Writing While Grieving 35: A Married Man
The Things I Can't Say
Our wedding song, June 3, 1978
On here, I’ve been writing fairly unfiltered, and as someone who writes, I’ve discovered how powerful that can be. But I’m not entirely unleashed. There are some things I can’t write about because they involve others or they are too private. I know I’m supposedly anonymous here, but about a third of my 340 followers know who I am. If I were truly anonymous, I could say more. What to do about this? I could set something up that would be truly anonymous, I suppose, but the things I would write there would be so tied to here, it would be difficult not to give myself away.
Writing a journal is an outlet, and that serves a valid purpose, but not one that is as compelling to me. I can’t be truly unfiltered even there, because some poor soul will read that stuff when I’m gone. I’d have to write it in disappearing ink. Fiction can serve as a way to be truthful in less recognizable ways, a way of saying without saying. This would be a way of writing indirectly through the use of images and description, and that would leave things open to interpretation. Worth a shot.
I can name the areas I’m struggling with: caregiving, intimacy, and the rocky parts of our married life. I’ve been a caregiver for so long now that I don’t know how to be anything else. I can’t get too deeply into that here, yet there is so much of it that is relevant to what it means to grieve. Since I no longer have my partner, I no longer have touch in my life, and that was not just an important part of my physical existence; it was a big part of my identity and how I thought of myself. Writing about that raises not just TMI issues but also brings up one of the most difficult challenges for a writer—how to write about sex convincingly and in ways that transcend stereotypes and clichés. Sex is often compared to death, but in life-giving ways. When your intimate partner dies, this is one of the many ways you die, too. It should be written about more, but probably not by me. And our marriage was mostly wonderful, but there were two dangerous periods, including one when we almost didn’t make it. That dark time is revisiting me as I try to process the regrets that grief has brought to the surface. As a writer, I feel a need to dive into these issues, and I’m interested to see what might happen, but the need to keep details under wraps saps motivation. It’s worth doing because whatever I write about those things will lead to insights that will be valuable in other areas and possibly lead to breakthroughs. Still, I feel the need to censor myself.
Here’s the marriage issue in sketch form. We had been together 16 years before we had a child. In our history, though we were not always on the same path, our paths were always parallel. Once a child entered the picture, that changed. It’s no one’s fault; it’s just that we were surprised to find we had different and incompatible visions for how things should proceed, and this was a shock to us. No one was having an affair (as far as I know). We just reached a point where we thought maybe we should separate. It was the only period besides the one I find myself in now where I felt I might lose my mind.
Though we thought we might be through, we didn't fight, and we were a good team in caring for our little one, but it felt like we had reached the end of the road. The reason this is on my mind so much is that grief has an annoying tendency to dig up regrets. Though I’m still not entirely clear what happened, my regrets center around the lost time. We wasted too much time feeling that way. I wonder what we could have done, what I could have done, to help turn things around sooner than we did. After reading our letters from the first two years of our relationship, I’m pretty sure that if we had sat down and read them, it would have helped us work out our differences much sooner. This makes me mourn the lost opportunity.
June 3 was our wedding day. This year would have been our 48th, but thirteen days shy of our 46th, I became a widower. In our minds, the wedding day was an annoying formality that only existed for the benefit of others. We wanted to elope. We didn't care—we were married from the start. I know marriage gets a bad rap, but I’m a big fan. I loved being married. It felt like my natural habitat. I know, it has a patriarchal history. For so long, for women, the choice was to be a bride, a nun, or a librarian. An unmarried woman could be a nurse or a teacher, too, but not much else. We had a traditional ceremony, took traditional vows, and she took my name—all kind of retro even for 1978. The ceremony and vows were to please her father, who was evangelical and a reverend. She took my name because she preferred the sound to her family name. (I have to agree.) She chose an “old maid” career when she decided to become a librarian. From a distance, I suppose her choices could seem old-fashioned. Like some fucking trad-wife.
Not if you knew her. She was a rebel through and through, and the most dangerous kind—the kind you least suspect. No wonder I fell for her.
Husband and wife are loaded terms. I never wanted to be a husband, but I’m so glad I was hers. (Just like I never wanted to be a father, but I’m so glad I am one.) We didn't have to be those things to each other, and except for legal ways, we weren't. We were a different category, and, as I said, whatever that was, we were that long before we married. I don’t have a word for it. We were married, but we made that mean what we already were together. We made it ours. So, yes, I’m a fan of marriage, but what I mean is I’m a fan of our marriage, even the troubled parts, and how we came through that so beautifully.
I’m proud of us.
So what advice can this former husband, this formerly long-married man, offer? Not much. You’re on your own. Just make sure, if you are going to do this, to marry your best friend in the entire world. That’s all I’ve got.
I’ll leave you with this TMI journal entry written by some random married man:
Plunged in darkness, legs became arms, your lips, breath, your hair cascading. Pulled by your undertow, I surrendered. I opened my eyes in water. I drank and drank, delighted to drown, all five oceans, not enough.
Notes
Here’s something I wrote about “Morning Has Broken” last year:
For some reason, maybe because I was writing about Eden, I remembered for the first time since the day we married that an instrumental version of “Morning Has Broken” was played at our wedding. My wife came from a religious family. Her father, a minister, officiated the ceremony. The music was religious, but my bride, the future children’s librarian, who was a rebellious sort but always in the kindest possible ways, chose a hymn by children’s author, Eleanor Farjeon. I have a hunch her fondness for Paradise Lost had something to do with her choice as well, plus that the song is barely religious, and though it evokes Eden, it’s really about spring in this fallen world.
A stealth, subversive selection. Praise with elation. She was a wonder.