My husband, Hugh, died of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome on February 27th of this year at age 54. It was a terrible loss for me and for our daughters, Camille (17) and Susannah (15). But, we are moving forward, one step at a time, sometimes slowly and cautiously, but still moving forward.
If you have ever lost someone close to you in death, you know that it is hard to move forward and to leave them behind. For a while, you stay locked up in your grief in order to remain close to the person you have lost. But the world goes on around you. Babies are born and people rejoice. Other people die and other families grieve. Tornadoes and floods do their damage and recede, leaving behind bright blue skies and a huge mess to be cleaned up. People go on with work, family and lives. But you remain for a while, in your grief, as close as possible to the person you have lost. Afraid to go on without him. Afraid of losing him for good.
But one day you emerge. The sight of other people going on with living life finally gets to you. A ministry you love is moving forward without you and it is too much to see someone else doing what you love to do. There are friends and plays and dinners and parties and you feel left out of life. For a while you long to be invited, but if you are, you politely decline. “It’s too much,” you say. “It’s too soon.” But what you really mean is, “If I go, I will forget to grieve for him, and then he will be gone forever and I can’t bear to lose him.” But then one day you surprise yourself and say, “yes.” “Yes” to life and “yes” to love and friends and “yes”, even, to parties.
As you step forward into the sunlight, back into life, there is still the worry that you are leaving behind him and a part of yourself along with him. But as you rejoin life, you are surprised to find that he is there with you, in the midst of life moving forward, in the midst of everything that happens. Still a source of guidance, strength and comfort. Still a part of you, and not left behind at all.
We are stepping back into the sunlight now and joining the stream of life. But it is still important to remember Hugh and to tell his story and ours as a family. As I have told my friends the stories of my experiences since Hugh's death, they have all said, "You need to write about this!" So here goes.
The First Story
We have always had difficulty packing up to go anywhere together as a family. There are always lost car keys and other items, forgotten chores and all sorts of crises due to our carelessness or forgetfulness and which were invariably solved by Hugh. As a result, Hugh always told us that if it weren't for him, we would all be stuck in the house with bumps on our heads from trying to get out the front door. We protested that we were competent people and we could manage just fine on our own, thank you kindly. But the proof is in the pudding.
On the day Hugh died, I called the family to come to the hospital. My parents, Gran and Grandad, were the first to arrive with our 14 year old daughter, Susannah. Susannah was anguished and cried for a long time when I told her that her father would not live. She seemed inconsolable, but finally, all cried out, she came and sat beside me on the couch in the waiting room. She was silent for a while, and then said, "Well, I guess we'll have bumps on our heads."
It has been almost 4 months since Hugh died, and it turns out that we are not quite as competent as we assumed. We have lots of bumps on our heads. It turns out that Hugh did more for us than we ever realized. He kept the house stocked with all household necessaries (paper towels, toilet paper, garbage bags, cleaning supplies, etc.). We never had to think of these things. They were always there for us. He did the taxes, paid the bills, handled all the insurance and business matters, kept the cars maintained, changed the air conditioner filters, kept spare keys hidden for occasions when we lost ours, rescued us from each and every crisis of our own making, and the list goes on and on.
We have learned to keep spare keys stashed in secure places, to check the cabinets to see if we are low on household necessities when we go to the grocery store. I have learned to pay the bills using Hugh's online bill paying service and have hired an accountant to do the taxes. We are getting fewer bumps on our heads as time goes by. But we remember all those things Hugh did for us and I am quite certain that his faithful attention to these things was an expression of his deep love for us.
