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The stages of dealing with the death of a spouse are likely common to all who must endure it. Perhaps it’s a keen, conscious appreciation of each of those stages that brings the survivor most fully to peace with the loss.
DancingIntoEternity
Of all the happy images I have of my husband, Ed McGrath, my favorite one appeared in a dream, a month after he passed away.
He walked out from our sunlit woods, in his softest blue shirt. He held one hand toward me, with a grin and a skip in his step, like a jig. Then I woke up.
Ed had not been able to walk, let alone dance, for many months since he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2014 and life fell apart. But his love of music stayed with him to the end. He had always been a quiet, reserved man, yet when the music moved him, whether at FloydFest—his favorite annual event—or in the kitchen at home, he would get up and dance. He did a shuffling sort of twist, his own modest, Ed-style boogie.
By late January 2015, he was bedridden, unable to speak or remember much. One evening, while we were watching “Song of the Mountains” on public TV, a band began to sing “Sixteen Tons.” Ed lay very still, inward and silent.
Suddenly I heard him murmur: “Well, a-bless my soul.”
He lifted one hand and waved a finger—and sang softly:
“Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go.
I owe my soul to the company store.”
He smiled. I laughed. His sense of humor was still there.
Several times during his illness he had told me that it wasn’t time for him to go. “There’s something that God wants me to do first,” he’d said. He never told me what it was, though. For someone who took care of so many people—not only his family but clients and colleagues at Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare—he likely needed to ensure that everyone was looked after. Including me.
Eleven days after he sang, Ed did go. Saint Peter must have called him, satisfied that he had finished God’s mysterious assignment.
Early on that last day, when Ed and I were alone, we held hands and I prayed silently, Please keep him from pain. Keep him from fear. I whispered, “Don’t be afraid,” my voice shaking. He nodded. I tried not to be afraid as well.
But after he was gone, I was afraid. Grief broke me apart. I became someone else, a sobbing madwoman. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” I understand this now, as, despite my faith, panic woke me many nights. Where is Ed?
Gradually, though, the fear was soothed by a beautiful, peaceful presence. It felt like God, saying, He is here, and I am, too.
Many other wondrous things have happened. For Ed loved nature as well as music, and I feel his loving presence in the natural world around me.
On the bitterly cold day of his funeral last year, all five of my peace lilies bloomed. One flower each, all on the same day.
A week later, when I arrived home one night, a small owl stood in the driveway. It stayed there a moment, staring into the headlights, and then soared up into the pines.
For several weeks after Ed’s death, a lone deer stood in the woods almost daily, watching our house.
When spring came, butterflies and moths seemed to follow me around the yard. A giant luna moth, just like one Ed had photographed the previous year, hung on our screen door for two days. Another evening, a black moth lifted off from the doorframe, landed on my hand, and walked up my arm to my face. It perched on my cheek while I held my breath, and when I exhaled it flew away.
On February 20, the one-year anniversary of Ed’s funeral, I found myself slowly dancing in the kitchen as I listened to “A Prairie Home Companion” on the radio. Garrison Keillor was singing a song about spring, the lyrics drawn from familiar poems. I looked at my feet and noticed that I was dancing like Ed. And just as I thought, “I’m dancing like Ed,” I heard Keillor sing the first lines of my favorite poem, “A Blessing” (“Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota / Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass”). And while I was smiling about that, and still dancing, I then heard him sing, “all the merry little birds are flying,” by e. e. cummings, Ed’s favorite poet. In that moment, several streams of the universe met in my kitchen, and burst into what I can only call holy joy.
Every remarkable thing that has happened since Ed’s departure strengthens and delights me, and I feel gently watched over. These days my tears are sweet.
Don’t be afraid.
So I am no longer afraid, not for him, and not for myself. Because I am fairly sure that when Saint Peter calls me, Ed will be waiting, with God. And heaven may feel familiar. There will be owls and deer, and moths, lilies, and music. And, of course, plenty of dancing.