Be strong

A few months ago, someone told me "Sandy would want you to be strong." Other people have told me what Sandy would want, too, and it always angers me. Unless she specifically pulled someone aside and gave them information I don't have, I'm the one most likely to know what Sandy would want. And what she actually wanted when she was alive.

But this particular statement — a gesture of support, made with good intentions — rankled me in other ways, too. Sandy always thought of me as emotionally strong, even when I felt weak and anxious. In fact, I understand that she told someone in her final weeks that it was unfair that I was so much stronger than she was.

Sandy accepted who I am and how I coped with difficult situations. She wanted me to be more flexible when it came to trying new things, accepting change, or (horrors!) acting spontaneously. But she never asked me to change my emotions, and she never implored me to be stronger emotionally.

I was ranting about this to a friend, shortly after receiving the well-intentioned missive. I asked, "What does strong even mean in this case?" Surely, strong doesn't mean hiding my feelings or pretending I'm not in pain. Everyone experiences grief differently — how could you define one reaction as strong and another as weak? I was reminded of the Marge Piercy poem, For Strong Women. This sentence, in particular, speaks to me:  

A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs.

My friend jokingly said, "Many people define strength as the ability to lift heavy objects" or something like that — and it hit me that there is one way Sandy used to nag me to be strong.

Sandy used her strength to be the physically active aunt,
whereas I was the one who got out the coloring books.

I never had upper-body strength because of my defective heart valve; I couldn't even do plank pose in yoga without feeling my chest tighten uncomfortably. After I got my new valve, Sandy encouraged me to start doing pushups. Simple ones at first, pushing against the fifth step on our stairs, and then gradually harder. Early this spring, I ran out of steps and started doing pushups on my knees; shortly before Sandy went to the hospital, I graduated to  traditional plank pushups on the floor.





Sandy was physically strong most of the time we were together; it was an important part of her identity and I was quite fond of her muscular arms. Helping me become stronger physically was also very important to her.

So I  decided to accept the gesture as an indirect message from Sandy to get back to doing the pushups I'd neglected since she died. I've been doing them regularly since. I've got the arm muscles to prove it.