Embrace Your Freedom

In the weeks after Mary’s death I wrote about how music had lost its power over me.

I was living a robotic existence. It was too too risky to feel anything at all. I had intuitions about the importance of love, but I wasn’t ready to experience it.

The road trip we embarked on started with a weekend of music that would break me out of the armor I had built.

As Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band tore through “Lay Your Burden Down,” I had my son on my shoulders, my feet in the mud, and tears framing the smile on my face. Mary and I had danced in front of them on a special date weekend. All the emotions I hadn’t let myself feel poured forth. I let myself be free to feel.

Music touches me even deeper now. Everything does. Freedom means being able to explore further, especially within.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Don’t Overdo

We don’t have a tree up, I haven’t acquired stocking stuffers, and I’m not sure where the stockings are.

These were all on my mind as I pulled this card from don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements deck.

Now I’m thinking of Halloween. Mary was Tippi Hedren from Hitchcock’s The Birds one year before we met. She took bloody pecks out of a stylish blazer, wired birds around her, and had more birds torturing her hair. It was brilliant.

We overdid it all. Costumes, hikes, meals, decorations…we never sat for more than an evening by the fire. Even that would be rife with problem solving and planning.I don’t know if that’s what left her depleted and unable to fight off the infection, or whether she knew in her soul that her time would not be long. Both could be true.

I’m finding my pace. I’m learning how to rest.

I’m going to do my nest today.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

A Night Out at the Bar

Alcoholism.

I’ve written very little about it since questioning whether I was an alcoholic almost a year ago.

I stopped drinking on Halloween night, 2018. It was two months before I felt my mind begin to clear. I was entering a romanic relationship with a woman who had a history with addict partners. With her help I stared down two decades of unhealthy patterns and concluded that I had a serious problem. In truth, maintaining the relationship was a significant motivation in my quest to make myself better. That and being a better father to my sons drove me towards therapy and weekly (at minimum) AA meetings. It was all helpful. It was all necessary for me to spend serious time exploring my past and working through my guilt and shame. Why would I quit drinking for this woman and my sons, yet I hadn’t for my wife and those same sons?

I was missing a key element to my healing and it wasn’t until the romance was ended beyond my wishes that I discovered that key. Suddenly single again, I set to meditating and reading more. I picked up Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. It spoke immediately to the hole inside me. I was lacking in a love for myself that was crippling my desire for self improvement. I took on the daily affirmations and listened with care to my self-critical voices. I found inside myself an ability to heal. I didn’t need the therapy sessions or AA meetings anymore, I needed to spend that time expressing love and care for myself. I found an internal drive to push away the things that did not nourish me. Identifying as an “alcoholic” was no longer appropriate. I had broken the patterns and swam in the darkness that had lead me to self medicate. I loved myself too much to do more harm to my mind, body, and soul with alcohol.

I went out last night and danced among the drinkers. There were friends there, but I was primarily there on my own. A lot of it was uncomfortable. I still feel like widowhood is a contagion, that people are too vulnerable to come near that pain. It’s often easier to be around strangers. The music was good and I fell into the bliss of moving to it. It didn’t matter who I was, or wasn’t, dancing with, I was experiencing the moment just for myself.

Not drinking turned out to be the easy part.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Still Present

Mary visited me again.

This inspirational card has floated around our lives for more than a decade. I don’t know where Mary found it and I never paid much attention to it on our dresser or her nightstand.

Having no clear connection to our life together, I was tempted to toss it in my efforts to make room in our lives. Physical health and wellbeing has been paramount in our family transformation and I didn’t think I needed a reminder. I checked myself on how easily bad habits form and old patterns return and placed the card between our kitchen and dining room.

A day or so earlier, I was at Lanikai Wellness Studio for a yoga class and purchased a deck of cards based on Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I have a long to-read list and thought this would be a good way to bring Ruiz’s wisdom into my life. I also hoped they would provide material for a new blog series.

I sat down this morning to flip through the cards for the first time. This same card was in the first ten I read. We didn’t own the book. We never discussed Ruiz. I didn’t discover him until after Mary passed and there’s no indication of his name or the book title on the cards.

This is my first real holiday season alone. A friend buoyed me through my first Christmas as a widower, but that friendship has been lost. As much as I trust where I am and the good things that are to come, the loneliness is weighing on me.

This week I came home from a brutal two hours of soccer. I was hammered in goal and on the field, nothing seemed to work in the back-to-back games. I was wiped out emotionally and physically. I was useless to my sons as they warmed up leftovers and served themselves dinner. I wondered what I was doing wrong, how I got to this place.

I had a dream that night that Mary had been in the stands watching our boys and watching me play. I ran over to the edge of the field to ask for help with something small. It startled me and I woke angry. I envisioned the stands again and I took her away. It wasn’t like a dream. I can see the empty spot at the end of the metal bench now. I could have told her how much I loved her, how blessed I am to have had her, how important she was, and is, to me, or I could have just smiled and enjoyed a moment seeing her again. But I erased her. I was angry at myself for a foolish fantasy.

So she’s back this morning telling me to take care of my body. She always protected soccer for me. She would come home from a long day of work, start making dinner, and send me out the door, no matter if the boys were being disagreeable or impatient, or if coats were still on the floor from our afternoon adventures. She was always there later to hear about my frustrations and successes on the field. I can hear her drowsy, mumbled, “I’m listening,” as she fought off sleep after a late game. She was listening, she was always present. She was so good at being present that she still manages it from time to time.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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

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

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.

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

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

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