It will come as no surprise to those who know me well that many of my waking hours find me listening to songs written and sung by Taylor Swift. Yes, I’m a Swiftie. I could listen to all of her albums on an eternal shuffle and never bore of her voice, her words, or her wisdom.
Actually… that pretty much describes my daily listening routine.
Recently, while doing that exact shuffling, a line I had heard countless times before mysteriously stopped me in my tracks and sent a dagger through my grieving heart.
It’s not coincidence, I believe, that the line that struck me falls within the lyrics to Swift’s song; Peter.
And for those of you who do not listen to Taylor Swift, for whatever reason (many of which I will never understand), I will note that her song; Peter has nothing to do with the love of my life… the man whose life and love I grieve deeply each day now just over a year since his death.
No, the Peter in the song is that flippant, free-spirited, and at times cocky Neverland boy, Peter Pan. And the song is sung by the girl-become-woman who loved Peter with her whole being.
They were Wendy’s words that Taylor sang that thrust the dagger in my heart;
“Forgive me, Peter. Please know that I tried to hold on to the days when you were mine.”
I’ve gone back to these lyrics more times than I would like to admit since hearing them again. In part, I do this as a way of sitting with them like an old friend offering wisdom to my cracked and fragile heart. I also go back to them time and time again to feel the pain they carry.
For Wendy, she sings from a place of her own grief after having waited so many years for Peter Pan to return.
For me… if I were singing these words directed to the man I love… (Who am I kidding? That’s exactly who I picture each time I sing them.)… I utter Wendy’s plea to him so as to acknowledge that I have not, and hope to never have forgotten who Peter was before the alcohol took control.
Prior to the addiction taking over, Peter was mine. He was the man I loved. The one I was thrilled to be spending my life alongside. He was the one and only person I wished to have as a co-conspirator in this thing called life.
Yet within each of his final years, the Vodka fog that enveloped him did more damage than I had initially considered.
The alcohol took from me what was mine.
My husband.
My love.
My support.
My friend.
My confidant.
My co-parent.
My Blub.
The man who embodied each of these was gone… taken from me by a disease that had also impacted my childhood significantly.
And then last year, he was taken from me again, this time by a heart that could no longer beat… at a time when it was beginning to feel as if the alcohol’s grip was loosening and the man I love was finding his way back to me.
When the disease descended upon Peter and upon our home, I had grieved a different grief. One that stemmed from my lived experience. One that had me fearful for our children, not wanting them to live under the same fog that engulfed me and my childhood in a home with alcoholic parents.
I didn’t see clearly then how Peter was being taken away from me. I was blinded by my misdirected anger. Blinded by the lies and the secrecy that surrounded the addiction.
I see it now. Now that the fog has lifted. Now that the alcohol has run dry. Now that there has been some distance beyond the time I first lost Peter, I see more clearly how he changed. And I know that change was never his intent.
On a recent trip back to our home in Maine, I gathered recyclables from the house and from a storage shed in an attempt to “tidy up” a bit and bring some semblance of organization back to the house. I grabbed a large bag of mixed recyclables from the shed as well as two bags filled solely with empty bottles to take for redemption.
For those unaware, many plastic and glass bottles in Maine come with a 5 cent deposit you must pay when purchasing the items initially. If you then return the empty containers to one of countless locations for redemption, you can receive that 5 cents back. And that is what our family has been doing for years.
I put the mixed recyclables in my car as well as the first bag of bottles. It was when I lifted the second bag that a flood of emotions, and painful memories, entered in.
This bag was significantly heavier than the first. The first bag was filled primarily with empty water bottles. The second clearly contained bottles made of glass… made heavier due to the sheer number of them.
These glass bottles were once filled with the Vodka that caused and maintained the fog which descended upon our lives.
Shortly after Peter died, as our boys and I were gathering things at our Maine home and making preparations for it to be used far less often as the cooler temperatures arrived, I had poured several opened bottles of Vodka down the kitchen sink. Looking back, this might not have been the smartest thing to do as I’m sure our septic system and its healthy bacteria would take an unhealthy hit once it flowed there.
Yet, drain the bottles I did.
These empty Vodka bottles started the next bag of redeemables. I then added to them several others I had found hidden throughout the house and in his truck.
This addiction makes people do really stupid things.
So when I lifted the bag of bottles that day, all of the grief, all of the anger, all of the sadness hit me once again. It’s never really left me. And it was greatly amplified that day.
One of the most heart-breaking things about all of this is that Peter was working so hard to fight the addiction. I know he was. I could see the progress he was making. We talked about it. We talked about how difficult it was. We talked about the hold that it had on him. And I reassured him that I knew deep down that it wasn’t him. He had lost control.
I knew the power that alcohol wields. And I remember the man Peter was before it took control..
That’s the man that I grieve. The sweet, generous, funny man that I love, that I married, that I was lucky to have spent nearly half of my life alongside. It is that man, and the many years we had together, to which I try to hold on.
“Forgive me, Peter. Please know that I tried to hold on to the days when you were mine.”
May there never come a day when this apology is given because I have somehow forgotten Peter. May it never be uttered due to a lack of memories that come from the life we shared, the life we built together.
I don’t think it is even possible for me to forget. I don’t think it’s possible because he is part of me. He’s part of our boys. He’s a constant in our conversations, our experiences, our memories… our lives.
It hurts so much to admit that I know he will never return. Like Wendy, I’ve turned out the light of hope that it could even be possible.
And I know that in some ways, many ways, he never left. Because I still hold on to the man I met at Applebee’s twenty-two years ago. I still hold on to the man that said “yes” when I asked him to marry me. I still hold on to the man that showed me, and showed the world, what it is to be generous and loving and selfless.
I still hold on to Peter and the memories of our time together. And I always will.
