Devastated

From there to here.

“Have you ever been devastated?”

Ron has just seated me at his dead husband’s desk. He’s not even sitting down yet when he lobs that grenade.

The glow from the lamp to my right does not quite reach him where he’s settled into the red leather chair across from me. In the dim grey light of this early winter afternoon, his eyes are dark, shadowed, hollow.

Have I ever been devastated. I consider. Deaths, divorces, miscarriages. Broken hearts, betrayals, loss. I’ve been gutted and left for dead. Cried oceans. Despaired. Willed myself to stop breathing. Actively tried not to live. I’ve been utterly alone with absolutely nothing. I have cracked from pressure and been flattened by circumstance and washed up on a filthy beach with no way home, out, or up.

And yet here I am. Alive, strong, happy. I survived everything, I survived devastation. So was I truly devastated?

Ron is watching my face. This is no time for a deep philosophical discussion with myself.

“Yes,” I say. And no more.

A common mistake when faced with another’s grief is to attempt to provide comfort by identifying with their pain. Tell them about the time it happened to you. Tell them your story of horror.

If this is something you do, please stop it. Immediately.

Think about a time you were heartbroken and crying to a sympathetic friend. Did you want to hear the story of their past heartbreak?

You did not.

You wanted them to listen to the story of your happening-right-now heartbreak. Because when a heart is in the act of breaking it is the worst, most painful, tragic, awful, agonizing heartbreak that has ever happened to anyone in the history of the world EVER. And it is the only heartbreak that matters at that moment.

Ron did not ask for my story. He asked a YES or NO question. I answered.

We sit there with my word in the air. I don’t elaborate. I just wait.

Ron’s eyes searchlight over my face. His heart and mind are pressing up against mine, looking for evidence to confirm my answer — scars, missing pieces, broken bits. He is probing my soul for signs of past sorrow.

I let him, without fear or hurry. He’ll find what he needs because it’s there.

The moment he does, it’s obvious. He lets go a little. Releases the steely control that’s been holding him upright since Phillip died. Ron drops his shoulders, slides lower in the chair, rests his head back with eyes closed as he sighs. Then he says, “So you know.”

Another breath and he collects himself. Sits up and looks at me.

“How did you get from there to here?”

That is not what I expected him to say. But a valid question, and not one I remember being asked before.

What saved me? Made me save myself? What made me get up and fight? I don’t know the answer.

That is another philosophical question to ponder – alone and on my own time.

And that is too much to explain, so I pivot to the PR tack: don’t answer the question that’s asked, answer what you want them to know.

I have that answer for him. Not an answer about me, but an answer for him. I have the words, because it is something I talk about when I speak for the dead.

“This is a hard, sad time,” I say. “Maybe the hardest time you’ve ever had. Grief like this is a very dark place on your path. But it is not a place to stay. It is not the end of your path.

“And the only way out of here is forward. You have to keep going.

“If you need a reason to keep going, remember your Phillip. The light and the love and the life of him. When you keep going, and carry him with you, then he keeps going, too. His story becomes part of your story, and his life becomes part of your life.”

I pause.

“You won’t get over this. This is part of you now. But you can make it into part of you, instead of all of you, by being in it now. Cry. Yell. Break things. Feel it.

“Talk about it. Give your sorrow words.

“Talk about Phillip. He died, he didn’t evaporate. His body has left this plane but that does not negate his existence. He lived. He was. Don’t act like it didn’t happen, like HE didn’t happen.

“Tell his stories and say his name. Remember. Because when we carry the memories – when we remember, our dead don’t really go until we do.

“So embrace your mourning, and experience it. That is the alchemy that will turn your horrible grief into gratitude for all you are blessed to have shared with Phillip.

“Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But eventually.”

And then I shut up.

We sit in silence again until Ron sniffles and I realize he is crying. I move to the chair next to his, and hold his hand. He squeezes it, and sobs without sound. I stroke his arm.

“I will always remember,” he says quietly.

He sits up and wipes his face with his sleeves and collar. The gesture doesn’t fit – he’s too well dressed, the house is too lovely, everything is too proper.

Then I get it. I recognize the precision, the order, the discipline.

“You’re a runner,” I say, more statement than question. He doesn’t understand for a second, then smiles.

“The shirt wipe give me away?” he laughs. “You run?”

“Slowly,” I say, “and I have used my shirt, too!”

We run-talk for a minute, then drop down onto common ground into why we’re here today.

We discuss the service he wants, the songs. A poem. Friends who will speak.

We talk about his husband, and as we do I feel closer to him, to them. I feel sad I never knew Phillip.

Ron talks about the shock of losing a partner so suddenly. The absence, the loneliness. The anxiety about being alone now, without the love and support of a life shared for decades.

He talks and it brings him comfort and I listen. When he’s done, the room is dark beyond the circle of lamplight. The gloaming has wrapped us like a blanket.

I don’t want any electric glare to break the spell, so I gather my things efficiently and we walk toward the front door in companionable dim.

When Ron opens the hall closet a light comes on automatically, and now the warm dark is behind us.

He helps me into my coat and pets the sleeve. “Mink!” he says. “Phillip would approve. Will you wear it to the cemetery?”

“Of course,” I say. “Unless you’d prefer sable?”

“Yes!” he yells. “YES! Oh my god, Phillip would LOVE that!”

He smiles then adds, “As long as you promise that halfway through you’ll wipe your nose on your shirt.”

We laugh and Ron hugs me. Then he steps back and puts one hand on my shoulder and the other on my face. Leans in and touches his forehead to mine. It’s oddly, achingly intimate.

“Thank you,” he says, “for giving me hope.”

And there it is, I think, as I walk to my car in the damp night. The answer I didn’t have earlier. The thing that got me from there to here. The antidote to devastation.

Hope.

Even in the cold black depths I must have had hope that things would change. Somewhere, someone, something must have given me a tiny glimpse of a better future if I could only lift, heave, drag, roll myself out of the hideous present.

Hope turned devastation from fatal to acute.

In silence I give thanks without an address, sent to whoever wants to take credit, for the distance between where I’ve been and where I am. My gratitude for the phoenix in my soul wells up, and all at once I have a new elevator speech of my purpose: to give hope.

I give hope to the grieving, the sad, the devastated. I remind them that now is not forever, that this moment will give way to another, and then another. I give them hope that they will find joy again.

It starts to rain, and when I turn on the wipers fallen leaves flick from the windshield. Their season is over — but it will come again.

Even now, the trees are dreaming of spring — full of hope.