A Heavy Heart

So tonight my father-in-law called, he wanted to buy S.O. a shirt and tie set for Christmas. Hesitantly, I had to tell him that I doubted he’d be able to find one in S.O.’s size. He said “I thought he said he’d been losing weight.”

I started feeling emotional. Why?

S.O. called me a lot today—at 3:45 when I thought he was traveling the three hours back from his court appointment, turns out he was already at home. He’d called me at lunch time too, maybe before starting the drive home. When I walked in the door at 5:30, S.O. was watching TV, looking so sad. I asked if he wanted to talk about his day and he said “Not yet.”

So I made dinner (A is with Grandma tonight), we played two rounds of Tivo-ed Jeopardy. S.O. mentioned a few times how sore he was feeling from the physical therapy appointment he had yesterday for his back, and he asked me to put him to bed. We walked upstairs, I helped him into bed, gave him a hug and a kiss and turned off the lights. He told me how nice it was to have me in his life.

S.O. is struggling, and it makes me sad—for him and for myself. As I hugged him, touched his forehead with my lips, the thought passed through my mind—I need to look into life insurance. He was denied life insurance because of his weight.

I understand, now, that I’m sad because I know S.O. needs to have life insurance. Not in the way that every parent needs it. I am afraid that one morning I will wake up and he will have died from a heart attack, or a stroke. I’ve been resisting calling people to see if S.O. can get a policy because I’ve been in denial. Just like I’ve been in denial about how unprepared I am to have another baby.

A while ago, I had taped the fortune from a cookie to my computer: “Don’t let the things you love slip away.” I had been wondering what it was, exactly, that I love.

Tonight I realized how very much I love my S.O. Last night as I was cleaning the kitchen I also realized the extent to which I am in love with my family. There are times when I have wondered, especially when there is so much I want to accomplish in my work, what the meaning of my unending laundry and kitchen duty and cooking and vacuuming could possibly be.

So last night I was meditating on this while sweeping the floor, and it dawned on me that we’re creating something that I never really had growing up.

A dad and a mom and a kid, together through hard times and good. I know it was best for my parents to split, but I think it left me with a lasting desire for constancy...stability. Which might be why I have a tendency to be obsessive and why I’m feeling so afraid right about now.

Before I hung up the phone with my father-in-law, that same fear prompted me to ask if he and his wife could say a prayer for my S.O.

Not much more to say than that I suppose. Except that now my daughter is home and she has given me a kiss on the forehead, and taking my head in her hands, she told me "That is to protect you from tigers and lions and elves."

And fear.