My Road

I don’t know what triggers it. It may have been as simple as hearing the birds sing this morning in the bare winter trees. It may have been talking with someone –that knows someone-who-knew Gordon. It may have been that simple. I’m left fighting to keep it all together. A little extra blush. Another coating of mascara. A little heavier on the eye makeup. Gotta cover up this sadness. Sadness is just so unattractive.

It started last night at a fundraiser. I was having a good time, laughing, smiling, in the company of others. But, I looked around me, and only noticed a few that he would have recognized. My surroundings are changing. My support has changed. I’m changing, too, probably.

While I apply makeup, my fingers run over the ridges of wrinkles that have set in since he died. I have wrinkles in along my brow. I have wrinkles under my eyes. My skin is thinner, rather than thicker, since he died. It’s all unavoidable. We grow old. He doesn’t. He’ll always be 40.

I tried to imagine today, how he would have dealt with the inevitable wrinkles, thinning of skin, blah blah. How would he have reacted to Tsunami’s, flooding cities, dead starlets, missing kids? I imagined the sound the roof made last year when we had the microburst and tiles and tiles were sucked off. How would he have dealt with it?

And then I recall that he wouldn’t have dealt with it, any of it. He’d hand the worry and blame and responsibility to me. He knew I was capable. But, I didn’t believe I was. He saw in me something I’m just finding out about myself now. He saw the strength. I just felt the weakness.

I like to imagine though, that he is more experienced now, than I am. That, wherever he is, he sees the road ahead of all of us because he’s somehow been there already. But, does that mean I liken his knowledge to that of God’s? No. Even in death, Gordon is only Gordon. Gordon was only a man. I need to take away that mystical power I assigned to him, only because he was my spouse. The road ahead of me, is my own. Not his.

I keep remembering a dream I had about a year after Gordon died. He appeared out of nowhere, with a long long list of ‘to do’s’ that he was responsible for. He told us that he was very very busy, that he had a lot to do. And, the healer I went to a few years’ back said the exact thing. Just because he’s dead, doesn’t mean he stops growing and learning, and paying for his sins. He doesn’t get off that easy.

So, if that is the case, the road ahead is dotted with stops he’ll need to make. His road no longer merges with my road. My faith pulls me forward down a road I have control over, at least some of it. I’ll never again hand over the keys to my life, to a man, only because he’s a man. This is MY road.