Stumbling in the Dark

I spent a morning with my (ex) Mother-In-Law last week. It was, as always, an emotional experience.

Her stroke has robbed her of voice and mobility. My divorce from her daughter envelops us in a dark cloud. The hearts at the heart of things struggle for expression.

I sat with her and talked. It wasn’t (couldn’t be) a conversation. It was a soliloquy on my part, met with smiles and nods and little more on hers. She does as best she can.

All the while, there was that dark cloud.

And, all the while, I wished I could bare my heart...answer all the un-voiced questions.

That’s kinda how things end, it seems, all too often. I wasn’t at my Father’s side when he breathed his last. My Mother and I had been estranged throughout my lifetime. When our hearts finally melted into each other (and they did), they did so silently. Alzheimer’s robbed us both.

So, there I sat, holding the hand of a woman whom I loved fervently, not knowing what she truly thought or felt about this miscreant who had brought so much pain to her family.

I wish I could explain the loss and the pain. How I loved her daughter and her family. How much I grieve that we are fated to be the sum total of our personal experience. In my case, I grew to be a man dedicated to serving authority, serving others, sacrificing too much of my soul for my own good, thereby serving my wife poorly. Those impulses carried me far in my career...but carried me ever farther from her love.

And I would have her know that her daughter truly once was the love of my life. For she is a fine person, but she grew to be a woman dedicated to hearth and home, family and friends, in ways that carried her ever farther from my love.

I grieve for all that. I grieve that we come to be who we are as a consequence of influences both noble and crass. That we each are the embodiment of laughter and tears, untold sorrows and sweet dreams. I wish I could explain how, despite our best intentions, we, too often, find ourselves stumbling in the dark. Trying to do right, trying as best we can, yet failing and falling even so. We light candles, yes, as we upend tables and chairs, stub our toes and lose ourselves in darkness. Those candles have their place, they surely do, but it takes a whole lot more to become enlightened.

There’s so much to be said that will never be said.

I told her I loved her and left her with a kiss.

But I can’t shake the melancholy.

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