As I sifted through two weeks of mail stacked precariously on my countertop, I happened upon one of those catalogues geared toward the rich and famous. You know, the ones that sell completely useless things like smartphone-controlled paper airplanes, pie gates, and egg pillows.
On my way to the round file, catalogue in hand, I stopped and opened it up again. There it was. A friend received one as a gift and raved about how it helped her sleep better, achieve a sense of comfort that was missing in her life, and reduce her overall stress. I half-expected to be able to purchase a Jason-replacement, but instead I saw this blanket filled with little weighted beads. It wasn’t just an ordinary blanket, but one that was about twice the width of my seven year-old’s big toe and cost ten times more than any other.
I bought it.
I thought since I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, I might as well even out the load by weighing down the rest of my body.
I always knew I needed a bit more weight on me to function. As a kid, I took all those smarty-pants advanced placement classes in school. And when most women were choosing either a career or kids, I chose to tackle both at the same time. Might as well grow a baby while I’m languishing in law school, right? So while others were hiding out in a basement, looking like Gollum, chasing the idea of being the next best Gloria Allred, I was nursing a squishy little baby and studying for the bar exam whenever she decided to nap.
Four more kids later, I had enough weight to break the back of an elephant. Then cancer came, and I thought about throwing in the towel. Not mine of course – Jason’s. He wasn’t given all that long to live, so his towel time was just about up anyway.
But God felt differently, so the next five years were spent pursuing clinical trials, chemotherapy lines, and as much life as we could cram in. Our life was crowded, with cancer taking up more than its fair share.
Yet we stepped forward each day, fighting an invisible enemy who kept delivering below-the-belt blows. We lived as best as we could until we couldn’t live any longer. We picked up the pieces — one man down — and kept going.
Pulling the weight of a mega-family had taken its toll. My thick, slightly frizzy hair, had thinned out to the point where I seriously considered a comb-over. If I had enough hair for that.
In fact, right after Jason dumped me for Jesus, I lost half the eyelashes on my right eye. I grabbed a pair of those fake eyelashes from the drugstore. Smeared glue on the strip, then smashed it someplace in the general vicinity of my natural lash line. As long as my friend stayed a respectable distance away, he’d never notice. I finished my appointment with him, slipped into the driver’s seat, and looked into the rear view mirror to check my long, luscious fake eyelashes.
As if waving hello to the world, my right eyelash strip had somehow unglued itself and was flapping in the wind like Superman’s cape. I frantically ripped off the strip which in turn ripped out the remaining eyelashes. Red eyes, zero eyelashes, hair thin enough it’d fit into a hollowed-out cigarette butt, and clothing that hadn’t seen a washer since Nixon was President, I turned the car on and prepared to turn in for the day.
But what awaited me was more than sweet sleep.
My beaded blanket that beat away the blues.
Each night, I developed a ritual where I’d remove the 350 pillows that adorned my bed, gently lay down my fuzzy tan blanket, then unfold my ten pounds of quilted happiness.
I don’t know what the beads were made of, but each time I lay underneath this weighted blanket, I felt the weight of the world dissipate. Each night, I’d trade the weight of what wore me down for the weight of this magical blanket that took away the weight of widowhood.
To this day, I can’t quite describe how this rectangular piece of calmness works, but adding weight worked to reduce weight. Under the safety of the grief-proof beads, I felt secure and calm. I could breathe.
The weight of the beads helped lift the weight of carrying five children through the searing loss of their father. And the heart hurt that I carried on my shirt sleeve. The black hole he left, the burden of being a widow, and the weight of raising five children began to change.
Like I needed the blanket to rest deeply, the kids needed me to heal and grow. I’d like to say that when the beads came, the backbreaking responsibility of walking five young children through life left entirely.
It didn’t.
But what it did do was allow me to see five beautiful faces looking to me for guidance, love, and support. It allowed me to see that I wasn’t just trudging through the days, blinded by widow fog, pulling a load too heavy for forty oxen. Rather, I had the privilege of influencing five little lives who would make this world a better place by just living. I was wanted, needed, and dearly loved by five children who knew how to love back.
And somehow, in some way, by adding more weight to my bed, the exact opposite started to happen in my own life.