Writing While Grieving 34: Proportions—Two Years Without You

On Reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Use the power in your heart

[Previously]

I wish you were here. It’s 93-degrees today. We would grill out or dine on the patio at our favorite restaurant. After a long, brutal winter, I finally feel comfortable in my own skin. As you know, my only complaint about 90-degree days is people who complain about 90-degree days.

In two days, it will be two years here without you. To deal with that, I’m transcribing the letters we wrote to each other during our first two years. (Don’t worry, I’m editing for our daughter’s eyes.) I’m doing this as this horrible anniversary approaches to focus on the beginning of our relationship rather than dwelling on its end.

Here’s something from our letters that captures what we were like together, something that was a constant, and that makes me laugh every time I think about it. In the middle of our second year of letter-writing, I’m telling you about that day’s sociology class:

We talked about adolescent love today in class. Did you know that people my age cannot sustain a lasting relationship? And of course, a relationship can’t last between an adolescent boy and an older girl! And it is utterly impossible for a young couple to cope with a geographical separation of any kind. I’m afraid that you and I totally contradict Mr. Erik Erikson’s studies.

A few days later, I opened your letter and read this:

Who is this Erik Erikson? We should have a talk with that man.

Of course I fell for you. My question is, who wouldn’t? That sense of humor, that kind of mildly sarcastic banter we had over the coffee table through the decades, or over 600 miles and several days as each letter made its way home. We had so much left to say, didn’t we?

In those letters, you mentioned the Narnia series several times and how much it meant to you. You said we should read it together sometime. We never did. I so wish we had. I decided to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this week for the first time. I wish I could talk to you about it.

We will mark the day you died by hosting an outdoor gathering with neighbors where everyone will tell stories about you. This is not a sad event. We’re focusing on happy memories. There will be food and drink and a playlist of your favorite songs from your childhood, your DJ years, and your concert-going life. We’ll supply large index cards and pens for writing the stories down and collecting them. If people need prompts, I’m asking them to focus on things that make them smile and laugh. I need the uplift.

In my former imagined scenario of how our later years might play out, I was always the one who went first. I’d even thought out what I would say to you if my death wasn’t sudden. Here’s part of my planned deathbed speech:

Please don’t be sad for long. I want you to smile when you think of me. Go, and live your life. It’s what I want for you.

I’m finding this to be easier said than done. My therapist says grief is proportional to the strength of the connection. “Fifty years together, two apart,” she says. “It’s normal to be hurting this much. Your connection was strong and lasted almost your whole life.”

That’s a whole lotta grief. What do I do with it? I’m left with all this love that has nowhere to go. Someone said to me recently, “You gotta move on.” People always say that, but they never mention how. It strikes me as a cowboy Western mentality. Moving on, I suspect involves a fair amount of whiskey and some occasional gunplay.

Here’s what I imagine you would say to those types who say to move on: “Well, they need to do their homework and brush up on their proportions, don’t they?”

In TLTWATW, there’s the line

And it was all more lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe.

Bullseye. I’m adopting this as my new answer to the dreaded How-Are-You question. (Only, I’ll use the present tense.)

Random Person: Hi, how are you?

Me: More lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe. How are you?

Next, Lewis writes,

I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been—if you’ve been up all night and cried till you had no tears left—you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.

I know Lewis lost his wife, too, but that was after this book, so he wasn’t referring to that here. Maybe I should read A Grief Observed, but I’m not religious like he was, and I know I won’t relate if he uses that as his source of comfort, which I suspect he does. I’ve read Mere Christianity, Till We Have Faces, his science fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, The Screwtape Letters, and possibly other of his Christian apologetics books, but not the Narnia series or A Grief Observed. After reading TLTWATW, I’ll read the rest of this series, at least.

I know for sure that The Last Battle was important to you because you told me how it gave you the language you needed for understanding how to live in your Evangelical family without swallowing that shit whole, something I see now that allowed your expansive view of life to thrive. I’m fascinated by that Narnia-loving girl you were and that, somehow, she came into my life and, with a wave of her hand, changed it entirely.

I’m still in the “You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again” part. I’m not even sure what he means by the “quietness” he speaks of. Is he talking about a kind of resignation? Is it a good thing? At least he didn’t say Susan and Lucy needed to move on. Fuck that.

Those two letter-writing years felt like they would go on forever, didn’t they? Remember how happy we were when that ended? Now, here I am at the end of another two-year absence. These past two years have felt like forever, too, but the letter-writing years were temporary. This time, it truly is forever. Do I need to quote that Lewis line again?

We are not like Susan and Lucy. We will never see Narnia again. I worry about how many more years there will be here without you, because I hate it here without you. But don’t be concerned. I have reasons to hang around, even though it mostly feels like I’m running out the clock. I know I have to live up to this, to rise to the occasion, somehow.

I have to—for you. And that’s enough to keep me going. Who wouldn’t be motivated by that? It’s all a matter of proportions. These numerous recalculations make up who I am now, or who I’m becoming, but I’m reminded that all of them lead back to you.

I’m not convinced that the “more lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe” part will ever go away. If there is “a sort of quietness” to be had, it will have to coexist with the other parts. But I can tell you this: our letters make me smile much more than they make me cry. It’s so clear to me why I fell so hard for you. Our connection was so strong from the start. I was the luckiest man who ever lived. That’s not hyperbole. Now I’m the saddest, but I’m also the one who is the most filled with gratitude.

In our letters, when we talk about being together, we call it being “home.” Now, it may be true that my love no longer has anywhere to go, but for a long, long time, I was home where I belonged. Unfortunately, there are too many reminders that I’m now on the wrong side of that wardrobe door.

When I read your letters, though—and now while reading Narnia—for a little while, at least, I feel you near, like I’m almost home.