The Tension of Thresholds

It’s been over a year and a half living in the strange, uncharted territory of widowhood. The people who are left, still walking with me on this winding path, continue to check in and ask me how I’m doing. Lately, I’ve been telling them I feel that I’m standing on a threshold…an unsettling place between my life with Craig and my life alone. It seems that remembering our life together has become more disconcerting than comforting. I don’t look at his photos as often as you think someone who deeply loved the person within the frame, would. I’ve noticed myself resistant to putting together a digital collage of our travels, celebrations, and those everyday moments caught on camera. This year it seemed like a great way to “celebrate” Valentine’s Day without him, but I just haven’t done it yet, and there’s no good reason. And though his old office is completely disrupted with unearthed files, piles of clothes and electronics, I just can’t muster the will to get in there and turn it into a guest room. Evidently, transformations of all kind take time...

Looking at pictures or his baseball and business stuff, takes me right to the “feel” of our life together. It’s the same familiarity you might experience if you think back to high school or college days, with all the emotion, ideologies, and experiences associated with that period and place in your life. The ambience of memory can be palpable. You may enjoy reminiscing about that time or you may wish you could forget it altogether. For me, at least now, entertaining memories of our marriage is too painful. Yet, I could never forget the husband I love. The kind of memories I desire fit somewhere in between, and I am standing on that threshold.

On Monday, the Hospice donation truck came and another round of “matter” that belonged to Craig left through the front door…his Lay-Z-Boy recliner and the antique desk I gave him for a wedding gift. I stood at the picture window watching the men load it up and thought, When will life not feel so dominated by the wake that death leaves behind?

Friends commented that it must have been so hard to let go of those things. I didn’t really know how to respond without explaining the complicated tensions I feel so often in grief. This time, as I stood on another threshold, the UNsentimental part of me knows I have no room for these things as I remake the house to fit my new singular life. But the sentimental part of me hates saying good-bye time and time again to more and more of the pieces that embody Craig's personality and spirit. I wonder what will be left another year and a half from now. Will it be enough to conjure the breadth and depth of our memories? Or will I regret letting it all pass through the front door of our home?

I felt the tension of thresholds again this past Easter weekend. Since I hadn’t really made any plans for the holiday, I just stayed home. I didn’t so much feel lonely (I’m learning the multi-faceted meaning of that word), as I felt isolated, or maybe even somewhat abandoned. I’m beginning to see that if some friends hear even the slightest bit of hope in your tone – they can feel justified to leave you alone. And if you are honest and talk about your continued pain and struggles, they WANT to leave you alone. It’s a no-win situation for the grieving – and so we often do it in isolation and misunderstanding.

But here is the tension I’m also beginning to understand around all of that…maybe it is supposed to be that way…as much as it hurts. Maybe we who grieve need that isolation to fully enter the healing process and cross the threshold into a deeper spiritual experience. Our moods change so frequently that perhaps a barrage of phone calls, visits, and invitations would distract and overwhelm us, doing more harm than good. What we really want is for our friends to just be “on call.”  We want all communication and activities to be on our terms, which is completely unrealistic. So once again, we stand in that tension between the bitterness of what we can’t have and the reality of the situation we must eventually embrace. We can only learn to let go of expectations and be grateful for those friends who do stay with us on the long, hard journey.

And apparently on this long, hard journey, we need to dwell at these thresholds longer than we think, constantly looking behind and looking ahead, forward and backward, until our choices become clear; until our head and heart are united to take the first steps in that direction. 

Cindy Steffen

April 2018