8. Clap if You Believe

Do you believe in Tinker Bell? When you go to see Peter Pan there is a part in the play where Tinker Bell is poisoned and Peter asks the audience “Do you believe in Tinker Bell?” and you’re supposed to clap your hands to save her and she comes back… That somehow your faith in her, your belief in her, will revived her, and she will continue to live on because you want her to. 

I think pretty much all my life I’ve been a non-believer in any higher power, entity, or God. I used to have discussions with a friend of mine about whether we were missing out on something, some gene that made us non-believers. Would it be easier to navigate this life if you believed in a God that provided an answer to unknown questions?  I think especially during times in life like now, when you have lost somebody, your brain wants to put the pieces together and try to make sense to give you a place to find comfort and purpose and as a way to release the grief and give it over to something… but I don’t believe.

After Brian died, I went to clean out all of his belongings from his apartment. Lots of the everyday things I took and added into our lives, things like the juice that was in his refrigerator,  sheets for his bed that are the same size as Ian‘s, a stapler.  One of the things I brought home was a container of Trader Joe’s pepper. I placed it in the cabinet where I kept all the other spices. For weeks every time I opened that cabinet the top to the pepper had popped open. I would close it and the next time I would look in there it would be open again. It just would not stay shut. I would start to joke with Ian that maybe this was his dad’s way of letting us know he was around… doing this thing to drive me crazy for no reason and just to prove his existence and watch over us. Brian had little things he would do that drove me nuts during our lives together and popping this pepper open seemed just up that alley.

After about a year it stayed closed.

And each time I opened the cabinet a piece of me wished to see that top popped open again. And I was sad it was not.
It meant he had left us…

I joined a widows group on FB… seeking to find people who understood this grief and loneliness and the complications of navigating everyday life while in this fog, that so many people in my life just do not get (Lucky you). One woman commented that every time she found a dime she knew her husband was reaching out to her from heaven… Again, as an atheist I didn’t believe that was really possible, but I found myself challenging Bret to send me a dime and suddenly I started to see dimes every time I went out, including one random trip to Target with Ian where I ran into Bret’s daughter. I really began to believe that this was Bret’s way of telling me he was still there with me and he loved me.  But as the days went on and I no longer came across dimes I would curse him and demand that he send me a dime, that he needed to prove he still loved me, that I no longer believed he cared… and after a week of not finding dimes I was devastated all over again. It was a confirmation that he couldn’t prove he really loved me, and that he was really gone. Not something I am ready or willing to face. But in all of this, I can see how faith can give you a softer landing in this constant falling feeling of grief, reason to not feel so alone, when all you feel is alone, and a way to still feel loved when you feel completely unlovable.

But I don’t have that faith.