Author: Jason Zerbey

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Single AF

Romantic. Fool for Love. Intense. Romeo.

My friends (and myself) have taken me to task for how I love. Sage advice, patient nurturing, and loving mockery have been at my doorstep since I chose to end an intense and public love affair.

I’ve experienced romantic love twice in the nearly two years since I lost my wife. It seems I have two modes of dating: one and done, or falling in love.

I live with all my heart. Parenting, soccer, yoga, even blogging isn’t fulfilling until it pushes me to tears. That’s where I like to get, that place of danger, the place where possibility blooms like a sunrise out of a winter morning.

Widowhood didn’t create this, as my high school sweetheart recently reminded me, it moved the bar. The love that Mary left me is greater than any I have ever known, the pain nearly equal. Living in these extremes has stripped away much of the middle. So comes the high-wire act. The joy and jeopardy of dancing between the fringes of existence. Worse than tripping back into the pain is floating off the wire into space, drifting without course.

My heart doesn’t break. It grows to the size of its pot. Then it continues to grow. The beauty is obvious as leaves and blooms spill out over the sides. The pain comes as the roots push silently against the hardened clay, struggling for room. The pot breaks and the pain is exposed and ugly. Relief is there too. I am reminded that love is infinite. I am reminded of God’s love that Mary opened a window to on the day she left this realm. I am reminded that there is always a bigger pot, that I can mold one on my own, and that it’s okay to crave a partner in that process.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Gratitude

I made space for family today. I sorted through piles, rearranged furniture, and tucked many things out of sight. I found this note that came with a delicious loaf of pumpkin bread delivered last Thanksgiving by a friend.

“Friend” isn’t enough. The Judys are an amazing family that just had to be in our lives. So many of our Venn circles overlap that it’s hard to recall how we actually met. It could have been at a soccer game, homeschool gathering, jiu-jitsu studio, Lego competition, church volunteer opportunity, nature program, or an evening of Christmas caroling.

I’ve been on a daily diet of gratitude since Gina surprised us with a quick visit over a year ago. I’ve never found it difficult. The hard part is accepting the depth of our losses and the darkest parts of our Selves. Carl Jung said, “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” I’ve learned much about the bottomless well that stretches down into hell. I wish it could be enough; but that is foolish, painful learning may be the only worthwhile kind there is.

It’s those mornings after a tearful, or simply exhausted beyond tears, transition into sleep that I wake and face those things I am grateful for. I find myself thanking God for the challenges, the adversaries, and the losses.

But for this Thanksgiving, for tonight’s easy transition into restful sleep, I am grateful for the peace and support of the family and friends who made this a special day.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Dear Mary,

I asked God to take me to you last night.

I know you wouldn’t want that so I’m finally writing to you. A confession, I suppose.

I love you and I miss everything. I miss your hair and I miss your laugh when the boys would find your tickle spot. I miss our team, our problem solving, our only-together-will-we-get-through-this approach, and our devotion and loyalty to each other and our family.

I keep grasping for these feelings to mean something, to have utility. I guess it doesn’t always work that way.

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Sharing Shakespeare

Three years ago today, we sat in our minivan outside a senior center and listened to a children’s adaptation of “Pericles” before seeing Delaware Shakespeare’s production. With the modest bribe of a lollipop at intermission, we survived the nearly three-hour show and brothel scenes that hadn’t made the cut into the younger version. I was touched by the heartache of a father who was losing everything her cared for. I had no idea how I was being prepared to face my own loss.

Eight years before that I took my new bride, Mary, to see her first Shakespeare on our honeymoon in London, “Macbeth.” I had no idea how the Bard would become a central figure in our lives.

Tonight I was blessed to take a soul mate to her first Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet.” Again performed by the talented folks at Delaware Shakespeare. She loved it and I have found a new thread reaching back through time to help make this new life make sense.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Me First

One must first have a relationship with oneself, then God, however you choose to define that which you value most. That is everything.

I’ve been slack on my daily stretching/#meditation/#gratitude/#affirmations routine lately. Why would I take this away from myself when it was a key factor in reuniting with a soul mate?

It is precisely that a relationship with another soul is NOT everything that we must maintain our connection with ourselves.

Today I reissue my promise to myself to treat my Self as something worthy of love.

Today my sons and I return to therapy, this time together. I have done great work since losing their mother to death. I have honored her everyday and remain guided by the wellspring of love that sprang up out of her deathbed. I have answered each one of my sons’ questions about death and their mother to the best of my ability. I have now recognized the limits of my ability and humbly look to help through continued challenges.

God bless you and thank you for reading,

Jason

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This #MondayMorning is brought to you by coffee, magic, and love.

Single dading is complicated, single-dad dating is fumbling with a Rubik’s Cube on a moonless night in the woods. Throw in a deceased wife, #unschooling, and a stubborn drive to challenge societal conventions and coupling starts to look impossible.

—-

Months ago that word entered my mind like this, “What am I doing? This is impossible. I hardly know how I got here, how can I move forward?”

—-

Impossible. It was already impossible. Mary loved our learning lifestyle and the evolution of our homeschool into an unschool. That love gave her an insight into her own death. Mary was moved to increase her life insurance policy less than two years before her passing. She expressed a desire for us to carry on for a while in case of her absence. She was the breadwinner and I trusted her, so we made the adjustments in our financial plans.

—

Her access to Love was easy, so easy that she just strolled in its glow. Mary’s stroll was direct and paced with purpose. When I followed and watched her, I learned the habits of Love. I learned what it meant to try to be like Jesus Christ. She never would have put it that way, but I saw it when she encouraged me to Bible study. I took an honest and direct look at Christ’s life and realized I wanted to be more like that. I realized that without having ever quoted Scripture, Mary was showing me the Way. We were baptized as a family a mere five months before we lost her. The Aldersgate United Methodist Church family has been a foundational piece of our impossible puzzle. Christ’s example of reaching out to each and every human has opened my heart to relationships as varied as the seven billion people on Earth. I’ve found Love in playgrounds, libraries, yoga studios, and even the internet.

—

The trouble is…I ain’t no Christ. I’m broken, fallen, and carrying more trauma than one lifetime can account for. I am easily bored by people, I have a temper with my sons, and if I’m not bored with you, I’ll probably love you to pieces. I never regret falling in romantic love, but I tend to do it easily. I enjoy being in the presence of women and I have passions for sex, family, and companionship that bring me no shame.

—

That’s a lot to bring on a first date. There haven’t been a lot of second dates.

—

Then I met Pinar. Not on a dating site, but online. We had been in the same small field, at the same small festival and followed each other on Instagram as locals a few months previous to her being moved to read my story. She reached out to me and we met by a quidditch field as my boys ran around on their “brooms.” I told her about Mary and she told me about studying astrophysics and surprised us with an invitation to an astronomy talk and planetarium show at Mount Cuba Astronomical Observatory that evening. Her intuition for an unschool adventure touched me. It was the kind of weeknight move that was habit for me and Mary, but that had come from years of talking and planning outings together. As I sat in the dark with this woman who had no children, I felt an energy very much like I had when I first met Mary and saw her with her nieces. I felt bold like I had with Mary, I wanted to put my arm around her.

—

This wasn’t supposed to be a date!

—

I kept my hands to myself until we hugged goodbye in the rain. Until our lips touched, I didn’t think it would happen. I wasn’t thinking at all.

—

Five days later we had our first “official” date, a day at Longwood Gardens. We fell in love and, more surprisingly, had the courage to share our feelings for one another. It was a magical day at a magical place. Mary loved it there, we visited often as a family and on our own dates. She was present on this day too. A smartly dressed woman, maybe 60, was admiring crocuses growing out of pachysandra. I only knew crocuses to bloom in the winter, I only knew crocuses or pachysandra at all because of Mary. I asked her if they were unusual and she told me these were autumn crocuses. I thank her and she walked off. Pinar said, “I think that was Mary. Something, the way you talked to her maybe.” I turned to watch her stroll down the hill, a confident, determined stroll. Her outfit and style, cropped and tidy white hair, it could have been Mary in fifteen years.

—

Mary left me with a feeling of love that has made the impossible become a beautiful reality. She left me with a faith in Love that allowed me to meet a soul mate. She continues to show up to support me.

Last night Pinar gave me a Harry Potter mug that reveals Harry’s stag patronus when filled with my favorite hot beverage. It was special as we’ve bonded over coffee and magic. It became magic in itself this morning as I tried it for the first time. I sat down to write at my laptop and couldn’t find the power cord. I searched Mary’s old laptop bag. On the corner was a button I hadn’t seen in years. She used this bag at work and it rarely came home.

We had read the books aloud to our sons, but were never Potterheads. This was an unusual token to encounter. It has reinforced my feeling of being in the right place, at the right time, whether that may be impossible or not.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Loving and Learning Out Loud

The fumbling, passion, excitement, and awkwardness of my romantic life since becoming a widower has been largely a secret. I’ve been searching for a balance between privacy and sharing an important part of my healing journey.

In Pinar I have found a soul who wants something greater out of our relationship: to not only help heal each other, but show others how happiness and meaning can be achieved after great loss. We fell in love hard and fast and have barred our wounds to each other. We’ve shared our experiences through death and divorce and how those losses have compounded through the loss of relationships with friends and family.

We’ve begun a new chapter of learning and loving in one another.

In sharing here and at astropinar.com we aim to model for other couples and honestly explore the myriad difficulties associated with partnering after loss.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Agree to Disagree

I think about the people Jesus called “friend” and how they oppressed his ethnic family, would kill his intellectual and spiritual family, and would deny the truth he was speaking and hang him from a cross.

And he knew the hearts of men, we do not. He knew the Hell on Earth he was inviting and walking into willingly. None of us knows the Hell that someone else is living or has lived through.

Politics is a set of categories designed to divide us into armies instead of individuals. Jesus would not have spoken to the woman at the well if he assumed she would not listen. Why would a Samaritan ever listen to a Jew? Ridiculous at the time. If he had maintained the tribe (politics is voluntary tribalism) mentality, he never would have uttered a word, for Jews did not think the way he did, no one did.

Jesus acted and spoke out of love. That’s why he could break all the rules of his tribe and the world at large. That’s how he changed the world with the ultimate #LoveWins moment.

In an age when we have the ability to express our individuality like no other human has, it pains me to see people choose groups over individuals.

You voted for Trump? Tell me about it and I’ll tell you why I can’t support sexual predators having a say in my life. You voted for Clinton? Tell me about it and I’ll tell you why I can’t support sexual predators having a say in my life.

“Agree to disagree” is a polite “shut up now.” A bumper sticker that has no use. We have to ask each other questions and look deeper at our own brokenness than the brokenness in others. Only when you listen and take lessons from the answers can you hunt down your own demons and heal your own soul. Once you start healing, you will find others on similar paths who are ready to learn from you and teach you.

I’ve seen this in my life, I don’t have to avoid political conversations because those people have disappeared from my life. My path is a lot scarier and a lot more work than turning on the TV or reading the newspaper. Not too many people want a piece of it. It turns out that the right people do want to be a part of it and I am blessed by the people I have attracted into my life.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Memories of Mary: Halloween 2014

My life with Mary was full of adventure. Whether it was going to a new place or handing sharp tools to our three-year-old, we were always exploring possibilities.

Each year, as Halloween approached, we would gather around the dining room table with friends and family to carve pumpkins. As with all holidays, Mary was queen. Vintage decorations, bins of costume elements, and carving kits were at the ready.

Knives and gooey guts, the boys were always in their glory and Mary loved every minute of it. I think of us team working and juggling the prep, execution, and clean-up. We both came from team sports backgrounds and it was our greatest skill.

Happy Halloween!

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“If only you could be as lucky as Romeo.”

Romeo and Juliet has never been my favorite Shakespeare. Perhaps that was why God gave me two opportunities to see it performed in the last few months. It hit me so hard each time that I played with the plot to find out what was bothering me.

I wonder how it would be different if it was set on All Hallow’s Eve and a mischievous child entered the Capulet mausoleum to interrupt Romeo’s planned suicide. In a jester’s costume the child could tease Romeo for loving Death on such a night, for wearing its mask in lieu of a proper costume. Or accuse him of being a grave robber, valuing Death over Life. The child dances and duels an invisible Death with a fool’s scepter, “For I would cleave Death thusly!” Romeo leaves with the child, who admits he needs help getting out of the labyrinthine graveyard. Juliet wakes in the pitch black, she panics and her hands search about, finding the poison that Romeo has left behind. She’s convinced she’s already half dead and takes the poison to complete the journey.

Romeo lives. Juliet dies.

Earlier in the play, Juliet fakes her death, but no one present knows it. Her father:

Ha! let me see her: out, alas! she’s cold:
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

These words. A pretty, dark haired, too young woman lies lifeless on a bed. A father wailing like my grandfather did and like I did so many times in my wife’s hospital room. I’m back in all those moments again: sharing the news of her impending death, watching it come, then leaving that room, no longer hers, now belonging to Death. They are not memories, I am there again.

Romeo lives. Juliet dies.

What of Romeo then? Does fair Rosaline finally appear on stage to console him, encasing him in teenage woe for the rest of his days? Does he stoke the fires of conflict with the Capulets, his secret in-laws, and wage war on human frailty, on himself? Or does he embrace his banishment, go into the world as a man who has faced Death and chosen life? No longer a boy, now a man armed with the strength of a blazing star of love and an intimate encounter with vulnerability.

“If only you could be as lucky as Romeo.”

Twice this week I heard variations of, “We can’t all be as lucky as you, Jason.” Both times it brought a comical smile to my face, “Oh yeah, let me tell you how lucky I am…”

I’m in love and most certainly deserve to be teased for being a 40-year-old Romeo. At least the Romeo from my rewrite. I’ve laid my heart open to the world like a fearless child. I’ve let disappointment, anger, heartache, and confusion climb into the ring and try their best to kill the love. Like a man, I’ve faced these emotions and let them take their shots. I’ve been scared, knocked off my feet, unsure of standing up for the next round. I’ve seen myself hanging from a rope in my bedroom, in the back of a police car for a drunken rampage…I’ve seen myself running away. I’ve seen death and pain and powerlessness and I’ve chosen another path. I’ve consciously chosen life and love more times than I could count.

I am one who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
against me alone he turns his hand
again and again, all day long…

But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
therefore I will hope in him.”

Lamentations 3:1-3…12-24

Mary left me with a glimpse of God’s infinite Love. Sometimes it is a pinprick of light in a starless sky. Sometimes it is as bright and beautiful as Asgard’s Rainbow Bridge, with edges into the abyss, but wide bands of color to light my journey. That’s when I know I’m in the right place, going the right way.

My soul has been reunited with a long lost traveler on that bridge. Her name is Pinar, “source” or “well spring” in Turkish. In her eyes I see centuries of longing and searching. Our souls have been on separate paths for generations, seeking a return to a love that never waned in that distance.

Even in this life it seemed we needed to learn a few more lessons and face a few more tragedies before we would be ready to meet again. I am humbled that God has entrusted me with this ancient love once again. I am humbled that He blessed me with a lifetime of memories in 13 short years with Mary. I am blessed by the riches of growth that have been made available to me in this life. I am blessed by the love I share with Pinar.

“We can’t all be as lucky as you, Jason.”

Yes, you can. It is a choice. Life is beyond your control and will do what it can to crush you and kill you. Life will take everything away from you, except your power to choose. Look at what you are choosing. What is your highest ideal? What is the one example or principle you turn to when you are at the bottom of a muddy ditch and the sides seem too slippery to ascend? That’s what you worship and that is your choice. When I feel out of power, overwhelmed by heartache, or in over my head, I choose Love and Jesus Christ. You don’t have to chose as I have, but think about how high your sight can stretch. Are you looking at the stars, or a fancy car? What’s going to last longer? What’s going to be there when a tornado has ripped through your town and your heart? Everything on this Earth will die and be less than dust. Even Pinar, whom I love with all my heart will cease to exist in her presently exquisite form. That is why I target my gaze at an eternal and infinite God. He is in the stars, the leaves on the ground, the darkest nights, Pinar’s smile, and everywhere when I’m looking in the right direction.

Figure out what you are going to choose, just for today. No conversion, no commitment, no bravery required (not yet anyhow). See if you can aim at something higher.

God bless you and thank you for reading,
Jason

Enormous thanks to Alessandra Nicole for use of her photo of Delaware Shakespeare’s current production of Romeo and Juliet, touring the state now through November 17, 2019.