One Last Prayer - Part 2

Author's note - This is the second of two installments. The response to the first installment has been amazing. Thanks to everyone who has reached out with a message, comment or kind word. Enjoy.

This Week's Song - If I had a $1,000,000 by The Barenaked Ladies - If you don't smile when listening to this one, get therapy. Now. "If I had a million dollars, I'd build a tree fort in our yard."

I was already awake when the first light crept into the room. It was October 23, 2000, the day after Cheryl died. I'd collapsed the night before in her spot on the unmade bed, where her scent was the strongest. The smell of her shampoo, her soap, the smell of my happiness was still fresh from her presence. I wouldn't relinquish the sheets to wash for weeks, as if handing them over would be saying goodbye, again. These are the details of despair. As she would for the better part of the next year, Shelby slept next to me. She slept the innocent and uncomprehending sleep of a child. Though I explained it to her in the clearest terms that her mother died, age erects a barrier to such nonsense. The tremors of emotion began, and I pushed my face into the pillow so as not to disturb my daughter's slumber. I felt her hand on my hair and the soft whisper on my neck, "it's gonna be okay, Daddy."  I vowed never to cry in front of her again. In the stillness that followed, I held her close until I heard Andy's waking voice.  The familiar "Momma," crackled through the monitor. This is how my new life began.

Destin 2004

There wasn't a road map for any of us who loved her. We wandered around in the fog through the funeral arrangements, a memorial service, and the incomprehensible act of placing her in a grave. Grief of this kind is all-consuming. Unless you've heard the undeniable sound of your own desperation and agony, you know not of what I speak. If you've heard the sound of your own grief, the one you cannot restrain or temper in any way, the one born of your primal self, the one we all have in us, then you understand. It doesn't knock. It blows into your life and when it does, you welcome it and place the rest of yourself in its service for it is the body's certified response to your brain and soul's failure to comprehend what has happened. Everyday life was incomprehensible. I recall standing beside her coffin as it was loaded into the hearse, watching cars across the street in line for Krispy Kreme donuts. Did they not know what was going on? How could anyone buy donuts? Surely, the world would stop, at least for a day. Grief is a personal and selfish thing, and if it was going to be my companion, I was going to become the world's leading authority on the subject. I'd just learned the concept of control was illusion, but old habits die hard. There are hundreds of books on the topic of grief. I'm the type of person who always felt like problems were solved by reading. Maybe that is why the discipline of a legal education and career appealed to me. Well-meaning friends gave me books, and I bought even more. One silly installment suggested there were steps to my grief, as if by checking each number off  I was making my way to a new and happy life. Others offered expansions on the time-honored theme of "time heals all." Then there was religion. I was a man of faith, but the constant battering of loss would challenge the greatest follower. The teachings planted in church and offered to me in abundance during those dark days did not bring consolation or comfort. The beauty and moments of peace I'd experienced on that terrible day faded beneath the murky waters of an unrelenting sorrow. Nothing ever written could explain why this happened or soften the pain. C.S. Lewis, in the one book with which I felt a kinship (A Grief Observed) echoed my feelings during those days - "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand." I'd long admired C.S. Lewis and knew that if a great Christian man like him struggled with his faith after the loss of his wife, I had no one to apologize to.

All I wanted to do was hit fast-forward, anything to not live in the present, because I knew I couldn't hurt like this for long. I sought to learn from others. I wasn't going to reinvent the wheel. I was in a maze and needed directions. I reached out to those who'd lost spouses at a young age, those who'd been in the maze. Many reached out to me. It is a sad fraternity. I hungered for the insights of people who had taken on the great loss and could reveal the location of the path to happiness. They were wonderful people who taught me many things, key among them that I wasn't alone. In their number were those who'd remarried and those who were lonely. There were those who'd found happiness, or some semblance thereof, and those still in misery. They were some of the strongest and most courageous people I've ever known, but again, the empty pit in my heart and soul was deep, and the frustration in solving the unsolvable took its toll as the weeks passed. It is a big maze.

The healing began within the company of a select group of broken people, all of whom became heroes. I owe a lifetime of gratitude to each. When you love someone with the intensity with which we all loved her, the pain is proportional and unmerciful. We didn't know what we were doing and didn't know we were doing it, but we somehow began the long and arduous task of healing each other. Cheryl's parents, my parents, our siblings, our dear friends, all of us broken and attempting to find our way, leaned on each other. Cheryl's parents buried their baby girl. There is no greater loss on the loss scale. No one deserves more respect and grace than the parent who has lost a child, and as she lay dying, I promised her my allegiance to them. I keep promises. Like all of us, they needed comfort and healing.  I needed them just as much. Cheryl's friends, our friends who'd grown up with us, all were dying inside. Yet, they ministered to me. My dear friend, Jimmy, consulted a professional on how to help me. I received daily calls and letters, friends planned trips, and Cheryl's closest friends let me cry on their shoulders. Each of us in this close knit group of friends and family unknowingly, but without reservation, mustered what strength we could to support and comfort each other and in the process the healing began. Put simply, God showed up, and I was glad to see him. "I love you" replaced "goodbye." Hugs replaced handshakes and were in great supply. Prayer ascended into conversation. Hands were held, tears were shared instead of kept in the shadows. There were long nights of deep reflection replete with stories about her that brought the first sounds of laughter in our house, each remembrance overflowing with an abiding appreciation for the life to which we all bore witness. We looked for inspiration and therapy from any direction or source. My father supervised the construction of a playground in his backyard. He drew blueprints, hired workers, and stood looking out on his project. I'd sometimes find him in the early morning hours looking out over the developing playground, alone in the fog with his thoughts. He is the most generous and loving man I've ever known. He'd always had the answer and, like me, he was searching.  Sandy and David White (Cheryl's parents) kept the children in their home frequently. They needed them. They directed their actions to decorating rooms for each, complete with photographs of their mother. Our friends secured a bench in her honor at The Cove Park, a place we both loved and last visited just a few days before it all changed. We all were just searching and writhing on our own. "It doesn't matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap, the drill drills on." Through it all, I discovered that no matter where we searched, no matter where we directed our efforts, the true healing, the best medicine, was found in each other, and more importantly, in Shelby and Andy. Only we knew what we lost. Only we knew what two innocent children lost, and in the knowing there was a common purpose - Shelby and Andy's well being - and it bonded us with steel cables. I hate the cliche' - God never gives us more than we can handle. Don't tell someone suffering any such thing. It is ridiculous. What God does is give us other people to help carry the weight of it all. Sharing the pain is the greatest form of love, and I was surrounded by people that loved me and who I loved in return. I like to believe we carried and continue to carry each other.

I learned how hard it was to be a mother and how willing those women in my life were to jump in. I feared the effects of the long-term absence of Cheryl in her children's lives, but until I was strong enough to go it on my own, women with immeasurable capacity to love and nurture were an arm's length away. My sister, Cheryl's mother, and Cheryl's friends all stepped up. However, it was my mother who without hesitation picked up the flag of the young mother she adored. Her love would not be denied. It never has been. My mother will always be defined in my eyes by the way she mothered my children in Cheryl's immediate absence during those days, weeks and months. She also mothered me, a role she has cherished her whole life. She was able to care for our daily needs while suffering immeasurably herself. She was strong when she had to be, weak only when she allowed it and accomplished it all with grace and a sweetness that could only be the work of the hand of God. There are mothers, and then there is my mother. I've never seen her equal. On the morning Andy first called out from his crib for her, it was one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking moments of my life. The children led us and we followed. They were the source of laughter and our greatest access to what was left of their mother. They were our water in a desert of sadness. By early Summer, we were all adjusting to the reality that she was not in the world. I was running and working out, taking sanctuary in those heroes around me and the two little amazing children she gave me, gave to us all, and doing my best to sweat out the toxic melancholy. As the days, weeks and months passed, I found what happiness there was in those people who loved me and who loved her, but the hole was deep, and on those nights I took to the bed by myself, I mourned just for me. I mourned that I was ruined for anyone else, that I would never share love again. I turned 32 in November. It was the first time she'd missed my birthday since I was 15 years old.

Is there a master plan? Is an invisible hand guiding and determining the events that randomly govern our existence?  A man misses his flight and his life is spared when the plane goes down. A woman leaves 10 minutes early for her weekly coffee with friends and is hit by a car running a red light. I don't know the answer, but I often wonder where I'd be today had I not decided at the last minute to go to the gym on a Monday evening in the Summer of 2001. "I'm Nancy," she said. I didn't know if she was talking to me. I had my headphones on, having just run a mile and meandering through the weights. When I adjusted and figured it out, she told me she had known Cheryl, that her daughter Cori had been in Shelby's pre-school class. As we talked I discovered I knew her sister, Jill, who was a friend of Cheryl's. To the casual observer, it could have been chalked up to so many forgettable encounters I had in those days - the nice person stopping the sad man who's wife died, followed by the offering of condolences. However, meeting Nancy Ackermann is anything but forgettable. As she was walking away I tried to place her in the landscape of my life. How did I know this kind and beautiful person. I put my headphones back in my ears and moved on. I would later learn that she received word of Cheryl's passing while dancing and singing at the Tina Turner concert the night 3 seats in section 117 stood empty.  She was a Senior at Farragut High School when, no doubt, she frequently passed two Sophomores in the hallway holding hands. She had been preparing for her own wedding while her younger brother was serving as my pledge trainer at UT and her little sister was becoming Cheryl's dear friend in the Delta Delta Delta sorority.  Just days before my wife died, she, heartbroken and scared, signed papers signifying the end of her life with another man, entering the unpredictable world of single parenthood. Then, on a Tuesday evening in October, she sat in the back of the church paying her respects to Cheryl, who'd been so kind as to give her daughter a ride to school one day, when she heard a heartbroken man deliver a eulogy to his wife. How many people dance on the fringe of our lives, just out of sight, never to know us?

Aruba Pier Bar

Now, you might not be able to tell by looking at me, but I can dance. Let me be clear - I can't get down with it like my younger brother, John, and baby sister, Amy, who have had many a circle form around them at wedding receptions, band parties, and street corner cookouts, but put me on a ballroom dance floor, and I have few peers. No, I don't watch Dancing with the Stars, primarily for the same reason Michael Jordan doesn't watch pick-up games in the park. As a self-respecting male, I don't advertise this little fact in the presence of men, but I have no shame in revealing, and more importantly, showing anyone as I escort a lady to the floor. Like so many things, I owe my Foxtrot, Latin, Swing dance/Carolina Shag proficiency to Cheryl Lynn, who dragged me, kicking and screaming, to Alumni Gym on the campus of the University of Tennessee where we honed our skills beneath the hum of florescent lighting interrupted by traditional songs on a turntable in a class known as Social Dance 101. I suppose I should also credit my groovin-fun-lovin parents who have always led by example when it comes to the art of groove, for in addition to the incomparable bloodlines, they provided a childhood filled with music, love, dance and fun. How many other kids have been forced to watch the National Shag Championship on videotape? Dancing and performing were not just encouraged, they were required. My great gift was dormant and had been locked away for some time when I met Nancy Ackermann.  I soon learned from Cheryl's closest friend that not only was she not married, but that she wanted to take a Latin dance class at our health club. I was further astonished to learn that my name had been floated in Nancy's presence by friends who knew of my dance-floor prowess, but believed I was not ready to dance, especially with a beautiful woman. I had many guards at the gate. Guards are good to have. In other words, I'd been considered a candidate for what would be a highly sought after position and not told to submit my application or offered an interview. I don't know if they were concerned for my broken heart and vulnerability or were afraid Nancy would become my stalker should she be subjected to my mastery of the floor. I suspected it was the former, and didn't necessarily find their concerns misplaced. I didn't know if I was ready for anything, much less a dance class. However, presented with such information, something unexpected happened inside of me. I wanted to chase a girl.

The admonition came to me in many forms and from several sources when I threw my name into consideration - She only sought a friend to take a 4 week class. Romance was seemingly discouraged by the gate keepers, and seemingly, Nancy herself. There was speculation that, perhaps, she was dating someone who was unwilling to take the class with her. In any event, I mustered the courage not only to submit my application, but to request a lunch-time interview. "I'm in," I told her when we went to lunch to discuss my willingness to accompany her. The fact she turned down dinner in lieu of lunch seemed to confirm her caution and established the friendly boundaries of our new relationship. Naivete' was my calling card. I learned asking a woman to dinner was somewhat presumptuous. No expectations was the mantra in my head. "What could it hurt?" I thought. We shook hands as we left from our lunch meeting, having booked our first class the following week. I would learn many things in the coming months and years, but it all starts with lesson number one - Never... I mean Never... underestimate the power of Latin Dance.

The last time I went on a first date was 1985. Then, armed only with a Camaro, a burgundy Member's Only jacket, and a mullet, I'd done alright. I had the gift of gab, and I could dance. I could do this. I knew I might be in a bit of trouble when she walked in wearing "The Dress." I give it the singular classification because she clearly indicated to me that she was a "jeans and t-shirt" kind of girl and that she didn't own one until she purchased it for the Latin dance class. My concerns for my heart were about to come into focus. In hindsight, I had no idea what I was doing. The class instructor separated everyone and instructed us to face a floor length mirror where we were to work on the steps to the Merengue before joining with our partners. I smiled as I watched her in the mirror. I already knew the steps, and entertained a thought that I might help teach the class. She was counting, nearly falling with each attempt to execute the rather simple maneuvers of the easiest of the Latin dances. The striking lack of coordination coupled with such overwhelming physical beauty was a picture I will never forget. She caught me watching and smiled, a bead of sweat forming on her brow, and I knew in that moment that many of my kind had fallen deeply and madly in love with Nancy Ackermann on nothing more than a smile. She didn't care who was watching or how bad it looked. She wanted to learn to dance, and as quickly as the smile melted my heart, a determined look returned to her face causing me to realize I was just a guy helping her accomplish a goal. How many have been entranced by the smile and mistakenly caused to surrender all sense and judgment? I was stronger than that, I told myself. It's just a dance class. Perhaps this was just as advertised and exactly what my friends, her family, my family, and her suitors wanted and hoped it would be - the nice brokenhearted guy helping a new friend out. I was simply going to play the part of the guy who helped her learn to dance, the guy who needed to get out of the house, the guy who just needed a dance or two with a pretty girl, only to bow and gracefully exit stage left, allowing the seasoned chasers their rightful place in the sun. I decided that would be just fine. I really didn't know how to chase. A man could do a lot worse than say "I once took a dance class with Nancy Ackermann." Then... the instructor told us to get in dance position.


There are times in life when you just know you are where you're suppose to be. I can't explain it any better. Something changed. Gears shifted. The sun came out from behind the clouds as I moved toward her and took her in my arms. We assumed dance position and moved across the floor, my hand on her hip, her hand on my shoulders, then her hands in my hands. "Don't count," I whispered. I counted for her. "Follow me," I said as I looked into her eyes. She did. She apologized for her clumsiness, but the lack of coordination I'd witnessed when she was on her own disappeared when we were together. If she was clumsy, I didn't notice, but I wasn't a good judge of such things in that moment. A bomb could have gone off in the hall, and I would've continued to glide across the floor. We parted after that first class as friends. "See you next week," I said  I challenged myself afterwards on whether my instincts were wrong. My feelings couldn't be real. How could they be? I was just lonely, right? She was just beautiful, and I didn't need to fall victim in my vulnerable, lonely state. "Get it together, Pryor!" I said. I couldn't. I imagined Cheryl, laughing somewhere. Over the next four weeks I found I was good at something else - The Chase. Cheryl's death taught the value of the now, the importance of each day. She taught me not to wait. She taught me tomorrow was not a given. I no longer was satisfied with letting the chasers chase. To Hell with them. So, I chased, and she needed chasing. I didn't know what I was doing, but I really didn't care. I gave her the gift of music. She was a runner, and I bought and loaded an MP3 player with music, leaving it with a handwritten note on her desk at her office. I asked her to run with me, and she did. We went to dance class number 2. She let me take her to dinner and we kissed at the top of a ferris wheel in a mall parking lot. She'd needed more convincing, but I was catching on. She took me to church and held my hand on the second row. We went to dance class.  I sent her emails and left her more handwritten notes, and we danced. After our third class, one more to go, my dearest friend raised concerns that she might have a suitor in the wings. "He better get his ass to dance class - quick," I said.  I believe love is exactly as Lucy McCall described it to her son, Jack, in Pat Conroy's novel Beach Music, "It's something that doesn't take to worry very well. You can't handle it too much. You let love be and it'll find its own way in its own time." With Nancy Lynn Ackermann, love's own time transformed into a sprint. It was chaotic, on fire and fully aware that tomorrow was not guaranteed. It did not lack for confidence or courage, nor was it apologetic. Before we knew it, it had kicked in doors and taken up residence, blinding us to our many broken pieces and scars, lifting us to a place neither of us thought we'd see in what was left of this life. It was surprising, mysterious, and incapable of solving. I felt like I did as a kid on the Ocoee River, sitting in a raft, frightened by what I saw before me. I did as I did then - I held on and let the river take me, and in defiance of every single consideration and measure of judgment, it took me. It was undeterred by the concerns or opinions of those around us and all consuming. And, it was beautiful. When its power became apparent, it was something we guarded our children from, unsure whether to trust these overpowering feelings to the ultimate expense of  four children who'd all been touched by heartache and loss, but we soon discovered the beautiful chaos that came when all six of us were together. We put a match to gasoline and figured out we were simply meant for the fire. "It's gonna take a lot of love," I remember saying to her on a night we visited the ER with Andy, who needed stitches from a fall during a chase through the house. It would take a lot of love. It still does. But, even after paying the tab, there is always plenty to spare when it comes to this girl . We have never looked back.

Wedding Day

January 18, 2002

In the same spot I married my Cheryl, where my Shelby was dedicated to Christ while her mother held her, where Nancy reached for my hand before a sermon, and where I eulogized a remarkable wife and mother, Nancy and I pledged the remainder of our lives to each other on January 18, 2002. We did it with our sweet children and a loving God in attendance. I have no doubt that the guards and the broken heroes were all concerned for our sanity, and I wouldn't begrudge them their concerns, but love finds its own way in its own time, and for 13 years it has more than held its own. I won't pretend to tell you that I knew it all would work. Who does? But, I will tell you that I wasn't scared and never have been with her beside me. A friend, one of the widows I'd spoken to, sent me a card with a cartoon of a bird on the front. It said, "Sometimes you don't know you can fly until you jump and start flapping your wings." We jumped. That night, Cliff, who was 9, sat in Shelby's bed with the other three, who were 6, 5, and 2, reading a book to them all. Of all the video we have from the days of our life together, it is the one I cherish most. We watched from the hall, tears in our eyes, certain our life together was going to be special, and we were right. I fell in love with two kids who already had a father, but fathering them, however it may be classified, has been one of the great joys and honors of my life. Through these years we have been the unconventional family, a family strengthened by tragedy and loss, a family forged and bonded by the love and support from three wonderful families and our friends. On a day in 2003, I heard two voices coming from Andy's room. I looked in to see Nancy teaching him to tie his shoes. He was sitting in her lap, calling her "Mommie," a word that should never be absent from a little boy's vocabulary, and one that returned quickly in the warmth of Nancy's love. As the loops were formed and his little hands searched to please her instruction, I leaned, undetected, against the frame of the door and watched until I needed to move out of their vision, the emotion jumping out from its hiding place. There have been many of those moments. Whether it's potty training or graduation from high school, whether it's a birds-and-the-bees talk or a driving lesson, there are so many moments along the way where I'm overcome by the conflicting emotions brought on by one mother's presence and the other's absence, and it is beautiful.  Shelby and Andy are now 18 and 15 years old, respectively. Shelby leaves for college next week as do Cori and Cliff. In an unpredictable life, a life that has proven me wrong on so many occasions, Shelby Pierce Pryor is exactly the young woman Cheryl and I dreamed she would grow to be while she was still in the womb. So many deserve a piece of the credit, but I'll give a lion's share to the woman who made the mistake of smiling at me across a dance floor in the Summer of my great sadness. I've come to understand how courageous it was for Nancy to love me, to take on two children not her own, to accept Cheryl's legacy, and to love and honor our families. I'm sure she'd say I'm just worth it all, but the truth is, ours is special kind of love, and we know it, for in addition to what has been said about it, it is as constant as the passage of time. When she and I pull out from Shelby's dorm parking lot next Wednesday to return to my first night without her under the same roof, I'll have one of those moments all parents have, and I won't handle it well. The nurturing child who caressed her grieving father in the morning light, who is the embodiment of the grace, poise and beauty gifted by a angel, and who helped heal the people who loved her mother, begins the next chapter of her life. She has no idea how much and by how many she has been loved.

If you come to see Andy play basketball, you are likely to see 10-20 people in the stands who are there for him and him alone. My union with the Ackermanns blessed my children with 7 additional cousins and two more loving grandparents. The bounty of our union is beyond measure. Others can't figure out who all these people are that follow the lives of our children. I'm always happy to explain it. At any given game, school play, Christmas program, graduation or special event in the lives of our children, you may find 6 grandparents and a chorus of cousins, uncles, aunts and a loving mother in the stands. Before every game, I look for two spectators in particular as the pre-game routine is played out. They are the only one's I mourned for more than my selfish self, and with rare exception, they don't miss a game. They come to see the baby boy who has their daughter's hair, her eyes, and her temper as he drives to the basket and argues with officials. They come to watch with full hearts and smiles on their faces. They sit with Nancy, who has mothered their grandchildren, and healed the heart of a man who once stood in their living room in another lifetime, hands shaking, asking for their daughter's hand in marriage. Nothing makes me happier to look across the court and see them, to see them all, and no one can convince me Cheryl isn't there, flitting unseen among the cheers and laughs. It is a good life.

on the pier

There is a wooden pier that runs from a white-sand beach out into the Caribbean Sea. At the end is a bar where people gather, live music is played and beer is served. It is where trade winds blow the salt through your hair while the delicious burn from the sun's sweet kiss settles on your skin. It is our place. Perhaps, it is the other way around, and we belong to it. Our bare feet have shuffled and turned across it's weathered planks many times. We dance until our feet bleed. It is where I first heard this week's song. Nancy and I danced to its silly lyrics on our honeymoon. I remember it in great detail for it was the first time I truly allowed myself to recognize and accept my happiness in this new life. Our kids know every word, and the sound of it in a chorus of six voices is as beautiful to me as any sound ever produced. One day, when our ship comes in, I'm going to build her that tree fort in our yard. Perspective is a funny word. People say I have it. Everyone seems to be in search of it. I don't know that I have wisdom, but I'll tell you what I've learned. My greatest pain and most glorious happiness can be attributed to one thing - Love. Relationships, with friends, family, and the human race, cannot possibly reach their potential without a full understanding of an unrecognized essential truth - We all must leave here. If we truly grasp that then we love better - we accept it when offered, give it without hesitation, and recognize it while in its company.  I know this - in the end, it is the only thing that matters. 



    

Litchfield Beach 2010

Christmas 2006

Easter 2004

November 2013