The Lovers

April 11, 2019

I awakened at 11:11 on the night of the total eclipse in January just in time to go out into the fierce cold to see the Wolf Moon. She appeared bloodied by her movement through the earth’s shadow, bathed in a dusky red light, and floating silently in the bright and the icy night. As I watched her, I couldn’t help wondering what this energy might have in store for me, and in store for the world. Such magnificence and such awe-inspiring mystery. It felt like the end of a difficult cycle.

Then at 3:30 that night I awakened again with a strong sense of a Presence overseeing me, watching me, helping me. I know it was my High Self for a feeling of pervasive peace came over me letting me know that everything is completely perfect.

It hasn’t been feeling perfect though. I have literally been crying every single day for the past five months. Storms of grief pass through me with soft tears or utterly surprising  wracking sobs. I’m deeply grieving for Michael again. I’m not sure why this is happening now except that I’m working on the book about his dying and death, desperately wanting to finish it. It’s a special kind of agony to be revisiting all those feelings again as I write and rewrite the saga of our journey through his illness. It had gotten so difficult that I simply stopped writing for several months. I couldn’t face it any longer.

Maybe the grief started to arise again because of the approaching holidays, or maybe because it had been seven months since Michael died, and for some reason, seven months was yet another time for grief – a weird gestation for a sorrow gone awry. For it had gone awry. I was believing that I was moving on from my grief and that the worst of it was over. I was wrong. All I know now is that grief has its own rhythm and its own intelligence. I’m trying to let this be.

For several months I had tried to dodge my grief. It had been so intense for such a long time, and I am tired of its insistence and its pain. I had spent a few months in a fantasy that things were better, that I was better, that I was figuring out how to leave horrendous loss behind. And maybe I am figuring it out, but I’m realizing I can’t force it in any way. As much as I would like to, I can’t force myself to be done with grief.

When Michael died, I felt a horrible aching emptiness, but to some extent, the grief was still distant because his death was so unimaginable and so unreal. And mixed in with the grief there was a sense of relief – relief that his suffering had ended, relief that I was no longer locked in caregiving for a dying man, relief that I could begin to piece my shattered life back together.

Today, I am no longer distant. There is no distance from the reality of this pain. He is truly gone and now I know it in every part of my being.

I miss him. I miss loving him. I miss his humor. I miss his funny old body. I miss cuddling. I miss laughing with him. I miss crying with him. I miss talking with him. I miss dancing with him. I miss his intuitive brilliant mind. I miss his unshakable faith in spirit. I miss how he played with the dog. I miss his voice. I miss his face. I miss seeing his joy when I walk into a room. I miss being known.

I’m finding that grief is its own animal, its own beast, and its own blessing. It has its own rhythm and it comes and it goes capriciously and unpredictably. And to second-guess that rhythm feels stupid and dangerous.

Stupid, because grief is a completely natural response to loss and to the intricacies of continuing to live without a loved one. I have lost my soulmate and I am keening.

Dangerous, because not trusting the innate intelligence of my body, and my tears, would put me in a compromised position with myself. I would move into a place of distrusting myself and my instincts, and that is crazy-making. I refuse to do it.

And under this, grief is a blessing. For in my grief, I know how much I loved Michael and how much he loved me. And that is worth everything.

Many women have told me that grief takes two years to get through the worst of it, and I’m just now approaching the end of this first year without him. Two years feels like an eternity. But that’s just what people say, and that’s their experience. God only knows if it will be mine. I’m trying not to make predictions or set timelines on this process.

There was a new man in my life – not a lover, but a friend – though lover-ship seemed promised early on. But The Lovers, the card that showed up as the outcome in the tarot reading about our relationship, began to die a rapid and completely surprising death about a month into our relationship, and now we are friends.

I didn’t accept this at first. The lover energy was so strong and so welcome that I wasn’t ready to let it go that quickly. Instead, I found myself building reveries around an imagined life. Not that this was completely my own imagining, mind you. There were statements made early on that fanned the flames of greater union, and I believed them and I wanted them. I greeted this respite from sorrow with open arms, and open heart, only to find a fearful reluctance from my friend who is beset by difficult circumstances.

I had also drawn The Tower card in my tarot reading, The Tower in the position of the self, and I knew that some egoic dream would be shaken to its core. Gradually, I saw that my ego was invested in the idea of who this man and I could become, of what we could be together, of how we would support and love each other. I suppose that those potentialities were truly there, but not in any substantial way. They were a dream, a phantasm that I constructed in order to avoid the grief that underlies my days.

Any fool could have seen what I was doing. Any fool could have known that it was too soon. Any fool would have realized that I was not yet ready for another love. But I am worse than a fool sometimes, and I believed that if love was coming to find me, I should be open to it. For who knows or understands the mysteries of how love arises?

But in my foolishness, I truly wasn’t allowing myself to see who this man really is. Or to see myself. His fear, his issues, and god knows what else, were all in the way. As were mine. Both of us had substantial blockages to being in love.

Several months ago when he said that his aging and his debilitation make it impossible for him to commit to falling in love again, I wrote to him, “Age and decline are not the barriers you make them out to be. In fact, they are the very reason to find the core of life more fervently.”

I believe this. I believe that finding the core of life, finding the heart of love, is the only quest worth pursuing. No matter how old we become, no matter how our bodies deteriorate, love in all of its forms, is the only thing worth doing, or worth being.

But I was still fighting for our love at that time, still hoping that my words might change a situation that really couldn’t change, or wouldn’t change. And mostly, I was fighting to avoid a grief that is so profound that all I want to do is escape its empty silence, an emptiness so deep that its black claws sometimes pull me under on the long nights without Michael.

I’m realizing that my friend is not alone in his fear and weariness over committing to another love. Many of us become frightened by its cost. For the cost is the highest possible. It is our very heart and soul that is at stake, and the more we love, the more we suffer. But it is in the suffering itself where the meaning of life is revealed. It is where our integrity, our truth, and our purity of heart are honed, and there is literally nothing more important than this.

As I look back on this now, I am grateful that the forces of life conspired to show me to myself in this way. And I am grateful to my friend for whatever odd body-wisdom asserted itself and kept us from a relationship that would have ended in flames and further disappointment for both of us.

So, on the night of the eclipse in January, when I awakened at 3:30 in the morning to a gentle sense of all-encompassing peace, it was about both of these men – my dear partner of 35 years, and my new friend who had seemed to promise so much more.

I lay in this peace for hours, feeling its love for me and for my sorrow, and I allowed all of the fantasies to fall away. I allowed the grief for Michael to be the grief that it is, in whatever time and form it takes. I allowed my new friendship to be just that, a friendship with a good man.

Today, months later, there is finally a softness around all of this. I don’t know how else to express it. I feel soft and open and accepting of whatever comes. For today I realize that The Lovers card in my tarot reading wasn’t speaking about my fantasy relationship. It was telling me about my own integration, about the Masculine and the Feminine energies coming together in me in a new and deeper way, about fully loving myself.

So, now I am allowing life to move through me more gently. I honor its vast and mysterious movements knowing that I am learning to trust its vital flow, learning to trust that it will show me exactly how to be, learning that this terrible grief is part of love. And finally, even in this seemingly endless anguish, the cost is truly worth it. For this grief, this enormous weight of sorrow, is exactly the price of love.