The Beginning of the End

How endings complete cycles and heal parts within us that we sometimes don’t realize still need healing

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Endings often begin long before we are ready to see them, feel them or deal with them. I’ve felt its slow rumblings working beneath the surface for a long time, longer than I care to admit. I’ve also dodged the feelings that arose and just kept moving.

That is until, I received a phone call on the morning of September 14^th that declared there was no denying this one any longer. The end was here. The end of this chapter of my life, this cycle of learning, growing, becoming. Release. 

My daughter’s father had passed away. My ex-husband, the man I met when I was 15 years old and had been with for 30 years, and who I escaped from a decade ago — was gone. 

Complicated emotions rose up and washed over me like a forceful wave holding me in its grasp. Spinning under water.

It was a glorious early autumn morning, blue skies, a slight crispness in the air. As I was busying around my cottage getting ready for work, I hopped in the shower and had the strangest experience. Time suspended, literally.

On a call with my bestie shortly thereafter, I tried to explain it, but it was unexplainable. I now know that it was the time he was leaving this dimension. I felt it. I felt him. I didn’t know what it was. Somehow our connection remained after all these years, all this angst, all this pain.

Despite the boundaries I learned to create and uphold, we had shared too much life, too many years for it all to vanish completely. We were linked forever by our shared experience, our memories...our child. 

Going Home

After breaking this news to my daughter, True and consoling her in my arms as tears streamed down her cheeks, we headed back to the place my ex lived, the place we once called home, the land that once held my hopes, where I grew up. There were arrangements to make, messes to clean up and goodbyes to be had. His body still remained when we arrived.

He had maintained this house like a shrine to the past. True’s childhood toys, artwork and books stood where we left them as if that little girl was about to walk back in. My clothes still hung on racks. Below that were my shoes lined up — shoes, I wish my feet could still fit in. It was a bizarre museum of our past covered in cobwebs and broken dreams.

While the coroner and police conducted their business, we walked the property — this glorious land that we loved and once belonged to. We had once foraged, planted, pruned and lived off it. I could close my eyes and see my small child running through the fields of grass towards the pond as if time were suspended. 

This land remained glorious and though I could appreciate her splendor, I was no longer a part of her. There was no connection holding me here. It was no longer my home and hadn’t been for many years.

We had our time to walk through the house. We had our goodbyes. I scanned the rooms trying to decide what I wanted. When I left a decade before with not more than the clothes on my back, I abandoned my personal belongings — books, photo albums, clothes, family heirlooms that belonged to my mother. Part of me held onto this notion that I would reclaim these items eventually, but low and behold, seeing them, running my hands over them — I felt devoid of emotion. They had lost their value — everything but my pictures.

I returned home that afternoon with a handful of old photographs of myself that I was so grateful to have. When I showed them to someone, he asked why I felt compelled to take those. I found that a surprising question but responded, “because I want to remember me. I haven’t seen that girl in a very long time.”

Reclaiming those images was more precious to me than any material possession.

The Awkward Condolence

The overwhelm has been real like a power struggle between conflicting emotions — both resentment and grief. I had supported him his entire life and had just finished paying alimony 1 year ago. I was both angry and heartbroken about this man.

I beat myself up over the brevity of my last text with him just the day before he died. When I first learned of his passing, I was so sad he had died alone, that he died poor, died lonely, died before manifesting all that he was capable of. This Renaissance man of sorts died with unrequited dreams.

As people find out about his death, there is an awkward pause that emerges as they search for the words to say. I get it. It was a complicated relationship, and a complicated story about a complicated guy. There are no perfect words to console grief or wrap it up in a pretty bow. Grief is gritty. 

Guilt Is a Waste of Time

The guilt stormed in and tried to smother me. God, I wish that last text hadn’t been so abrupt. It haunts me. And still, it was true. He only heard what he wanted. He regularly crossed boundaries, and I grew resentful. That resentment created a chasm of distance between us. I know why I had to be brief in my communication, but it still makes my stomach turn. My heart and my head in a tug-o-war.

I Am Deciding How I Feel

Of course, there can be no resolution or hindsight when you are in the midst of the moment. But I am engulfed with sadness and simultaneously separated. Sad for his life choices that created the end of his life story — separated by the reality that I couldn’t control his choices and those choices resulted in being alone. Perspective doesn’t make meaning of all, but it helps remind me of the raw truths. And the truth is that I can feel it all.

Death brings people together even if they didn’t show up in life

My head was spinning the day of his death — What are we doing with his body, his belongings, how are we cleaning out this house? How am I going to be able to manage all of this? I don’t want to manage all of this! The enormity could’ve leveled me. I couldn’t reconcile it all in that day, but I committed to showing up to bring closure that I could feel good about for my daughter, for the landlord who was a friend of many decades and for myself.

I literally think that the act of declaring this intention changed the trajectory of everything in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Miraculous ways. As I reached out to his adult sons who he hadn’t seen in twenty years, I had no expectation of anything. And yet, I was met with the most surprising responses. Suddenly, his sons and brothers were stepping in to take charge — to reconcile the house, the funeral and to meet True for the first time. 

Texts, photos, stories, music and memories began to flow — a connection I would never have imagined was born. It felt right and healing. There was no judgement. Randy was not easy to show up for. It ultimately had me thinking how death really isn’t for the dead, but for the living — a conscience of the soul, a reality check of morality, a review of our own life.

Through it all, I always wanted the best for Randy. I wanted him to succeed in life. I hope he is smiling seeing that his family is coming together and honoring his passing. It is beautiful. I guess what they say is true, “Death works in mysterious ways.”

A Soul for God

There are many reasons one might think that I would hold onto bitterness, I don’t. I haven’t gotten to forgiveness because I have forgotten most of what led me to here. I am very good at burying things.

But I found a journal left exactly where it was ten years ago filled with pages of my unhappiness. I scanned over them and was shocked. I don’t remember that I was unhappy for so long. I can’t remember why I waited so long to leave. I can’t believe that I would allow such unhappiness. I can still muster up some of the wonderful memories, but now I wonder if I was just making it all up to survive. Was I always walking on a thin ice? And one wrong move would bring the whole delusion down?

This is where my faith needs to play a part. The death has revealed some truths that I have tucked away because I am ready to be released and to release him. I want to fully forgive and have his soul rest in God. 

I knew this day would come

The day I left Randy I walked away, never to return. Death is an ending, but also a beginning. When I left, I began my new life with True and in Randy’s death, this cycle of my life is complete. Again, it is still tender and raw, but it is also gentle and sweet. It is finished.

True 

I am here for True — the remaining goodness between us. I wanted to walk away from his mess the day he died and never look back, but that isn’t possible. She needs me, she needed him. She wanted a father.

Months before his death, when True told me she forgave him, and wanted to build a relationship with him, I was happy for her and concerned. I wanted to warn her, but I also knew she needed this.

She had a few lunches with him these past months. She was reconciling and healing her heart. In turn she healed Randy’s heart — and probably a part of my own. His landlord recounted that after their most recent lunch date, he ran over to tell her, “That was the best day of my life.”

True gave him life again, hope, healing, forgiveness. I think her love gave him permission to go — and that was the beginning of the end for all of us.

— Lea Haas, Owner, The Garden Cafe Woodstock