From Gratitude Blooms Sorrow

Last February, when I wrote a blog about finally letting go of the grievances I still carried toward my ex-husband, I never anticipated that he would be “gone” before the month’s end. Nor had Grace, our young adult daughter and my only child, who was knocked akilter when her father—with whom she’d always had a fraught connection—succumbed to a blood disorder run amok.

 Nevertheless, after the shock of John’s hospitalization and his death four days later, I—unlike my daughter—felt grounded, finding within myself a  strong sense of gratitude. That emotion gave rise to quiet sorrow: after twenty-five years and considerable reflection, I had been able to forgive him for the irresponsible and painful way he had parented our daughter, as well as to make peace with myself for the long time it had taken to leave him behind and thus protect her. And then, trading disdain for compassion, I also pondered his long battle with alcoholism—one that he was destined to lose. All this helped me to discover a new sense of empathy for him.

 However, as the yellow and purple crocuses by the back door began their push through the soil last week, a riot of unsettling feelings––many of which I could not then name––encroached on my serenity of the prior weeks. Confused, I wondered now about the forgiveness that I had worked so hard to forge. Was acceptance enough? Had I really put my worst memories of this fractured relationship to rest? Or was I only deluding myself about this because I wished so fervently that it could be so?

 As the days passed after John’s death, all I could really concentrate on was Grace. She’s too young! And she’s suffered so much already! This mother’s lament sounded repeatedly in my mind and created a nauseating ripple of anxiety in my chest. I wished for the impossible: that I could spare her the pain of a loss that was indelible. And then I vowed to listen whenever she gave voice to her sorrow. And to do so for as long as she needed this kind of embrace.

 Nights were different, though. My thoughts made it impossible to rest comfortably once I’d burrowed my way down into my pillow, and disturbing dreams inevitably followed. Almost always in technicolor, they were chaotic nightmares, often violent in nature, and they regularly jolted me from sleep.

Initially, I relegated them to being what psychologists label “day residue:” the memory traces left by the events and thoughts of the waking state. This made particular sense because, like so many of us, I was deeply troubled by the war in Ukraine. Surely, nightmares invaded my sleep because the atrocities in Europe had settled into my unconscious mind.

 But then, after a series of these in which the action centered around me as I ran from a single adversary­––a sharpshooter––I woke once more with a start. Staring at the ceiling while still cocooned under the covers, my first thought was of John: he had been the sniper in my life for so many years. The nightmare was undoubtedly a metaphor for our acrimonious divorce so many years before, a time when I had indeed felt like I was fleeing, not only for “cover—” but for a new life.

 More recently, I have also begun to dream about my mother. I have no difficulty recognizing her when she appears in my night-time landscape and I am not surprised by her arrival: she had been as emotionally unavailable to me and as troubled as had John. In these vivid scenarios that so beset me, she quickly became the stand-in for my ex-husband.

 Yet, in these newest iterations, I was unerringly patient, empathetic even, when she directed her fury at me. I didn’t respond defensively to the disapproval in her eyes. Or to the look which told me that she believed I had betrayed her by leaving her alone in her later years. In these instances, I reminded her of my final and hard-won devotion just the way I always had when she was alive: Oh, Mom, I was just over there last week. Don’t you remember? Anyway, all of our misery happened so long ago! We’ve gotten past it.

 I’ve awakened from these notable dips into my unconscious not with a feeling of fright or a sense of disorientation, but with hope instead. My dream-life seems to be trending in the right direction—my psyche indicating that my conflicted connection to my mother is now, indeed, resolved. And if I could resolve that with her then, why not this “unfinished business” with John now? And so, in my mind, I began to hear a voice that reassured me with its clarity: Forgiveness is exactly what made it possible for you to finally have an open heart with Mom, you silly girl. Have faith! You are on your way with him, as well!

At a community fundraiser last Friday, I met the woman who had spearheaded the drive, and who also was a member of the library board on which John had served for many years. It was then that I found myself introducing myself in a way I never had before. “I’m Terry Crylen. John McFarlane’s ex-wife.” Despite my bravado at connecting myself to him in this way, I was afraid of how she might react. Would I be embarrassed? Had he ever come to a meeting drunk? “I wonder if you remember him?” I inquired, pushing onward, with a hopeful sort of bravery.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “YOU were the wife?”

I froze. What did she mean? Had he done something to humiliate himself? Or me?

“What a small world! Of course I knew him.” She beamed. “He was brilliant. What a loss to us all. He had such a dry sense of humor, right?”  

I nodded. She had spoken of one of his best qualities, that keen wit: I had set it too far at the back of my mind in the tumultuous years we were married.

“You know, John was the person who mentored me,” she added, warmly.

A fresh sorrow swept over me after she went on to the next person she had to greet; I recalled how smart and funny the man I’d once called my husband had been. Then, for perhaps the first time since our anguished separation a quarter-century ago, I felt a new emotion: Grief, a stone that now settled in my chest. Today, as I watch the crocuses open from my back door, I continue to carry this sense of loss with me. Perhaps believing it will help as I try to bury the splinters of a marriage long dead—and to create room for tenderness to bloom in my heart, at last.