. . . . .
One Saturday morning in early spring my phone rang. I was already awake, lying in bed. The snow still hadn’t melted outside. Sunrise brought chilled air that made me not want to crawl out from under the covers. I answered the phone.
“How are you, Luisa?” It was my sister, Angela.
I looked around the empty bedroom and felt the aloneness that had persisted since Brandon was taken from me. It wasn’t fair that God took him. Brandon should have been here with me right now.
“How am I?” I said. “How do you think?”
“I know you’re not happy. You have to think about other things or you’ll never get over this.”
“Get over it? You sound like an American.”
“I mean you have to live your life again, Luisa.”
“I am living,” I said.
“Barely.”
I couldn’t disagree. Instead, I said, “Why did God take him, Angela? This isn’t right.”
She told me all the reasons, justifications that I’d heard a thousand times before from a dozen other people, all the ways I was supposed to think in order to accept what happened and move on. But I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t move on. How can a person simply move on from the one love of their life? We’d been through so much and came out stronger, closer, more in love. Only to have it all ripped away. Move on? The only move on I could imagine myself doing was moving on to the same place Brandon was.
But then Angela said something else, something that went straight to my heart, something that hurt.
“Listen to me, Luisa. Please. I know it’s hard, but you need to let him go, not just for you, but even more so for him.”
I didn’t understand. “For him?”
“Yes, for him.”
“I can’t,” I said, falling back on the words I’d said over and over, the thought that never left me. “I can’t.”
“You have to. You’re holding him. Don’t you understand? You’re holding him.”
“What does that mean, I’m holding him?” Her words started to anger me. “I wish to God I could hold him.”
“No, you’re holding him from going through the light. He needs to go to heaven, Luisa, but he won’t until you let him go.”
“I can’t let him go!”
“You have to.”
“I can’t. I don’t want to be without him.”
“If you love him, if you truly love him, you have to let him go through the light. It’s not fair to him. He needs to get to Heaven. You’re stopping him.”
“No.” I didn’t want to believe I was doing that to him. I never wanted to hurt him in any way. “No,” I repeated.
“Luisa, let him go. For him. For you, too. Let him go.”
I realized that she was right, and all I could do was cry.
. . . . .
When I hung up with Angela, I called Father Walsh. I needed to see him. For me, he was the embodiment of the world Brandon had gone to, the clarity of what God wanted. I needed help seeing the correct path to take. If anyone could shed light on the answers, my hope was that it was Father Walsh.
Though he didn’t usually work in his office Saturday mornings, he told me to come over to the rectory right away. An hour later I was sitting in his office, sobbing and asking for guidance. He told me that Angela was right. I did need to let Brandon go.
But he was more concerned about me, about how my holding onto Brandon was affecting me. He worried that I had given up on life. I needed to let my husband be with God, true. But I needed to do it, not just for Brandon, but also for me.
Father Walsh and I talked for an hour and a half. His words brought me peace. He said God would help me if I let Him. I left, desperate for God to take me by the hand and show me how to survive this loss.
I started volunteering at the church, donating to the charities. They had a group for widows. I supported them and tried their meetings, even though I was half the age of most of them. Being in the church, having that community to fill some of the emptiness left by Brandon’s death, did give me a little strength. I felt strong enough to talk to other people going through depression and try to give them encouragement.
Even though this helped a little, the pain of losing Brandon remained. I let him go, let him pass through the light.
But I was in the pits of depression.
. . . . .
Being involved in the Church was helpful, but as time wore on and my depression remained, I knew I needed professional help. I recognized that this was too much for me to handle on my own. I remembered how difficult it had been for me when my mother had died. And in those days, in Naples, people didn’t get professional help. If you even mentioned a psychiatrist or a therapist, people would think you were crazy. But I was a long way from the Naples of my youth, both in physical location and in time.
When I had moved to Massachusetts years earlier, I had contacted a clinical psychologist to help me with some unresolved feelings having to do with my mother’s death. I realized it was time to call her again.
I started going to see Cindy weekly, talking about everything I was going through, all the feelings I was having. I even told her about the “event” in our bedroom that night, when I felt Brandon there with me. I hadn’t discussed it with anyone else. I didn’t know what they would think of me. But I trusted Cindy. I also needed to talk to someone about it.
As I explained to her what had happened that night, I watched her expression. All I saw was attentiveness, concern. “Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked.
She smiled. “One thing I can tell you for certain, you’re not crazy.”
I knew I wasn’t crazy, but hearing her, a professional, tell me gave me an incredible relief.
“Could I have imagined the whole thing?” I asked.
“Luisa, only you know the answer to that. What do you think?”
“It seemed very real to me.”
“There’s you answer.”
“So then what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you want to do?” Cindy asked me.
“Sometimes there are moments,” I said, “when all I want to do is die so I can be with Brandon.”
“I know how terrible it feels to lose someone who’s so close to you.”
“He was my whole life. Without him, I don’t have a life. If it wasn’t such a bad sin, such a bad act against God, I would have done it.”
Cindy nodded. From her expression I knew she cared. She said, “There are times in our lives that aren’t easy.”
“There are times that are too hard,” I said.
“Yes, there are.”
“The only thing that gets me through the days is thinking how I’m going to make Brandon proud of me.”
“Well, that’s what you should do then. That’s good enough. That’s plenty.”
“But it never gets better. Sometimes I can’t even bear to face the next day, with nothing changing.”
“Just get through each day. Let tomorrow come tomorrow. One day’s enough at one time. Just take care of today. I promise you, eventually the tomorrows will get better.”
. . . . .
She listened to all of my stories of sadness, and even though I knew she was being paid to do this, I could tell that she genuinely cared. Her advice helped me through the darkness. From talking to me about making sure that I ate properly and slept the right amount of hours, to figuring out why God separates people who love and need each other so much, the weekly visits with her gave me strength to go on.
I talked to her about the difficulties of returning each
day to the house I had shared with Brandon, about my feelings of loneliness at the same time that I didn’t want to be with other people, about the problems and the successes I had at the studio, the thing that was, in a way, my reason for living. I still needed to make it a success for Brandon.
“And for you?” Cindy asked. “Couldn’t making it a success be for you, too? For both of you?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t think about it in those terms. Not at that moment, anyway. But afterwards, when I was at work, putting in sixteen hours a day to make sure it was successful, increasing the number of clients beyond what Brandon and I had imagined it would be at this point, I did let myself feel proud of what I was doing. Maybe what I was achieving at the studio could, in part, be for me, too.
The sad thing was, as well I was doing at work, without Brandon, I had no one to share it with. And alone, it didn’t have much meaning. Alone, life had little meaning.
CHAPTER 25
Fifteen months after Brandon died, I opened my email to see a message from the corporate offices of Fitness Together, the franchise I owned, announcing the annual franchisee conference in Florida. In the past, Brandon and I had gone together each year. It had usually been a great networking and learning experience for our business and a wonderful time away for the two of us.
The previous year, I’d been so distraught by Brandon’s death that I hadn’t even noticed it was conference time. Not that I would have gone without him. This year, though, I wondered if attending would be a good step to take. The thought of actually doing it terrified me.
When I went to see Cindy for my weekly therapy session, I told her about the conference and my considering going.
“I think that would be great for you,” she said.
“I’m not sure if I’m ready.”
“How would you feel different if you were ready?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t be so scared.”
“Being afraid isn’t what tells us we can or should do something. Fear is only an obstacle, the same as being tired can be an obstacle or bad weather or a broken leg are obstacles. They are things that we can overcome, not things that tell us if we’re ready or not, or whether or not we should do something. The healing process involves taking steps. Some steps are simple, some are more challenging. This one might be more challenging, but it is another step. You know you’ve taken many other steps, Luisa. This is one more.”
I understood all of that already. But it was easier to understand it and say it than it was to actually do it. “I know it would be good for me to get out of my comfort zone, and that is definitely out of my comfort zone. I was thinking, maybe Brandon would want me to go.”
“I’m more interested in hearing what you want, not what you think Brandon wants.”
“What I want?”
“Yes. That’s what matters.”
I wasn’t sure how to say what I thought. I sat forward and looked at her.
“Cindy, life doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I don’t want anything. I’m not even sure I want to be alive.”
She reached over and placed her hand on mine. “Luisa, I think life has more meaning to you than you realize.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Then why do you get up every morning and go to work and spend so many hours and continue growing your business?”
“I do that for Brandon. Because the studio meant the world to him.”
“That’s not the reason.”
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“Why do you come here then? You come here for Brandon too?”
“I come here because it helps me to talk with you.”
“Exactly. It helps you. Not Brandon. I think that if you look real hard, you may see that other things you do are also for you. You’re trying to put your life back together, and that’s for you.”
“I want him to be proud,” I said.
“Yes, I know. I get it that the studio was something he started with you and so it means a lot, and you want to honor him. But you also have to do it for you. To be proud of yourself. And maybe you can’t see it, but I can. You dress well. You put on makeup. You always look good.”
“I have to for the business.”
“No, you don’t. You do it because you decided that it matters. You do things for Brandon, there’s no question. But you also do things for you, and you do it because even though you are deeply sad and mourning the loss of your one true love, your life does matter.”
I couldn’t answer. Maybe she was right. I wasn’t sure anymore.
“So maybe Brandon does want you to go,” she said. “But what do you want to do?”
“Why do you turn it back to me? You tell me, what should I do?”
“You know the answer that is right for you, Luisa. There isn’t a wrong thing to do. What do you feel?”
“I don’t know what I feel sometimes.”
“Well, think about it. What do you feel right now?”
“I think maybe Brandon might want…”
“Luisa,” she said, raising her hand to stop me. “Not what do you think Brandon might want. I want to know what you think, what you want?”
I hesitated, trying to know what I should do. It was difficult for me to imagine taking any trip without Brandon, let alone a trip we used to take together. But then again, it had been difficult for me to imagine running our studio alone, making a life in our home alone. Over the last year, I had gradually come to understand that I was stronger than I’d thought. I could survive a lot. Possibly I could even thrive…
“Maybe I can go,” I said.
Cindy smiled. “Why not?”
. . . . .
Why not? The closer I came to getting on the plane and flying down there, the more reasons I came up with for why not. Who was going to take care of the business? What if there were a problem at the house and I wasn’t there to take care of it? What if there were a hurricane in Florida? What if…what if…what if…?
But I had made up my mind that I’d go. I went shopping for some new clothes, colorful clothes. The year of wearing black was over. Brandon would like me to wear colors again. As I tried on different dresses, I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that it felt good to care about the way I looked. I began to enjoy dressing up again.
The business continued to do well and shortly before it was time to take the trip, I received the news that my studio was the top revenue producer in the entire country for the previous month. The trainers and I celebrated in the studio. I saw how thrilled they were. I said that Brandon would be proud of all of them. They congratulated me. It really did feel good. And that feeling helped me as I boarded that plane to Florida. Tears were in my eyes, but underneath I knew I had a strength in me and I needed to rely on that strength.
. . . . .
Being in Fort Walton Beach brought back memories. I had always traveled with Brandon. We were inseparable. Without him, I felt out of place. Even just checking into the hotel. He always took care of everything. But now I was on my own.
As I filled out the paperwork and handed the woman behind the counter my credit card, I told myself that I could do this. Life had been better with Brandon, but it did not have to come to an end without him. Just as the business didn’t close and the house didn’t fall apart, my life could continue. Coming here was a step toward being alive again. I would never stop loving Brandon, never stop missing him, never stop wishing he were by my side, experiencing whatever I was experiencing.
But I could feel alive again. Perhaps not happy. I still was not able to imagine myself feeling that. But I could at least feel something approaching contentme
nt.
I went up to my room and unpacked. The franchisees were invited to a welcome party out by the pool. I went out onto the balcony and saw people gathering below. Everyone was dressed up, the men in sports coats, the women in short dresses and heels. A DJ played club versions of pop music, competing with the sound of the waves coming from the beach. I wasn’t sure I should go. I was in no mood to mingle and make small talk. But I had come here as part of healing, of rebuilding my life. I needed to go down there and meet the other studio owners.
I had no idea what to wear. For things like this, Brandon always helped me decide. I used to love trying on outfits and getting his responses. On my own, I couldn’t make up my mind. I picked up my cell phone and I called Lora, Brandon’s mother. She had good taste. And she was one of the few people I knew I could count on. She told me to relax and assured me that we would pick the right dress together. Then I described everything I’d brought with me.
“Definitely the ivory dress,” she said.
“You think so?”
“Definitely. With your skin tone, it’ll be perfect.”
“Okay, if you think so. Thanks, Lora.”
“And have a good time,” she told me. “Enjoy yourself, for God’s sake.”
“I’ll try.”
At first I felt uncomfortable, but as I met people I knew from previous conferences, I began to feel more comfortable. Many people didn’t recognize me because I’d changed my hair color. Everyone was so kind. They kept complimenting me on how good I looked. If only they knew how much sadness I had inside. But tonight I let the happiness of the event take over. I ate and drank and even danced a little. By the time I went back to my room, I felt happy that I’d gone. A few months ago, I would not have been able to imagine me at a party. This was another small step on my road to healing.
The last night there, the owner of the company invited me to sit at his table at the award banquet. He was very kind to me and made sure I was enjoying myself. It wasn’t easy being there, but I was beginning to enjoy being out again, doing things other than work, talking with people.
Until Forever Page 17