part of my brain. Everyone had dirty, awful, shameful, unimaginable thoughts float through their heads on those rare occasions.
“It’s … freeing.” Kelly shared a sheepish grin. “I can’t fully explain it. Missing him is the part that comes naturally. It’s the part that everyone understands—everyone expects. It’s easy to miss all the good times. But it’s hard to live with the regret over the parts that weren’t great. I miss a million things about him … does that make it okay to not miss a dozen things that I literally started to hate about him? A million to twelve. That’s not terrible. Right?”
Silence settled over our group for a few minutes, letting Kelly’s words hang in the air—a familiar cloud I knew all too well.
“A tiny rock in your shoe on a ten-mile walk. It’s so freaking tiny compared to your foot. The size of a grain of salt. And the view is amazing. You love that pine scent filling the cool air. You know the soft trickle of the nearby stream is the most relaxing sound ever.”
“Blue sky.” Kelly took over, and I smiled at her. “Soft breeze. Archways and canopies of trees. A wonderland. But … you can’t enjoy any of it because the tiniest little thing is irritating you. It’s hijacked your mind. And no matter how hard you try to ignore it, you just can’t let that tiny thing go. It slowly steals your enjoyment … your happiness. And if you don’t get rid of it, you know it will ruin the hike, and you’ll regret not doing something to remedy the situation.”
“But …” Bethanne spoke up. “It’s not just you on the walk. It’s a group of people.”
Pam nodded slowly as she picked up the story. “And you don’t want to disrupt the pace. You don’t want to ask them to stop for you.”
Kelly wiped a tear. “You don’t want to complain. You don’t want to be difficult.”
“So you go with the flow,” I said, not knowing when the mood of the room shifted, but it did. And everyone shared the same moment … the same thoughts without really saying much at all. “Until you can’t take it. And you say something.”
“And you realize you should have just stayed quiet because when they see the rock … it looks so tiny. And you look ridiculous for making a big deal out of nothing,” Bethanne finished the scenario.
Or you empty your other shoe filled with more tiny rocks. Then … you let them know the rocks are their fault. They leave … and never return.
Fucking tiny rock …
“My husband scratched his junk then sniffed his fingers. I don’t think he knew I saw him, but I did, and it was a total turnoff.” Bonnie wrinkled her nose—so did everyone else. “I mean … it was his junk, not mine. It wasn’t the end of the world. It was just a gross thing he did. I suppose it was no different than someone smelling their armpits to see if they have BO. Right? I suppose he just couldn’t bend his nose down that far.”
A few of us snorted suppressed laughs as Bonnie smirked.
“Rick would gag on his toothbrush … Every. Single. Time.”
“Toby had a few teeth knocked out from playing hockey, and he wore a removable denture or bridge thing in public. But at home, he took it out because it was uncomfortable. And I totally understood. You should be able to just relax at home. But … here’s the awful, embarrassing but … I hated looking at him with missing teeth. So I didn’t. He’d talk and I’d look at anything but his face. Quick glances to make eye contact, but I couldn’t look at his mouth. Terrible. Right?”
A collective head shake moved like a wave around the room. Maybe it was terrible, but we all had our “buts,” so it felt hypocritical to judge—it felt unchristian to admit it aloud.
WWJD? He would’ve looked at Toby’s gnarly smile and seen past it to his beautiful soul. But Jesus walked on water, so I always found the WWJD bar to be a bit high for the average modern-day sinner.
The “I loved my husband but” statements rolled off the tongues of all the sinners/widows that night.
“Eating with his mouth open.”
“Removing his dirty underwear and tossing them on the bed right before getting into bed.”
“Always talking politics.”
“Scoping out women—not so slyly.”
“Assuming I would cater to him like his mom—laundry, cooking, cleaning, picking up after him.”