Joy, you are called to be a priest, pontifex, bridge-builder. Reach across and take our hand and bring us across safely to the Other Side.

Priest, Pontifex, Bridge-builder–my husband Lew, ordained for 26 years, charged me with this calling in his sermon at my ordination to the priesthood in 1988.

Now I wonder whether he wanted me to be a bridge-builder for him, bringing him safely across the chasm of his unspeakable losses. Near the beginning, he had outlined his early losses: the deaths of his father’s first two wives; the death of a baby brother before Lew was born; his own near-death after he was born; the death of his twelve-year-old sister when he was three; the deaths of other crewmen in an Air Force plane crash; the death of his friend, the father of the two daughters he later adopted when he married their mother.

As an Episcopal priest wrenching losses were added to these earlier ones. Once we married, he came home and told me in a few words about horrific death after horrific death—he was the first person to enter the bedroom where a young father had shot himself, pieces of brain spattered on the walls, while the man’s wife and their twin sons cowered downstairs; he saw a helicopter crash in the bay and swam out to see if anyone survived, then had to tell the parents of the young man he recognized that their son was dead; he arrived in time to witness the cutting down of our friend who had hanged himself. Then he came home, sat down with the family, and ate dinner.

Where were his feelings? Why did he not cry or seem overwhelmed? Had his early losses taught him to close feeling off? Was he terrified of being vulnerable, of letting his losses speak their meaning, the trembling he felt without knowing he was on a bridge?

We had first found one another in times of darkness in our lives; we shared the outlines of our stories of loss with one another; he was willing to put his love for me before his future in the church; he shared my grief when my mother died and later when I struggled to piece together her story. As I did this excruciating, liberating work, I wanted Lew to do his so that he too could feel freedom from the weight I knew he carried.

I saw him dissociate, inaccessible as he looked away into space, whenever a plane crash was replayed on TV news. I continued to hear the devastating stories from his parish work. I cried; he moved on. Was I unconsciously designated to mourn so that Lew could vicariously grieve without facing the meaning of his grief? As our children left for college and I discovered my own passion in the world, I became insistent that Lew do his own psychological work.

Instead, whenever I challenged him, his passive aggressive behavior and my frantic reactions ate away at our relationship. Why would he do this to us when he proclaimed and I trusted his love for me? Exhausted from throwing myself at this conundrum, one day I realized my part: I was reacting to his behavior rather than working out the challenges in my own life.

Within a year after he retired from parish ministry and we had celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, he was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. As his PSA climbed, I told him, I can’t go through this with you without support. You have to talk to someone.

When I was invited in for a therapy session, I intentionally revealed the losses in Lew’s life. Lew, what about the plane crash?

In that room, with that safety, nearing the end of his life, Lew sobbed, Getting lost. Frigging dials going around. Recalibrated all the stuff. Used Electronic screwdriver, adjusted the Loran, then took a reading and found out where we were. In that situation it means disaster.

He let us hear and see the unbearable feelings he had carried for 50 years.

Then, in one of our last sessions before Lew was debilitated by the cancer, as he tried to fend off my continuing insistence that he be responsive, I felt him speaking to the ghosts of his sister and mother. Even though he seemed to be talking to me, I knew he was actually addressing them. My anger drained away as we contended with all these ghosts.

Together, trembling, we had built the bridge he, months later, courageously crossed over, knowing it was sturdy enough to carry him to the Other Side. And it was so beautiful.

© joy anna marie mills 2015