Sometime back in 2019 or 2020, I became acquainted with a woman living in Nashville, TN. We met on a dating app and over the course of a week or two had a few very deep conversations. We both wrote and we were both interested in psychology/spirituality – though she was professionally trained in psychology. We shared some of our writing with each other. I sent a poem, she sent part of a chapter from a book/memoir. Both of our pieces were about loss and/or remembrance. She was a good writer. I admired her candor, clarity, and depth. I think we connected because we were both interested in, and and trying to be honest about, moving through grief. She was grieving a husband who had passed two or three years earlier. I was about a year into grieving a serious relationship that I thought was with my forever person. We could see that neither of us were ready for a relationship and the three-hour drive between Memphis, where I was living, and Nashville would be too much. We chatted for a few weeks and then relegated the connection to Facebook friends.
Aside from a few mutual birthday wishes, we’ve only connected one other time when I reached out to ask if she’d be willing to talk with the widow of my late best friend. My request was clumsy and maybe even inappropriate, but I wasn’t sure how else to help my deceased friend’s wife other than to say I know someone who knows a thing or two about losing their world and trying to move forward while raising three kids. Both she and my late friend’s wife were faced with the new reality of raising three kids without their spouses. Lives and relationships cut terribly short. Graciously, she said she’d be willing to talk, but I don’t think they every connected.
I was reminded of this woman today because she shared on Facebook her annual tribute to her late husband. I think I’ve read her tributes every year since we first “met.” They’re always heartfelt, thoughtful, and wise. Reading them, for me, serves as an annual reminder of the depths and duration of love and the delicate dance that loss teaches one about living in a present moment adorned with the shadowy yet pleasant hues of memory. This year’s tribute was no exception. She shared that she had gone looking for a photo and couldn’t settle on one. In her words, “the pictures were old, and I longed for something new.” This was another realization, one I’m sure she’s come to many times before, that life moves on while loss (or at least the one(s) we’ve lost) becomes a fixed moment in the past. She wrote, “he is back there, and I am right here.” She’s faced with the paradox of remembering this person she knew with day-to-day intimacy yet won’t get to see him age, his hairstyle change, his interests grow and evolve. There are no new memories to be made with the people who are no longer in our orbit – which makes those existing memories all the more bittersweet. In some respects it reminds me of a visual I once came across that suggested grief was something like a stone under a container. The stone never shrinks, but the container, with time, becomes larger – makes room for other things and other loves. Grief doesn’t diminish, we grow.
Reflecting on my own journey, now almost two years in to a new city and several years since I last experienced that day-to-day level of intimacy, there are a lot of people and places in the rear view mirror: a dear friend who has passed, women I’ve dared to love as honestly as I could in the moment, friends who I may never see again, family members who I see less often than I would like. Everyone moving at their own pace and in their own direction. All of those memories frozen in time. There are days when most of my life seems back there while I am right here. I’ve had many occasions when the memories and pictures are old and I’ve longed for something new – someone new, yet not so new… something recognizable and familiar, a little like home yet still full of the unknown, full of possibility in all its future iterations. With every break, every loss, some of what is mourned is the future that may not come to pass. And so we work to carry some things with us despite time’s relentless erosion. These days, I’m quicker to cut my losses and more willing to chalk things up to fate. I work to build slightly different versions – kinder, softer, more flexible versions – of the future I’ve always been chasing – all the while being mindful that regardless of who or what’s back there, I am right here.