. They become nothing but chicken scratches in the dirt. You're left standing in that smooth, flat field and realize that you aren't important at all. You're here and you'll die.

You know that story called The Dash. About a preacher saying the dash between your date of birth and date of death is the life lived between. In essence, it tells about making days count and doing things that leave a mark.

But in truth, when you stand at the edge of a grave, the dash IS ALL you see. You can't escape it. The dash is a dagger, a sword, a sharp knife that inflicts a million razor cuts to your flesh and you end up in a heap on the floor, bleeding your life away. You reach a point where you begin to realize that the only thing you know for certain are those two dates on either side of the dash. The beginning and the end. What happened in between is erased and doesn't exist at all anymore except in memories and photographs. Or in journals if you were wise enough to record them. My journals were totally self absorbed and I will be burning them in a few months, probably on the anniversary of Jerry's death. Might as well erase it all. It doesn't really matter anymore because it doesn't exist. The purely metaphysical would say nothing exist and now I'd probably agree with them. Even the Bible suggest we're nothing but vapor.

Another woman I spoke with last night, the one who sent me the photo, lost her husband maybe six years ago. She is probably my mother's age and they were married a long time. She has children and grandchildren. She said, "It never gets better." Her pain doesn't stop. She sees him in the young man who plays the guitar in a church she attends. "He sounds just like George." She sees him on the platform playing the guitar when she comes to visit our church. She lives 50 miles away and can't come often. I know what she feels as she sits there. Her heart is ripped thorough her chest, twisted, and stuffed back in with no regard.

"It never gets better."

I don't know if I can live with that.