A Heartbeat at a Time

I got the phone call Monday morning from my mother. I almost ignored it, but I turned off the shower, and answered the phone.

She knew very little beyond, my brother-in-law was dead.  My sister had lost her husband, her best friend, the other half of her soul.

Those words sound so over the top, overly dramatic, a huge exaggeration of a relationship.  But those who knew them, knew they shared a soul. They shared everything.  He was the Ying to her Yang, he was the quiet support to her loud, vibrant life.  While she chased dreams he anchored her, not stifled, anchored. He believed in her. To him she was beautiful inside and out.  Her soul was a beautiful to him as her face.

On the outside, they looked so polar opposites. But for those who knew then, knew that inside, where it counted, they were just alike.

He was her best friend, her other half, her everything, and you can see that love shine through picture after picture after picture of them.

It was just last week, I was looking through my sister’s Facebook pictures, of her, of her and B, their boys, their life.  Their love, their happiness, radiated through those photos.  I cried knowing that the love they shared was a once in a life time deal, and I would never find that kind of love.

This weekend, their story took a turn nobody could have seen coming.  The love that shown in her eyes just days before, has now been replaced by pain, hurt, confusion.  Her heart is shattered, the landscape of her life is no longer familiar.  She is a stranger in a strange land, and nobody gave her a map.  Nobody can.

He is gone, never to return.  For a woman who couldn’t imagine spending a day without him in her life, she can’t even comprehend a lifetime without him.  And yet, she will, even if only a heartbeat at a time.

Late yesterday afternoon, the how, the why, the what happened were answered.   As strange as it sounds, there is a certain degree of peace, and strength, and resolve to be found from having the answers to the haunting questions.  Now there are facts, and now there is something, anything, that explains, and gives some sense to the incomprehensible.

Three years ago, I heard a Rabbi explain ‘sitting Shiva’.  a Jewish funeral tradition where the family of the deceased “sits Shiva’ for 7 days accepting visitors offering condolences.  The point is to sit with the family members.  To just sit, and to just be.  To not even utter a word unless the family does.  Don’t do or say anything, because nothing you can do or say will fix it, take the pain away, bring back their loved one.  We, as people, are compelled to do something, anything because doing nothing is awkward and appears uncaring.

Since my sister found out Sunday night, she has had people surrounding her, doing nothing more than sitting with her, just being.  If she needed to go somewhere to deal with something, they went.  They offered no advice, they offered no opinion.  They just were there.  It is in this unconditional quiet support the giving of themselves, that my sister can draw strength.

Our family is grieving.  We are hurt.  We ache at the loss of B, but we are also swallowed by the pain of knowing how shattered my sister is.  She is a widow at 36, with two boys, 12 and 10.  She is lost, and all we can do is stand beside her and hold her up as she finds her way in this world she never wanted to be in, a world without him.

She knows that all she has to do is get through this heartbeat, and the next, and the next until a minute has gone by.  And then she will get through this minute, then the next, and the next, until she can get through five minutes.  Eventually she will learn that she can survive an hour, an afternoon, a week.  But today, she just has to get through each heartbeat