Eulogy for a not quite dead girl

Have you ever read stories, fictionalized, or real, about a widow, standing at her husband's grave, only to discover, as she raises teary eyes, that across the way stands another woman, also claming to be the deceased's widow? With some slight twists, this is how the last many years of my life have been spent. There is no other widow, but had there been, I would not have been surprised. Actually, I am not his widow either, I'm not sure there is a name for what I am, or was to him, and I'm not sure I'd much like the name if it existed. Perhaps I am just another in a long line of women who believed lies. Somedays I want to have been more than that, somedays I am sure that I was, and still other days, I wish I were only that and that my life had not been so ensnared as I must finally face that it has been. The layers upon layers of lies are still being revealed to me. The lies and mysteries encompass everything from dead brothers who show up quite alive to memorial services, to the whispers shared by nervous speakers with batting eyelids as they inquire about my ill health. My health is in such danger that I had not even known the perils and did not feel the prayers of those far and away from me as they worried for my sanity.


I would like to tell you that the other women who are also not his widows came as a surprise to me. I have to confess that I wasn't even surprised by the rumors of my failing health, or the fortune which I am supposed to have spent these last several years. I'd love to pretend that all of these things, and the many more which I will not speak, shocked and surprised me. I cannot claim surprise, though over and over again I have lost my breath as yet some new unreal reality damands my attention. I think I knew from the beginning, I think I understood and walked, eyes wide open down that dark, twisting passage and into the belly of the beast. So, I only pretend to be surprised when the truth is, nothing surprises me. I knew about the lies, and I co-signeded the documents. The note has come due though, and I am willing to pay my share of the debt, as long as I can pay from this side of the prison bars.



I know now that it is possible to both know, and not know a thing, and I think I am beginning to understand why. I see now that the incomprehensible does not cease to exist just because I have declared it well, incomprehensible! That reality still exists despite my most brillant and capable new age declarations that it not! Watching The Secret just one more time won't make him any less of a liar and a cheat, and it won't make my life into the pretty little life that I conjured and insisted that it be. It sure would have been some life if all my efforts had born fruit. Alas, we cannot choose life, nor the hour of death, for another.


I was about to make imagry, the image of an onion came immediately to mind, one lie exposed after peeling away the last and then, I couldn't make the oinion work because I wanted next to say something about being swallowed up whole. And of course, I had to accept that onions don't swallow anything, not even me. As I breath deeply, releasing the onion metaphor with a bit of a laugh, I realize that I am not being swallowed up anymore! In fact, I am being regurgitated from the deep, dark belly of some beast which only now I can recognize as having been my prison cell.



Every few days I realize that I am reveling in some new priviledge, some new delight, much as a child delights in the discovery of new treasures. And I must tell you, depite the sorrows and laments, the deep, wretching pain and silent wailing of grief, that this feeling, this feeling of escape, sings to me louder and clear, with a piercing trill that I cannot ignore. Some might find me unkind. I can live with that. Today, I ate what I wished, spoke to whom I felt inclined to speak and I sang at the top of my voice in the car. Yes, I can live with being thought unkind. I can.