Shredding Sadness

To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love.

In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.

~Robert Muller

Lately, I’ve been shredding documents I accumulated with my ex-husband. These always put me in a dark place. I have happy memories of Steve, but sometimes they get overpowered by the negative ones — the money I lost, the birthdays he missed, how sick he got, and the way I felt that he no longer truly loved me by the end of the marriage.

In all the years since Steve and I divorced, I had never dreamed of him. I spent enough of my waking time feeling guilty about our failed marriage; I had no need to do overtime at night. But just a couple of months ago, I dreamt of Steve.

He was off in the distance, walking across a field toward the building I appeared to be living in. I peered out my window and knew that it was him but couldn’t figure out why he was there. Just as he got close, a noise in my real house woke me from the dream.

I remember how frustrated I was that I didn’t get to see him face to face, didn’t get to talk to him, and didn’t get to understand why he was appearing to me.

Later that week, I missed a rare phone call from his son who was about to go into the Coast Guard. I felt frustrated about not getting to the phone in time or being successful in calling back. It had been four years since I’d seen Junior at his dad’s funeral and seven years since I’d seen him prior to the divorce. All these years, I’d often lamented our break in communication. And now he would be unreachable for eight weeks of training — maybe even the whole time he would be in the Coast Guard. I thought back to the dream and began to worry. Did Steve know something I didn’t?

Unexpectedly, though, two months after the dream and the missed phone call, Junior appeared at my door. He’d graduated from Coast Guard training and was on his way to report to duty. At first, it seemed he might stay for just an hour, but instead he ended up staying for two days.

The entire time he visited, we didn’t talk about the difficult stuff of the past. Why fill what little time we had together with sadness? Instead, we laughed and hugged each other often, reestablished our connection, and vowed to keep it going.

After that, I had another dream of Steve.

This time, he was up close and personal. He pulled up in his blue pickup truck, pulling a large boat made of weathered plywood painted barn red — a ridiculous-looking thing with a large, enclosed captain’s wheelhouse. I chuckled when I saw it.

“You didn’t actually drive this thing all the way across the country, did ya?”

“Heck, yeah!” he said, puffing out his chest like a superhero.

I couldn’t help laughing. “Are you sure this thing floats?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” he said, with a grin.

An instant later, we were at a table in a house I appeared to be living in. Steve came over to me with a big white bakery box. He took a birthday cake with lots of white icing roses out of the box, set it down on the table and dropped his head right down into it, taking a big bite. Next, using his fingers, he grabbed a huge hunk of icing and cake and joyfully shoved it into his mouth. His eyes sparkled. He was eating, laughing and joking.

“Now, your turn,” he said, pushing the cake toward me while swiftly turning around and heading back over toward the other things he’d brought.

I hesitated for a few seconds and then said to myself, “Aw, what the hell,” and dug in. Steve came back, grinning at my icing-laced face and fingertips. He laid another boxed cake on the table, one with big blue sugar-cream roses on it — just like the cake at our wedding some sixteen years earlier. He cut into that one, too, but with a fork instead of his fingers. I noticed there was a third cake on the counter in the distance, a white one with yellow roses around the edges.

He left the table again and came back this time with several documents. One was a blank check. Another was a proclamation honoring and memorializing my late father — with whom Steve had felt very connected. I looked up at Steve and, seeing his warm, gentle smile, I understood immediately all he was trying to say.

I would’ve liked to stay right there in that dream and enjoy what felt like a warm wave of healing, compliments of Steve. But like months earlier when I first dreamed of him, a sound in my real house interrupted my slumber. As soon as I opened my eyes, my pint-sized dog licked my face, saying “Good morning” in her own sweet way. Then my husband Mark rolled over to wish me a good morning, too. I must’ve seemed distracted because he did what he always does when he can tell I’m in deep thought. He asked in a lyrical, six-year-old-kid kinda way, “What’cha doin’?”

I laughed like I usually do when he reads me so well and answered with the same lyrical lilt, “Think’n.” Then I proceeded to share with Mark the details of my dream. As has always been the case with Mark, he was touched by my story of emotional connection with my ex and was especially happy to see and feel my positive energy while I described the ridiculous boat, the cake-eating fest, and the loving kindness.

I spent the rest of the morning thinking about that dream and the many things that have been happening lately that feel like opportunities for healing. I thought about the symbolism of the dream, especially those cakes. The first one reminded me of a photo taken of Steve a week before he died. He was still in the hospital but felt good enough on Thanksgiving Day to ask for donuts, which he then ate with complete abandon, covering his face with white icing. The second cake reminded me of our wedding day. And the last cake, with yellow flowers, symbolized friendship.

Mostly, though, I remembered that I had loved Steve. And I remembered that he loved me, too — enough to drive a weird boat across the country to see me, and enough to bring me a blank check and three meaningful cakes. It was time for me to focus on the happy memories, to honor the love we had once shared.

And that’s what I did today. I let go of any residual pain that came from loving Steve. I fed the last of my less-than-happy documents into the shredder, never to be seen again. With it, I shed the self-inflicted sadness that for so long kept me from fully living my life. I fully forgave Steve for all he’d done. But more importantly, I fully forgave myself for all I’d done, too.

— Susan Maddy Jones —