I dance with you in my mind.
You hold me next to you.
I feel your heartbeat and the strength of your arms.
As the music plays,
We move gently and gracefully as one.
Then, it ends with a kiss
As I wish for one more dance.
I laugh with you in my dreams.
I see your sweet smile
And you kind and gentle eyes.
I hear you start to chuckle.
Your smile grows.
Then you wink at me
As I wish for more laughter.
I make love to you in my heart.
I feel your strength and your gentleness.
Your compassion and love flow into me
With every touch and each sweet kiss.
We become one in that moment.
Then I lay in your arms
As you hold me close,
Gently kissing my lips, my eyes, and my fingertips.
As I wish for one more loving moment with you.
One more dance,
One more laugh,
One more chance to love you.
Then I realize these are always deep within me…
~ Linda, Sept 2013
I believe that looking for our loved ones after they are gone is normal. Every corner we turn, every call we answer, there is a part of us that expects to find them there… at least in the beginning. Yes, we know they are gone. But for many of us, the life they left behind just stopped… In the beginning it felt as if everything were just on pause as we waited for their return.
The year Bruce died, there was a song that was at the top of the country music charts, “I Drive Your Truck.” It was a song about loss and the absence of someone loved… And the attempt, after they are gone, to find them in the things they owned… like their truck.
Every time that song came on, the tears and emotions would come gushing… I could relate to many phrases in that song. There was one phrase that captured my anger and confusion… Two simple lines that let me know I wasn’t alone in my reaction to losing Bruce.
“I’ve cussed, I’ve prayed, I’ve said goodbye
Shook my fist and asked God why.” *
But the main thing about that song was the way it completely captured my feelings when I climbed into his truck… I kept that truck for quite a while after he died. The two of us (the truck and I) had a kind of love-hate relationship. On the one hand, every time I turned the corner and saw his truck in the driveway, there was a part of me that thrilled with the initial thought, “Bruce is home!” Then, just as suddenly, reality would hit me and I knew he wasn’t there at all… I just hadn’t brought myself to the point of being able to sell his truck yet. (That was the “hate” part.)
Then there was the reason I didn’t want to sell it yet… I loved driving it!
It took me a couple of weeks before I ventured out to the driveway, with his keys in my hand. I can remember climbing into the driver’s seat and just sitting there for a moment… Sitting in the seat where it fit him, feeling the place on the arm rest where his arm had left a dent from years of resting there… looking at all the things he left sitting there, waiting for him to return – his sunglasses, a pipe cleaner sculpture his daughter had made as a child, his favorite CDs, his cooler, a stack of red solo cups, and a bottle of water. Then, as soon as I turned the key, the music started…
“I leave that radio playing
Same old country station where you left it
Yeah, man I crank it up” *
The CD with the last songs he had listened to continued to play as I put on his sunglasses, put the truck into gear and left the driveway. I had no idea where I was going. I just knew that wherever it was, I wanted to get there in his truck. I don’t remember everywhere I went that day, but I know I drove all over our little town and out to the beach with the music blaring and the tears running down my cheeks.
“I drive your truck
I roll every window down and I burn up
Every back road in this town
I find a field, I tear it up
Till all the pain’s a cloud of dust
Yeah, sometimes I drive your truck.” *
After that, driving his truck became my weekend ritual… my way of trying to find him somewhere… anywhere… Somewhere in that truck and on those roads, I always felt like some part of him was there too, and in those moments, maybe I wasn’t so completely alone.
It took a long time, but I finally came to the decision that I couldn’t keep his truck forever. It didn’t make any sense… I needed to let it go. Lovingly, a sweet friend from work bought it. She didn’t need it; she already had a great car. But I know she bought it for me… As soon as we signed all the right papers, I remember she turned to me and said, “Whenever you need to sit in it, you tell me. I’ll drive it to work, just for you, and you can sit in it anytime… And she was good to her word… I only remember asking a time or two, but she was beyond gracious to me.
That was years ago, and I haven’t heard or thought about that song in years… Until yesterday.
As I was driving my grandson and I to a special, “just us” lunch, “I Drive Your Truck” came on the radio. But things change… and this time, there were no tears. In fact, I found myself smiling ear to ear, just remembering those many weekends spent driving his truck… How precious that time spent in his truck was to me… All those days spent finding some kind of peace in those moments… a healing that I didn’t even realize had begun… Yet a peace that was born out of simply driving his truck and feeling his presence within that small space that had been his.
* I Drive Your Truck – Recorded by Lee Brice; written by Jimmy Yeary, Connie Harrington and Jessi Alexander
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCSMCgqlc-0
This grief journey is a crazy ride that I never signed up for. While we can hold each other up, we know it is different for everyone… Some days are easier and some days are harder. Sometimes we can smile at the memories and other days the tears won’t seem to stop. The many ways we experience grief are as diverse as we are, and we all move through it at our own pace and in our own way… We are just doing the best we can in a world that doesn’t always understand us.
What about you? How has your grief journey changed through the months or years? Would you like to share your story or ask a question? Do you need a helping hand or even a virtual hug? Let us know… we are here for you. To leave a comment or story, go to the comments and leave us a note. *
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