And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (24 page)

“Kid, I had to see you for myself. I had to look at you with my own eyes. I had to see that you’re okay. And I think you’re right where you should be.

“Look at this empty chair. Pretend he’s in it. What did he call you? He called you ‘baby girl.’ You know what he’d say? He’d say, ‘Hey, baby girl. I love you. I still do. I didn’t want to leave you. But I’m so proud of you. You go do this, baby girl. You’re strong, you’re wise, and you can do this. Now you do it. Do it your way. I’m proud of you, baby girl.’

“It’s a new chapter now, Tricia. You’re a writer—you know what that means. It means you decide what happens next. It’ll be hard. It’ll be different. But you can do it.

“Leadership is the path from intelligence to wisdom. You’re on that path, kid. You’re earning wisdom that a dozen degrees can never give you.

“You need to cry? You call me. I can host a pity party with you. You bet I can; you bet I will. And then I’ll tell you to get out there and do this thing. Because you can. I know you can. And Robb knows you can. You hear him, Tricia? ‘Baby girl, I’m proud of you.’

“Hey! What did I tell you? No defending. Don’t defend yourself. You make your decision, and you don’t defend it. No defending. You do what’s best for you and those boys.

“And you stay in touch. I’m not giving up on you, kid. And neither is he. ‘I’m proud of you, baby girl.’ That’s what he’d say.

“Now you go do this thing.”

When you let it go, it’ll come right back to you.

—Tyrone Wells, “Freedom”

I had felt such turmoil in the last weeks, torn between the life that was, the marriage that isn’t, the choices that are mine to claim. I find myself remembering the worst about us, and the spectrum is broad. I am set free from the pesky rules he felt so compelled to maintain: I can wait a couple of days to check the mailbox, I can leave the shower curtain swept aside with carefree fearlessness of mildew, I can wait another thousand miles to get the oil changed, and I can leave lights on throughout the house if I’m feeling afraid of the dark or if I just like the charm of a lamp glowing in a bedroom. I am set free to be the girl I have discovered: I can spend money the ways I choose, I can travel anywhere I want at any time I choose, I can pursue my career without an awareness to nurture his ego or confidence. Aside from caring for my children, I live without boundaries. The world is my oyster, it seems. I’m a single girl; anything is mine. I pursue these thoughts in my mind, chase them down and grab them, blindly convince myself that this is what I wanted all along.

Can the heart truly love more than one person at a time? As I look to move forward, write the next chapter, I feel my heart wanting distance from Robb. As if the only way to move forward is to trick my brain into thinking I don’t really want him anymore anyway. How else could I move forward without dishonoring him? How do I carry him through the day without crying? How do I make plans for the future without carrying him with me?

The answer is simple: he doesn’t get to come.

I have to let him go. The strings that keep us attached are the same cords that keep me tethered. I have to let go. This is the only way I can hold tightly to the memories, keep them sacred without tainting them. I have to let him go while I can remember him well.

I read about a woman who has a birdcage. Not a bird, just a birdcage. She keeps it on display in her home, with the door wide open. A reminder that her cage is open. She can fly away, but she chooses to be where she is. This metaphor comes alive to me. I had felt caged in, incapable of spreading my wings and growing into the person I knew I could become. But the truth is, Robb didn’t put me in a cage; I had stepped inside on my own. And I hold the key. I always have.

So here I am, driving up the mountain with his ashes at my side. I play our favorite songs, letting my memories take me wherever they want to go. I let myself cry with abandon—the warm, cleansing tears of healing. I drive on a two-lane road that becomes more winding, less crowded, and finally utterly secluded as I arrive at a lake just below the mountain’s peak. I turn off the car. I step out. The air is crisp; there isn’t a sound. I button my coat, grab the handles of the white bag, and click the remote to lock the car behind me as I head for the water. I sit down on a rock, placing the bag beside me. I open the canister and unwind the bread-loaf tie. My movements are slow and methodical, as if I am laying out an elegant picnic. As if I were here on a date with him.

I lift the bag into my hands. I reach inside. I gather a small pile in my hands and scatter the ashes on the sand around me. I repeat this
step over and over, sometimes scattering the ashes low to the ground, sometimes tossing them in the air like confetti, sometimes listening to their rippling splash on the water. I love the earthy mess of it—the gray under my fingernails, flecked on my jeans, dusted on my shoes, and powdered across my white winter coat.

The ashes do not seem like his body to me, even though these small stones are bits of his bone and teeth. No, I don’t feel like I’m holding him at all. I feel like I am holding something he has given me, a sacred gift. The last thing he touched. Some people have others scatter ashes on their behalf, or they hire a helicopter service to scatter the remains. How thankful I am to do this myself, on my own.

I talk to him. I tell him about the boys, how they are and who they are becoming. I tell him about me, what I’m learning about who I am. I tell him we are okay, the three of us, the two of them, me: together on our own. I tell him things I’ll never again say aloud, since one of the most precious gifts of marriage is the treasury of secrets.

I kneel and pour a thick pile onto the ground. With my finger I trace a heart in the small grains. A gravestone of sorts, albeit one that will wash away with the next rainfall. I kiss the gray off my fingertips.

I sit in the stillness until I am finished. The bag bulges with untouched remains. I twist it closed and wrap the plastic tie around its small neck. I put it back in the canister, back in the white handled bag. I will give the remaining ashes to his parents and his brother. Robb belonged to them before he was mine to love.

I dust off my hands, my jeans, my shoes, and I walk back to the car. Instead of putting the bag in the front seat with me, I tuck it into
the backseat. I don’t need the security of holding it close by anymore. I sit in the driver’s seat, in stillness. All I can feel is thankful.

As I start the car, I think of one more thing I want to say. I roll down the window as if he can hear me better, as if I am calling out an “Oh, by the way, before I go …” to a friend.

“Thank you, Robb,” I whisper. “It was real. It was beautiful. It was so great. I love you, babe. And now I have to live.”

I race down the mountain to happy songs of acoustical freedom and pounding joy. A whole new playlist.

That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it. You’re a woman who can travel that far. I know it.

—Cheryl Strayed,
Tiny, Beautiful Things

That evening, after I scattered his ashes, I finished the last page in a hardback journal—one with stripes of grass green, chocolate brown, burnt orange, and deep sugar plum.

The book covers of my journals bind the pages of my life, and my heart had traveled a ragged road since I began writing on those pages. They held my worries, concerns, questions, waiting, wondering. All poured out. Every last drop. But as I wrote the last page, I realized this closing chapter held a theme woven throughout: faithfulness, goodness, strength, and peace. Not a bad story line.

Off to the bookstore to buy a new journal. It’s time to write the next chapter.

Madeleine L’Engle says that a work of art comes to the artist, and the artist either willingly becomes the bearer of the work or refuses. I suppose refusing was an option, in the same way that indoor plumbing and Tylenol and air conditioning in the car are options. I could have said no, but my life would not have been the same.

Robb, thank you for more than four thousand days of life together. I agreed to this wild ride on the day I said, “Sure, lovey. I’ll marry you,” and I’d trade nothing for the journey now. May I live as many days as I’m given, just as you did.

I thank my mom, my dad, my brother, and his beautiful wife. What’s important to one of us is important to all of us. You make my heart sing.

I thank my agent, Greg Johnson, for taking a chance on a girl with a story. For listening to the Walgreens nurse who first mentioned my name to you. For reading and coaching and representing me in the world where you are well known and your expertise is trusted. You have been my champion.

I thank my Tuesdays, the four sisters of my heart. I raise my wineglass to weeks and weeks of Tuesdays on Wednesdays, topics and lists, coffees with cream, and together being known in all the best and worst ways. Every girl should have such a seat at this table. You are sewn into my life with satin threads of every color.

I thank my therapist, Jana. Thank you for countless hours in your comfy chair, for offering a safe place for any and every word I needed to say and even some that I couldn’t. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and keeping my secrets.

I thank Bruce, my editor, for refining this story until it shone. You have brought far more to my life than marks on a page; you have taught me to make literature. Thank you for revising my path.

I thank Donald Miller, whom I met at the Portland Storyline conference in 2012 when he said, “Have you thought of writing a book about this? Let’s stay in touch. I want to see where this goes.”

I thank Natalie Goldberg for paving the way with books upon books to teach us that writing is a practice and the memoir is attainable. For telling all of us to pick up a pen and get started.

I thank Sara Bareilles, John Mayer, Christy Nockels, Kari Jobe, and the Zac Brown Band, to name a few favorites, for singing into my iPod for hours every day, not even minding when I turned you all on repeat and made you start all over again.

I thank the baristas who memorized my preferences, who saved a table in Starbucks, and who let me rent office space for the price of an Americano.

I thank the readers who have joined me since this story began on a blog, with the musings of a teacher-turned-writer who wasn’t thrilled with the stay-at-home scene. Thank you for joining me every morning, for letting me speak into your life. You are an invisible community that has kept me afloat. You keep me writing.

T
RICIA
L
OTT
W
ILLIFORD
’
S
great loves are teaching, writing, and her two young sons, Tucker and Tyler. When her husband died unexpectedly and tragically at Christmastime, Tricia suddenly found herself to be a thirty-one-year-old widow with two preschoolers to raise on her own. The blog she had been writing for several years became her lifeline as she wrote about loss, sadness, laughter through tears, daily challenges of raising little boys, the return of hope, and the spark of new dreams to come—and her readership grew dramatically and went worldwide. Tricia is a highly sought-after speaker and teacher for events and retreats all over the country. She collects books, words, and bracelets, prefers to have a solid supply of both Diet Pepsi and steaming coffee on hand at all times, and is quite particular about her choices of both pens and technology. She loves playing games with the boys, does not so much love the mounds of dirty jeans and socks they seem to generate, and cannot for the life of her catch a ball.