Another Anvil Falls from the Sky

The loss of a loved one is devastating.  We can say that.  We all know that.  In fact, in the days and weeks immediately following the death of someone deeply loved, most of us literally live in sorrow.  In those first few weeks after I lost my wife (the most beautiful woman on this planet while she lived) I could not do or see anything that did not deluge me with thoughts of her. 

I hurt all of the time.

As time went on, the sorrow started to come and go.  My continuing life distracted me.  I began to live a fairly normal emotional life, but still found the world filled with triggers and paths that led me to internal places of deep, intense grief.  On occasion, I found myself breaking-down as I changed bedding.   During our last sixteen years together, after Uyen became disabled, Uyen and I did this together.  I still think of Uyen every time I finish filling the gas tank in our car and twist the clicking cap to a full count of six.  That is a path.  I follow the path of her reminding me to make the gas cap click, to her being diagnosed with cancer, to her becoming unable to sit-up in bed, to her taking her final breath as I held her hand.

That path makes me ache.

These days, I don’t hurt all of the time.  I don’t even hurt most of the time.  I am really pretty happy.  I enjoy the new business I have launched.  I am busy.  I have new friends and I have all of my dear old friends.  When I encounter one of the old sorrow triggers, I am able to turn aside the freight-train of emotion that was once released by it.  I no longer follow those dark paths that descend down to bedpans, morphine, and that final night.   Every so often, however, an anvil falls on me: intense, heavy, sudden, overwhelming.  From out of nowhere—perhaps when I am simply driving along—my wife’s perfect smile fills the expanse around me. 

At once, an anvil of solid grief crushes me.

Sometimes, I pull-over alongside the road so I can step outside and maybe hear a bird singing or a dog barking.  Maybe I can smell the new grass.  Anything will do.

Then I drive on.

--Mitchell Hegman