Reengaging

I cheated myself.  I didn’t do it intentionally, but I did it. 

Several months ago, on October 18, I accepted a marriage proposal from the sweetest man I’ve met in the last year and a half.  Our engagement took place in the middle of Times Square’s hustle and bustle, and yet it was somehow sweetly intimate and private.  Several passersby who witnessed what was unfolding squealed and “oooh’d” at the sight, and a couple of them even took pictures (one of them texted it to us so we would have that candid moment captured on film – er, I mean phone).  Over the next few minutes and hours, we reveled in the excitement of being newly engaged, and laughed and conspired like junior high kids about how it was still our own little secret.  We had our likenesses sketched by a caricature artist on the street, then continued on to a lovely dinner in the heart of the city.  The special weekend continued the following afternoon with a trip to see “Blue Man Group” as well as some more sights around town.  Once we returned home, we slowly began sharing the news with our closest family and friends.  The next day, I shared the news with my in-laws (which was very tough), and soon thereafter made it “Facebook official.”  It was lovely and perfect and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Why, then, wasn’t I exactly on cloud nine?

I am so thankful to have met Mark, and thankful that I didn’t give up on life after losing Mike.  I am thankful that on April 24, Mark and I will get married and start the next chapter of our lives together.  I must make these things very clear before I continue.  The problem isn’t with Mark.  The problem is with me.  I wasn’t prepared for the feelings my engagement would stir up in me – feelings that I was moving farther and farther away from Mike and our life together.  For so long, I have protected my relationship with Mike by putting it in a sort of grand display case – like a precious gem – complete with glowing luminescence to highlight its beauty and perfection.  I put our relationship on a pedestal, in a class by itself.  How now was I supposed to tell people that I’m going to be devoting my life to someone new?  One of the residents at the assisted living where I work recently made a comment that caught my attention.  Florence’s husband died at age 46.  One afternoon, she said to me, “People asked me why I didn’t get married again.  I said, ‘I know what I had….’”  That comment made me well up with tears that I quickly had to hide.  I have operated under that same way of thinking for so long.  I lived for almost three years in a horizontal haze, spending more time than I can count lying on the couch, the front of my shirt completely soaked in tears, in utter disbelief at what happened.  I remember being at work and sitting in my supervisor’s office about five months after Mike died (roughly two months after I returned to work).  I told him I couldn’t continue to work.  I couldn’t function.  I cried and cried and kept saying, “I just want my old life back.”  He retorted, “You can’t have your old life back.”  I almost hated him for saying that.  He soon followed with, “You’re young.  You might meet someone.”  I almost hated him more for saying that.  When he proceeded to get on the phone and call potential therapists for me until I finally landed an appointment, I could barely recognize his role in the earliest moments of my path to help.  And meanwhile, God knew I wasn’t through.  He was preparing to send Mark to me, long before I was prepared to entertain any such plan.

Fast forward to last fall.  I had already been painting myself into a corner over the preceding months.  I was rather private and reserved about my new relationship, and I wanted to tread lightly with respect to my family, friends, and I think even Mike.  So when the news of our engagement went viral, I was overwhelmed.  Some were a little surprised, some were a little shocked, but every bit of feedback I received was positive.  Most people were over the moon for me.  And yet I found myself wading through all the positivity, like slashing my way through a jungle, trying to find the truth about how they really felt.  They must be upset.  They must think I’ve “gotten over” Mike and that I’m all healed.  They must think my life is perfect again.  They must think I don’t want to (or need to) talk about Mike anymore.  They must think my pain is completely gone.  They must think I’ve moved too fast.

One night (one of many), when we were talking through my struggles, Mark said the words that I needed to hear.  He just looked at me and said, “Nobody expects you to spend the rest of your life as a grieving widow, sad and in pain.  Nobody….except for you.”

Wow.  There it was.  I was cheating myself.      

Mark has reassured me time and time again that he is here to add to my life – not replace anything.  To put that into perspective, one of my re-married widow friends says this:  Just as a parent loves all their children and doesn’t compare them, a deceased spouse is just as loved as ever, and there need be no competition or comparison between the previous spouse and the current spouse.  I will take that one step further:  If a parent should (God forbid) lose a child, do they stop loving him or her?  Don’t they love their remaining children just as much?  And should they create a new life after loss, does that child replace the one who has died?  No.  I try to explain my love for Mike and Mark in the same way.  I will always love Mike, and I will always miss Mike.  I will always grieve the lost hopes, dreams and plans we shared.  I will always be angry at how cheated he was.  Our love was unique and special and cannot be compared to any other love.  In my new life, I love Mark in a special and just-as-unique way.

Still, I remain terrified of more loss.  That’s the root of my problem.  Over the past year, I have been sure I was going to lose people.  I was sure Mike’s friends would keep in touch less and less, until they disappeared from my life completely (after all, without Mike, what interest would they have in me?).  I was terrified I would lose my in-laws – these wonderful people who have been as close and supportive as if they were my own blood relatives.  I was sure people would stop talking about Mike, and would think I didn’t want him brought up in conversation.  I was sure that my family would take down any pictures or reminders of Mike, so as not to upset Mark, and also adopt a “that was the past, this is the present” attitude.  I have been fearfully anticipating others’ erasure of my 10 years with Mike, as if they never happened.  Those difficult anniversaries would now be treated as any other day, and the support I still need would be gone.  I lost Mike physically three and a half years ago, and now I was going to lose every last trace of him I have left, including his name.  My grip on everything Mike seemed to become even tighter.

It took weeks after the engagement to really begin feeling excited.  Until then, it was like I was grieving another sort of loss.  For three years I had gotten used to being Mike’s widow, which was all I had left being I could no longer be his wife.  I had settled into the comfortable, albeit reluctant, role of being Mrs. Michael Coyne, sharing memories and talking about Mike as the still-center of my universe.  I had my pictures, my mementos, my routines.  Just as I was “settling” into this reality, along came someone I wasn’t expecting.  It took a lot of time, tears and talking to figure out how to weave this new person into my life, while being true to the person I’d become – a person with a lost love imbedded in her heart.  I found a way to make a new relationship work – but marriage?  That brought with it an entirely new responsibility.  Mark and I had talked about marriage for a while, and I was all for it, but once news of the engagement began to seep out, I was blindsided by a flurry of feelings – fear, uneasiness, renewed grief, desertion.  How could I be excited about becoming someone else’s wife when the husband I lost had permanent residency in my heart?  And how do I weave my two worlds into one?  After all, Mike wasn’t just some guy I dated – he was my best friend, my partner and my entire world.  Plus, his illness gave us a special closeness that most couples never get to experience.  Now I felt like I faced the exhausting task of managing this delicate balancing act – talking about Mike in the right amount and context.  And since Mike is such a big part of who I am, to keep that hidden would be like hiding part of myself.

Over the weeks and months post-engagement, I began to make peace with some of these feelings and become more comfortable and eager about remarriage.  It hasn’t been easy, and Mark and I have had many tear-filled talks, sometimes going over the same difficult hurdles multiple times.  This adjustment period is still a work in progress, but we have promised each other that we will get through our struggles together.  Today, as Mark and I are less than a month away from exchanging vows, I am getting more and more excited about the big day – genuinely excited.  Mark has helped me immensely with this growing comfort, as have family, friends and my therapist.  They have reassured me that Mike is not forgotten, and that shows when people simply speak his name.  I suspect that as the big day nears, I will have some twinges of mixed feelings – not because I doubt my love for Mark, but because yet another chapter in my life with is Mike closing.  That chapter, however, has not been deleted.  My commitment to Mark doesn’t negate any of my love for Mike – it just puts it in a new place in my life.  In fact, maybe because my marriage to Mike was so wonderful, it will allow me to have another wonderful marriage because I know what true love looks like.  I don't want to live the rest of my life cheating myself.  After all, cheaters never win.