As I write the first draft of this post, it's my Holy Saturday - the first I've spent alone, no kids, no husband, in over 30 years. Not completely alone - I'm recovering from surgery so there have been visits and texts and phone calls - but for most of the day it's been just me and my pets, my books, and my thoughts - the usual companions.
There is the desperate side of me that wonders if life will always be like this. Although I am ok with the silence and solitude, I constantly fight the nagging thought that there must be something wrong with me, to be alone like this. It is my perennial fear - affirmed in many ways by the divorce - that I am unloveable, that I will always be alone.
But to be truthful, along with that nagging fear is a sense of relief that I don't have to over-do on holiday preparations this year. I just feel so tired, and the idea of making my traditional Easter doughnuts, or otherwise spending my Holy Saturday consumed by chores exhausts me. I'm ready to lay down my doughnut-frying, Easter egg-coloring apron and just rest. I used to think my value was tied up in all those things I accomplished to make the holidays "special" - and now I wonder how much energy I threw toward something that was never in my control.
I ran across an interesting Instagram personality today, a man who noted how we live most of our lives in Holy Saturday - waiting, unsure, not having anything really figured out. Coincidentally, I wrote in my journal this morning - before getting on Instagram - that I don't even know what Easter Sunday resurrection I'm waiting for anymore.
At this point I should clarfiy that my understanding of the cycle of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday might differ from a more traditional interpretation. While I recognize the historic celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection, the more fascinating part of all the spring holy days, for me, is the recognition of the universal pattern of death, waiting, and new life. There is more to this than the establishment of a world religion. This pattern is the foundational pattern of life - being born, living, dying, and being born anew.
And I no longer know what "anew" means for me. I once thought I did, and I was wrong.
Metaphorically, my personal Good Friday - to this point, at least - happened nearly four years ago. Ironically, that Easter weekend was our family's last "perfect" Easter: we branded, finally, our own small bunch of calves with our family brand, held our newly-traditional "beer hunt" - marked, ominously, by one of Shawn's tempers - and in the morning hunted for baskets and ate Easter doughnuts. We even took a really good family picture before church, though there was a darkness in Shawn's eyes, and a worry in Cody's, that was not hidden by the brims of their hats. And there was a falseness in my smile that I don't think I even recognized - it was just a pose, just a smile, just a pretend-perfect family.
About three weeks later, on Mother's Day weekend, Shawn asked for a divorce, That was Good Friday - a weekend that stretched into weeks, and then months, of shock, horror, denial, earth-shaking loss, and the realization that what I thought was a stable, though troubled, marriage was an illusion that I spent my life keeping intact. My kids knew things, saw things, realized things, before I ever did.
I'd really thought we had turned a corner. That the hard years, of financial struggle, of raising six kids, of our ongoing battles about the horse business, my career, his drinking, were over. I thought we'd learned enough to put those times behind us. We had one grandchild, a daughter married, three kids out of the house. To myself, and maybe most people looking in from the outside, our future looked like nothing but more weddings, more grandkids, more graduations, and more years together. And while I worried about living alone with him, and that odd comment he had made to me about "not seeing us grow old together" -- I brushed all that aside and busied myself with keeping the family together and keeping up appearances as best as I could. There was, of course, so much to stay busy with - it was easy to distract myself from any rumblings of unhappiness.
But this post is not the story of that Good Friday experience, when the skies were split and the world turned black. That's not the story I'm ready to write just yet. This is the story of the next day - now stretched into years - of questions, dashed hopes, uncertainty, and life in the upper room.
At that first Holy Saturday, the disciples did not have the benefit of history. They did not know what the next day would bring and most were scared and lost. The only ones who seemed to have an inkling, a sliver of hope and fight, were the women who refused to stay hidden, and instead approached the tomb. These men and women are only symbols for what we all have within us - an ongoing struggle between our hopelessness and devastation at the reality around us, and our hopefulness and embodied instinct that there must be more, that there has to be more. As I live longer in the reality of my aloneness and life on the margins, I still feel deeply the hope of an imminent Easter Sunday for me - but I have no idea what it might be.
For the first six months or so of separation, I felt certain that Easter Sunday would be reconciliation with Shawn. The longer I lived on my own, howeve,r the more I recognized the peace I had - and the more I knew returning to marriage to him would be returning to the tomb. Not that it was ever an option - I found out that I'd been replaced before I even left the ranch. Nonetheless, it would have been like Lazarus re-entering the tomb after having been ordered out - and while I do have a really good Lazarus story, that was not part of it.
For a while I thought my Easter Sunday would involve finding a man - so deep was my shame about having failed at marriage. And I have met some nice men - but like me, they've been conditioned to follow certain cultural roles and gender patterns. And after being single a while, I've found myself unimpressed by things that are supposed to impress me. I care little for career prestige, or money, or achievements. I care about kindness, and passion, and vulnerability, and the kind of humility that comes from failing, deeply, and having to own one's part of that. And while I'm sure there are men out there who do possess these qualities, most of the ones I've met are afraid to show them. And when I show my own vulnerability, most seem uncomfortable with the depth of my emotion. Thus, for me, there will be no more relationships if they require false faces and socially-appropriate masks.
Sometimes I wonder if my career will become my Easter Sunday resurrection. But as the culture wars intensify and ridiculous charges are lobbed at my colleagues and me, it becomes obvious that I may have to leave the career I love to fight for the institution and values I love more. Time will tell - after all, it is still Holy Saturday.
Ultimately, I suppose, my Easter Sunday, if I get to pick it, is the hope I hold above all.. that I will reconcile with all my kids. I'm learning that this, as life, happens in cycles: there are beautiful, Easter Sunday moments like birthday parties and holidays and grandbabies and Zoom calls - balanced with a lot of Holy Saturday waiting. Any mom who's estranged from one or more of her kids will tell you they're never out of her mind - but she still has to smile and enjoy Easter moments with the kids who are with her. In my heart, I feel like the shepherd who has 99 sheep safely in the fold but goes out to bring in the one lost. Only, adult children are not sheep. Perhaps Biblical sheep are different, but in my experience, catching a stray sheep usually involves a chase, a wrestle, a rope, brute strength. It is not as pastoral an image as it is presented to be. And again, adult children are not sheep.
The only chasing I can do amounts to codependency; the only capture, manipulation; the only brute strength, a guilt trip. And after the devastation of my Good Friday, and the realization that I brought so much on myself by living outside my values, those values have become my Holy Saturday psalm. I will not disrespect my kids my imposing on them patterns of abuse and emotional warfare - not any longer. And so I wait. I leave a gate open, call out the door, hope the warmth draws them in, hope their desire to rejoin their siblings in the fold will someday be enough. Hope my love and repentance will be enough.
For today, I sit in my Holy Saturday - not knowing, not having anything figured out, just trying to read the signs. Outside in the gathering dusk, geese squawk overhead. My living room mantle is filled with eggs, rabbits, spring flowers - promises of fertililty, and growth, and new life. Promises of something. And though I have no idea what that something is, I choose to trust what the signs tell me - that life will go on, and that resurrection, in some form, is on its way.
