Re-Arranging

What do we do when we don't know what to do?

It’s mid-morning and suddenly I have to rearrange the sunroom. 

Finishing my morning routine, coasting along, sipping coffee and just being, minding my own business, I’m ambushed by an urgent demand to rearrange the sunroom. No idea where this comes from. I’m not even sitting in the sunroom when it hits. 

But I have to. So I do.

I love our sunroom. I spend 80% of my at-home awake time in the sunroom.

There’s nothing wrong with the sunroom.  

A couple of months ago, I had the sunset-facing windows replaced. The original windows, 50 years old, were double-paned and the seal had degraded, so they were cloudy. The stunning view deserves clear windows; Tom and I had talked about replacing them since the year we moved in, but we hadn’t done it. So finally a few months ago I had them replaced and the improvement is eye-popping. It’s one of so many things I wish we’d done before Tom died. He’d have been delighted by the opening of the view to the river, the bridge, the birds, the feeder, the bird-bath, the "jungle".

The loveseat in the sunroom sits with its back against the old/now new windows. So I scootch it around to the other side of the coffee table, facing the new clear windows, looking out onto all that glorious green and blue. And then I drag Tom’s beloved reading chair – a big comfy “stressless" thing – from the living room to the new window. The chair swivels, and now I can look out to the feeders or directly to the water. And it’s far more comfortable than the love seat. I’ll probably have a nap here this afternoon (I say here because I’m sitting in it now to write).

But. Something’s not right.

Now the loveseat doesn’t look quite right in its new spot across from the windows and I had to move two other chairs to accommodate it and now the coffee table is definitely too big with this change and with the addition of the chair I’m sitting in, and also that round side table doesn’t quite work either, and now I’m consumed with finding a new, smaller coffee table and maybe – maybe ? – getting rid of the loveseat altogether. 

And now I’ve spent 2 hours online looking at coffee tables. I make a trip to a consignment store and then another but I don’t see what I’m looking for. 

Honestly I have no idea what I’m looking for. 

No idea how to rearrange my life.

How do the rooms of our hearts make space for this life, now?

***

The sunroom project continues. 

And – who knew? – that “old” coffee table looks great in the living room, so now the living room coffee table is in the garage. It’s a beautiful dark walnut but there’s already a lot of walnut in that room, and now the black metal frame and glass of the old sunroom coffee table (at least 20 years old to be specific) is just what the living room needs. 

For now. 

For my current mood/ preference. 

Which could change by noon.

I ask the neighbors if anyone wants a coffee table. Or a loveseat, maybe. Not now, they say, but maybe for the daughter’s "first job" apartment, maybe for the dad’s rental property? 

So I drag the loveseat to the garage. By drag I mean by myself I pull it, push it, get it stuck in the doorway, get me stuck in the doorway, solve the spatial-issues challenge, and wrestle it into the garage. It’s spooning all cozy now under a sheet with the rejected walnut coffee table.

I pick up my friend Carolyn and we go to Grayco and find a little "nesting" coffee table: a small table under a slightly-larger¬–but–still–small matching table. They’re a white lacquered metal frame with a light wood tray-top, kind of modern industrial chic, I guess. Perfect. We put them in the back of the car and bring them home and move the two surviving chairs to face the windows and situate the little tables between them. A plant in the corner hides the ugly power outlet. 

I can see the water, the birds, the jungle, the bridge.

Maybe this room is the bridge – the transition, the crossing over, from then to now.

Just thought of that. I’m on a bridge of sorts.

Bridging from before to after, from then to now. From now to next. 

What’s next?

What happens next in this “one wild and precious life”, in this enormous emptiness?

It’s disorienting, the way his absence fills every room.

I’ve been wondering Why? So many whys.

Why did this happen? This – the giant gutting loss.

And this, the sudden (is it sudden, or has it been building in me for a bit?) need to re-arrange? The room was/is fine. The furniture was/is fine. 

Maybe I’m rearranging the sunroom, my warm and safe place here in the house, because I have no idea how to navigate the bridge from now to next. 

The sunroom is fine. 

Sort of.

But it’s time for something and that something has something to do with whatever it is that I need now, which is so damn hard to identify. 

I have no clue. 

I don’t know what I need now, and I don’t have a clue what I need next.

I can’t see over the bridge. But I can see the sunroom and I can see out through its new clear panes.

I know this much: It hurt to see Tom’s chair empty, over in that quiet space by his vacant desk with the little side table holding the books that he didn’t get to finish reading. 

I can’t see through these pains.

Yes, of course, I want to leverage the better view from the new windows in the sunroom. And sure, ok, the coffee table was too big.

But that’s not the problem. 

It never was.

The problem is that I just keep bumping into things that hurt, all those things that re-bruise the bruises. An empty chair. A ball cap. A sweatshirt. His leather jacket in the closet; my God, his scent still lingering in the leather. Tequila in the cabinet. Boots. Books. Bathroom things. His scruffy tennis bag on the shelf in the garage. 

Memories. The way his skin felt, smelled, warmed. That voice. How he knew every lyric to every Dylan song, and sang along, badly. His laughter. His eyes. Those beautiful eyes where his smile began, and then the smile itself.

Dreams unfulfilled. Trips not taken. Notes still on his desk. 

***

Carolyn admired the rearranged sunroom and she told me she thinks I’m doing really well, that Tom would appreciate the new configuration, especially his chair in its new spot with the view. I said that I’m afraid that maybe it’s only rearranging, and not really changing, that I’m not changing, that I’m still so stuck. 

She offered alternative verbs (she’s a writer, of course she did.) Redefining, maybe. Reworking. Reclaiming. 

All of that, perhaps, if slowly. And maybe a few others. Maybe redesigning? Remembering, of course. Always remembering. 

What about re-imagining?

I’m intrigued by the idea of imagining and re-imagining. Tom and I had imagined a life together, and we lived into it. We imagined adventures and we adventured. We imagined a new home in a new place, and we found it, made it ours, savored it. 

But now – can I learn to imagine again? To re-imagine? Can I imagine a future for myself without Tom’s physical presence, without the partnership and passion we shared? 

I miss the old arrangement, the one with Tom in his chair, reading and laughing and smiling. I miss the old arrangement, his body curved around mine in bed, his breath on my neck. I liked the arrangement of our days, our nights, our travel, our sunset moments on the patio, our secret jokes, our walks with the dog, or on the beach, or downtown, or up a mountain trail. 

I miss this man. I don’t want to rearrange or rework or redefine. I don’t even want to reimagine. I just want Tom.

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm is all about. ~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore  (Full disclosure: I haven’t read this book yet. But I like the quote; it sounds true; I hope it’s true; maybe I just want to find something of meaning in this awful storm.)

I ruminate about things I wish I’d done differently a year ago, or two years ago. What did I miss? I think about what I know now, what I understand, what I’ve processed – all those things I didn’t know when we were going through it. There’s still so much I don’t understand. None of it was “textbook”. The oncologist told us, “I’m sorry, but your situation is unique. I wish it was textbook.” The nephrologist pretended it was, and that was worse.

Tom didn’t want to talk about death. He was dying and he knew it. In retrospect, I know that he sensed it long before I acknowledged it. Sometimes I wish we’d talked about it more – not more often, but more intentionally. It’s what I’d have wanted if I’d been the one dying, because I seem to have to process everything – every feeling, every fear, every question, every hope. Tom was always more pragmatic, more analytical. He knew I could handle the household decisions and finances. He knew I had a solid support system. He wanted to make sure I knew that he wanted to be cremated. He wanted to be taken to oceans and rivers and mountains and forests all over the globe.

He wanted me to feed the birds.

He loved watching the birds at the feeder, the birds over the water, that big hawk that claimed that branch in the live oak, all the birds. Remember, honey, to feed the birds. I promised.

I feed the birds.

I wish I’d felt more grounded but I don’t know what that would’ve looked like. He leaned on what was left of my faith: me trusting for both of us that somehow God was still God, somehow love wins. And he knew he could count on me to give him my best.

Did I? I think so. I took good care of him. But what if I could’ve done it better? 

What if …. What if….. What if…..?

Being present, living in the moment, being fully there – these things matter to me, they always have. But those hard days were a demanding season of cherishing the past and hoping for the future and often missing the present. Sometimes hating and avoiding the present. 

The present – so full of pain, fear, questions, loss. 

It’s hard to live in the present when the future feels precarious, so dependent on everything you do right now. The pressure of the present was crushing and exhausting. Every evening, prepping the dialysis machine, I focused on the job at hand but always with a prayer for the future: "Let this be the night he turns the corner; let this be the beginning of improvement."

What’s the point of the present if it doesn’t affect the future? 

One night after "dinner" (some broth, really, because he wasn’t tolerating anything at all but we kept trying) I took our golden retriever, Bentley, out for a walk. We passed some neighbors and said hi, and then, inspired by what must have been the best-smelling garbage pile in the history of garbage, Bentley broke loose and sprinted into the corner of another neighbor’s yard, delighted by the rotting treasures he was finding in the trash. I was too tired to be amused, and when I grabbed his leash I unleashed four-letter expletives that I didn’t even know could be full sentences. I yelled and yanked at him all the way home, and when we got back I told Tom he was the worst dog ever, that if he got loose like that again, I was just going to let him go, that nobody needed such an awful ungrateful disobedient animal in their lives.

Tom and the dog both grinned at me.

After I washed up, I began the dialysis prep, beginning with retrieving a 30 pound box of fluid from the garage. My right wrist was almost always hurt during those months, from the awkward lifting, and it was particularly painful that evening (probably from yanking the dog back home) and then I scraped myself opening the box. When I was almost finished with the prep, I accidentally dropped a coil of tubing, contaminating it. I had to start all over. I let loose again, this time sobbing through the f-bombs. It wasn’t my first episode of crying and cussing, but I didn’t know it would be the last night of dialysis. 

The last night of trying. 

The last night. 

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm is all about.

The storm is still storming, sometimes full-force, often quiet and distant, usually just on the horizon.

This storm is still rearranging me and I’m learning to let the waves and the wind do their work of smoothing the jagged edges of my heart.

I’m learning to trust that the clouds will part now and then. I still bump into things that hurt. I’m learning to make space for gratitude alongside grief; they both live here in me.

I’m learning that I don’t have to know what’s next, but I still have questions, so many questions.

Like, What do we do when we don’t know what to do?

Today, I feed the birds.