The Widow's Laugh

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 25

"The Lord destroys the possessions of the proud but cares for widows."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

There's so many documentaries and specials and docudramas and God-knows-what-all-else is just coming out of the woodwork and out of the static and out of the screen such that it's searing into your eyes, seeping in through your fingertips and sliding into your veins.

After all, tomorrow's November 22nd.  

Where were YOU.

I don't know where the hell my parents were.  I haven't asked them, and I probably never will.  It's not that important, not to them, not to me.  There are dishes to do, you know.  She was fourteen, discovering life guards in Atlantic City.  He was fifteen, one year away from trudging through Israel's deserts with a rifle in his hands and a 60-pound pack on his back.  

God only knows.

There was a piece on the radio today about how the Boston Symphony got interrupted midway through with the announcement that Kennedy had died.  Some members wanted to not play the rest of the concert.  It was decided that they would, that they would help the audience heal through their music.  I wonder if it worked.

One of the stories I read today was about Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit's widow.  Her name is Marie.  She's still living, a great-grandmother at 85.  

"He was a Christian man," she said of her husband, whom Lee Harvey Oswald shot dead as he was being questioned on a street in Oak Cliff.  "He went to church with the family; we prayed together. He was a good police officer. He loved his children, and I always knew that I was loved."

She always knew that she was loved.  I guess, even if you do lose your husband on some Dallas street for damn near nothing in the blink of an eye, it doesn't get much better than always knowing you were loved.  

You have this idea about widows-- what they're supposed to look like and talk like.  How they're supposed to be thin-lipped and sullen, staring at the floor, or out the window-- right through you.  They look right through.  They may laugh at something, later-- later, you know.  But it's different.  It's the widow's laugh.  And it isn't phony or tinny or forced.  It's sincere as can be, but it's broken, somehow.  Like a Limoges saucer with a chip in it-- still pretty and functional, but it's not 100%. 

My sister's a widow.  She's still pretty, and functional.  But she's not 100%.  She's broken somehow.  She's always been touchy and emotional.  Dramatic.  And I want to be of use to her, not to do things for her or to clean up after her, but to make her laugh or let her know that she is loved, but I find that I'm inept, fumbling, bumbling, stumbling.  It doesn't work.  It's not clicking.  It's not happening.  Something's broken somehow, not just in her, but in us.

Her husband was appallingly ripped away from her, not by a gunman's gruesome bullet, but by ravenous, voracious cancer; unceasing and insane.  At the funeral, she stared right through everyone; it was terrifying and I knew something was over somehow.  Some part of us as a family was over.  Maybe it had ended years earlier and I was just too self-involved to notice.  I used to call my mother, absolutely panic-stricken about how "our family is falling apart!" but not that it's happened, there's no more fear or anxiety about it.  After all, fear and anxiety are all about anticipation.  That's the stuff that all comes before.  

This is after.