Today I Nailed It

All the three long years of this thing called widowhood, the definition of loss and its effects has remained hazy until today. Today I got it. Today I nailed it, as my contractor husband would say. Yes, today one sentence sums up all those vacant moments; all those random tears and the ache that always grips some aspect of my waking hours. One revelatory sentence gathers all those emotions together, secures them in an invisible bag, cinches them up and ties a neat bow on top. It is:
I am no longer the most important person in anyone’s life.
As a tiny baby, to the parents, I was the most important thing they had. As years moved on, and the responsibility of child rearing increased, I remained the most important; for I was the ‘project’ that needed work. The twenties chased away that ‘most important’ identity as I searched for my own, on my own.
That identity found me when God brought my life’s mate and made me a mommy. To those tiny babies, I was, once again, the most important person to somebody. Then It was my turn to focus on the ‘project.’ As those years flew by, my human value to my dear husband increased and once again I was the most important person in someone’s life, and he became the most important person to me.
Then, after 40 years, he left. The children all grown, became the most important people in someone else’s life, and their children looked to them for direction and significance.
I begin to list those important people above me in the line; my mommy, dad, grandma, grandpa, uncles, aunts, cousins…all gone now. Then I look to those in the line behind me, and the stunning revelation of singularity, aloneness and insignificance sweeps into now with the grip of reality. I am, no longer the most important person to another human being at all.
Oh, I am loved, tolerated and hopefully respected to a certain level, but that special feeling of value that comes when one knows they are the most important person in the world to another is gone.
The saying is, that we really don’t know what we have until it’s gone. I can tell you this feeling of unique importance is easy to take for granted during the years we walk therein. Oh yes, but when it is gone…the vacancy can be debilitating if we wallow therein. So, what to do now that I have nailed it?
How do I re-identify as a valuable human without the confirmation of that significant other? When it really sinks in that my importance to other human beings is cursory at best and certainly not unique or paramount to them, how do I behave, how do I spend the time left? The answer is as obvious as the question is rhetorical.
I now choose to make other people feel important to me. I choose to focus on the needs, hurts and victories of others in my life so that a small sense of significance might soften their individual transitions as the years unfold. Afterall, life hurts and we need each other to find value and personal worth to carry on. Giving of our love, time, understanding, eye contact and genuine interest builds people, and in the building up of others, we nail it for ourselves.