After Jim passed away, I said that I was going to do regular blogging on my new unsolicited life as a widow, for both my own outlet and perhaps help someone else. I have not been very faithful to that intent, but I have had something to say on the yearly anniversaries of his death. On March 27, he will have been gone from us for four years. I am sure it is common among others with the same experience to say that it both seems like yesterday and also like a very long time.
I could not fathom on that day four years ago living this long without him; but I couldn’t really fathom much of anything. I have memories of the time immediately following which are sharp and cutting and very clear, but many days and months which are shrouded in a mental and emotional fog that is at the same time frustrating and protective. That has not really gone away, but I believe it is just part of losing someone. I have always been a realist, so I don’t try to pretend it ‘s a bad dream or deny his absence. As a Christian (as was he), I trust that he has been with the Lord these four years. How anyone without that assurance deals with profound loss is beyond me. God knows that we will grieve and weep and question and sometimes yell at Him, but He says we are not to despair as unbelievers do. So I try, and mostly am able to obey Him, because I do know I will one day be there, too.
People occasionally ask how I am coping, even after several years. They genuinely care and want to know. I appreciate that deeply. Is there a time of year that is worse then other for me? Yes. Most folks would expect me to say Christmas….and it is very hard without him. But it is the current season which provokes both the happiest memories and the most melancholy emotions…that being baseball season. Spring is certainly preferable to 14 degrees and ice storms, but without baseball, spring would be primarily itching eyes, sinus headaches, and the beginning of the inexorable march towards our season of the dreaded H&H (heat and humidity ) which drags on into what should be fall and prompts me to plead with Jesus to hurry on back. I think one reason Jim fell in love with me was because I could discuss pull hitters and safety squeezes and the pros and cons of the DH. We both had loved baseball all our lives. I won’t try to wax poetic about baseball…..why we love it, why it is something of which we never tired; I can’t improve on what the script writers of Bull Durham or George Will have written.
Through the years, he was a Dizzy Dean coach and then an umpire for the league. Like with everything he did, Jim had studied the game by playing, teaching, and reading Coach Polk’s book about ten times (it is VERY thick). We loved kid baseball, high school baseball, college baseball, minor league baseball, and yes, major league. I still do. He had a theory about the decline in the numbers of American kids playing baseball and softball…that being that in those sports, there is no group or line in which to hide or get lost. It is absolutely a team sport, but you can’t take your buddies to the plate or mound with you. You are there and often , as the cliche’ says, you fail until your next chance. All sports if properly taught can be character-building and helpful to young people. I believe baseball lends itself to that especially well. Springtime meant keeping the trunk of the car packed with anything and everything we might need at Dudy Noble. Weather was irrelevant to whether we were going to the game. If the Dawgs were on the road and we couldn’t go, radios were on in every part of the house and or yard. It was the way we were. We talked about the trades in the MLB and our favorite teams. I did not force him to be a Yankees fan, but he understood my passion and cheered with me.
So, is this a blog about widowhood or baseball? Baseball is still part of my life, for which I am grateful. I still yell out loud , whether cheering or bemoaning. Ziva the German Shepherd cocks her head curiously, but doesn’t really appreciate the left fielder banging against the wall and grabbing that ball as it soars toward the skies. Baseball season is still glorious for me, just very different because he is not here to share it. Jim’s being gone is not just a spiritual battle for me. It is an actual physical sense of a “missing part”, as if part of myself has been severed. Does one learn to live with loss? For me, I am trying to live despite it. I just know I wake up everyday and try to honor his memory and the life we built, which was by the grace of God, because as two sinners living together, we most definitely did not always do it right, with each other or with our children.
Four years…right now, I can still actually remember how his hand felt in mine or how good it felt to lay my head on his shoulder. When you have been kissed for 45 years by a really good kisser, you hate to lose those “tactile memories” ! Young people think that sort of thing is only for them; if you’re lucky, like I was, they are proven wrong! So this is my “take” on the four year anniversary of a very sad thing that happened to me and my family. Like everything else in life, it is full of both wonderful memories and terrible longing for things to be different. I can speak only of my own experience and rely on the Lord to prop me up as he has every day. Play ball!
musingsfrommississippiblog 