It’s said grief comes in waves, and as I near the 2-year mark since Lisa coasted free, slipping through her eyes to the stars, I feel a return to a heavier tide. Much of the last year could be characterized as a constant lapping at the shore, a grief I could manage through thoughtful actions, intentional crying, and diversion. The last week or so, however, has reminded me that the heavier emotions are still there. I’ve been caught off guard by intense and sudden moments of grieving, while driving, when waking in the morning, at the store, in the midst of a workout.
It’s not a mystery I suppose. Anniversaries have gravity to them, pulling us forward toward moments loaded with expectation and steeped in memories. Last year was huge of course, the first year, an accomplishment if you’re the one left behind. I felt I’d made it. All the “firsts” were behind me. I survived. It was important to me to live that year in honor of Lisa and that first anniversary was observed with grand gestures and thoughtful tributes. My son and I backpacked Mt Hood, a place I’d always promised to take them both. I planted a garden infused with her earthly remains. By the time Fall came again and the lesser anniversary of Lisa’s memorial, a celebration of her life, came and went, it felt like a mission had been completed and life would maybe begin to open to new possibilities. The pain of loss began to soften some. I started to imagine life could feel good again, or at least not hurt so much.
Bigger waves started landing again around Memorial Day this year, the same weekend that in 2024 we took our last hike together, our only as New Hampshire residents. It was an easy, flat and quite beautiful hike around Odiorne Point State Park, and to see Lisa’s joy when communing with nature was something you’d simply have to experience to understand. It’s humbling, looking back, knowing she was so close to her death, something I know she knew but didn’t acknowledge, and yet was so happy in those moments, so content to wonder at the earth’s natural gifts. Her love of all things living was profound. If you knew Lisa, you knew this about her. Trips to emergency and hospital stays became common from this point forward, but we got out a few more times together in those last two months — a lovely day in Portsmouth where live music made her dance a little and smile, and a final drive up the coast of Maine late in July. Lisa ate her last real meal that day, a lobster roll. She’d be gone in 2 short weeks.
I’ve been telling people how well I think I’ve grieved and that it’s allowed me to position to move forward in life. I believe this, or I did at least. Maybe I still do, but its not so simple. A loss like this isn’t a wound that heals, and a love like ours isn’t one that fades over time. The hole in my heart is permanent, a blast zone where nothing new can grow. We don’t fill these holes with others. They don’t seal off to be forgotten. A new love, should one ever find me, will never replace what was once there. I can only cultivate the land around the hole and make space for a new love to sit beside it. Living with grief means living in pain, and it requires us to find a way to live with our loss, but it doesn’t mean we can’t also live in love. These two things can be true at once, or so I’m told.
I mention this because I’ve started to try dating again over the last few months. Too early? Who knows. Maybe. It kinda doesn’t matter. Dating at any age is hard, but at this age it’s really awful and very confusing. I find a shallow pool of divorcees, widows and the never married, each carrying their own set of complications, and the apps seem to be the only viable course to meeting others. Divorcees think they know the pain of loss, but don’t. I’ve done both. I know well the difference. The never married… at this age? Kind of a red flag, though I’m keenly aware of the challenge to find love, and I don’t dismiss how fortunate I’ve been there, but I’ve had two full-on marriages. I likely don’t have patience fo someone less experienced in relationships. And the widowed, well, they’re broken like me, stuck between juggling love cut too short and abject loneliness. I’m also challenged by how few of us have done what’s needed to age well, and I’m likely in denial about how old I myself actually appear. I feel so young inside and still carry myself with a bit of that ease and temperament, so I look in the mirror to remind myself where I am on the spectrum of life. The guy staring back is older than I remember him to be.
I’ve gone on a few dates, met a few people, and actually fell surprisingly in like with someone local to where I live. I won’t recount the long, strange, windy road she took me down, but I’ll say in the end I’m conflicted — is she a profound narcissist, on the spectrum, or just not really a good person? Really, I’ve never in my life interacted with someone who gave me such mixed messages and with the worst communication skills of any adult I’ve come across. I should say, in person, she was pretty fantastic. We could really talk and get to things. I thought feelings were being addressed head on, openly, but once out of sight, the usual text/phone call displays of thoughtfulness, playfulness, curiosity, never came. I’m still baffled how something that appeared and felt like it had so much potential could be so misread on my part. I let this person get to my heart, and in return learned through her actions and behaviors that I’m actually not compelling on any level to her. We hit it off, had fun, share some interests and intellect, and I honestly thought the beginning of a new stage of life was on the brink. When things started to look confusing, she told me I’m too brimming with love, that it’s a force I’m holding, waiting to give. She said it’s intimidating. My capacity to love is intimidating. She thinks I need to date around, maybe sleep around? A game? – oh yeah, well she’s not legally divorced yet so there’s that, and money, privilege, with two daughters in Ivy League college. Possibly I was a fun, scrappy, musician type with limited resources good for a couple nights out and a toss in the hay. I’ll likely never know. The other dates went nowhere.
We talk sometimes about universal love; love thy neighbor, love for humanity, love makes the world go around, all we need is love, etc. I know within me it is the highest power, not an emotion but a state of being, a high vibrational place of existence. It isn’t logical nor can it be tamed. You don’t plan for love and it can’t be created. Sometimes it’s earned and sometimes it’s magic. For me it’s been an immediate change of reality when it appears and there’s no going back. You can’t turn love on or off. I thrive in relationship. I’m a lover, a coupler, a serial monogamist. It’s what I’ve sought my entire life beyond any personal success or accomplishments. My life choices, my path through this existence have been driven by seeking love, not music, not money, and not power. I don’t easily identify with our most dominant cultural standards. I am not impressed by celebrity, fame, billionaires, founders, influencers, or politicians. Material things don’t impress me. I can wrap my head around the concept of humanity as All One in a super high level macro kind of way, but lets be honest, that’s not how it is. Humans are a divided, fearful, hateful, hungry, selfish, opportunistic bunch. We don’t act as one. We don’t treat each other as one. It may be we are all connected through energetic pathways and fabrics of the universe we don’t yet fully understand, but we kill and take and belittle and judge without reserve. So I’m linguistically fascinated that a single letter changes All One to Alone.
The great unifier is death. We are all one in this way, and maybe Lisa’s passing should have shown me the deep universal connection we all share in our mortality, that we’re all one through death. It didn’t though, it just made me alone. Thus, the love story I can tell now is about me. I’m learning to love myself, to live for myself, and honestly it’s a challenge. I’ve not always been my biggest fan, and I’ve most often sought validation through others. Maybe there will be another great love in my life, a woman to be home again, my safe place, my person. It’s quite possible though that I’ve had my share, more than my share, of true love, and maybe, for what remains of my life, love will only come from within me for me, a self-love I’ve not yet mastered, and this may be my ultimate life lesson. I endeavor to love myself, all one within myself, complete and alone. I am Alone and I am All One, and Lisa is gone.