Leaving No Mans Land

This is making a difference. For some reason, retracing those steps is - and I search for the word. Healing is too strong, too pat. I am not healing. I doubt I will ever be healed. But it is like a small release of pressure, a little at a time. The immense angst that has been carrying me around for these two years is lightening in colour. Perhaps it is burrowing deeper; perhaps being absorbed into my soul; perhaps being released. There is no metaphor for exactly this, words come close but they are not enough. Being widowed is a journey without a handbook.

I heard yesterday of a friend's sister who lost her husband just weeks ago. She is having a terrible time, my friend said. All she wants is her husband. I look at my friend, perplexed. There is such a long furrow for her to plough, I said. She has a long furrow ahead of her.

The expression that time will heal is meaningless. One tick at a time, being swept along a changing landscape is not what does it. What heals - if that is the word - is a gradual coming back, a gradual resurgence of something so delicate it is impossible to put into words. It is perhaps gradual reinvention, a gradual reinstatement of - what - health?

But not natural; it does not happen by itself. It has to be worked for, stalked, cornered, trapped. It is a fight. Every day passed in a blur of depression is a defeat. Every moment glimpsing some contentment, even if fleeting, is a skirmish won; a day passed in happiness is a major triumph,and a private victory. But there is no battle plan. The entire war is solitary and inexplicable. I am a general of my own soul and it is not my thing, this. I would make a lousy soldier.

So, writing down every detail of the descent into the worst time of my life is some kind of a lifeline I am clinging to, now. Reliving the events and details is rehashing them into something more acceptable than the blur of images that are crammed only with pain, irony and horror. I think.