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And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed - Softcover

Lott Williford, Tricia

 
9780307731982: And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307731987 ISBN 13: 9780307731982
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

“Now I know that every single day, the best and the worst, only lasts for twenty-four hours.”
—Tricia Lott Williford, And Life Comes Back
 
When your life falls apart—through a death, a lost relationship, a diagnosis—you want more than anything to know that your pain has a purpose. And that beyond your pain, a new day awaits.
 
Tricia Lott Williford discovered this in a few tragic hours when her thirty-five-year-old husband died unexpectedly. In And Life Comes Back, she writes with soaring prose about her tender, brave journey as a widow with two young boys in the agonizing days and months that followed his death.
 
And Life Comes Back documents the tenacity of love, the exquisite transience of each moment, and the laughter that comes even in loss. This traveler’s guide to finding new life after setbacks offers no easy answers or glib spiritual maxims but instead draws you into your own story and the hope that waits for you even now.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tricia Lott Williford was an elementary school teacher before becoming a freelance editor and a stay-at-home mom. Tricia writes regularly for a loyal blog audience and is a sought-after speaker. She and her two sons live in Colorado.

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October 2012

Gas tank: full. Cell phone: charged. iPod: stocked. I drive up I-70 toward the mountains. A decision of classic, spontaneous impulsion on my part. Once I’ve decided I want to do something, I want to do it today. This is no exception.

Robb and I weren’t a perfect match. We were different in every way. But maybe the differences make the perfect match. He liked a planned agenda; I thrive on spontaneity. He was a filer. He put everything in its place. I am a piler, and I can’t find anything once it leaves my hands. He liked to visit the same restaurants and order favorite dishes; I like to try new places and taste new things. He went to bed at the same time every night, just after the nightly weather report at 9:17 p.m.; I come alive at night, often thinking and writing and creating into the early morning hours. He was deeply invested in the decisions of the government and any election; I am apolitical and often handed him my ballot since it mattered so much more to him. He believed in the thrill of competition; I enjoy the commercials and believe in the gracious social merits of the game. I always have a book in my hands; he was nonliterate. Not illiterate, but nonliterate; he hated to read. We parented differently. I read books, conduct Internet research, post on parenting blogs, and study consequences based on love and logic. He wrestled on the floor, tickled and roughhoused, and earned respect by saying things like, “Dude, just obey. I’ve pooped bigger than you.”

But we both loved road trips and loud music on the iPod. (I like mine louder than he preferred.) We loved having people in our home (although I could quickly and seamlessly add a chair to our dinner table while he preferred a guest list in advance). We both loved serving people; I would listen and learn their favorites and their fears, while he
would grab his tool belt and fix any problem at hand.

Years ago I stopped trying to make us match—him the same as me, me the same as him. I learned that his relationships, although far less verbal, were in no way inferior to mine; they were just different. His experiences and his preferences were different from mine, but they were equally valuable. The ways he chose to love me were, in fact,
loving me. The face of love depends on one’s willingness to understand two vernaculars of the same language. We were not the same.

We didn’t always understand each other. And we made a great team. In the passenger’s seat is the white paper bag with handles. It looks like it could come from a candle shop or a quaint boutique. No one might guess that it holds the canister of my husband’s ashes.

I drive on a two-lane road that becomes more winding, less crowded, and finally utterly secluded as I arrive at a lake just below the mountain’s highest elevation. I turn off the car. I step out. The air is crisp and silent. I button my coat, grab the handles of the white bag, and click the remote to lock the car as I walk toward the water.

Part 1
I Will Love You Forever

Life was rich. No matter what the future held, this was a marvelous moment.
—Madeleine L’Engle, Two-Part Invention

October 2009

As I scrambled with the many dishes on the stove and in the microwave, two-year-old Tyler cried because he wanted to sit in his chair, twenty-five minutes before it was time to eat. Four-year-old Tucker needed, needed, needed to be in the kitchen with me, standing at my feet, asking to help.

Please. Help. Please.

Tyler wanted to be held. Then Tyler wanted to wear his Superman shirt. It could not be found. He could not think of eating without it, so he organized a search party, looking high and low. When we found it, he didn’t want to wear it. He put on a Power Ranger costume instead. Meanwhile, Tucker endlessly blew the pinwheel he had made at preschool, sending spit flying all over everything and everyone. That’s fun, just before dinner.

The kitchen door opened from the garage, and the familiar jangle of car keys exploded into boisterous, joyful shouting. “Daddy! Daddy!” The boys tumbled over each other in their race to greet Robb, which became a fest of shoving and blaming and claiming. I stood by the stove, stirring the spanish rice to accompany the chicken enchiladas in the oven. I watched the greeting unfold, aware of two things: he was finally home to help referee such scenes, and we would have our own hello once the hubbub settled. I could leave them to their wrestling match. Sure enough, they dispersed as quickly as they had commenced, spinning and bouncing like pinballs.

“Hey, babe,” he said as he came behind me, one hand on my waist, one hand holding the mail. I gave him a quick kiss over my shoulder.

“Hi, love. Welcome home. How was work?”

“Eh, you know. Work.” He flipped through the mail, sorting the wheat from the chaff. “How was the day here?”

“Eh, you know. It was the day here.” I pulled the enchiladas out of the oven, balancing the casserole dish in one hand, clicking the beeping timer off with the other hand, and giving a quick, upward exhale to blow my bangs out of my eyes.

“Anything you need help with before dinner?”

“Yes, you can pour drinks and have them go potty and wash their hands.” (Perhaps in another life stage I won’t say “potty.” Lots of grownups say “bathroom”—so I’ve heard.)

“Boys! Go potty and wash your hands! Time for dinner!” He headed up the stairs and returned in a frayed T-shirt and athletic shorts. He wore shorts 350 days of the year, even when there was snow on the ground.

Robb and I had a silly joke between us. About trivets. Really, that’s what marriages are made of: silly little nothings that add up to a decade of important somethings. As you probably know, a trivet is the little doodad that goes under a hot plate or dish to keep the heat from scorching your table or countertop. Robb insisted on calling it a trinket. I insisted on calling it by its name, trivet.

I carried the hot dish to the table. “Could you hand me a trivet?”

“You mean a trinket?”

“No. I mean a trivet.”

“Sure, babe. Here you go. Here’s your trinket.”

“Thank you for the trivet.”

“Trinket.”

“Trivet.”

We did this, I kid you not, every single time one of us set the table for dinner. It was a nightly dialogue, a playful banter. The trinket/trivet debate. One night he said, “You know, when I’m dead and gone, you’ll look at that trinket and smile. You’ll remember me, and you’ll call it a trinket.”

“Doubt it.” Lower my vocabulary standards? Hard to wrap my mind around that.

The dinner scene unfolded with arguments over washing hands with soap and water versus sanitizer and whether dinnertime is an appropriate opportunity for such shortcuts. There were spilled drinks and excessive napkins. Any semblance of real conversation was replaced instead with interruptions and incomplete sentences. Someone wise once said, “Where two or more are gathered, someone will spill his milk.” I envisioned my family dinner table looking so much more collected than this.

Tyler didn’t want to eat at all; he simply wanted out of his chair. No dice, kiddo. You have to take the three obligatory “thank-you bites.” That’s the rule. And he could have his share of yogurt and grapes. I support the idea of children eating what the adults are having, but sometimes I don’t want to argue and negotiate every bite of the one meal we all...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307731987
ISBN 13 
9780307731982
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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