More random thoughts on my journey following the death of my wife, Renee.

There was a time in my life - actually, it was most of my adult life - during which I had no understanding of a phenomenon which played itself out repeatedly before my eyes.  This phenomenon, which I found to be so strange, was exhibited every year when young mothers sent their first child off to school for the first time.  Rather than expressing excitement for the beginning of their child's educational opportunities, rather than openly speaking of dreams for the future [their child's, and their own for their child], and rather than expressing joy for the respite they themselves were about to experience now that the child was being placed in the charge of other caring and competent adults for several hours per day, a different emotion was shown.  Almost universally, each mother expressed, or demonstrated, sorrow, sadness, and almost grief at this moment.  

It was incomprehensible to me.  It certainly never occurred to me to be sad when my own son went off to school.  "This is a wonderful moment; why can't these ladies be happy?", I thought every time I witnessed this.  While I don't think I ever said this out-loud to any of these "suffering" ladies, I'm pretty sure I rolled my eyes in their direction - which, fortunately [or hopefully], they couldn't see through the fog of their tears.  

I now have something to say to all of those ladies - "I am sorry!  I get it now.  I finally understand your feelings because I have now, in a way, experienced what you were going through."

Much like those ladies, my child became virtually my entire world after Renee died.  His needs are many, and my days were filled with just the efforts needed to keep him healthy and happy, not to mention figuring out all of the other things required to keep a home running.  I found myself exhaustedly falling into bed late each night, too tired to think, too tired to grieve, too tired to pray anything more than “God help me”, before drifting into fitful sleep.   And then, to quote a line from “The Pretender” by Jackson Browne, “When the morning light comes streaming in, I’ll get up and do it again, Amen.”  My life was also looking like some lyrics from Bob Dylan's song, "Tangled Up In Blue":

                                               And when finally the bottom fell out

                                               I became withdrawn

                                               The only thing I knew how to do

                                               Was to keep on keepin' on

                                               Like a bird that flew

                                               Tangled up in blue.

For me, all that "keepin' on" kept keepin' on, and keepin’ on, for what seemed like forever, until it felt like I was "running on empty, running blind, running into the sun, but I’m running behind” - [thanks again, Jackson Browne, for the song “Running On Empty”].  Much-needed help finally arrived in the form of two gentle souls who now take care of Little Ambrose five days a week.  And what a blessing that help has been, in both expected, and in unexpected ways.  As might be expected with the advent of help, I now have time for things – for shopping, for work, for golf.  I'm no longer "running on empty".   

One of the unexpected ways I have been blessed by the arrival of help is that I can now empathize with those mothers who are so sad to leave their children at school.  I can empathize with them because I reacted exactly the same way the first day that I left Little Ambrose in the charge of those two caring, competent adults.  It was time for me to go when the realization hit me that I didn’t want to go.  I didn’t want to leave him.  And when I finally forced myself out of the door and got into my car, behold - there were tears, actual tears, streaming down my face.  I couldn't believe it, but I was acting just like the people I had literally scoffed at all my life.  More than that, I wasn’t just acting like one of those people, I was one of those people.  I get it now.  

I get a lot of things now that didn’t make sense when I was young, and life seemed easy.  And endless.  When time seemed like a commodity that could be wasted with abandon.  When it seemed that growing old was a myth.  When it seemed like there would always be another day.  When I didn’t realize that I was one of the people Jackson Browne was writing about in “The Pretender” – one of the many who:

                                                        Tear at the world with all their might

                                                        While the ships bearing their dreams

                                                        Sail out of sight.                                               

Yeah.  I get it now.

Ambrose Ramsey | Pastor and Shepherd