Liz was leading Dusty up and down the aisles between the paddocks when Martha found her.
“Hey, taking her for a walk?”
“Yep. I’ve been riding a lot lately and I thought today I would carry my own weight and we could just walk around to spend time together.”
“She’s been good for you.”
“I hope I’ve been good for her, too.”
As they rounded a corner and started walking toward the main gate that separated the house from the horse facilities, Martha leaned a little closer to Liz. “That guy has been staring at you the whole time.”
Liz shielded her eyes from the sun and then pointed at him. “That guy?”
“Don’t point.” Martha swatted Liz’s hand down.
“I wouldn’t know what to do if he wasn’t staring at me.”
“You know him?”
Liz was quiet for the last several strides closer to the man leaning on the fence. His salt-and-pepper hair glistened in the sunlight.
“Martha, this is my husband, Josh. Josh, meet Martha.”
“Nice to meet you, Josh.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you. Thank you for the time you spend with Liz.”
“Happy to be of assistance.” Martha shook his hand.
Josh ducked through the fence and walked up to Dusty, stroking her neck, then her shoulder, then over her side.
“Obviously, I kind of know where Liz is with things. How are you handling everything since Colby passed?”
“Some days are easier than others. I’m not sure I would have made it this far without Jesus and a good counselor.”
“What does this far mean to you?”
“Able to keep up at work. Able to enjoy things my family does.”
“Are you finding enjoyment in things you do?”
“Sometimes,” Josh said.
“Okay, that’s a start. Some couples find it difficult to learn how to communicate with each other after a catastrophe. I thought it would be good for you and Liz to do some counseling together, to give you both a safe place to say hard things, to work through complicated things, and to face some challenging conversations. We often try to avoid hard things when we are working through trauma, and even after. But research has shown time and again that avoiding hard things is actually detrimental.”
“I get it,” Josh said.
Liz leaned heavily on the beautiful mare. Dusty swung her head around and nudged Liz’s hip with her soft, black muzzle. She blew a heavy breath out of her wide nostrils and then shook her head.
“How do you feel the communication between you and Liz is?”
“If you would have asked me three months ago, I would have told you it was strained. I couldn’t talk to her about anything and I had a few things I was mad at her—”
“You were mad at me? About what?”
Josh waved his hand through the air, dismissing the notion. “I was mad. I’m not anymore. I’ve realized that what I was mad about was just grief.”
“But you never talked to me—”
“Liz,” Martha cut in, “let’s let Josh have a chance to finish.”
“It’s okay,” Josh said.
“No, you need to finish. You were mad at her and unable to communicate that?”
“How do you tell your grieving wife that you’re mad at her? For anything, at all? Let alone for how she is grieving? You don’t. You work through it and wait for the feelings to pass.”
“That’s very honest, Josh. Have the feelings passed?”
“For the most part, yes.” Josh reached over and gently rubbed his hand against Liz’s back.
“For the most part?” Martha questioned.
Josh hesitated. He looked past Martha toward the sky, hoping his words didn’t cause unnecessary pain for his wife. He brought his eyes back down from the sky and met Martha’s kind gaze. “Sometimes it feels like Liz thinks she’s the only one who lost a son that day, but that’s not true. I lost my son. And in so many ways, I lost my family for a time. Even my wife. I see these little moments and windows into her soul where she is finding joy again. I am grateful and I try to remember to tell God each time I pray just how grateful I am, that she seems like she’s going to pull through this.”
“Did you think at any point that she wasn’t going to be okay?”
“At one point, I questioned whether she would ever be okay. Of course, at the time I wasn’t thinking okay, I was thinking back to normal. And none of us are going back to what was, or who we were. But we go on, and we will get through this one day at a time.”
“You’re very strong Josh. Do you ever get tired of holding up that strong, brave face? Do you ever wish you could walk in somewhere, being as vulnerable as you just were with me?”
“No, Martha. I couldn’t have done that without Liz here beside me.”
Martha stood solemnly for a moment, then asked Josh, “Do you feel like you’re doing okay with all of this?”
“It’s gotten better at times and been harder other times. I guess I just try to take things one day at a time.”
“That’s a good way to take things. How is today?”
“Today is good. I took my son out for his birthday last week and he is an incredible young man. Losing Colby made me realize how much I’ve missed because I was so focused on my career.”
“Work is important, but not at the expense of family. What can you change now?”
“Not enough.” Josh hung his head.
Liz rubbed between his shoulder blades and nestled closer to him.
“Now, you just told me you’re taking this one day at a time. You can only change what is ahead of you, that’s for sure. But one day at a time is the way to face change, too. So, I ask again, what can you change today?”
“I can do something special with Tyler when I get home.”
“Good. And you are here doing therapy with Liz, but can you and her stop for a treat on the way home and share it, out of the house, just to be with each other?”
“I’d like that,” Liz said.
“Me too,” Josh agreed.
“Do either of you feel like your marriage was threatened by everything that’s happened?”
Not a word left Josh or Liz. Her hand dropped from his back and her posture stiffened. Josh looked away from everyone. Martha looked from Josh to Liz, then back.
“Don’t you both speak at once now, I won’t be able to understand you.” Martha forced a chuckle.
“I did,” Liz whispered.
Josh swallowed hard and stood up from the fence rail. He folded his arms over his chest. “So did I.”
“Are either of you willing to share why?”
Liz scrunched her nose and pursed her lips tightly together. She ground the toe of her boot into the dirt.
“I wasn’t sure I could come home to Liz in bed every day for the rest of our lives.” Josh uncrossed his arms and slid his hand down Liz’s arm. “I wanted to be that strong for you, but I was getting angrier and angrier with God for stealing Colby and you. I wasn’t sure I could do it. But you started getting out of bed, you started doing things with me, with Tyler, again. I don’t feel hopeless anymore.”
Liz let her hand slide into Josh’s hand, and she turned to face him. She reached up with her free hand and trailed her fingers gently over the side of his face, along his jaw, and then she dropped her hand, resting it on his chest.
“My reason isn’t quite so noble, Josh. For a little while I was mad at you. Not for anything recent, but for the years of working extra hours, being holed up in your office working on the weekends, and the endless barrage of must-have toys—the boat, the luxury car, the lake house, and more. It was never enough and so you worked harder and harder because you had to keep up with the spending and the investments and the retirement accounts. It all sounded good at the time. It was cleverly disguised as providing, but when we lost Colby, I saw it all different. I felt your absence throughout the years, and I was angry.”
“Rightfully so,” Josh said.
“Not necessarily,” Liz turned her head to look at Martha and Josh drew her close, putting his arms around her and kissing her a little bit above her ear.
“You guys didn’t make it this many years into your marriage by dumb luck,” Martha said.
“I’d like to think it’s because I was a man of God, leading my family closer to Christ. But I think it was because God is faithful and He knew I was too caught up in this world to do anything differently,” Josh said.
“I have been through many counseling sessions where a couple is facing devastation and then to add to it, they start coming clean with secrets that have to do with online affairs, real-life affairs, addiction, pornography. It becomes too much to bear and the couple cannot withstand the weight of it all. I don’t feel like either of you have a secret so big that the other won’t recover from it. That is good, so good. And I think you’re right about God being faithful, Josh. But you had a hand in it, in the choices you made. Forgiveness comes easier in some situations. Working too many hours is more easily forgiven than so many things.”
Liz turned her head to face Josh and she whispered, “I forgive you.”
“Liz,” Martha spoke more softly than Liz had heard before, “have you struggled with depression before Colby’s suicide?”
“No, not that I can recall.”
“Situational depression is real and doesn’t always require additional help. But if you find that you get back to that place where you can’t get out of bed, it may be a good idea to include your doctor in your treatment plan.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.”
A new week, a new session with Martha. Liz scooped poop and left-over bits of hay into a wheelbarrow while listening to Martha.
“The first year is the hardest. You haven’t made new memories. Everything you are doing today is tied to some memory that includes Colby. It’s a constant reminder that he is gone. After the first year, you’ll have memories of things without him. It will hurt still, I’m not here to tell you it ever stops hurting. But you’ll be able to see that there is life after he is gone. You’ll be able to accept that you still find enjoyment in certain things or in new things. There will be a thicker line of before and after. You’ll think of before and be able to remember the best things and the worst things, but they won’t cloud all of the current things like they do right now,” Martha sat on an upside-down five-gallon bucket in the middle of Dusty’s pen.
Liz scooped up another pile of manure and sweat dotted her forehead. “It’s hard to want new memories or to want this time to pass and to move into the second year, or third year, or longer. The more days go by, the further away from Colby I am. It makes me crazy, Martha. It literally drives me mad.”
“Of course, it does. No mother wants to be separated from their child by the grave and the passing of time. But it marches on whether you want it to or not. You know, I have half a mind to pitch the idea of what Colby would want for you, but the truth is, that doesn’t matter all that much. What matters is whether you want time to march on anyway while you do nothing but mourn, or while you make grief walk on its own two legs and you get out and see life… no, while you do life.”
“You make it sound easy,” Liz scoffed.
“It’s anything but.”
“Have you ever lost anyone close to you?”
Martha hung her head, nodding as she stared at the ground. “My husband took his own life twelve years ago.”
Liz leaned against the manure fork she’d been using and rubbed one hand against the back of her neck. She shook her head and heaved a deep sigh. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“Because I’m here for your therapy not mine. I have a therapist.”
“The therapist has a therapist. I guess that makes sense, but I sure never thought of it before.”
Martha chuckled and stood to her feet. “Most people don’t think of it. But I have to have a way to decompress, too.”
“Of course.”
“I miss him every day.”
“I can imagine.” Liz dumped another pile into the wheelbarrow. “You’ve made it clear that time stops for no one. What have you done with some of your time?”
“Make myself useful.”
“Like do the dishes, mop the floors?”
“That, but in other ways, too. Like, help out where I can.”
“You mean like volunteering or like mowing the neighbor’s yard?”
“Either. Both. For me it’s been a lot of volunteer work. I think that would be something good for you. If you get out of the house and do something for someone else, it makes you consider other problems than your own, and it helps you solve problems because yours can’t really be solved. But we are solution-driven.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to try to volunteer.”
“Well, I’d say church is a good place to start. They always have different things you can do or places you can help.”
“Church,” Liz tossed another scoop of manure into the wheelbarrow.
“What about that place Colby helped? Maybe it would give you a sense of connection to him to continue the work that was important to him?”
“You mean Books for Kids?”
“If that was the name of it, the place that helped kids with their reading.”
“You know, he helped there because he had a tutor in school that he was too ashamed to tell me about?”
“You told me.”
“What kind of mother doesn’t know that kind of thing?”
“The kind of mom that was always crossing her t’s and dotting her i’s and whose kid didn’t want her to know.”
“I should have known.”
“And you didn’t. Nothing to do now but forgive yourself and move forward.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
“I introduced myself as Elizabeth to another mom a couple weeks ago.” Liz stopped mid-scoop and looked over at Martha.
“Why?”
“I was hoping you’d have some deep insight as to why I would do such a thing. It wasn’t preplanned.”
“Do you like going by Liz?”
“Doesn’t bother me. I’ve been Liz my whole life.”
“Do you like Elizabeth better?”
“Can’t say that I do. I don’t dislike either one.”
“Well, tell me if you do it again, I guess.”
“That’s all you’ve got?” Liz furrowed her brow.
“For now.”