No Answers

Image credit: Detail of a photo by Carla216 on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

This week, when our family pet went missing and later turned up dead, I did an obsessive imitation of some of my favorite literary detectives; like Sherlock Holmes, I tried to piece together the smallest clues and like Hercule Poirot, I strained the little grey cells of my brain looking for answers. How and when did he get out? When did he die? What did I miss or overlook? I tried to pinpoint the time of death, doing google searches for information on when rigor mortis sets in in animals. I tried to talk to witnesses, questioning everyone from my five-year-old daughter to my husband on what they last remembered seeing and hearing. I had theories, but no way to confirm them. No answers.

And what difference would answers have made? The answers wouldn't have changed anything, but they would have given me the illusion of control. Next time, I wouldn't let those thousand little circumstances that led to tragedy play out in quite the same way, would I? I wouldn't choose that same moment to go get food ready. I wouldn't ask my husband to run that same errand. I wouldn't have my daughter help me with that chore. I wouldn't let my pet out of my sight. Still I was desperate to know; I felt that somehow knowing would calm my grief. And I was angry and frustrated that I couldn't know. There simply weren't enough data points, not enough evidence, not enough pieces to make out the picture in the puzzle.

Then — because life, because the universe, because God likes to beat me over the head until I learn — my daughter misplaced her favorite stuffed bedtime companion, Gigi, and I had to run through the detective work all over again. When did she last have Gigi? Did the babysitter see her at bedtime? Had my husband seen her the night before? Had she taken Gigi out of the house? Should I search the trash? The yard? The car? The closet? Should I tear the sofa apart again and search under the cushions more thoroughly? And again I couldn't know. I just couldn't gather enough information to solve the mystery.

After a night of sleep, I discovered Gigi in the morning, buried under a pile of other stuffed toys in my daughter's closet. No one remembered having put her there. Someone (daughter? playmate? babysitter? husband? son? me?) scooped Gigi up and dumped her in the closet. We never would know who and it didn't matter. Yet I had tortured myself the night before in my own quest to know the unknowable, both in Gigi's disappearance and in that of our pet.

When my husband disclosed his addiction, I went through the same thing: grilling him for hours each day on exactly what had happened, trying to solve the mystery and create that nice, neat narrative that came at the end of the detective stories of my youth. But some parts of the story were lost forever. There were no answers. Early on, I thought that recovery might help me to understand addiction enough to at least fill in the blanks, like researching the rigor mortis of the marriage I thought I had. Instead, I'm recognizing that accepting what is — and letting go of my obsessive need to have all the answers — is where my recovery is taking me today.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.