Connections

On connecting and guilt. I am built for connection. I cannot help myself. This is how I survive, because this is how I’m made.

I am back in Durango for a few days. The place it all started, so to speak. The place I became Chloe Marty. I avoided visiting up until now. In fact, I haven’t been here since before John’s diagnosis. I decided I need to come, and I need to be in this place. I needed to face how being here feels. Because grief doesn’t just live in memory — it lives in geography, in locations, in ordinary decisions, like whether you can go back to the place where your life began.

I move through the world alone now. And with Raffa, of course. I am responsible for him. Raising my son alone. It’s lonely in its own way, and weighted with responsibility in an entirely new way. A weight that is hard to put into words. Parenting decisions meant to be made together, made alone. A loneliness of sole responsibility, not emotional emptiness. I will meet it with everything I have.

And as I enter the new year, I am feeling the truth of what it means to keep going more fully. I don’t subscribe to New Year’s resolutions, but I cannot help but feel the significance of the calendar turning. Through the holidays, I let my focus narrow and I gave myself a mental break. I even paused writing for three weeks. I concentrated on making the holidays what Raffa needed them to be. And truly, that carried me through, too.

During December and as we entered a new year, I felt a subtle shift — a shift that I have not yet puzzled out entirely. This shift has included a little less looking backward, and a little more looking forward. Which, even just typing out, feels like a betrayal. But I am here to tell the truth of my experience — first and foremost for myself. And I don’t want to be disingenuous outwardly either.

I do not think you can lose someone and not carry some measure of guilt. That guilt may take shape in many different ways. Some people have regrets. I don’t. Some people wish they had done more. I gave it every fiber of my being. Some people wish they had said more. I said it every day.

But still, simply being alive carries an undercurrent of guilt. That I get to be alive. I have my future. And I get to watch Raffa grow. It’s guilt because I am still here and he isn’t.

---

One morning last week on my run, as my feet took turns hitting the ground, I realized something — a common occurrence on my runs. After losing John, the relationships in my life deepened. It surprises me to reflect on this: even in all of my grief, I have had the capacity for connection. I lost John, and that connection to him, and nothing replaces that. But the space he left behind seems to have made more room in me. And the people in my life responded. They gave me lots of space to just be, to talk. They listened, and they truly showed up, making themselves available and present.

But for all they have given me these past almost-seven months, I also find that I have more capacity to give of myself in these relationships, too. My existing relationships have strengthened. And I have formed new relationships that I would not have before. I always felt so fortunate for all of the rich and meaningful relationships in my life. Of course, before, maintaining all of those connections felt like the icing on my happy little family of three life.

And through the fog of grief, that icing became my glue. My capacity expanded. I have become more emotionally porous, time has felt different, and my priorities have sharpened once again.

What perhaps was part distraction in my early grief-filled days has become people tucked into my life in new ways. Friends whom I once saw monthly, I now see weekly. My mornings are filled with more coffee dates than they responsibly should be. I am on others’ minds more, and they are more on mine. The kindest of neighbors has become a trusted friend. People I never knew are now people I count as friends. I have also become close with four other widows my age — women I would never have met otherwise.

Grief didn’t change me into someone who connects; it revealed how deeply I already lived this way. I am still myself, just more exposed.

I am built for connection. I cannot help myself. This is how I survive, because this is how I’m made.

And in that way I honor John Marty. He was always present for every risk and reward of living.

I am not finding silver linings. This is not a silver lining. It is me living. There may be guilt for being alive, but not for living.