Tender Grace (2 page)

I miss Tom.

I also miss me.

two

July 20

Our youth minister called this morning and asked if I’d teach the fourth grade for VBS next week. He asked last February, said the kids always asked for me, but I declined. “Maybe next year,” I said. Fortunately finding people to help at our church isn’t too difficult, and Karen Norton agreed to teach the fourth graders. Unfortunately, Grant explained, she had emergency surgery last night, leaving them “in a fix.” I said I was sorry but I just couldn’t do it on such short notice. I felt bad. Two summers ago they could have counted on me. I told Grant to call everyone he knew and call me back if there was literally no one else. He said there were others on his list, for me not to worry. If he calls back, I just won’t answer.

It has crossed my mind that caller ID and the DVR make my life tolerable.

It was only eight when Grant called, and I was not ready to face the day. Hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t go back to sleep. Finally I got out of bed, poured a Diet Coke, and sat on the back porch staring at the trees. The trees used to nourish me, but these days I merely stare at or through them.

Out of my stupor came Tom’s voice, calling me to look at his tomato plants. The vines had grown above the six-foot wire contraptions he had made to encircle and protect them, and though the tomatoes were still green, they were as big around as his hand. I got out of the glider and actually walked down the steps and across to the side yard, where railroad ties outline the rectangle of his garden, empty but for soil dry and compressed after waiting so long to be cultivated.

July 21

Mom called today. She wanted to tell me “the girls” had spotted a pod of dolphins this morning. Since my dad died, she, along with five other widows in their seventies, has spent every July and August vacationing in a beach-front house in Gulf Shores. Most of them haven’t missed a year in the last eight.

I asked her if she was having fun.

“We’re having a blast,” she said.

Then she had to go; it was her turn to deal.

July 25

Rita talked me into lunch today. She has made the transition from couple friend to solo friend. I’m sure it took some effort. The first Sunday I returned to church after Tom died, Rita dragged John to the other side of the auditorium so they could sit by me, and there they have sat every Sunday since. More often than not, when church is over, she tries to arrange something for the following week: lunch, a movie, shopping. “You’d do it for me,” Rita said when I told her she does too much. It is such a relief that she never gets offended when I say, “Not this week, do you mind?” Most of my friends haven’t been so tenacious. I don’t blame them.

She came into the restaurant carrying a purse the size of carry-on luggage and two sacks requiring handles. When she reached our table, she looked at her sacks and laughed at herself. She had picked them up with her purse when she got out of the car. She situated them in the corner behind our table and said she and John are going on a cruise. She called it “your cruise,” since Tom and I had gone on a Mediterranean cruise for our twenty-fifth anniversary.

Rita is dear to me for many reasons. That she isn’t afraid to mention Tom is among them. It’s one reason I sometimes accept her invitations. She and John are leaving the second week of September and will be gone almost four weeks. They’re taking a land tour of Italy after the cruise. I told her Tom enjoyed that cruise but said he’d never again spend more than two weeks away from home.

Oh, but he’s been gone much longer than two weeks.

And he didn’t take me with him.

Four or five years ago I read about a couple in their eighties who died together in their bed, the result of a gas leak. My own grandparents died only three months apart. I have thought of these couples often . . . and envied them.

July 26

If people knew what was really going on in my life, they’d probably say I’m depressed and should get help. And I’ll admit I do have some classic symptoms of depression. Still, though it takes me forever and gives me little pleasure, every day I take a shower, wash my hair,
and
put on makeup. I put on my makeup even if I plan to watch ten straight hours of recorded programming. If someone comes to the door, I might pretend I’m not home, but not because I don’t look decent. I’ve been surprised to discover that all these years I’ve looked as good as possible for
myself,
not Tom, though he appreciated it. What that means, I don’t know. But when I no longer care about my appearance, I’ll turn myself in, and if I don’t, Mark and Molly will most certainly intervene.

Music and reading are the only two things I’ve given up entirely. I still go to church, at least the morning worship service, I still talk with the kids and Mom, and I still invite them to come see me (but please make it brief). I still do things with Rita now and then, I play handheld games Tom used to take on planes, I keep a deck of cards nearby for solitaire, and I watch hours of television. I sometimes watch fluff stuff, but HGTV, Animal Planet, the History Channel, the Learning Channel, and the National Geographic Channel keep me enormously informed. I’m not brain dead, but I’m sure my heart is precariously close to a kind of death, because anything I do is such a chore. My life is one long sigh. That seems a crime against God’s goodness to me.

That knowledge, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t change anything.

July 28

I didn’t pick up the phone today—not even when Molly called. I figured she’d leave a message if it were an emergency. I just didn’t have the energy to sound fine. I’ll call her this evening. I’ll ask her what Jada and Hank have been up to and reciprocate with details about the Alaska pipeline, fresh off the History Channel.

She’s lost her dad; she must not lose her mother.

July 29

I’ve been reading my entries. In doing so, I’ve realized that I have given up something besides reading and listening to music. Not quite as completely, but as significantly. I’ve given up speaking.

Of course I say what is necessary. And with those closest to me, I try to interact, but I’ve become adept at asking open-ended questions. Such questions keep others talking, and the questioner comes off as a good conversationalist. When open-ended questions need a rest, Animal Planet (et al.) comes to the rescue. There you have it: Someone who was once borderline gregarious has no desire to speak. None. I haven’t even carried on an interior monologue. I’ve been close to comatose within.

Is that why I opened my laptop the evening of July tenth?

To speak?

July 30

I sat beside Rita in church today and felt like crying when a girl sang a song I hadn’t heard in some time, since long before Tom died. The refrain is all I remember, all I heard after the first few lines: “Jesus will still be there.” Not that I don’t know that. “I am with you always” runs through my mind most days, even as I sigh. But as she sang I saw the image of massive hands extending from strong arms reaching over a cliff and grasping my forearms. I remained suspended in midair throughout the song, but I didn’t fall.

I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of such an optimistic image.

July 31

An idea came to me in the middle of the night.

Even when I was sane I tended to roll my eyes at ideas conceived under such circumstances, so I’ll probably deem this one stupid too when I ponder it in the light of day.

The kids called to check on me. Today would have been our thirty-second anniversary.

A Tennyson line comes to me: “O death in life, the days that are no more.”

August 1

Twenty-four hours later, the idea seems feasible. The wildness of this late-night thought trumps the desperation of my days.

I’m leaving here.

three

August 3

I’ve “summoned” the children. They’ll come Saturday and go to church with me on Sunday. It will be nice not to go alone, nice to have friends gather around our pew to greet the kids and marvel at how cute the grandkids are.

I took the car in for an oil change and asked them to check the tires, lights, and anything else that needs checking when one is taking off on a long trip. I sat in the waiting room watching
Dr. Phil
when a man I’d never seen before started talking to me.

“Hot,” he said.

I glanced away from Phil for a minute to see if the man was really talking to me. We were the only two people in the room, so I shook my head in agreement.

“It is,” I said.

“A hundred three degrees.”

“Whew,” I replied.

“It is” and “whew” were all he needed.

He told me he laid tile for new construction, but it was just getting too hot for it; he told me about a new invention he’d come up with to take the ambiance of a tiled floor up a notch (I didn’t quite follow this); he told me in detail about the design he was doing for the kitchen he was currently working on, which featured little diamond-shaped insets made of colored glass.

At some point in all this, I told him my husband laid the tile for the bathrooms in our new home.

Driving away, I thought about my conversation with Chatty Man. (Generally speaking, that might be a prize-winning oxymoron.) It struck me as interesting that I called our house
new
. Most things are relative, I suppose; nevertheless, we didn’t move in last month, or last year—Tom laid those tiles
eleven
years ago.

Still, I like the present tense sound of “our new home.” I can see why I chose it. I can see why I let it stand.

August 5

After we cleared the dinner table and settled the babies in the bonus room to watch
Cars
(an appropriate choice in retrospect), I asked the kids to sit with me in the living room.

“I don’t mean to be mysterious,” I told them, “but I’m going on a road trip, destination and time frame undetermined.”

The four of them looked at me as if I’d suggested a game of strip poker.

Molly finally said, “What do you mean?”

Then everyone was talking at once.

They began to calm down somewhat when they realized I had been carefully preparing for this trip. Even in the fog of my existence, I knew if I didn’t give them an explanation of what I am planning and convince them I will be okay, they’d send the Mounties after me.

Mark was impressed that I had the car taken care of, and he was glad to hear it still had substantial warranty time left on it. Molly was relieved to see my current insurance and AAA cards filed neatly in a plastic bag, ready for the glove compartment. The size and weight of my new atlas seemed to reassure them as well.

“I may not know where I’m going from one day to the next,” I said, plopping it on the ottoman in front of the sofa, “but when I decide, I’ll know how to get there. Ultimately, I plan to visit an island near San Diego that your dad wanted me to see.”

“That’s sad, Mom,” Molly said.

“Sort of, I guess. But I want to do this.”

I went on to tell them that the Bennetts, who have lived across the street since we built the house, would take care of the yard and collect the mail. “Mark can pick it up once a month and pay any bills for me that aren’t taken care of directly through the bank.”

“Once a month!” They were a choir.

“I may be gone awhile.”

My cell phone, I explained, would be on, but just for family emergencies (and to hit *55 at the first sign of trouble). I would communicate by e-mail, and I’d try to do it several times a week, at least once a week. I assured them I’d stay in nice places and be very, very careful.

When I finished, I asked if they could think of anything I’d overlooked.

“Someone to go with you,” Molly said. Mark nodded in agreement.

“Who?” I asked.

The girls stared at me, eyes brimming with tears.

“I think this may be something I’m supposed to do. I won’t exactly be alone, you know. Something you can think of every time you start to worry is the promise that runs through my mind almost daily: ‘I am with you always.’ ”

Because they are children of faith, this seemed to help.

August 8

Everything is in the car except my overnight bag and this laptop. My clothes are laid out for tomorrow, a midcalf brown cotton skirt, a white tank top, and brown leather flip-flops— the usual. Tom and I always packed the car the night before a trip. He wanted an early start and nothing to impede that goal. I’m not too interested in my departure time. Whenever I get around to it. I loaded up tonight to check for things I’ve forgotten and to have tomorrow morning to check again.

Mark wanted me to take Tom’s Tahoe, a three-row version purchased with a number of grandchildren in mind. He liked the idea of my being in something tanklike. But I’m taking my Solara. I know it well—it’s my second one, and it takes much less gas. And I can park it.

Molly asked me to stop by when I told her I planned to spend the first night in Tulsa.

“Joplin’s on the way, Mom,” my daughter pleaded so sweetly.

I couldn’t refuse her even though I will have barely been on the road an hour. The kids want to tell me good-bye again. The little boys aren’t old enough to know I’m going farther than Wal-Mart, but the girls are, and they aren’t much happier than their parents about this sojourn of mine. They have a charmingly limited point of view: I’m a nana, not a wanderer.

What I am is a woman who wants her old life back.

I don’t know how to
be
without Tom Eaton.

August 9

Molly had a nice lunch ready for my arrival and had me on my way in an hour. She and the kids walked me to the car, gave me hugs and kisses, and waved good-bye until my car turned the corner and headed for I-44. Part of me hated leaving them.

Almost as much as I’d hated pulling out of my driveway this morning. I sat in the car with the garage door open, practically hyperventilating as I contemplated leaving everything I have loved. But in the end I put the car in reverse and drove away before the life that I have loved destroys me.