On a whim…

Recovering from Silence

I watch the women in my life — and who could resist? Each a marvel, her own constellation of strengths and mysteries. What strikes me most is their uncanny attunement: they know when something is right, and when it is not. Perhaps this is why their lives, more often than ours, run longer — they listen to themselves.

These days I find that same listening rising in me. My history, long buried in hidden folds, presses forward and names itself. The fiftieth anniversary of my marriage to Beth, my late wife, has brought me into strange country. Difference is not only what I admire in others; it is what I now confront in myself.

For years I kept my inner dialogue under lock. Sadness and joy alike I carried in silence. When I remarried, I spoke Beth’s name, but I hid my grief. I feared it would wound my wife to know sorrow still haunted me, so I consigned memory to the shadows. Silence gave sorrow room, but never joy.

Now the landscape shifts. What was once rolling and familiar has grown sharp and perilous. The gentle curves of remembrance have narrowed into hairpin turns; the easy hills have broken into sudden ridges, blind crests, and heart-stopping overlooks. Change no longer waits at a distance; it walks beside me.

I have wept more in the last month than in decades past. But the tears are welcome, because in speaking aloud — in sharing what I once held back — grief no longer stands alone. Joy has stepped out of hiding to take its place beside sorrow. And together they travel with me, companions at last.

Women are sometimes faulted for their sensitivity, their willingness to notice change within. But I am learning this is not theirs alone. It is human. And that discovery — that I too can listen, can open, can live — is the real difference.

Vive la différence!