Life On The Other Side

                                                          Life On The Other Side

The following is a letter posted by a friend of ours...primarily Tracy’s from her single days living in Connecticut.  Jeff just lost his wife to a battle with cancer.  He offers challenges, perspective and honesty as he writes to his friends who stood by him and his wife during this traumatic time.  May you be blessed by his musings.  I was. 

Posted on January 14th, 2014 by Jeff Miserocchi

I guess the thing that seems most important to me to share is what I have taken out of this experience so far. First, MEN, (I'm sure women also live out some version of this too), but MEN, you get up in the morning and unless you are single or just a slug, your first thoughts and actions of the day are focused around "what can I do to make my honey's day start out great?" Whether it's putting a pot of water on for her tea, shoveling a path to her car, taking your coffee out to weed a patch of her garden, filling her bird feeders, or gluing something she broke and misses, you are programmed to take some course of action that makes her life a little better. It makes life better for both of you - is there anything better than to hear your honey say "my hero!?" If suddenly after 30+ years of living this, the impetus for such action is suddenly removed, you may find yourself scrambling for reasons to even get out of bed!

Most of you who know me well would probably say that though I have my whiny moments, I'm generally a sunny character with a positive outlook on life who engages life energetically. Losing Anne and the exhausting battle that led up to the day we lost her, threw me for such a loop that I truly could not find a good reason to get out of bed - even if I had gotten a little sleep that night! Man, do not underestimate the power of grief! Not something to be trifled with! Frying a couple of eggs seemed like an unsurmountable task. Even with my stomach growling I felt no interest in preparing or eating food. Mr. Social didn't want to talk to anybody. I was being medicated for anxiety and I'm sure I was clinically depressed!! Everywhere I turned, from professionals and just others that have been through this, I was told to expect to feel this way for six months to a year, maybe more! A year!? Are you kidding me?! I can't live this way for another month!! My pathway home? You folks! God's grace through you and my church family lifted me beyond the reach of the enemy of God's lie that I had been defeated - " Yeah, you put up a good fight but you lost, and you lost BIG!" That's a lie that in my exhausted and depressed state was nearly believable (though I’ve always known better), and it would sit on my chest with a nearly suffocating effect.

Then came last Sunday the 5th. I had every intention of joining my church family for our Sunday adult study and the following service but I had been awake most of the night and finally dozed off by about 4am. I called our pastor and told him I was struggling, would not be there, and asked him to please have me lifted in prayer during the service. Sometime thereafter I suddenly knew I could not spend another dreadful afternoon reading, snoozing, and laying around the house. I suited up, grabbed the snow shovel and tackled the driveway. Between your constant prayers and support and the prayers of my church that morning, the light of the truth burned through the dismal fog that had surrounded me for a month and just came pounding into my head; "Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is thy victory? Oh death, where is thy sting?!" My honey’s gone home, she is bathing in the glory of her creator, no sting there!! The only sting then, is me trying to hold on to the life we had together. Ouch!! Impossible!! Gotta move on. Between the freedom that came with that realization, the physicality of being outside aerobically working, and the sense of accomplishment (I got a lot done), I walked back into the house after dark knowing that I would sleep that night, and sleep I did. Six days now and no return to blottoland and I’m getting good sleep.

So returning to my original topic, when your focal point goes away, you need to embrace a new one. I had a life before I met Anne, and I have a new life the shape of which hasn't really presented itself yet, but I'm certain that my pathway forward will be a merging of the two and as fully embracing my new coalescence as I did my life with Anne. What I have been able to take out of this is MEN, (again I say MEN, only because I have a much better sense of what makes men tick then I do women. Hah!) all this service to your beloved is wonderful and good - it’s in our design, just don’t lose track of who you are along the way in case some day you find it’s all you have again. That person, by the way, is the person your honey fell in love with!! It serves you both well to keep yourself alive and well!

This paragraph is really a relative of the former paragraph, but one of the first things I took out of this whole experience is I simply cannot look back. I don’t mean I am now endeavoring to forget all about Anne, I just cannot spend a minute wishing life could be as it was. I can’t spend Christmas moping about not having “Mrs. Christmas” with us (there were two seasons in Anne’s world - Christmas and gardening). I can’t walk by something on a shelf and dwell on the wish that we could go back to Atlantic City together and get another one. Slowly those things that leap off the shelf and stab your heart are being transformed into just lovely warm memories of a love shared and time spent. So as I said above, I can only look forward and embrace my new life, to try to hang on to the old is just death.

My dear brother Steve (yes Stevie, believe it or not you really are dear to me) got me thinking when he said, “We are not designed to experience death which is why it is so painful” - or something to that effect. Truly!! We were designed to walk the garden in the cool of the day in perfect, eternal communion with our creator and each other! We are designed for eternal relationships! We were not designed to endure the torment of death because we were never supposed to experience it! All this ripping and tearing and the agony of losing someone you love is a product of the fall. When we fell out of the garden it’s as if a veil was hung between heaven and earth, God and man. Now, because we can no longer see through the veil, we have only the agency of faith to embrace the “things that are unseen.” Though God in His infinite mercy has made provision for our safe passage back to the garden, while we’re here on earth, experiencing death, we’re kinda on our own. That too is why it is so painful. I am so grateful that over forty years ago, for reasons unbeknownst to either of us, God chose to touch Anne’s and my life and plant in us that seed of faith that has come to blossom in us both, and that he furthermore provided safe passage over the bridge of Christ and through the veil to where “every tear shall be wiped away!” See ya there doll!!

So, enough of Jeff’s theology. These are just some of the things that have been running through my head during this time, and they have helped me get a grip on this whole event. If none of it makes any sense to you or in any way offends you, FAWGEDDABOUDIT!! I have nothing to return to all of you and just hoped that sharing what has been going on in my world might be of some value to some of you.