One year later….
Early in the morning of June 16, 2018, the call came. I new it would come, but it’s still a shock when it happens.
Jeff had been staying in Tulsa to be with her in those last days. I had come home to take care of the dogs, the house, etc. , etc. I contacted the dog sitter, took care of a few last minute things at the house, packed a few things, and headed north. I remember that Wade Bowen had just released a song called “Death, Dying and Deviled Eggs.” It came one very shortly after I started — maybe while I was still on 180 — and it brought out the heartache. I might add at this point that it’s really, really hard to drive while you’re crying. I heard that song a few times over the next couple of hours before I lost connection to the radio station.
It was an early summer day across north Texas and Oklahoma. There was a lot of green. The trees were waving in the wind and the livestock were all out in the fields. The windmill farm on the mighty Arbuckle mountains — which are one of the few mountain ranges with folded strata — were spinning as I crossed. At any other time, I would have said it was a beautiful drive. Maybe it still was.
By the time I got to Tulsa, much of the work for arrangements had been done. To be honest, a lot of it had already been planned. That afternoon and evening we sat at Lesley’s house and looked at some “old shoe box memories” (another quote from Wade Bowen), chatted some about the past and the future, and then went to bed. The next day we headed back home, knowing we’d be making that drive north in the near future.
In those first few days and weeks, you play a lot of the “I should have/shouldn’t have” games with yourself. “I really should have stopped at Sonic more for her.” You let go of a lot of the bad stuff, and focus on the good stuff. You wonder what the world will be like when she’s not around. You cry a lot. You laugh some. Most days are pretty sad. People say weird things to be comforting. Some people don’t say anything at all. But each day, you wake up and move forward because you really don’t have a choice. When my dad died in 1993, I remember feeling like I was in a bubble of time for a while, and it was so odd to occasionally step out of it and realize that other people were moving forward with their lives. “How dare they,” I thought, “don’t they understand what’s happening here?”
The first wave of holidays is hard. You brace for it, and you endure it. They aren’t quite as bright as they used to be. They aren’t nearly as fun. But you push forward, because you really don’t have a choice. Along the way you start making some new memories, and having new experiences, and there is this underlying guilt of “is it o.k. for me to still enjoy life?” It’s not rational, but it’s still a part of it. The family gathers, with laughter and love and fun, but during it you can always see the face of someone who’s suddenly thought of who’s not there.
Chris Young just released a song called “Drowning.” Hit me pretty hard. He speaks about grief being like waves, “and tonight I feel like I’m drowning.” Soon those waves of grief give way to melancholy. That melancholy will eventually give way to bitter sweetness, and then wistfulness. But it will always be there. As someone told me when my dad died: “It never stops hurting, but it does eventually stop hurting quite so often.”
It’s now the early morning of July 16, 2019. I look back on the last year with some sadness and fondness. Over the year I’ve thought so many times “I wish Teri was here to see this” or “wow, Teri would have really been able to use this thing I just found.” But there have been new, good memories as well. As it should be.
I think of Izzy, Isaac, Isla and Holly. I wonder how they’ll remember her — if over time they’ll know how much she so deeply loved them. Then I think about my favorite musical — Into the Woods — and the final scene. Everyone had lost someone or something. The Baker now had a child, but his wife had been lost to the giant.
Baker: How proud my wife would have been of us. And how sad it is that my son will never know her. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to have children—
Baker’s Wife: (enters as ghost) Don’t say that! Of course you were meant to have children!
Baker: But how will I go about being a father With no one to mother my child? (BABY cries)
Baker’s Wife: JUST CALM THE CHILD.
Baker: (attempting to do so) YES. CALM THE CHILD.
Baker’s Wife: LOOK, TELL HIM THE STORY OF HOW IT ALL HAPPENED BE FATHER AND MOTHER YOU’LL KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Baker: ALONE…?
Baker’s Wife: SOMETIMES PEOPLE LEAVE YOU HALFWAY THROUGH THE WOOD. DO NOT LET IT GRIEVE YOU NO ONE LEAVES FOR GOOD. YOU ARE NOT ALONE NO ONE IS ALONE. HOLD HIM TO THE LIGHT NOW, LET HIM SEE THE GLOW. THINGS WILL BE ALRIGHT NOW. TELL HIM WHAT YOU KNOW…
Once upon a time, in the far off kingdom of Tulsa, there was a young maid, whose life and home were always filled with music………..