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But I know that being loved really well made me more attuned to love itself.
Loving him, and being loved by him, was easy. I had the good stuff with Aaron, and I lost it. But I didn’t lose the muscle memory for it. I know what it is when I see it. I can meet a couple and quickly sense whether or not they’re built to last, which sounds extremely judgmental (and absolutely is), but is also true.
I had the good stuff, and now I have the good sense not to let it sneak by me if I find it again. It’s luck, but it’s not as random as lightning, which, it turns out, isn’t even random. It’s all about ions and electrical charges. About the reaction of energies to one another. I just told you I’m not at an age where I’m going to learn much about electricity,
They confirmed my high school boyfriend’s observation that lightning can absolutely strike twice in the same place. Maybe just as a fluke, but perhaps, also, because there is some quality about the location that makes it more likely to be struck.
I knew a good thing when I saw it, because I’d had a good thing before. The gift had been given.
It is completely bonkers that after we’ve had our heart put through a meat grinder, we just gather up the chunks and say, “Well, let’s try again!” Love is universally regarded as the highest thing that we can strive for, as something not only worth pursuing, but worth fighting for, worth dying for if you’re into that.
And the strangest thing about love is that we have opinions about love that isn’t ours.
Love is entertainment. Love is sport.
a tower, mainly because he did have children to raise and a job to go to, I just . . . didn’t really go out in public with him. Aside from Costco and the occasional movie, our relationship developed via FaceTime, text messages, and the two nights a week where he didn’t have his children and Ralph had gone to sleep. It didn’t feel like a conscious choice I was making, it felt like the natural development of a relationship between two parents with limited time
And the only explanation I can come up with is that I took on some of Aaron’s unselfconsciousness by osmosis. Slowly, at first, through our relationship, with the balance being directly transferred to me upon his death.
please contact me immediately so we can resolve this important legal issue. Aaron and Matthew are different, but we fell into sync the same way. We met, and we were together. When Matthew and I met, I was open to love theoretically. Thinking about what I wanted was easy. Finding what I wanted was surprisingly easy. Enjoying what I wanted? Basically impossible.
But the harshest judgment I felt was from me. If I loved Aaron, what was I doing falling in love with this guy? If I was still so bone-achingly sad about Aaron’s death, why was I so comforted by the feeling of Matthew’s hands on my bare skin? There is a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt says I did something bad and shame says I am bad. I had both, swirled together like a really awful twist cone. It was bad to fall in love with someone new, because I was still in love with Aaron. I was bad to fall in love with someone new, because it meant I couldn’t love Aaron.
Tyler and his wife would be out of town that weekend, and they offered us their very nice, very kid-free home for us to just hang out and do whatever it is you do to commemorate a monumental loss in your lives.
The first year after Aaron’s death was filled with a million firsts, but this would be the biggest one.
Indeed there was. At the moment Aaron’s death became officially one year old, Ralph and I were splitting a gluten-free pizza. We raised our glasses and had a toast.
wanted him to know that I didn’t know how to feel, about time, and memories, about the future, about the past colliding with the present, about him. About anything.
what is this all about?” Even if I’d asked these big questions, I don’t know that the people around me would have been able to clarify. Sometimes, the appeal of Catholicism seemed to be in the difficulty people had in understanding it. The bread and wine we took at communion wasn’t symbolic, it was actually the body and blood of Christ. It’s called transubstantiation, and it happens after the consecration, and you’ll need to look up both those words on your own. Even the structure of the organization felt complicated: the main boss is the pope, but there are cardinals and archbishops and
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I love her, and that’s the beginning and the end of everything. You’re still a Catholic, but Zelda’s the only God I have left now. —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
God may not make sense, but at least God is predictable in her unpredictability. It’s God who gives you what you can handle, and only what you can handle. It’s God who planned this, so it’s pointless for you to worry about it. It’s God who will see you through, even though it’s also God who planned this?
Sometimes, she explained, she pictured God as an ocean. Standing on the edge, she could throw in her worries, and watch them be swept out to sea. I liked that.
it felt like a good mother would take him to. It was all on me, I knew. Or I thought. After our lunch, I sat in my car and cried. The car is actually one of my favorite places to cry, because it’s like a little semiprivate pod where you feel invisible enough to really let loose, even though anybody with vision can see exactly what you’re up to.
to build them a safety net to fall into. But we were never alone, and we never hit the ground. We were made safer and seen through the hardest parts of our lives. I had been so angry about what God hadn’t done that I’d missed everything that people had done for us. People fed us and cared for us. They paid our bills. Some of these were our friends and family, but most of the people who reached out to help
They did it because we needed their help, and they had help to give. They showed up, and they brought God with them. Because God, to me, is just people. It’s that simple, and it’s that hard. God is people. God is the best of them, and the worst of them. And the path to God does not start in a Church. It doesn’t even need to wind through one. You have a direct line to God, and you don’t need to make a Sunday appointment to see Her. God is here, whether you like her or not. Whether you need her or not. Whether
or not you believe in her. That there is no magic spell to
Being a dad is a huge part of Matthew’s identity. Not just because he has kids, but because he acts like he has them. We all know a guy who is “technically” a parent. Sure, he loves his kids, but it also seems like he kinda got tricked into the whole situation. A guy who refers to spending time with his kids as “babysitting” or who idealizes his glory days of being young and single.
in the front seat. Sophie, nine, bounded out of the backseat wearing a puffy, purple winter coat and
which I promptly lost. Matthew’s children were sweet and kind to Ralph, and Ralph was effervescent with joy at the presence of other kids in his house. Dinner was a culinary masterpiece
are a package deal, and that should they choose to marry me, they’d be committing to a family that still practices the ancient art of Tickle Torture. It is one of many traditions within the McInerny
him actually, but with making fun of him in his presence. My dad loved making
just to fit in. My dad would have had a field day with this guy. “Oh, great, a vegetarian. You want my wife to make you a mushroom steak? Maybe that’s how they do things in Wisconsin, but not here, pal.” “Nora, can you kindly explain to your friend from Wisconsin that we remove our shoes before entering a person’s home? Was he born in a barn?” “Matthew, would you like a cup of coffee?
and I provide . . . nothing, really. We show up, with our hungry, crabby kids, and let them
welcomed Matthew into the McInerny fold as if he had always been there. In other words, they treated him like he was nothing special. My mother’s first feedback about Matthew was that we already have a Matthew in the family, and would need to call him something else. I suggested Matty, but she claimed that she sometimes called her brother that, which I had never actually heard her do, but I let it slide.
of bacon in front of him anyway, and eventually, he caved and ate a piece. She makes very good bacon and is a very persuasive presence when it comes to salty breakfast meats, and most things if I’m being honest. Before this brunch, when
meet his parents. “Sure,” I said, trying to decide if the twenty-pack of full-butt-coverage
for this shit. Matthew’s mother, Shari, does not live for this shit. She does not enjoy a drop-in from her beloved son and the only lady friend they’ve met since his divorce on a November Saturday while she’s sorting through Christmas decorations. She answered the door and went into complete shock, as if I had presented her with Matthew’s severed head. “You’re . . . you’re very tall,” she said, and immediately and
house. It was the cleanest house I had ever been in, but I forgave her anyway because that’s the kind of person I am. In the hour or so I spent on their couch, Jim and Shari gave me a very convincing pitch for Matthew. Did I know he was the valedictorian of his college class? That he gave a commencement speech? They had taped it, and they could probably find it somewhere.
butter in Costco, but this endorsement made his stock soar. This was a good guy. I left their house with a full heart, and with a bottle of Perrier for the road. Matthew’s mom and dad even walked us out to the car and hugged us each good-bye. A few
marrying his family, just like he was marrying mine. We would go to dinner with our parents regularly,
Even if you’re surrounded by people you love, figuring out grief is a solo project. Aaron was loved by many, and was a loss to many. But he was (to my knowledge) only my husband. And he was Kim’s only son.
From the day we met, I loved her, and I loved how much she loved Aaron, which was different from how most of my boyfriend’s moms had loved them, which was for some reason always borderline romantic, and made me feel like the other woman. I love a mama’s boy, but I don’t want to compete with my boy’s mama, ya know? Most of my friends have really great stories about their nightmarish
mothers-in-law, and I do someday plan on being that MIL to whomever my children marry, but
was supposed to take him to music
I’d married Aaron, and I’d married his whole family. We just didn’t know how to be family without him. There isn’t really a guidebook out there called How to Tell Your Mother-in-Law You Are Dating Again.
“I just want you to know, that someday you’re going to meet someone, and I know that. I hope you do. You’re wonderful, and I love you. I just always want to be in your life.”
She had been nervous to say this to me, I could tell. Not because her voice shook, or because she was fidgeting, but because the words came out in such a precise and measured way that I knew she had practiced it many times, had probably meant to bring it up to me for months. This realization crushed me. This was her reaching across the space that Aaron left.
