I draw a chalk line that wends gently upward in a steady, predictable run from childhood to old age. Education, school, work, adventures, love, purpose, a peaceful death in old age. No dust, no muss, an Instagram-perfect flow. Then I glance sharply at these innocents with a look that says, Are you paying attention? The chalk screeches sharply up, then cuts a razor path down to the X-axis, rebounding in wildly erratic loops and culminating in a mad dash to death, all the way to the right.
So frantic are my gestures that the chalk breaks, sending dusty fragments to the floor. Those crazy swirls hold grief, universal but often unspoken. Yet it took the sudden exit of my husband of 30 years, starry-eyed over an old girlfriend, to realize its impact β and that I had no training in moving forward under the weight of it.
In my family, we simply buried grief. He was also an alcoholic who abused my mother relentlessly when he was home from overseas. I was the youngest of six, joining my siblings in at a rural home where terror was strangely normal. I remember lying in bed at night, covers pulled over my head, hearing my mother scream as she was chased and beaten. Another night, my brothers Michael and Scott huddled in their bedroom after hearing gunshots inside the house, believing our mom had been killed, too scared to move.
After 30 years, and only after my father revealed he had a mistress in Japan, my mother found the courage to leave. I became a journalist and over the years interviewed many trauma survivors, including veterans.
My childhood and the silence around our collective trauma did nothing to prepare me for marriage. I knew only that I wanted a safe harbor. I had not screened for alcoholism. Ten years into my marriage, I issued an ultimatum and my husband, to his credit, quit drinking and begged me to stay.
