Stars and Moons and Comets, and Letting Go

I was reading "Stars and Moons and Comets" by Beth Alvarado in The Sun magazine.  Beth's husband of forty years was dying of cancer, and she writes about the time before and after his death, as well as about their life together.  Notice the use of the singular: life.  They shared one.

When Beth's mother was dying, she worried that she was a bad daughter.

"Shhh," Fernando would tell me, even though he knew I hated to be shushed.  "She knows you love her."  His hand on my back let me fall asleep.  This is the one reason we get married: to have someone who can help us bear what we think we cannot.

To have someone who can help us bear what we think we cannot.

What happens when the person you are married to betrays you?  How can they be the person who helps you bear what you think you cannot, when he and what he did is what I cannot bear?

(I am terribly sorry for that confusing sentence.)

What about Jack's long absences for work?  How can he help me bear that when he is not here?  How can he help me bear my loneliness when he is gone?  What about when he is home, but absorbed in things other than the family?  This weekend, he spend installing a tile backsplash in the kitchen.  It looks beautiful.  Six months ago, he would hide in the garage working on his bike, keeping secrets from me.  How can I tell the difference from then and now?

I had a hard time reading about this woman's anguish over her dying husband, the loss she felt after he was gone.  I haven't yet finished the story, though I want to.  It really is a beautiful tale, one that I thought Jack or I would have lived to tell, the story of a couple who is with each other until the end.  I think of my great Aunt Kay and the suffering she felt after my Uncle Tom died.  They never had kids--it was just the two of them for fifty plus years.  I remember visiting her and helping her plant flowers in her yard.  Afterwards, we sat in her kitchen and drank some water.  She broke into tears, crying over Uncle Tom who died a few years earlier.  I was quiet, and she composed herself.

I imagined that someday I would be like my Aunt Kay, that my marriage would be like hers.

But it is not, or at least I don't know the inner details of Aunt Kay and Uncle Tom's marriage.  Maybe there were betrayals.  Maybe there was forgiveness.  People don't talk about these things.  They take to the grave.  If there were betrayals and lies, they both hid it well.  I remember Aunt Kay and Uncle Tom laughing, telling jokes.  She looked at him admiringly, like she thought she was lucky to have him, even when he was an old man.  She was lucky.  He was a funny and fun guy.  He thought she was special.  Everyone else called her Kay, but he called her Katherine.

I am not sure which is worse, betrayal or death.  Right now, I cannot imagine what would happen if Jack would die.  I am sure I would miss him, but which him would I miss?  I would probably miss the old Jack, the one who was faithful and true.  I miss that Jack now.  I mourn the loss of my innocence, my naivety.

Both betrayal and death bring mourning over loss.  With a betrayal, it is the mourning of the loss of trust and recognizing that our relationship wasn't what I thought it was.  Death is final, there is no chance to go back and fix things.  I guess there is some hope that our marriage might be saved.

"You have to let me go," Fernando tells Beth in the first line of this short memoir.  He says it because he is about to die.  With this betrayal, I will eventually have to let go of something, whether it is my pain and forgive Jack, or letting go of Jack who caused my pain.