There is an anger stage of grief, they say, and for the past couple of weeks, I have been solidly in it. I am burning with a white-hot, pure-blooded anger that I can feel all the way down to my core.
There was a part of me that honestly believed, as many times as Michael Powell had cheated death in his lifetime, that he would simply do it again. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised that he did not. Mike was a realist, though, and I think he knew the outcome long before I did.
Reality has landed, with a gigantic and horrible crash. Mike is well and truly gone. For the rest of my life, I am going to be by myself, without Mike. And the anger from that threatens to overtake and consume me.
There is a hole inside me. Being around other people doesn’t fill it. Work doesn’t fill it. Keeping busy and active doesn’t fill it. It’s the hole that exists when I look at Mike’s chair. When I wonder what I will fix us for dinner. When I want to sit on the deck and listen to us tell stories and laugh and make plans for hours. When I look down the hill at Mike’s workshop, shuttered tight.
I keep raging – why, why, WHY did Mike and I find each other again, only to lose that we-can-do-anything unit that became us? Why did Mike move me from Houston – why did I want to follow him – why am I here starting all over, once again, at 62? Why isn’t he here to see his grandchildren grow up, to give counsel and guidance to our adult children, to spend time with his friends he loved so much?
Whose name do I put on this sternly-worded memo I’d like to write, protesting the unjustness of it all?
Cancer? No. Cancer is a thing. It’s not an entity. It’s a disease that seems hell-bent in taking us off the planet long before our hoped-for expiration dates. I look at all these new esophageal cancer patients in the support group I follow. Half of me is cheering them on, half of me says why bother to fight? But cancer isn’t something to be mad at. It has no feelings, no soul.
God? Well, as a Christian, I’m supposed to believe that everything that happens is part of God’s plan. We just don’t yet understand that plan. And that may be so, but I have to comment that sometimes, from a human standpoint, these plans are really quite wretched!
Mike? Hell, no. If Mike had his druthers, we’d have just gotten showers on this rainy evening. We’d be laughing and talking, we’d be curled up on our pillows watching old Westerns and reading Facebook to each other. We’d be happy and relaxed and at peace, and he’d be sending me to the kitchen to forage for snacks. Mike had no plans to get cancer and die. He was too full of life and too full of dreams he wanted to accomplish.
And that’s the only thing right now that is keeping me going. I keep thinking of all those plans we had – both mine and Mike’s. I’m the only one left to make them happen. He’s depending on me. I’m depending on me. I can’t let either of us down.
I recognize the anger as unproductive, a waste of time. And I must shake it, and fast. None of this can be solved except through acceptance. But I’m not there yet. Right now, I’m raging at a loneliness that only Mike can fill. I’m raging at the injustice of our short time together. I’m raging at myself for not just picking myself up and getting on with it.
And I’m raging at time. In the grand scheme of a lifespan, there’s so little of it left, and I so very much wanted to spend it as Michael Powell’s wife – not his widow – at 62.
At 62 