549 Days

I have been a widow for a year and a half.  18 months.  549 days. 

How many things alarm me about this?  Too many to count.  I start to worry about how well I am adjusting.  Is it possible that I am fine after losing the living version of Ron Clark?  I worry about how the scales will eventually start to shift as time goes on and how I will reach a point when I have lived longer since his passing than I did during our too-short three years and two months together.  Even now, I have lived as long after his passing as I did with him after his cancer diagnosis.

Right after he first died, I could not imagine ever being OK again.  I did not believe anyone who told me I would be.  ‘Your heart will be light again.’  Lie.  ‘You will love again.’  Lie.  ‘You will feel happiness again.’  Lie.  ‘Time heals everything.’  Lie.  ‘You have so much to live for.’  Lie.  But now . . . I start to notice that my heart often is light and I am frequently happy.  Sure I did a lot of grief work to get here, but I do think time has helped to distance me from the sadness.  It is a healing balm.  I lived through it.  I lived in spite of it.  I am still living.  I do not take living for granted.  Each day is a gift.  I do feel that now, whereas right after his death, each day felt like an insult or a burden.  Perspective has shifted and this is a good thing.

So, as I go forward, I reflect on so many of the gifts Ron Clark blessed me with.  In addition to my newfound appreciation for each day, I am learning acceptance and tolerance, both of myself and others.

One of the coolest things about Ron was how accepting he was of everyone, faults and all.  He was not blind to people’s faults.  He saw them and joked about them, but never from a place of malice or contempt.  He lovingly accepted people in their totality.  I could put him in a room with strangers and they would become instant friends.  He just had this awesome, magnetic personality.  He had charm.  A friend of mine, in talking with me about Ron shortly after his passing, pointed out how part of the attraction people (myself included) felt toward Ron was his confidence.

Ron had a lot of faults.  He was the first to tell you about them.  He was overweight and unhealthy in his eating and exercise habits.  He did not attend to his medical issues.  He had a lot of debt and was sought after by numerous collection agencies.  He did not finish things, making it almost all the way through a music education program and then almost all the way through a culinary program, starting sewing and crocheting projects and abandoning them, getting obsessively interested in learning something new and then giving it up entirely a short time later.  He avoided confrontation and would quit jobs by just not showing up for assigned shifts.  I don’t say any of this to be disrespectful to Ron.  Obviously, he is not here to defend himself.  But, I don’t think he would defend himself.  These were his faults and he knew them, just like he could see other people’s faults.  He loved himself in an all-encompassing way, faults included, the same way he loved others.  He accepted imperfections.

Ron knew I had faults.  There were the quirky, fun ones I told him about and there were the ones I was too ashamed to say that he just witnessed firsthand.  He knew about me seriously binging eating after a stressful day, making judgmental comments regarding people I genuinely care about, and having serious rage episodes during which I would spew spiteful, hateful things out of my mouth, often misdirected at the wrong person (sometimes at him).  He could see that I was anxious, socially awkward, and perfectionistic.  He knew that one little thing going differently than planned would send me into a tailspin of despair and hopelessness.  He knew I was uncomfortable when everything was going too smoothly and would distort some stupid thing just so that we could have a fight now and then.  Still, Ron loved me totally, all faults included.

I have a hard time loving myself along with my faults.  I don’t love my faults.  I hate them.  I want to change them.  I beat myself up over them.  I criticize.  I berate.  I am far meaner to myself than I could ever be to anyone else.  But, the thing about this is, not having acceptance for myself seems to translate into not having acceptance for others.  Please know this is something I am working on, because it really makes me sound like an asshole to admit that people often don’t meet my expectations for them and then I wind up feeling mad and/or hurt and/or disappointed in them.  I am impatient with others.  I want people to be more efficient.  Smarter.  To make healthier/better/wiser (all subjective) decisions for themselves.  I want people to be better to one another and to me.  I want people to make improvements.  I love them, but . . . (fill in the blank with ‘I wish they didn’t do this thing’ or ‘I wish they would be a little more whatever’).

So the thing I am becoming aware of is that what we all found so comforting and attractive in Ron was his self-confidence for all that he was and his vast acceptance of himself and others.  I am grateful for this awareness as I begin to try to harness acceptance in my own life.  I realize that I need to be more forgiving of myself and of other people.  I need to accept the good, bad, and ugly of all of us.  The more I can accept who I am, the more I will also be able to accept (and not want to help, save, change) others.  The more I can accept all of us, myself included, the more whole of a person I will be.  Ron was a fucking rockstar of acceptance.  I don’t know how or where he developed this skill, but from talking with folks who were in his inner circle a lot longer than I was, it sounds like it was always there.  I don’t know many people who have the skill of acceptance as down pat as Ron did.  Maybe he was just a blessed, gifted individual.  Whatever it was, I am glad I knew him, glad he modeled this for me, glad to have become aware of the capacity for it in myself, and glad to have the inspiration to try to tap into it a bit more.

None of us are perfect.  We cannot expect this of ourselves.  We cannot expect this of others.  Loving one another, not in spite of our faults, but including and even because of them is key.  Ron Clark genuinely loved all of the things about me that I hated.  He did.  He just saw them as part of who I am.  He knew the same to be true of his faults; they were just a part of him.  He loved it all.  And he radiated that confidence and love.  He was a beacon of charm that everyone wanted to be near. 

I miss him so much, but my gratitude for Ron’s existence in my life, what he taught me, and what he is still teaching me is limitless.  

Thanks for teaching me love and acceptance, Ron.  I love you always.