Hold Me Back From What?

I wake up nearly every morning with a prayer. I pray to not let this energy I have be wasted, again. There is a ball of energy lodged in my chest. I feel like it is a bomb about to explode. There is no outlet for it to flow in a good productive way. Just balled up energy. Frustrated.

When my husband died, I heard him say to me “I don’t want to hold you back”. I screamed back at him “hold me back from what?!!!” It’s been 5 years. I still don’t know what he didn’t want to hold me back from.

We were married forever. Sounds romantic. Sounds silly to some. Some who don’t know the forever thing. We recognized each other from the first. Again, sounds silly to some. But, I can’t and don’t, care about sounding silly. The poets know what I mean.

We always said we saved each other. Again, drama. But, it was true. We saved each other. From what? Well, that’s a whole lot of something. We saved each other. We were the instruments of each other’s salvation. Again with the drama.

To say Gene gave his life to us, to me and the kids, is not an exaggeration. His job killed him. (That, and smoking.) It was a good job, so that’s not it. It was a good job that paid him well enough to keep us housed, fed, cared for. That’s a lot. He was good at his job. And he did it for us. But it was not soul satisfying to him. He had a mind, a big mind that could have been directed in many creative and technical ways. Left to his own devices, without his family to support, Gene could have been many things. He was brilliant. I know, wives say that about their husbands all the time, don’t they? No? That’s a shame. We thought that about each other. I had more cause to say that about him, but he would challenge that. Love. Powerful stuff.

He said, often, too often, that if it wasn’t for me he’d be dead in the street. No, I’d say, you’d have met a nice girl at St. Mary’s (St. Mary’s was the ‘sister’ school to Notre Dame — he started at ND in 1976, they were still calling it sister school then) and have married and had a family. No, I wouldn’t he’d say. He meant it.

We were destined for each other.

Doesn’t mean that all our energy, our ambition, our great yearnings were fulfilled. Nope. We each of us had dreams and ambitions and the seeds of other lives. Lives not lived. There was not time. We had to pour our energies into each other and our family. Sacrifice. Yep. Sacrifice sometimes means putting aside what you think you might rather be doing and do what needs to be done. And it needed to be done.

We needed to have our four children. We needed to read and read and think and talk to each other and to others about our thoughts. For many years, our Friday night dates consisted of dinner and bookstore — bringing home bags of books for each of us to read — either end of the couch — reaching out once in a while to hold a hand, squeeze — smile. Yes.

A kiss on the head. A fresh cup of coffee. Our eyes lit up when we saw each other. What treasures are these? Unmeasurable. Precious.

We met young, very young. 16 is still a baby, isn’t it? yes. But, there it was. We recognized each other. When I would get mad at him in those early days, I’d get mad that he made all those other perfectly nice young men look small by comparison. Competition? Not much.

Our last conversation: we laughed and talked about how we preferred to be with each other. Of all the options in life, we preferred to be with each other. Very simple. I went to get him coffee. And then he was gone. Gone. Lying on the floor, the Blessed Mother lifting him to herself, the light, the light of love lifting him, his wounded body, like a baby. Like a mother lifts a baby to her breast, She lifted him. Don’t argue with me. I saw this. As real as anything I have ever seen, I saw this. As she lifted him, I saw wounds, as though a broad sword had pierced him through, large wide wounds. She’s healing him. That’s what I knew. She’s healing him with her light. That’s when he said ‘I don’t want to hold you back’ and when I screamed — within me, I screamed, ‘hold me back from what?!!!”

So, each morning I wake with this prayer: show me what I am to do today. Too many nights I go to bed, wondering, have I done enough, have I done anything? ‘Hold me back from what? is my constant refrain.

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