Shattered, shattered
Love and hope and sex and dreams
Are still surviving on the street
But look at me, I’m in tatters!
I’m a -shattered

Shattered – The Rolling Stones

The sun’s still shining in big blue sky
But it don’t mean nothing to me
Oh let the rain come down
Let the wind blow through me
I’m living in an empty room
With all the windows smashed
And I’ve got so little left to lose
That it feels just like I’m walking on broken glass 

–Walking on Broken Glass – Annie Lennox 

When I (hesitantly and against my will) entered Margaret’s (my counselor’s) office for the first time, 3 days after my husband died, I had two thoughts/feelings to express.   First, that I felt that my life had been shattered into a million pieces and that they’d flown off in every direction.  I had no idea where to find them, how to collect them or how to put anything back together.  I wondered if the shattered mess was even repairable.    Second, I knew that I wanted to emerge from this experience NOT angry and NOT bitter.    I didn’t want to be that victimized person who nursed and coddled their wounds while taking their frustration and disappointment out on others around them.  Good goals.

I’ve been saving sheets of colored glass for close to a year – waiting for the right time to break them.   Over Thanksgiving, I put it all in a shallow box and took it out to the very spot on the driveway where my husband took his life.    My son videotaped me with my hammer breaking it into small pieces.   Yeh, it felt really good.       

Into a million pieces.  I don’t know where they are, or how to find them or retrieve them, or begin to put this all back together.  I don’t know what “back together” looks like.

 I had to keep reminding myself when assembling this piece that it WAS supposed to look like a mess and not pretty.  I fought wanting to order it, design it, inlay and fit the pieces beautifully and bring some feng shui into the chaos. Which has pretty much been the story of my life these last 2 years – wherein I’ve been trying to impose some order on the mess left behind.  Between cleaning out someone else’s lifetime of accumulated stuff,  playing financial detective, learning about state interstate laws when someone dies without a will, and the expensive process of settling a small estate in probate court (HINT:  taxes, legal fees and court costs are inescapable and substantial)… it has been a slow, piece by piece process of re-assembling my life, my home, my head… and yes… my heart.  Like I said, it’s not a linear process, but rather two steps forward, one step back.   Good days and bad days.    Celebrating small victories.   Crying for no reason, or due to some random trigger like finding a can of tuna fish in the back of the pantry that was an off- brand that only Jim used to eat.  

So the reassembling process is sometimes messy,  sometimes not pretty  and yet if one pays attention there can be beauty in the mess.   In the raw jaggedness of it.   “Beauty is in the eye…”  and all that.  

But the real question deep down in my heart is… “Will ANYONE else ever find MY brokenness beautiful – EVER again?”    Fear encroaches.