Getting ready

Preparing to observe significant dates is an exercise in liminality

I didn’t think it would be this way, and it’s harder than I thought it might be. The days are ticking by to mark a year since I found Claudia’s unconscious body and then, ten days later, released her into Love’s keeping.

Other important dates have come and gone. Our 29th wedding anniversary, the first we did not share together, three months after her death. My 61st birthday, the first I observed without her in over thirty years. Her 62nd birthday, the first time she would have been eligible to retire with (limited) Social Security benefits. Over the past year I have remembered the birthdays of our children and grandchildren, celebrated Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas in new ways. So it’s not like there haven’t been hard days over the course of the past year.

But there’s something about the one-year marker of Claudia’s collapse and death that weigh more heavily on my soul. I’ve been wondering why, and then I stepped out with Otis into the darkened early morning, sensing a change in the air. The past few days have been balmy enticements toward Spring, but a shift is occurring. The moon’s soft glow was illuminating the sky, and I could see mottled clouds moving briskly in the onyx atmosphere. Awaiting Otis, I heard the memorial wind chimes in my backyard, thrumming with activity. The previously mild temperature of yesterday now has a bite to it. This morning begins with the vestiges of yesterday and the possibilities of tomorrow churning together, uncertainty afoot. It is a liminal (“in-between time”) start to the day.

I sense that my own disquieted spirit is because this is yet another liminal moment in my bereavement journey. A full year since my loved one’s demise means that something is shifting, although I am not quite sure what that is. I think, primarily, it’s the sense of finality — the looming sense of closure — a year brings. Somewhere, hibernating in the den of my subconscious, there is a creature called “false hope.” It is not logical, it is not intentional, but it is there. Somehow, against all evidence to the contrary, I am waiting for Claudia to come home. And while she has come Home in a spiritual sense, she will never come home to me in a physical sense ever again.

It’s a strange thing, really, because I know this rationally, but I can’t seem to believe it completely. It’s not really denial, and it’s not that I’m angry (two of the classic “stages of grief”). And it’s not that I haven’t accepted my new reality. It’s just that deep within I wish it weren’t so, and unconsciously I harbor misplaced hope.

It’s a liminal time for me, sorting out memories, relinquishing my attachments, living into a new way of being. I’ve been at it for a year now, and I’ve made progress with some setbacks, but I’m not quite ready to fully embrace this way of life foisted upon me by a physical crisis that could not have been prevented or corrected.

For some reason it reminds me of this old Curtis Mayfield song, “People Get Ready.” He was writing during the Civil Rights Era, encouraging everyone to get on board the train that would lead to a new way of life. All it required was a step of faith, an awareness that “the diesel” was “hummin’,” and it was an invitation for all to ride, even when the final destination was not yet in sight.

As I reflect on the lyrics of this hopeful music, I am reminded that while great progress has taken place in our country in the past sixty years to advance the civil rights of all people, the journey is not yet complete. There have been surges forward and ebbs backward in the arduous work to achieve a world of greater freedom and dignity for all. It continues to be a liminal time — the already but not quite yet.

I find that grief works that way for me: moments of banner-waving optimism followed by my own personal walk through the bloodied grief streets of Selma. I know what is gone, I can see where I want to be, but I’m not quite there yet.

So I will listen for the whistle of the train, push myself to get to the station, and get on board, one passenger among many others, riding this train to a new day. The beauty of it is that I don’t need to be the Engineer on this train, I don’t even need to know how many stops will there be along the way. I know I can trust Love with both my journey and my destination.

For today, once again, I simply need to get on board.