Africa… Table for One

Have you ever experienced a loss so great you felt you couldn’t go on? How many times did you hear, “Don’t worry, time heals all wounds.” This advice is complete and utter bullshit!

Time does not pick up pieces of a priceless vase shattered on the floor. It just continues to pass until all the delicate fragments are carefully picked up and glued back together. That takes excruciating patience, focus and tenacity. Over time, with great effort, the vase begins to take shape again. But it will never be the same.

For me, time stopped when my husband of twenty years was diagnosed with the deadliest of all brain tumors, a Glioblastoma. The beautiful life we once knew extinguished in an instant.

He fought valiantly for two and half years, but when he left me forever on March 12, 2021, I prayed for an end to my suffering. An end to time. Six months of trying to drink myself to death, with dribs and drabs of over the counter drugs, “not so over the counter” drugs, and a diet of microwave hot dogs and Uber Eats proved unsuccessful.

Until, one morning, I was ripped from an alcohol induced slumber by the loving arms of my dead husband. I heard his words whisper in my ear as though he was still lying next to me, “go to Africa.” A place I had dreamed of since I was child. A place I talked about endlessly throughout our marriage. During my thirty-day expedition, the healing powers of Africa began to stitch up the cavernous tears in my mutilated heart. The darkness in my soul began illuminating once again. And everywhere I went, the animals came to me as though they felt my anguish.

I was putting in the work. Picking up all the shattered pieces. Accepting the refurbished version of me covered in the scars of a sloppy repair job. Learning how to live without the other half of me. A Table for One.