After the fire, the fire still burns

Mixed feelings

2011-11-29T20:49:00.001-08:00

Among the many things I didn't receive when A died were a bunch of things of my own, including several books. We had swapped a bunch of our favorites that we thought the other would like, and I'm glad we did, because if I hadn't had the books he brought me all the way from California ten months before he died, I would've had nothing of his. I haven't read a single one of those books yet. I don't know what I'm saving them for. But it brings me some comfort to know his fingers touched every single page of them.

But this isn't about his books; it's about mine. Particularly the first two books of a series I love that were among his belongings that no doubt ended up at the charity thrift store, it never occurring to anyone to ask me if there was anything of mine, or anything I wanted, at the home of my lover of two years. But I'm not bitter.

(Hell yes, I am.)

I recently checked up on that author, and downloaded her latest book to my Kindle, and along with it, a short story that told of the meeting of the two main characters through the eyes of the man (who happens to be Sherlock Holmes); the original novel told it from the girl's (she was a girl when the books started, anyway) perspective. And that made me want to go back and reread the whole series, which I haven't done since the Little House books a million years ago. But of course, I couldn't, because I don't have the books. The completist in me had often thought about replacing them, but somehow, I couldn't, or didn't. I can't even tell you why I never did. Maybe it was a tiny cross I was hanging myself upon, a reminder of how I'd been wronged by his family, and worse, his ex who evidently took charge of the disposition of his things--she had the legal right, if not the ethical right; I think it may be worse that I don't think it was malicious; I don't think they gave me a thought one way or the other.

In any case, tonight, 5 years, 4 months, and 2 weeks after his death, I bought the books again and downloaded them to my Kindle as well. My main impulse was that I wanted to read those books again, but it brings up a whole bunch of other stuff, of course. If he hadn't died, I'd have them, or know who did. If his family could've found it within themselves to care a little more about my feelings, I might have them. I am looking forward to rereading the books (and the story of their May-December romance between people of uncannily like minds), and resentful that I had to buy them twice, and sad because they were the least of what I lost, but they are the tip of that whole iceberg and it all comes back. They just can't be two books that went missing. I'm a widow, and too many damn things in my life are fraught with subtext that only I see and can read.

On the surface, it's no big deal. I had to replace two paperbacks. But there's an emotional kick that I can't avoid. I can anticipate it, and I can survive it, but I cannot avoid it. And frankly, I think that's a bitch. Even when you're mostly free of the pain, and the heartache, you're never free and clear. There's always something that can pull it front and center, where it mocks you in your helplessness. You can't fix it any more now than you ever could. And you know that only too well, with more clarity then you had way back in the beginning. Grief and loss? They're emotional herpes: something that won't kill you, but certainly has the power to cause you pain, inconvenience, and to cramp your style. It just pisses me off sometimes.

Useless

2011-10-24T22:57:00.001-07:00

The coworker I mentioned in this post has been back to work a couple weeks now. I sent him a condolence e-mail when the news came that his wife had passed, and we've swapped a couple e-mails sharing pertinent poems since he's been back, alluding to his situation, but not really talking about it. I talked more about it than he did, which I suppose is how it always is. I assume people want to talk, want to process; over and over again, because I did, but I find a lot of people really don't. When I was still e-mailing with A's family, I would spill my guts (carefully...I would carefully pour my gutsout), and their responses, even in e-mail, seemed to have this palpable feeling of "Whoa there, lady...way too much information/emotion." It's always a sharing mismatch with me. He seems much like he always did, and is walking around, joking and laughing when he isn't hiding out in his office. It may well be that he's relieved to be in a context where the expectations are clear, and not so heart-rending as those he's been in all these months. But I swear I catch him staring blankly at his monitor a lot. I am not surprised. I did a lot of that for almost 2 years.

It's been weird, and I've felt frustrated, because my instinct is to reach out to him. I am, to my knowledge, the only other person at the company who's been widowed. I have grief books to share. I have experience. I have the URL of a sometimes wacky, but overall helpful, support website I could give him. I have an open heart and a listening ear. I could, and would, be there for him but for two things: we are only friendly, not actually friends, and he has no reason to confide in me, or to imagine he could; and I am not out as a widow to the world at large, just select segments of it. And I don't see any point in coming out 5 years after the fact to someone at work. Too risky.

But I have to say, it was bad enough when my being a closeted poly person interfered with my own grieving; now it's interfering with my ability to be compassionate. Or rather, my ability to demonstrate that compassion. And that sucks. The suckage of that never seems to end. I think about that sometimes, as my parents and my friends and I all grow older. How many times will my ability to empathize be constrained and stifled because it still seems prudent to keep my love of A on a need-to-know basis? How many times will I bite back, "I do know how you feel," because they don't know that I do. Sometimes, I think "fuck it," I'm tired of keeping that secret, and that I'll let the chips fall where they may. But I never do; somehow, beyond the imagined risk, it seems disloyal and cowardly; if I wasn't going to 'fess up when it was happening and he was here and it could've mattered, why would I do it now, when that particular reality is long gone, and only the meanest souls would think less of me for it?

So I do what I can, but mostly, I feel I stupid because it ain't much. I don't ask him how he is. I ignore the subject, just like everyone else seems to around the office, and maybe that is, in fact, what he'd prefer. A lot of widows I know have expressed how they got really tired of people asking "How ARE you?" with that look. And it's not like I can ask him. So basically, I'm behaving like any other DGI--Let's all pretend M's wife didn't die, and that it's business as usual for him. I cringed when a coworker ran into him outside my cube, and chirped brightly, "Welcome back!" like he'd been on vacation or something; he spent the last 5 months watching his wife die. Jesus.

I guess, if I'm honest, I'm projecting the feelings that arise from my old wounds onto him, and he may be feeling none of that himself. But it's not about me. And maybe that's what I need to remember in my frustration; I have to guess he has other means of support. It is no doubt pure ego to think that he needs what I have to contribute. That makes sense to me; there's just that bit of doubt that nags at me, as I remember how many rats fled my sinking ship, and worry for him: what if I were the one person who might've supported him, but didn't?

Reality smacks me again

2011-09-27T00:01:00.001-07:00

My friend had a bowel resection today for the cancer they found during a routine colonoscopy a few weeks ago. At the time, the doc removed a polyp and was sure it was nothing...until the biopsy came back. Now she's down 7" of colon and will be in the hospital for 3-5 days, (forever in insurance time), and will be recovering for weeks. I want to be supportive, and I try, but the one thing I can't bring myself to say is that everything will be all right. Because I don't know that, and I don't believe that anymore as a default, and I don't want to be a liar.

Another widow thing; it makes us socially uncooperative in so many ways.

I am hoping for the very best, for my friend's sake, of course, but also my own; I can't lose another best friend. But at the same time, I know it's totally out of my hands, as most things are. So I find myself in the limbo between unreasonable-yet-comforting optimism and fatalism. The die is probably already cast. She came through the surgery well, but now there's a waiting game. Did they get it all? Will it come back? Will she have to do chemo or radiation after all? Will she, and those who love her, ever be able to relax again?

It may all be fine; but I have plenty of reasons to know that it isn't always. I no longer believe I wouldn't survive another great loss of a loved one; I just don't want to, you know?

Who is allowed to remember?

2011-09-10T23:29:00.001-07:00

I don't take anything away from those who lost family and friends in the 9/11 attacks. They are, for me, a kind of family, like all the widows I know, all the bereaved people I know who have suffered. I want to say that right up front. Their pain, their grief, is as valid as mine, even a decade later.

That is not my issue.

What keeps running through my head is this: We have been reminded, exhorted, and otherwise encouraged to never forget that day, to keep the wound fresh, seemingly so it can be exploited by any number of people for whatever self-serving reasons they may have, most likely control and commerce. People who are passionately angry can be riled up and swayed. People who are afraid can be influenced and coerced. However cynical that may be, the fact of the matter is, as a nation we have been in mourning, actively grieving, for a full decade. And it's been encouraged everywhere you look. Even people who were not personally affected by the 9/11 attacks are encouraged to wear widow's weeds for a nation that died that day and was reborn as something different, something vulnerable, something afraid.

As someone who got a month, tops, before people were bored and uncomfortable with my widowhood and explaining to me that I needed to grieve better, faster, and more correctly, I really don't understand the patience and passion it takes to keep an entire nation, the majority of which was only affected emotionally and intellectually, not personally, by the tragedies and the loss of so many lives, in mourning for 10 full years and counting. Did the 9/11 widows and widowers get 10 years of compassion, of genuine empathy, of listening, as they tried to put their lives back together? Maybe in New York, where the scar of the attack burned and smoldered for so long, where the skyline had changed so dramatically, where there was no way anyone there could forget...maybe there was more compassion for longer. But what about the families of the people on those planes from other parts of the country? Did their neighbors and coworkers and friends soon get tired of their grief? I've read the stories, because they've abounded in the last week, of people who HAVE rebuilt their lives. They have moved forward, and healed. It's a good thing; it's just that their nation hasn't followed suit. If the USA were another widow in this emotional place after 10 years, we'd say she was stuck. Really stuck. But we're not saying it.

I don't know. I really don't. But I suspect that the patience for individual grief, even for those who lost loved ones through this heinous act of murder, was still too brief than it seems to be for national grief. Where grief-stricken individuals are pushed to "get better" and "move on" and heal as soon as is convenient for their observers, the level of pathos, of anger, of vowed retribution seems unabated in all this time, and the scab is regularly pulled off the wound wherever it seems useful to do so. Why is the general impatience with grieving suspended in this case?

I guess I feel some anger and confusion that at 5 years out, I'm supposed to be well over having been widowed, and I certainly should not be still talking about it, but as an American, I'm never supposed to get over 9/11. In fact, I feel like the message being broadcast is that it's my patriotic duty to never move forward from it; I'm supposed to be just as hurt and angry and torn up about it as I was the day it happened.

What is that about?

Can't go home again

2011-08-18T23:36:00.001-07:00

I spent last weekend attending a guitar festival in northern California with a couple of my girlfriends. It was beautiful up there. We had fun and laughed a lot. We drooled over guitars. We shopped. We ate at great restaurants. It was a good time.

But at the same time, it was hard for me to be there. For me, the Bay Area will always mean A to me. I loved it there, because I loved him there, and we explored a lot of it together. And up until now, I've looked for excuses to go back there, to revisit places we visited together, as if I could revisit our life together, like some kind of historical reenactor, I guess. I hadn't been back for 3 years because I haven't been back to guitar camp, so was looking forward to this trip. But the melancholy hit me as we descended into San Francisco and remained as an undercurrent for the rest of the weekend.

In the past, flying over that vast green landscape was a time of excitement and anticipation; I consciously remembered that as we neared San Francisco, though I've only flown into San Francisco once before; it was always San Jose. But from 35,000 feet, at 700 mph, it's much the same view. I would be nervous and jittery with anticipation of holding A in my arms again, seeing him smile, talking with him, kissing him. And that just wasn't going to happen this time around.

A and I had discussed going to this very event, but hadn't had a chance to do so, because it only happens every 2 years. I wasn't ready in 2007, or in 2009, but I thought I was ready to do it without him this year. And I was, but it was more challenging emotionally than I had anticipated, because honestly, I didn't anticipate it being challenging at all. Maybe that was naïve.

In quiet moments, I felt it was all wrong. I wasn't supposed to be there with my girlfriends. If A were alive, I would've flown to him and driven up and met them there, with him at my side. To be there without him just opens up a chasm in my heart in a way being at home does not. The land, the light, it all conspires against me in California, highlighting what is not there. It isn't comforting like I thought it would be; it's actually painful, and I know it affected my mood on and off all weekend. I missed A terribly. And I was homesick, missing E and the dogs in a way I never have before.

It got worse as the weekend wore on, and by the last day, as we headed for home, I was pretty much silent and solitary whenever I could get away with it. I was in my own head, and terse when I did speak; I was irritable, the most consistent indicator of unvoiced grief I have now. I don't know how much of that my traveling companions noticed, but they didn't ask, and I didn't volunteer, because the weekend wasn't about me and my widowhood and I doubt it occurred to anyone that any trip I happily volunteered to take might be bittersweet nonetheless. They wouldn't have understood anyway.

At one point, I took a break from all the guitar stuff and sat out on the lawn, listening to music, enjoying the feeling of cool, damp grass on my hands and legs. As I sat there, soaking up a different kind of sun, the kind that kisses you instead of burns you, feeling the cool breeze, and luxuriating in the change of scenery, an idea for a song came to mind. But it gave voice to what I'd end up feeling all weekend:

There's something about coming back to a place
where love used to live
and finding no one home
and finding your key doesn't fit in the door
and finding it's not home anymore

It may be too sad a song to write; I'll have to sit with it for awhile.

In any case, the feeling I'm left with is that I'm not sure that I want to go back again. I mean, it's entirely possible that life circumstances might make it necessary, but I don't know that I'll be looking for reasons to go anymore. Because the reason I always went to California is gone, and it's just too hard to reckon with that again and again. It brings up so much stuff, stuff I still can't do anything about, will never be able to do anything about, and I don't know that I need to do that to myself. In the early days of grief, there is wisdom and healing in feeling it all, processing it all, however painful; but now, five years later, it seems to me avoidance of known triggers, especially the totally optional ones, may be the wiser choice, the emotional version of "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Then stop doing it."

Dreaming of him

2011-07-18T21:20:00.001-07:00

I had a series of bad dreams last night, and as I remembered them this morning, I realized they were all pretty obviously triggered by various stressors in my waking life. There was the recurring dream I have about driving my car off an embankment into a lake (sometimes it's a bridge); I've never quite figured out what that one's about. There's the one immediately following that where I survived, got out of the car, and walked out of the lake, only to be barely able to walk and ending up in a clinic talking to someone about my pain and being unable to move, and asking my brother to go back and get my shoes and socks. That's about the chronic pain I have that has been worse this past week than it has been in a long time.

And then I dreamed about A, which I almost never do. And it wasn't a happy reunion dream. It was sad and desolate. It was like one of my trips out to visit him, and we were doing things we always did, but he barely spoke to me, and when he did, it was like he was out of it...nothing he was saying seemed like him, or made any sense. He barely seemed to notice or care that I was there. I remember being worried about him in the dream, that he was going senile or some such, and what was I going to do? It was all so sad.

The interpretation of that one seems clear enough: he is far away from me, and I can't reach him, and he won't reach me. I can't get through to him now. And he either can't or won't get through to me. I kind of hoped for an irrefutable sign this weekend; I didn't get one. The dream I got is not one I would've hoped for--one where we could be together and happy for a little bit of dream time; instead, it manifested the insurmountable, depressing distance between us now. If nothingness can be palpable, that's what I feel--a totally one-sided love. I want to believe he loves me still, wherever he is. And I think that I do; but it's a hope I think about, not a fact I can believe. Sometimes I get angry at him, and think, "Well, if you're going to ignore me, I'm going to ignore you, too." And then I wonder if that's exactly what is supposed to happen so that we can get on with getting on with it.

Where's the handbook on all this? He's dead and I'm alive, but I'm in limbo when I try to reconcile those two facts with the love I still feel for him. I don't know what to do with all these loose ends that I thought were tied to him, but no matter how I pull on them, I can't get him any closer to me. Do I tie them off in a knot and hang them up somewhere?

5 years

2011-07-15T00:03:00.000-07:00

My sweetie died 5 years ago today. But 5 years ago today, I didn’t know that. I didn’t even start to worry until 5 years ago tonight, didn’t panic until 5 years ago tomorrow, and didn’t know for sure that he was gone until the day after that. In the aftermath of A’s death, and all these years later, there are 2 things I still have anger about, when I let myself think about them: 1) the stupid apartment manager who wouldn’t be the least bit helpful in finding out whether A was home, or if his truck was in the lot, when I called 5 years ago tomorrow, and 2) his family’s seemingly cold dismissal of my feelings, needs, and their own promises, in the end. I can almost forgive his family; they probably did as well as they could under the circumstances, even if it wasn’t nearly as good as it should’ve been. The apartment manager I can’t forgive. The combination of stupidity and laziness (she said that despite my concerns that he might actually be hurt or dead, she couldn’t tell me anything because of policy, and she said she couldn’t check for awhile because she was going to lunch) added up to a cruelness that meant my sweetie lay dead in his apartment for 3 days. If she could’ve been a thinking human being for five minutes, she could’ve helped me spare him 2 of those days. It’s unkind, but I hope it haunted her after the fact, because it haunts me. I hope she realized her mistake and vowed never to be so stupid, thoughtless, and lazy again in an emergency; however, my faith in humanity is not so robust as to believe that happened.

But I try not to think about it.

I’ve spent the entire week waiting to fall apart, and it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been in considerable physical pain since last weekend because of my stupid back, and I suppose that has been a pretty significant distraction. Any whimpering and whining this past week (and there hasn’t been much) has been about that. My back is worse than usual due to some random mechanical factor I can’t put my finger on (as usual), but it also gets worse in the damp and when I’m PMSing, and I’m doing the latter while we’re full into monsoon season; it also occurs to me that while I’m not feeling consciously stressed about this impending milestone, perhaps it is subconscious, and contributing to my back problems. My body fell apart completely in the year after A died, and I’ve never really gotten it all back together. It’s not impossible that I’m revisiting the physical as well as the emotional this week.

I have plans for every day of this ugly weekend. The usual Friday night hang-out with the girls. Concert of a favorite artist Saturday night with a pal. Usual Sunday night dinner with the girls and E. And my back is what I’m most worried about ruining my good time Saturday night; it’s general admission. A would like it that I’m at a concert, rather than home moping.

It’s trite, but “it is what it is” is mostly my feeling regarding this stage of my widowhood. I accept that missing him is what I do now. It isn’t at the forefront of my thoughts most of the time, but it is never entirely gone, either. Nothing I can do about it but shrug, in any case. Not because I don't care; not because I don't miss him. But because I can't do a thing to fix it, or feel differently about it, and this is my new normal.

You can get used to anything. Anything at all.

Then again, there's also the possibility that it's all just roiling under the surface. I found myself particularly easy to enrage after work today; that kind of irritability is usually a subtle sign that grief is at work on me, even if I think otherwise.

There are 2 As now: the one in my head, and the one he really was. Sometimes I get a clear memory, or reread an e-mail he sent me, or a chat transcript, and I remember exactly who he was when he was alive, in astonishing, unadulterated vibrancy. But a lot of the time, it’s the construct of him that sticks with me, one that is necessarily informed in every part by my perceptions, my loss of him, my grief, my feelings about his absence. There's a bit of distance to that one, too, and perhaps that's why it's my more constant companion: it's safer. They are similar, of course, but the real one is better; and it's the real stuff that, in remembering, that makes my mouth smile, my eyes tear up, and my heart ache. The real man provokes the real feelings that I can't afford to feel constantly every day.

I often feel like I want to tell people all about him, because he was such an awesome, amazing person, but every time I try to sketch his character in words, I fail, because there was so much to him, and I can’t convey that totality with any justice. And even if I tried, it wouldn't matter to them because they didn't know him. They didn't love him, like I do. In the end, I fall silent, because in remembering who he was, all of it, I am forced again to reckon with how much I go without because he’s not here.

Even though you're far away, you're on my mind. Oooooh, wishing you were here.

Countdown

2011-07-05T22:59:00.001-07:00

A note went around at work today about a coworker's wife; a couple of months ago, she had horrible back pain that wouldn't go away, and now she's in hospice, and her stay there isn't expected to be a long one. This is a coworker I'm friendly with, though I wouldn't call us friends; but he's a nice man, and they've been in love for 34 years, and I feel terrible for both of them, for the end she is facing, and for the widowhood he is.

Granted, I've only experienced a long fatal illness with my dogs (who are my kids), because my sweetie died suddenly, but even that experience taught me that the time you spend waiting when there is no time left is miserable, a special kind of hopeless. When my A died, I imagined I wished I'd had more time, time to say things that needed to be said, time to say goodbye, time to say "I love you" a hundred more times before the last time in his presence. And maybe, in fact, I would prefer that. Maybe there is some peace to be found within the dread. I don't know. I pray I never have to find out.

In some ways, I know what he's going to go through. In other ways, I know I don't have the first clue. All I know is that another family is hurting, and is going to be for a long time, and there's nothing to be done for it. Mostly, my heart breaks for them, and this empathy probably couldn't have come at a worse time; then again, it probably couldn't have come at a better one, either.

It's that time of year again. Basically, when I flipped the calendar to June, I started to feel the dread, and more and more, I curse clocks and calendars. If there were no calendars, no named and numbered days to tick off, I would no doubt recognize that another year was about to pass, but there wouldn't be this relentless feeling of movement toward a specific day, the build-up to which is an emotional burden as I'm constantly taking my temperature. How am I feeling? Am I sinking? Am I not, and if not, is it going to hit me further down the line? When? How? And what does it mean if it never does?

Without this "anniversary" date, I would remember that he died in high summer, and there wouldn't be this funnel of time sucking me down to a specific point where despite having no conscious plan to do so, I seem to have expectations about my feelings. Without that date, without labeled time in sequence, I would merely recognize that the day formerly known as July 15th is probably going to be no different than the ones before and after it in terms of how I'm feeling about A, and his absence. I seem to have settled in to a manageable missing him; it's pretty much the same day to day. Sometimes it brings a tear to my eye; mostly it doesn't. I'm done wishing. I'm done begging. I'm done blaming, myself and him. I've given up all hope for a different past. I just miss him. Quietly; consistently; every day.

As it is, the thing that bothers me most is that nearly 5 years have passed. 5 years has always seemed like such a long time to me; I've seen my life change again and again in the span of 6 months; 5 years is an age in one person's lifetime. For almost 5 years, I've been getting along without him, when for the 2 years prior, there was rarely a day when I didn't talk to him multiple times. It still sounds like a long time to me, and while I'm fine now, if I could measure time emotionally, it doesn't feel like nearly that long. I don't know how long it feels, other than "not that long ago." I've been around the sun 5 times since he died, hurtling 2,934,600,000 miles through space. Shouldn't it feel like longer?

It makes me wonder if I hold him too close, if I would be better off hiding the pictures and the keepsakes and putting away the candles. Because wherever he may be, I don't feel like he's holding me that close, not like right after he died. I can't hold on to him; I feel he's gone. So what am I holding on to? Where is the line between keeping space for a true love that I still feel, and keeping one foot in the past to my own detriment? Does that line actually exist, or am I thinking too much? I had something brilliant and wonderful with my A, and I don't anymore. But that doesn't keep me from still wanting it. And wanting an impossible thing is as sure a recipe for heartache as I know.

If there is a healing task that remains to me, it must be this: figuring out a way to stop wanting and missing what was. Figuring out how to cross over from wanting what I can't have to appreciating what I had with true acceptance of its impermanence. Figuring out how to have the love without the yearning. It is the difference between begrudgingly accepting that I can't have him here anymore because I have no choice, and being Zen about it, and cutting the ties that continually bind me to that past where I was, admittedly, happier, healthier, more loved and more loving. I guess what I'm saying is that I am not living my inner life in constant grief anymore, but I do think there's a pretty constant undercurrent of regret when my thoughts find him. You can only regret the things you accept as having happened.

I have to think it's possible. (And if it isn't, I'd sure like someone to let me know, so I can let myself off the hook.) But I don't have the vaguest idea of how to make that move. I've never done this before.

2011-06-29T10:10:00.001-07:00

--Robert Montgomery

It gets different, and sometimes that's better, too

2011-06-06T23:32:00.001-07:00

Today, I found myself in the bathroom at the office wiping away tears. I was trying to pull myself together because I was laughing so hard reading this site at work, that if I didn't excuse myself, I was going to get busted. I could barely control my laughter; there was some snorting and other strange noises, too, as the laughter exploded out in spite of my best efforts. As I sat there, repeatedly breaking out in giggles as I remembered some of the posts and wiping my eyes, I thought of how many times during the summer of 2006 I'd been in the bathroom at work wiping away tears, crying my shattered heart out as silently as possible for one who is sobbing uncontrollably. And I was grateful to be in there today, shaking with laughter as I cracked up again and again. There was a time where that seemed impossible.

"He was born on a summer's day, 1951."

2011-06-05T11:42:00.001-07:00

Because I have a lot of musical "friends" on FB, I received the news today that Andrew Gold had died. I didn't recognize his name, but I did recognize his hits. There are a lot of musicians like that, I think--people you don't realize you know until something puts it together for you. Like a eulogy. It was only today that I found out he'd died at 59, of a sudden heart attack.

Even though I wouldn't have been able to pick Andrew Gold out of a lineup, and didn't know him by name until today, news of his death has hit me hard, because it echoes A's death. A was born on a spring day in 1951; they were born the same year. And A died, also too young, of a sudden heart attack.

My feelings are a jumble: frustration that men of a certain age are so vulnerable to deadly heart attacks; sadness that I seem to be moving into a stage of life where the actuarial tables showing that the mortality rate quadruples once you're in your 40s are illustrated daily among friends, family, and acquaintances; and also envy, that Andrew Gold and his loved ones got an extra 5 years that my sweetie didn't.

It's selfish, I know, to find in someone else's death, some other family's misfortune, an occasion to think about my own loss and my own pain, but I am not immune to triggers; it'd be more surprising if, given the parallels of the cases, if I didn't make those connections.

I learned Friday that the wife of a coworker has most likely received a death sentence, via metastatic cancer that was just found. They're probably in their sixties, but still relatively young, to me. Maybe they will have a miracle happen; but miracles are always a bit thin on the ground.

That's the thing about death. It's easy enough to accept intellectually as something that happens, and something that happens to every living thing. But it's difficult to accept the mighty upheaval it causes in your life and the lives of all who are left behind. Death in the abstract is simple enough; death, concrete and immediate, is complex, and takes years and years to unravel. How many years? I don't know; I'm still unraveling it. Obviously.

Hello darkness, my old friend

2011-05-31T16:47:00.001-07:00

I had death on the brain yesterday, considerations I'll not detail lest anyone reading this panic for me, because they didn't really reflect how I was feeling, personally--it was all very detached and theoretical, if graphic. But it was still an unpleasant train of thought, and I tried to shake it off as I drove across town for band practice, even as I was puzzled as to where it was coming from.

It wasn't until later last night that it hit me; it was Memorial Day. The last day I kissed and touched A; the last time I saw him without two computers between us. Consciously, I was thinking about other things, more current things, but my subconscious was busy dancing with the Reaper, dredging up all kinds of creepy scenarios and thoughts. Even when you forget for awhile, or for a minute, you never really forget.

I had a long telepathic talk with A once I went to bed, and talked about the stuff I never talk to anyone about regarding his death and the circumstances of his being found and how much that bothers and baffles me, still. His best friend identified him, having arrived about the same time as his sister and the cops I called. The friend told me he'd been found in his bathroom, and that he looked peaceful. I accepted that at the time, and never asked for more details, because I didn't want them, even if I sometimes wonder about them. Better to not know; better to speculate wildly than to have a clear vision of the truth to torment myself with. I talked about how awful it was that he might've been taking a shower or brushing his teeth or combing his remaining hair and just collapsed, with no warning on a Saturday morning. How awful it was for him to be there, waiting to be found; and how he probably wasn't waiting at all, and maybe I could eventually get my head around that enough for it to be a comfort. He was probably gone quickly, because why would he stick around when his spirit was free? How it was just really awful for me, for all of us who loved him, because we only knew him in his body, and so we'd have to be forgiven for confusing his body for his being, and hurting about it.

I talked about how the Mystery itself causes people to deny there's any mystery at all, and how it would be easier, and really not so painful, to believe that this IS all there is, that when we die, that's it, and there's nothing to hope for beyond that, because that's what I believed for a long time and it didn't bother me at all back then. I had no evidence otherwise, so it made sense. I talked about how it would be easier to disbelieve in a future when he and I would cross paths again, once I died, and that it was worthwhile to keep the one-way line of communication open in the meantime, even if it was sometimes painful, and just walk on and not ever look back. Except that I've had evidence otherwise since A died. But it all happened soon after he died, and after awhile, you're on your own, and doubts creep in. Some people manage that inner conflict through faith. I don't have faith; I have reason and experience...and hope. And sometimes, that's just not enough to keep your spirit bright and moving forward. It's like knowing the sun will come up tomorrow, because it always has. But if it didn't for a few days or weeks or years in a row, no matter how many times you saw it happen before, you'd start to wonder if it ever did.

I don't talk about those things, even in my head to the man they happened to, very often, because they hurt like hell to revisit. But I guess they needed an airing for that very reason. In articulating it, I allowed it, and in allowing it, I was a bit more free, a bit more whole. Over and over again, I've felt that grieving and healing are a process of integrating the experience into who and what I am. If I can't even talk about it to myself, then it will continue to plague me. If I can't talk about it to A, if I can't take advantage of the heightened intimacy of death, where all cards are laid on the table and honesty rises to new levels because you can't possibly hurt each other more than the pain the separation of death causes, then I am an obstacle to my own healing that continues even now. You've got to process this stuff; if you just stuff it down, it'll come back to bite you. Maybe even 5 years later.

This morning a song came up on shuffle on my iPod that I will take as a sign, because I needed to hear what the song had to say, and the people saying it was a sign in and of itself. I need to believe it; I need to hope.

DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE By Carl Perkins

WHILE I'M OVER THERE, YOU'LL BE OVER HERE
BUT WE'RE IN LOVE SO HAVE NO FEAR
'CAUSE DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

WHILE THAT SAME FAT MOON THAT SHINES ON YOU
IT'S THE SAME OLD MOON SHINING ON ME TOO
AND DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

SO LET'S DREAM, DREAM, DREAM,
LIFE IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS.
YOU'RE THE GIRL I'M DREAMING OF
SO DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE.
(Makes no difference, girl, with love)

FOR LOVE TO ME IS BOTH YOU AND I
IT SURROUNDS THE GLOBE, FLOATING ON THE SKY.
SO DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

FOR I AM YOURS AND YOU ARE MINE
AND THIS WILL BE TILL THE END OF TIME
AND DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, GIRL, WITH LOVE.

SO LET'S DREAM, DREAM, DREAM,
LIFE IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS.
YOU'RE THE GIRL I'M DREAMING OF
SO DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE,
DISTANCE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE,
IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WITH LOVE.

Happy anniversary, Sweetie

2011-05-24T20:37:00.001-07:00

"Postsecret.com is a website where people can anonymously reveal their deep, dark feelings. I came across one entry that I think would be perfect for you to use as your own in the coming weeks. "I don't want to cover up my scar," it read. "It's a good conversation starter and it makes me look bad-ass. But thank you anyway!" To further inspire what I hope will be your fearless effort to claim the power inherent in your wounds, I also offer this spur from musician and author Henry Rollins: "Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."

This was my horoscope today, for the next week. Been thinking a lot about my scars...or rather, the scar.

In a strange twist of fate, my anniversary of meeting A falls three days after my anniversary of marrying E, which makes for an especially fraught week as it leads into Memorial Day weekend every year, the last weekend A and I were in the same place at the same time. (If you don't count my walking through the redwood forest where his ashes were scattered. Which I only count when I'm engaging in dark widow humor to myself.) Even though I talked to him every night between then and when he died, when I think of our last goodbye, it is always the one where we hugged and kissed and said "I love you," my eyes filled with tears as I went through airport security.

The attempt to balance the celebration of one relationship with the mourning of the loss of another is something that generally leaves me feeling entirely unbalanced. I find I alternate, swinging between them: I celebrated during the day; I cried at night.

When I am really missing him, I remember a hug we had in his kitchen that last morning before I left. He was wearing a red shirt, and he felt so big and strong. My sweetie was 6'2"; he made me feel safe and protected; it's such a rare, surprisingly sweet thing, my being smaller than anyone. In remembering that hug, I can feel the solidness of his chest and the strength in his arms holding me close, and the muscles in his back as I ran my hands over them. It's one of the strongest physical memories of him I have, and I try to keep it evergreen, because it means so much to me, and does so much to calm me when the ache threatens to tear me apart. I feel like I have lost as many memories as I've managed to keep. I cannot remember his voice now.

I cannot remember his voice.

It's been nearly 5 years, and mostly, when I hear his words in my head, they're in my own voice, and it feels like an exceptionally grave loss. There are one or two phrases I can almost hear in his voice, but even that I doubt the accuracy of. I went to sleep the other night, on my wedding anniversary, thinking about that, crying a little, begging both him and my own memory banks to conjure up his voice in my dreams so that I wouldn't lose that, too, but as usual, my dreams did not cooperate.

I tried to tell myself that perhaps I heard my own voice in my head because he and I were so truly connected that it was one and the same. But while I considered the possibility that it might be true, I didn't really believe it.

I remember reading my first grief book a couple weeks after he died, and seeing the chapters that dealt with beyond the first year, going out to the fifth, and I couldn't imagine what that meant. Would I still be grieving 5 years out? That terrified me. Would I be better 5 years out? I couldn't imagine how that could be true.

The answer to both questions turns out to be "yes." Time has passed, and I've grown accustomed to the duality, accepting that while there may be momentary confusion in the comparison, it really isn't so impossible to live in seeming emotional contradiction. Our hearts are not linear, feeling one thing at a time, in its turn. I wonder, now, why I ever thought mine was.

I suppose this is true for many, if not most, widows, but I can't "celebrate" these anniversaries. I met A 7 years ago; I've celebrated 5 of these anniversaries without him. The day passes each year without failing to give me a blithely malicious kick. There are few days on the calendar sadder than birthdays never attained and anniversaries celebrated by only one person.

At every step of this journey, I've wondered if whatever stage of healing I was at was as good as it was going to get, and then I've ended up finding out it wasn't. But it's been the same for a really long time now, and I think maybe this IS it. And what does it look like for me? It means missing him a little every day, and terribly some nights; it means a few quiet tears in memoriam here and there; it means sighing and carrying on, because there's nothing else to do. It means appreciating every little good thing that comes my way. It means realizing the strength, and moving. On. Forward. Sideways. Sometimes backwards. But moving.

No joy, again

2011-04-06T17:31:00.001-07:00

I am, even as I type this, listening in to a live web broadcast from a young woman who styles herself a "joyologist," who has found her calling in helping other people live joyous lives. I first heard about her because she's worked for a musical artist I'm a fan of, and he seemed pretty jazzed about who she is and what she does. And she's gone into business as a life-coach-type person, working with other bands and now doing seminars and one-on-one sessions. I was simultaneously skeptical and intrigued. I've never thought I needed a life coach. I tend to think I do pretty well on my own.

But at the same time, I know (as anyone who reads this page regularly knows), I still don't feel like I'm doing this life thing with an optimal attitude. And I think it IS my attitude, formed by my experiences, because intellectually I get that life is what it is, and probably isn't persecuting me or anyone else personally. Life is life; I have no control over that. I only have control over how I navigate it.

So while I've always been a little smirky-snorty-eye-rolly about the whole life coach concept, I fully admit the possibility that someone else might have a different piece to this puzzle that I do not currently have, and that I can use. How can I know unless I check it out for myself? I signed up when I found out she was doing a seminar for what basically amounts to tips...you could donate whatever you felt like donating, because, frankly, I could use a little more joy in my life, a little more contentedness as a baseline, rather than the pendulum swinging, rather speedily, between "I'm fine, life is pretty groovy" and "Jesus, is this all there is?"

She's adorable, and young, and she's got a lot of good ideas that, if you've never considered them before (and it's entirely possible that you haven't in a culture that is constantly judging you as deficient in a thousand ways, urging you to judge others as harshly, and that runs on dissatisfaction and competition rather than peace), could be revolutionary. The commentary on the running chat that accompanies the broadcast indicates that for some folks, it is, and good for them. I am, regardless of my own personal growth agenda, thrilled that young people are reaching out to other young people to share these new, counterculture messages that they are awesome, right here, right now, always were, always will be, even as they continue growing and learning.

She talks about feeling your feelings, but choosing your attitude, giving examples like being pissed off because it's raining or because you're stuck in traffic. And as I know people who tend to blow piddly crap all out of emotional proportion, I'm aware that plenty of folks need guidance on even that level. She says shit happens, life happens, and you just have to choose to deal with it head on. She talks about loving yourself. She talks about negative, neurotic self talk and how destructive it is. And how "should" is limiting. She shares a lot of important messages, exciting ones if you haven't heard them before.

But the stuff that is the lead weight to my balloon of joy is a little more serious than a rainy day and old biddies driving 15 mph in a 40 zone. It's missing my beloved. It's a world where people treat each other in stupid, abominable, inhumane ways and don't seem to notice or care they're doing it, and my frustration with that. I'm kind of beyond this Self-Actualization 101 stuff. I was looking for, hoping for, more. More wisdom. More depth. More than I have.

Because I keep looking for sages with answers, even just tidbits, that will light my way further than I can manage myself, and what I keep finding is that other people are equally benighted as I am, or worse. (Much worse, in some cases.) And while I guess it's neat that I've managed to figure some things out in this life, I want good answers from someone wiser than I as much as anyone else does. But I just can't seem to find that someone.

Circles or spirals

2011-03-30T16:58:00.001-07:00

Last night I was driving over to my friend's for a massage, listening to music and pretty pleased with myself as I thought about an e-mail from an acquaintance I'm negotiating with to start a musical duo (with the hopes of finding a drummer and becoming a trio at some point). She'd told me that she'd shared some of my tracks with some of her friends, and they were "quite impressed," and that she's excited to get started. I am, too.

The thought popped into my head that this might well have been where my life was heading before I met A. My unique circumstances mean that, unlike for most widows, my life now looks very much like it did for years before I was widowed, and before A came into my life. It took me aback, the idea that the last 7 years has basically been a detour of 2 years of a gorgeous, wonderful dream and nearly 5 years of slowly receding hell, just to drop me back where I was: Married to E, with dogs, in the same house, at the same job, making my way into some kind of amateur music career.

Granted, I am not at all convinced (though A was) that I would be a musician today without his influence and encouragement. But in any case, it's weird and more than a little disconcerting as I think about it. Is that what's happened?

On the one hand, getting back to normal is the dream of the bereaved isn't it? Even when we know it's impossible. On the other hand, I cannot pretend the last 7 years didn't happen, either; it wasn't a detour—it's been my life. I just don't know what to make of it. My life, on the outside, may look very much as it did, and was going to, before A, but my life, lived from the inside, feels so very different from then. So it's weird that the comparison would've occurred to me at all.

Perhaps the conflict is in the constant tension between past and present. Sometimes I think, "If I had no past, if all I had and all I knew were what's going on in my life today, I'd be pretty happy." But there is a burden of prologue, and we must carry our joy and our pain and our lessons with us. I don't think there's any avoiding that, unless you trade it for the burden of iron-willed denial; either way, it's heavy, and there seems to be no option to set it down, short of amnesia.

I fantasize about that kind of amnesia sometimes, about forgetting the events of recent years, and even the idea of not remembering A, not remembering how we loved each other, not remembering everything he taught me, nauseates me.

The best I seem to be able to do is to decide when and how much I will let the past influence my current choices and actions. But the awareness of his absence and my sadness whenever I consciously confront that fact again, that doesn't go anywhere. It may not be flowing unchecked over the bar, but it's always on tap.

As I sit here in my cubicle at the same job I've been complaining about for nigh on a decade, and consider last night's epiphany, I have to wonder if the fact that my life now so resembles my life before is my fault…that I haven't done as much as I might've with the time, and rather than the universe playing a nasty joke on me, to put me through all that and drop me back right where I was in the end, that it is some kind of stagnation on my part.

Or possibly, what I'm looking at is a personal victory, in that I have managed to steer out of the rocks and get back on course. Because if I consider only the present, it's all pretty good. I'm pretty good. It's not a bad life at all. The problem, as always, is in knowing what you're missing.

In early grief, the signs that you're improving are pretty obvious: less crying; an occasional smile; being able to tell the story without a meltdown; feeling like you don't have to tell the story to everyone you run across. As you get further out, and you integrate the loss, it necessarily becomes more difficult to separate the widow experience from the life experience, and evaluate how you're progressing.

Maybe the answer is not in evaluating it at all.

Right.

How do I (not) do that again?

Happy birthday, Sweetie

2011-03-15T12:59:00.001-07:00

You're supposed to be 60 today. Do you care? Or are you reveling in your infinite self? I hope you're reveling, for your sake. I was just thinking the other day that I wish we could talk across this space between us, but then I wondered if what you can see and do and experience now is ineffable; could you even share your "day" with me now? Would I understand? Or is it one of those "you had to be there" things? I can tell you about the dogs and what I'm up to, and you'd have to try to explain what it's like to be a supernova, because you get that now. And I'd be dumbfounded, and Google would be no help.

Still, I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

As tempted as I have been to just take some time to mope tonight, I'll be going to open mic to honor you instead, singing songs for you. You know the ones. I always sing for you, of course, but this is expressly in your honor. I figure you'd prefer that to moping. I'm doing my moping on the clock instead, in my cubicle. I'm a multi-tasker like that, as well you know. A few tears today, when I wrote S to tell him it was your birthday. He's the only one in my life who knew you, too, and had a relationship with you of his own, and cares, and I needed that connection today. I'm sure your family and your other friends are thinking of you today, too, but...well, you know how that goes.

Anyway, there's nothing to say now that I haven't said a million times. I just wanted to tell you that I wish you were having a birthday today, and that I love you so very much, and miss you an equal amount.

Tu J, siempre xxooxx<3

Ageless, timeless, endless

2011-03-14T17:08:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow would have been...should be...A's 60th birthday. He's missed 5 birthdays now. He only got to be 55 for a few months before he passed, though we (and by "we," I probably mean "I") had great fun teasing him about his official senior citizenship. Now that he was 55, we were going to enjoy that nice 5% discount at Jack in the Box when next I visited, among who knows what other untold discounts he might be eligible for. We were going to be on high times, me and my senior discount sugardaddy.

I never got to take advantage of that, though, because my next visit was scheduled for 2 weeks after he died.

Yes, I still feel cheated.

While I'm always a little sad around his birthday, this one has loomed in my mind for a few weeks now. I think it may be because it's a milestone birthday. 60. While I felt like 55 was still firmly in middle age, even if it was at the tail end of it, 60, to my mind, seems to be the gateway to actually being old. It's at the youngest end of old, but it's old nonetheless, and it's kind of a big deal. I would like to be giving him crap about that now; when we addressed our age difference at all, it was mostly to tease each other about our age and youth, respectively, although he tended to comment on how old I was. He would've had a field day when I hit 40 this fall. And I would've reminded him he was still a helluva lot older than I, and a grandpa, and then there was the matter of his bifocals. Game, set, and match to moi.

Only he's not as much older than I as he used to be. The gap has narrowed, from 20 to 15 years now, and it will only get smaller. I may well surpass him, albeit later than a lot of my other young widowed friends and acquaintances who have already dealt with that personal milestone. And I don't like this. All these markers of time passing just remind me of what I'm (still) missing, what he's missing, what isn't happening.

I have been particularly annoyed by these new American Cancer Society "Happy Birthday" commercials, where they style themselves the "proud sponsors of more birthdays." A didn't die from cancer, and I certainly don't begrudge anyone more birthdays if they can manage them. It's just that someone I love isn't having anymore birthdays, and that fact is especially front-and-center for me at the moment, and dammit, I just don't need Celine Dion (who is oddly creepy to me, anyway) reminding me of what I don't have. It's a little of that early grief tenderness and self-focus on the emotional side, even if I know better on the intellectual side. I KNOW the American Cancer Society isn't doing anything on purpose with the intention of hurting me. However, as far as I'm concerned, they and the statin commercials can do me a favor and go far away from my TV set.

I'm not even that upset...it's just this heavy, poignant awareness that, shit, he's still dead. I'm still at it without him. I still miss him. Situation normal...for whatever that's worth.

It occurs to me that, had he not died when he did, his heart disease might've gone undiagnosed throughout these 5 years, and he could've had that fatal heart attack anytime. I could've lost him any minute; there is no guarantee I would've had these 5 years; clearly, the odds were against it. And though it wouldn't have saved me one minute of widow pain to have one more year, one more week, one more day, one more hour with him before he died, I still wish I'd had it. It'd never be enough, but it'd be more. And while I'm almost certain that being able to let go of that impossible desire for more of him is what could end this ache in my heart, this longing for what can't be, I don't have the first notion of how I would do that, or what it would cost me if I did.

You're only as old as you feel

2011-02-25T14:12:00.001-08:00

I was chatting with my guitar teacher the other day about yoga, and he was lamenting his lack of flexibility at the tender age of 29. I mentioned that he should get started now, or he'd been in rough shape by the time he was as old as I.

Evidently, that was the final "old" comment that tipped the scales, because he called me on it "Do you mind if I ask...you make comments all the time about being old...how old ARE you?" I told him I was 39, and he commented on how that was not so old, only 10 years older than himself. I told him I was older than I look..."I'm like Yoda...I'm 800 years old." I laughed as I said it, but I meant it. I feel that way often.

We moved on from there, on to actual guitar-related discussion, but the conversation stuck with me. First of all, it held up a mirror to me, pointing out that I probably make far too many age-related remarks to people (and it probably annoys both those older and younger than I). But what I've really been pondering is, why? Why is that a recurring motif with me?

The fact is, I don't feel 39, although I fully admit that having never been 39 before, this may well be what 39 feels like and I just don't know it. I feel so much older. If I had to put a number on it, I would say that widowhood added 10 years to my age, physically and mentally.

People sometimes are surprised when I tell them my age. I guess I look younger than the number (one of the benefits of being fat--it keeps your skin filled out), and I think older than most people expect of a thirtysomething, but since I'm me every day of my life, I know that I look and feel much older than I did, more than the actual years can account for. I was a dyed redhead when A died, having moved beyond the "pluckable grays" in my mid-twenties. When I finally stopped dyeing my hair for good in the year after he died, it was at least twice as gray as the roots had shown before he died, and the grays seem to be multiplying all the time since. And then there is the chronic pain, a problem that flared to crippling proportions within 6 months of A's death and which I'm still dealing with 4 1/2 years later, and may be for the rest of my days. On my best days, I am stiff and sore, and tired because of it. I never imagined there being such a physical response to grief; I knew I would hurt in my heart; I didn't realize the rest of my body would be affected as well, though I've since learned that that's common to the bereaved.

As for the mental aging, widowhood took a lot out of me, primarily patience for foolishness (not that I had much in the first place), and ignorance and naivete due to lack of experience. This leads to a bit of curmudgeonly reverse ageism where I'm pretty quick to dismiss or condescend to those younger than myself. It's a bad, presumptuous, uncompassionate habit, but one I'm not always aware I'm engaging in until the words have left my lips, which indicates to me that it's solidified into a life view to some extent; it's just too ready, too thoughtless, to be otherwise. I feel older than my peers, not only because I've been widowed (although that experience is a large part of it), but also because I've been with my partner twice as long as any of them have been with their own, bought 4 houses, had 2 careers, and have been living the life of an empty-nester for years now. And I've always been an introspective personal problem-solver, and have identified and worked through (or at least made peace with) a lot of my "stuff" when a lot of folks I know seemingly have yet to recognize they may have "stuff." I find myself expressing world-weary sighs and mentally washing my hands of young, inexperienced, or unenlightened hopeless causes on a regular basis.

I have become an old crank, it seems to me. But, to others, I'm still a youngish woman.

People want to argue with me when I comment on my "oldness," especially since so many of my friends are older than I. "You're just a baby!" they say. And while it's true that I am relatively young, it always feels dismissive to me, because I'm not. (Which is probably why the youngsters whose youth I comment on are annoyed, too. Maybe I should start by not calling them "youngsters.") I've lived through a hell of a lot (emphasis on the "hell") in the last several years, and it's taken a toll I can barely articulate. I'm struggling, even here, to string together the words that will describe what all the widows reading this will probably understand implicitly, but I couldn't for the life of me explain to someone who hadn't had similar experiences.

Perhaps the best comparison would be Westley's experience on the rack in the pit of despair in The Princess Bride. Count Rugen puts him on a machine that extracts years of life from its victims; he puts it on the lowest setting, 1 year, and it just about kills Westley. It takes a miracle for him to recover, and even so, though he looks mostly the same from the outside, he is weak. When A died and left me behind, it took 10 years of my life, I swear, or rather, fast-forwarded me 10 years. I feel it, quite literally, in my bones. It took my youth and my playfulness, my strength and my resilience, my innocence, and my patience, my hopefulness and my defenses against a world that is often puzzling, cruel, or wicked, to a degree I'm only now beginning to recognize and seek a remedy for. I have little hope of regaining my innocence; the nature of innocence precludes that. You cannot unring a bell, cannot unsee what you've seen. What I'm left wondering about, and praying for, is whether I can somehow rebuild the others in spite of that.

I often wonder who I would've been if I'd not been widowed at 34. Sometimes I think back, and that woman was enthusiastic about life and certain of her efficacy and a little insecure, despite outward appearances. She was fun, and carefree. Now I'm actually pretty secure in myself, but only situationally enthusiastic, and not certain about much, other than that my efficacy counts for very little in the grand scheme of things. I'm not entirely sure I know how to be fun anymore, and "carefree" has become "couldn't care less." In some ways, there is a settledness about my new mindset, a peace in acceptance...or resignation--maybe it's both--and that's not the worst thing in the world. But it does take a bit of the sparkle off life, in a lot of ways. If I haven't seen it all, I've seen more of it than I wanted to, and it has worn me out.

It occurs to me that perhaps the reason I make so many "old" comments at my own expense, or "young" comments at others', is because on some level, I want people to understand the change that has taken place within me. I want people to understand what life has cost me. I want to be acknowledged as a veteran in this battle from cradle to grave. I, like anyone, want to be seen. And while I cannot explain exactly what widowhood and other difficulties have done to me, to my life, to my relationships, "old," has become a sort of shorthand to describe the end results of the events in life that tend to make us tired and embittered and ready to be done, like some truly old people we've all known. I know life scars us all; I don't think I'm special in that regard. But I only have to live with me, and I'm trying hard to find a way to do that better, rather than bitter.

When I meet octogenerians who are still enjoying themselves and savoring life in general, despite having experienced all the things that drag me down today and more, I find myself envious and eager to know their secret to living with gusto still. Because I feel like a wimp compared to them. By the time you're 80, you've lost so much and so many; maybe more than one spouse; maybe children; friends for sure; you've had health problems. What have they learned that makes them still want to go out and dance through life, even if they need a cane or a walker to do it?

I need to know that. And my ignorance on that count is the one thing that reminds me that I am not truly old. Because if I were, maybe I'd have learned it, too. I'm half their age, and most days I feel indifferent at best (and worst) about throwing in the towel. Clearly, I'm missing something.

I suspect A would be disappointed in me, feeling this way. He had 20 years of life's ups and downs on me, had lost both his parents, many friends, and his marriage. And while he got down sometimes, he generally greeted the day happy to be alive. I loved that about him, and it rubbed off on me. I need that energy of his to keep me from slipping into in cynicism, apathy, and negativity, and I don't have it in anyone else. It's an ugly bit of irony that the man who was so integral to and nurturing of my positivity about life is, through his death, the reason I no longer have it. I'd like to honor him, and who he was, better, and in doing so, appreciate the miracle of being alive better for my own sake. I'm working on it, but the way is not clear to me at all.

What does a person do when she is too old to be young, and too young to be old? Too old to be deluded as to the reality of things, too young to be wise about same?

Worlds collide

2011-02-07T15:49:00.001-08:00

I do a lot of reading in the so-called "Fatosphere," a group of body acceptance blogs. There's a new one on the feed, from a young widow. I posted at her site, offering my condolences and directing her towards the ywbb. She hadn't posted much since, but today she posted that she's put up a dating profile, received quite a few replies, and been on two dates in the last week or so.

She is two months out.

I thought about leaving a comment warning her to be cautious; warning her that the worst is yet to come grief-wise; warning her that while interpersonal miracles do happen, they are rare and she needs to be careful of her heart, lest she hurt it even worse. At best, her odds are pretty bad.

But I think back to all the ugly back and forth on similar posts at the board, and wonder if it would make a difference; it never seemed to with all those other folks. I think about where I was at two months; I was IN a relationship, and still wasn't a fit partner or companion--I was a mess. And I think about how there are no hard fast rules...she could be the one that beats the house on this; she could have extraordinary spiritual steadiness and amazing coping skills and only need two months to move forward. I don't know her. And I'm the first to say that "people may be, but individuals aren't," about just about anything.

On the one hand, I feel the desire that all experienced folks have to spare those who come after them some of the pain they earned learning things the hard way. On the other hand, less and less do I feel like I want to advise others, or share my opinions. It's a combination of feeling like it's intrusive, condescending, and the realization that it most often falls on deaf ears anyway. That is, in part, why I finally walked away from the board.

I hope she'll be okay. I think she's probably headed for a crash. But in the end, she didn't ask me, and our mistakes are the only things we can truly call our own. Indeed, they are often our best teachers.

Lose-lose

2011-01-05T11:30:00.001-08:00

The pharmacy just called. "We filled a prescription for M last week, and were wondering how he was doing?"

I stumbled over the words in my head before I came out with, "We had to put him...let him go...on the 1st."

I could've done without that phone call, even though the lady on the other end was sympathetic.

I got rid of the medicines the day after he died. I almost did it the same day, but once I had them in my hands, I started bawling, so I put them back. They were staring at me from the counter, each and every one of them screaming failure. That was so different from A, where I wanted (and still want) to keep everything I had that was remotely connected to him, little though there was. But all those medicines, including the one from last week, all the trips to the doctor, all the procedures, and still I couldn't keep him here. I got rid of the usable stuff by sending it home with my friend the vet to give to a client who could use it, and the rest went into the trash because I couldn't stand to see it. You open up the fridge to grab a soda, and there's the insulin that won't be used, and the dozen bags of Pill Pockets that just arrived right before he died that have no purpose now. E says we can use them as treats for the other dogs, and he's right, but part of me just wants them gone because until they are, they will be a reminder of what we're not doing.

We're not doing meds and eye drops three times a day. We're not cutting up hot dogs to make sure M ate enough before getting his insulin. We're not guiding our little blind dog through doorways, and around furniture, and past rocks in the yard. There is so much time; our remaining dogs don't require special care--we let them out, and make sure their food and water bowls are full. That hasn't been the case for us for years now. It's weird.

Last night I came home to mail from the vet clinic. I suspected what it was, but half hoped for a moment that it was a note of condolence instead. But no; it was the bill for M's cremation. We don't even have his ashes back yet, but they were Johnny-on-the-spot with the bill. It's revolting. I haven't even moved his dog bed from next to ours yet; he spent his last night there, a night where we still had a shred of hope that he'd wake up doing better, and while it doesn't give me any comfort to see it, I recall how trying to move or change things too early really stung after A died. Eventually it will go into the wash, and then be given to the Shih Tzus for their own, but not yet. Maybe not until he's home again.

So many times, in blog posts and in conversations and in my own head, I lamented the suddenness of A's death, how I wasn't there at the bitterest end, how I was kept out of the aftermath of cleaning up and paying bills and settling the estate. Dogs don't have an estate, but there is settling up to do nonetheless, and it sucks. I always knew it wasn't easier on those widows who had nursed their loved one through a fatal illness...or rather, I imagined and suspected; I couldn't know. But I get it now. Would that I could've been spared the basis for comparison.

What's weird is that after all the crying on the day M died, I seem to have skipped over the middle part, the confusion, the outbursts of uncontrollable tears, and moved right to the resignation and the quiet sadness stage. I think it's maybe because I know all that pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments doesn't actually change anything. He was a little dog, nearly 12 years old, with multiple serious health problems. There was no surprise this time; we saw it coming miles away. I am sad, but far more functional than I was after A died, and I guess that's not too surprising, given the circumstances. But it's launched me right back into the pit of existential angst I had really only recently pulled myself out of. And I could've done without that, too.

He's gone, and I am heartbroken

2011-01-01T22:44:00.001-08:00

Today, we had to let our little boy go. That's how I say it, because I don't want to say that I killed him. I can't say "put to sleep," because he's not sleeping. I can't say "put down," because it makes him sound like some wild, dangerous animal that no one cares for or loves. We set him free from his pain and suffering, because to prolong it for our sakes would be cruel and wrong. And yet the whole thing feels so very wrong. I miss him so much, and hate that it came to this.

We had to make the decision that we never wanted to make, the one that of course we would make for ourselves if we could, but making it for anyone else...that's a whole other thing. And it doesn't matter how right it was, or how much my baby isn't suffering anymore, or that it was inevitable, or that we did all we could for him, more, my vet tells me, than most would've. It wasn't enough, and it's just unquestionably horrible. And I have learned once again that getting the chance to say goodbye doesn't making letting go one tiny bit easier. Watching the whole process doesn't make it make any more sense. I keep thinking that life is just merciless. People may be merciful, but life is not.

When we let our eldest dogter go, just 9 months after A died, I was still such a wreck from A's death, that there wasn't far to go in grieving for her, as well. I was already grieving; it hurt a whole hell of a lot to lose her, but I was already hurting so bad that it didn't hit me quite as hard. You can't fall down when you've been on the ground for months.

This has hit me really hard, probably, in part, because I have recovered. I spent most of the day in a stupor, or in bed, or in a stupor in bed. There's this numb place I can (evidently) go to where, like how you can make your eyes let go of focus and blur everything, I can let my mind blur it just enough that it isn't hammering me with its awful truth. I know it's there, but I'm not looking directly at it and I can breathe. And between those numb spaces, I cry until my chest hurts and my face aches, and I remember that this was how it was. I had managed to forget, to a certain extent, exactly how it felt. But grief has come back into my life again, and I know it so well. So well that I know that this is normal, that I will heal eventually, that the pain can be overcome, and that, in this moment, knowing that doesn't help a bit. It just keeps me from being scared that I will never be right again.

And yet I can't help but wonder...how many times can a heart break, before it is broken irreparably?

I've been trying

2010-12-28T21:49:00.001-08:00

You know, I've been trying. I've been trying for so long to wade out of the ennui, to shake off the feeling that it's all so futile. I've tried not to focus on the daily mountains of evidence that life is just a long, slow, disappointing slog to the blessed, welcoming grave, harder than it ought to be and punctuated only by the rarest, briefest moments of joy and beauty that are, as I'm feeling today, wholly inadequate to balance the hardship, pain, terror, grief, and bullshit that makes up so much of life, because, frankly, if I do, I've got nothin'. As I tell E, who is Captain Pessimism, bad shit is gonna happen whether I focus on it or not; at least if I focus on the good stuff, I have some light in the darkness. And you know, I thought I had it licked, or at least adequately back-burnered that I could go about my life and enjoy it to a reasonable degree.

But this week, I'm failing.

My dog, my little furry baby boy, is dying. My friend, his vet, says that if his behavior hasn't changed, then we should still only be thinking along treatment lines, because I broached the subject of this being the beginning of the end with her. He is peeing blood, and it isn't stopping; it's getting worse despite antibiotics. It's not just a UTI; we've known he's had a bladder mass since August, but he wasn't healthy enough to have the surgery then, as he has multiple health issues, including a possible adrenal tumor. We chose palliative care until the inevitable end. But I had really hoped the end would be further down the line, and now that I'm seeing the results of our thoughtful, informed decision, I'm second-guessing it. But it is probably too late. No one is telling me that he's dying; not yet. But I know this is the endgame. I know it is. And that'll bring my tally of dead beloveds to one man and two dogs in 4 1/2 years. Thanks, Universe. Thanks for killing the nascent bit of enthusiasm for life I had manage to cobble together, finally. And fuck you, too.

My health, at least on the orthopedic side, is little better than it's been in the last 5 years, which is to say, pretty shitty. I manage to stay mobile and reasonably upright through weekly chiropractic and massage treatments, but I honestly cannot remember a pain-free day. Not one. It's been years and years. The best I am able to manage is to make the pain tolerable, and it is probably only manageable because by now I have a pretty high pain tolerance. I am tired, and there is no help to be had. The only things I haven't tried are Reiki and illegal steroids. And believe me, I've considered both quite seriously.

And eating has become a problem; it seems like it makes me ill most of the time, even though I'm not eating any more or differently than ever. When you can't even enjoy a meal, or even a cookie, anymore, you start to wonder what's left.

And I hardly need to mention that I'm still a widow. Which isn't particularly pertinent to my current bout of exhaustion (though it does seem to flare when I am worn out, no doubt contributing to the previous post), and the self-pity it breeds, except in this: I worked so hard to heal; to bring myself back to life; to regain some semblance of myself to be a decent woman, daughter, friend, wife and engage in my world again; to have a sense of humor again; to not be so dangerously fragile in my feelings. And the question I keep asking myself is, "For what? For this?" Not that it's all so bad; it's just not that good, most of the time, and it just seems to be more of the same, day after day, for all of us. How does one keep herself going? I've had enough of the stick; I need some more fucking carrots. God, I need the whole damn salad bar.

Anybody got a crouton?

2010-12-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

"Is That All There Is?" by Sandra Bernhard

All you can do

2010-12-26T23:45:00.001-08:00

You know, sometimes, all you can do is cry. And I'm not talking about the body-wracking sobs that could go on for half an hour or more at a stretch of early grief, although it's true of those as well. I seem to be past that (though of course I never say never anymore.) I'm talking about the silent tears that slide out of the corners of your eyes as you remember, once the lights are out and the house is quiet and there is no protection from your mind, or your memories. I have yet to be able to determine which hurts more: the regrets of things unsaid or undone (or unsaid or undone enough), or the memories of the moments that were really, really good. It's the really, really good moments that make me cry most often.

I should be asleep, but I can't sleep, because that was me until I got up a few minutes ago, in the hopes that if I emptied my head, I could fall asleep eventually.

I remember some things so clearly that I can almost feel him in my arms, feel his lips on my cheek, hear his laughter. I go back to those moments like a safehouse, where for a minute I can just be there again, where it was all so good, and he was HERE, beautiful and strong and loving me, and I had no reason to cry in my bed once the lights went out. But I am not safe for long; it always backfires. Because what it comes down to, what it has always come down to since he died, is this:

I wanted more. I wanted more of him. I wanted more of who he was, and who I was with him, and the marvel of the two of us finding each other and it being so very good. I wanted so much more of him.

And the truth is, I still do. And that is why I suffer.

Because I still do not understand how a person can just disappear like he did. I understand that it happens, but I cannot comprehend this violent interruption of his and my conversation. I cannot stop wanting to talk to him and hold him and love him. And I know I'm absolutely powerless to change it. I cannot will the conversation to resume beyond the symbolic. All my wanting, and all my aching need, is entirely, stupidly futile against this reality. And I want to hurt this reality. I want to beat it with my fists and scratch it and make it bleed, because when I'm really and truly frustrated, that's the only impulse left. I cannot understand it, I cannot change it, and so I want to lash out physically.

And I can't even do that. I can't punch reality in its stupid nose, or kick it in its gut, (although it can do it to me, evidently). I can't do anything but be here and accept that he's dead. So I cry. I cry quietly in the dark so no one ever hears or knows. I cry because the immutable truths of the survivor never change. My life has changed around them, my soul and my self as well, and thank goodness, but after all the struggling, all the healing, all the time, at bedrock...I wanted more of him. I want more. And I can't have him. And that, all by itself, is enough to make a grown woman weep.

Damn

2010-12-14T17:28:00.000-08:00

I found out today, through an e-mailed newsletter of all things, that a man I knew through the local music scene died last Friday. We weren't close; I wouldn't even say we were friends. But we were friendly acquaintances, and he always seemed to appreciate my music. He was a hugger, and he did a lot for musicians in our community, of which he was one, too. He was a nice man, with a nice wife, and just like that, he is gone. I don't know the how of it. What I do know is that I am unexpectedly affected today by his passing; goosebumps and a heavy heart. I think that's because it was so unexpected (at least to me), and because he seemed to be of an age with A, which, in my estimation, remains too young. (I'm of the mind that anyone under the age of 75 is unjustly young to die.) I am reminded again of what I know only too well: That people just die sometimes. No warning; no appeal; no sense to it. It happens every damn day.

Ha.

2010-12-12T22:57:00.001-08:00

Looking for something else entirely tonight, I found an e-mail I'd sent to a friend of A's in November of 2006, just 4 months after he died. In it, I'm talking to her about how I was having some better days, and that I was hoping that the worst was over.

I can only laugh now, and pity that poor woman that was me. She was clearly out of her mind.

I suppose that after 4 months, things had already started changing, that I had already started healing compared to the shock and confusion I felt when it first happened. But I had no idea how long and hard the road would be; I had no idea what I was in for yet.

This is why I burned my journals; I don't want to know how bad it really was. I don't want to remember; 4 1/2 years have wrapped it in protective paper and put it safely away, and that is a blessing. I remember corresponding with author and poet Mark Doty after reading his book. He lost his partner some years ago, and he told me, widower to widow, that he couldn't really remember the pain itself; he can remember that it was horrible, but couldn't really conjure up the full horror of it now. When he told me that, I was sure it was impossible, because my pain then was so acute, I couldn't believe it. But I wanted to.

But as it turns out, he was right. We widows talk about how the pain of losing our beloveds is so terrible and terrifying that one's mind will not allow one to imagine it in advance; and it seems that the mind's protective instincts eventually come back again, and we cannot fully put ourselves back into the worst of it, even though we were there and don't really need to imagine it. Sometimes, I think I try just to test myself, to push the limits of my emotional muscles and see just how healed I might be, like someone testing a broken leg after the cast has been removed. When I do it, I have this vague feeling like remembering a nightmare...I remember the feelings I had at the time but I don't FEEL them anew in the remembering. And that, too, is a blessing. The healing is real. It really does happen.

Lost time and misty memory

2010-12-01T15:55:00.001-08:00

I put up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving this year, a little earlier than usual. I guess I was feeling a little Christmas. It's a little 4-foot pre-lit tree that I picked up (I think) the 3rd Christmas after A died. The first year, just 6 months after his death, I had no Christmas spirit. I bought a wreath from a co-worker whose kid was selling them for a fundraiser, stuck a candle in the middle of it, and called it good. In fact, I was impressed I'd managed that much. It was a depressing display, perfectly suited to a depressing holiday season. Christmas shopping was miserable as I passed up gift after gift that would've been perfect for A. I managed to do for E and the rest of my family, but mostly I just wanted it to be over.

The second year, I was amazed to discover I wanted to put up the tree, so I did. It was an artificial one we'd had for some years, pretty, but putzy in that you had to fluff each branch and stick it in the trunk, and it always took a couple hours to get it from box to beautiful. E has never been one for Christmas, so it was always my task alone to do. I never really minded putting the tree up, and always enjoyed it once the work was done, but taking it down was another matter. I've always, even before being widowed, hated taking down the tree, the decorations, the post-holiday letdown…taking down the tree meant it was well and truly over, and, when I was still living in the Upper Midwest, that there was nothing to look forward to but miserable, dark cold for another 4 months. Grief was still a constant companion that year, especially given the holidays, and putting up the tree only reminded me of Christmas 2004, when I put up the tree while talking to A on the phone the entire time, and taking it down just brought me further down when I still wasn't really that far up.

Last year, I decided I wanted all the joy of a Christmas tree and none of the hassle, so I picked up a two-piece pre-lit tree that took 5 minutes to set up, and was only half the size of the original tree, so it took no time at all to decorate. I only put my favorite ornaments on it, because that's all that fit, and left the rest in the boxes. It was so cute, and not the chore it had been in the past, but where I got really brilliant was at the end of the season: I realized that with such a small tree, I could put a Hefty bag over the top of the whole works and put the tree away, still decorated, until next year.

When I pulled it out this year and carefully eased the bag off, only 3 ornaments came loose, and I was pleased to see that the pack rat population that has been taking over the garage (despite all our best trapping efforts) had left it alone. Voila! Instant Christmas. I'm still congratulating myself on my awesome problem-solving on this one.

There was just one thing missing. The second Christmas after A died ended a year where I had been teaching myself to do pearl inlay, and along the way, I decided to make a memorial Christmas ornament for A. It was quite the project, and somewhat more important because it was really the last thing I could do for him. I didn't realize it at the time, but once I finished it, I knew it was the truth because I felt at loose ends, but also settled in my mind that there was nothing left to do but trudge forward down the grief road that, at that point, was still dark, riddled with bumps, detours, and blind alleys that I was still stumbling through.

It was my habit at the end of the holidays to take his ornament and hang it from his picture in my office at home the rest of the year until Christmas came around again. But sometime in the last year, I had jostled the picture, the ornament had fallen behind the cabinet it sat on, and I left it where it had fallen, because I wasn't in the mood to move furniture when it fell. That's how I remembered it, anyway. Time wore on, and I didn't really think that much about it until I got the tree out this year, and remembered that I had to fetch it out of there.

So once the tree was up, I went to my office to retrieve the ornament, which required my moving all the stuff that constitutes the ofrenda for A that I've created there off the cabinet first. I dusted things as I pulled them off. I sniffed the box of Irish Spring that I keep there, wiped down the first inlay projects I made and put there, moved the photos of him and my dog who died 9 months after he did, and other mementos, and pulled out the cabinet, only to find there was nothing behind it but dust.

I distinctly remembered the ornament falling. Where was it? Long story short, I ended up tearing apart the room, pulling all the furniture along it away from the wall, feeling under it, emptying cubbies to see if somehow it could be there, but I didn't find it. I looked at the tree again, examining it a few times, just in case I'd left it on after all last year, and couldn't find it.

I was not a happy camper. Those of you have read me for a long time know that losing things that belonged to A, or were touched by him, or merely symbolized him (or us), have been a painful recurring theme in my journey. I just couldn't believe I'd lost yet another.

I was upset, but not undone. I was stressed that it was missing, but not sick. I wanted that ornament on my tree, and had no idea where it could be, but in the end, I knew I could live without it if I had to; I've learned to live without him because I have to. I kind of marveled at my own reaction. This was so different from the "Missing Bookmark Panic of Early 2007" that left me in tears. This time, unhappy about it as I was, I was able to accept that it would probably turn up eventually if I cared to ransack all the Christmas boxes in the garage, and if it didn't, well, it sucks, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I wasn't going to be able to recreate it even if I was inclined to, and I wasn't really inclined to. There is something about the alchemy of a moment that gives rise to action and ritual that cannot be reproduced later. A different person made that ornament; the person I am now wouldn't be able to; it would seem inauthentic…hollow, somehow.

It's amazing how so many "crises" are met by me without much more than a shrug now. Perspective. I haz it.

I sent up a little prayer to A and said, "If you can help me find it, I'd really appreciate it."

I was sitting around reading last night, in view of the tree. At some point I decided to check the tree one more time, very carefully and methodically, to see if I'd missed the ornament somehow. This time, I didn't look for the ornament, though; I looked for the red ribbon it hung from, as very few of my ornaments hang from ribbon at all. And I found it almost immediately, half-way from the top of the tree, and tucked in deep, and I can't tell you how relieved I was that it was no longer lost, and that it was where it should be.

Did A help me find it? Maybe. On this one I'm inclined to think I just missed it, but one never knows. All I can guess is that I dropped it behind the cabinet two years ago, and fished it out last year after all, because I haven't touched that tree since. But memory is a funny thing, especially when grief is involved, and while I'm chagrined that my memory messed up the timeline like that, I am not terribly surprised. I remember so little of those first two years after he died, and what I do remember is long periods of feeling wooden and dead inside, punctuated by hazy fragments of painful memory. It's happened before; I suppose it may happen again.

The whole experience, though, was like a microscopic (and less emotionally fraught) slice of my entire widow journey: Something is lost, and not where I was sure it was and would remain; I am baffled and panicked and sad; eventually, I accept that I will have to live without it, and go on with my life; and even though I cannot see or find it, turns out it's been there all along, and not really lost at all, despite all appearances to the contrary. I suppose the fact that I can even see it that way is meaningful.

Old pals and new words for constant feelings

2010-11-22T14:05:00.001-08:00

I have been away from the widow board for 6 months now, so I was surprised yesterday when I received a PM from a member there that I had talked to in PMs and via various threads when I was still active. Apparently, I was missed by one person, but my absence from the board had exactly the effect there that I imagined it would: none. It WAS the right time for me to leave, and these 6 months have proven to me the correctness of that choice for my mental and emotional well-being.

After I responded to her, I took a look at the main board and saw a few of the old names, and a lot of new ones. This wasn't surprising, but sad nonetheless: there are always new widows. I saw all the same kinds of topics—the thread titles with the swearing in the new widow section, the calmer ones in the BAG section. Same old shit-stirrers up to their usual antics. Same majority of people who really just want to help each other and themselves get through the horror. It was like walking into someone else's family reunion: all the same dynamics, even if the names and faces are different.

I realized, as I slipped back into widow mode in talking to my sister widow, that I had indeed managed to slip out of it in these 6 months. I think of myself more as a bereaved person than a widow at this point; this is probably in large part due to the fact that the role of Widow was largely denied to me. The emotional loss was, and is, the same, but the way I navigated through my days, and society, in my grief was necessarily very different. In hindsight, I can see that there were good and bad aspects to that. I don't think if I traded my experiences for a more conventional widowhood that I would've come out ahead; neither would the person I traded with. It is what it is, and for the most part, I'm able to accept that now.

In any case, being at the widow board reinforced my being a widow every day for me, and being away allowed it to evaporate to a large extent, and make room for me to be more present to the rest of my life. And yet, I realized as I wrote back and forth with my former boardmate, that my widowhood—the feelings, the experiences, the hurts, the outrages, the empathy—was easily accessible at will after all. The distance between me and it can be bridged in a heartbeat, if I choose. No adjustment, no awkwardness, and, for the most part, no particular pain. I suppose that means that I have integrated this…that what was an experience to get through has now become a state of being, or one aspect of it, anyway. That is a good thing, I think. I have more than once wondered if I'd run out of compassion, and maybe I have not.

The widow who contacted me is facing her one year milestone soon. I was kind of shocked, as I guess I hadn't realized she was so early out; I was nearly 4 years out when I left, and I'm half-way to 5 now. So strange. She said she may be coming to the end of her run at the board already…she's starting to feel it. I said that that's the way it is…a good support is one that allows you to eventually walk without it, or is flexible enough to morph into something else that is more appropriate for your needs. There will always be 10-year and 4-year and 1-year and new widows, and each "class" will graduate into helping the one behind it, while others graduate to not having, or needing, to be active participants anymore. And some bodhisattvas will stay and stay until everyone is healed, as much as is possible. Those people have touched more lives and done more good than they even suspect. I'm certain of it.

I did read all of one thread, on the BAG forum, where someone asked if people still thought of their beloveds every day, and how that manifested for them. The answered varied, as did the number of months and years out each respondent was. For me, the answer is "yes," and that is by choice. I suppose if I put away all the pictures, the answer might well become different, but I don't want that. I don't force myself to think about him, and I don't force myself not to. It comes as it does, with whatever emotional cargo, and I deal with it.

I recently have been made aware of a word that describes perfectly (in Portuguese, if not English) the feeling that so often accompanies me in regards to A now. It's a word that I had seen for years in music…Brazilian music, actually, that A himself gave me: Saudade

"Saudade" is a longing for something or someone that is gone, that may return some day in the distant future, but it is a future so very distant, and so uncertain, as to make virtually no difference to the present.

I miss him. I long for him. I really do believe that we will be reunited on the same plane at some point, once I die, though what that existence will be like, I haven't even the beginning of a clue. And while that belief has given me hope and strength to survive and heal, I have to say at this point that it isn't much sustenance for the long haul. It will be true (or not) regardless of how I get through the rest of my days—whether I do so healed and whole, or broken and bitter. I don't think I am the latter, and I don't think I'm in danger of becoming it, at least not at this point. But still, the longing remains because he remains absent and out of reach. I do not grieve for him every day, but I miss him every day. When you've had the pleasure of the best company in the world in someone, there's really no way around that.

Saudade. The wiki article linked above said that one researcher deemed the word the 7th hardest expression to translate into English. I find that so apropos, as the experience, especially the emotional experience of significant bereavement like widowhood, is equally hard to translate to people who have not yet had the opportunity to learn the language.

Better than nothing?

2010-11-13T20:24:00.001-08:00

I had a nightmare about A last night. I haven't really had an actual nightmare about him in all these years but for one early on that was clearly about my anxiety about him being alone for 2 whole days before I called the police to find him. I really don't know where this one came from. I'll spare you the dream minutiae that is always tedious for someone being told a dream, but there'd been a freak accident on a beach, and E and I were there, and I went with A to the ER, where they determined he might've had a heart attack. He was trying to unhook himself from monitors and such and I was trying to get him to calm down and stay so he could get help. I was terrified and panicked.

I remembered the dream when I woke up, and as awful as it was, I still had this odd sense that I was glad I dreamed about him, even if it was this. That I would've rather have been panicked and terrified with him in a dreamworld ER than not to have been with him at all. And 12 hours later, that feeling is still with me.

That's how much I miss him. I miss him so much that a nightmare with him is better than the reality without him.

Dead man is dead: Anger redux

2010-10-20T11:44:00.001-07:00

As I have mentioned here before, right after A died, I felt like I got a lot of communication from him; lots and lots of signs, and a couple actual visits where his presence was undeniable. And I've talked about how much that helped me heal, because I realized that he wasn't gone forever, that he just hadn't ceased to exist, and that we'd probably run into each other somehow once I shuffled off this mortal coil. And I've lamented how, as time has worn on, the signs have become less frequent, dreams of him rare, and the visits? Those disappeared within the first year.

On an intellectual and metaphysical level, all that makes sense to me. I have healed; if life goes on, we have to assume it doesn't involve our loved ones who have crossed over sitting around twiddling their ghost thumbs waiting for us to show up. Life goes on for us and for them.

But I have been sad to feel him slipping away. I have so little of him now, that to lose even the wisps of him that remain to me seems like insult to injury. But I realized yesterday that sad isn't all I'm feeling about it. I realized that I'm angry, too. Because yet another level of what death means to me, on this side of it, is sinking in: When people die, they leave you. And they leave you again and again beyond the first hit.

This may seem self-evident, and something I should've dealt with in the early years of my grief (which, I could argue, is still now; I mean earliest years). And you know, I did, but that doesn't mean it's a once-and-done kind of thing.

Because sometimes in the dark of night, in the quiet of my own mind, I speak to him and say, "You know, if you wanted to come by in dreams, I'd really love to see you." And he doesn't come. He almost never comes. And the next morning, I am hurt, and sad, and angry. "HOW DARE YOU LEAVE ME FOR GOOD?" "HOW DARE YOU TAKE WHAT LITTLE I HAD LEFT OF YOU AWAY FROM ME?" "HOW DARE YOU WITHHOLD YOURSELF FROM ME LIKE THAT?"

I don't care about the rules of the universe. I don't care about logic. I don't care if it's absolutely nuts to expect to communicate across the veil. What I care about is that I am calling for him and he isn't answering.

Jerk.

If he had never done it, I guess I wouldn't miss it. (And if he hadn't, I don't know what I would've become, or how crooked or hopeless my path to healing would've been.) But because he did, and because I know it in my bones that he did, and could, then I have to wonder why he can't, or won't, now. And I don't get those answers; there's no explanation yet again for his disappearance, just like there wasn't when he died. This echoes that, and I wonder yet again why I received such gifts, of the man, of the messages once the man died, only to have them taken away without warning or justification.

And it pisses me off. I am angry. He left his baby. Twice. And he couldn't be arsed to even let me know he was going, either time.

They leave you again and again. They leave you as their bodies go into the ground or into the flame. They leave you when you can finally move their books. They leave you when their stuff goes to Goodwill and the dump. They leave you as their families fall away. They leave you as memories fade, and you can't quite remember the sound of their voice. They leave you when you stop feeling their presence in your day and in your dreams. And with each leaving, you sink into a new, deeper understanding of what "dead" really means, what "for the rest of your life" really means.

What it means for me is that I cannot hold tight forever to the life preserver he threw me after he died. I thought I could, but evidently, someone, maybe him, has gently pried my arms from it and walked away with it, leaving me on the deck to figure out what they meant by that. I thought I would have it with me every day going forward; I thought it, that he, would be my secret companion, that death didn't count for me quite as much because we had this connection that transcended death; that I had a back-channel I could rely on when the missing him became too much, as it does from time to time.

And maybe we do. And maybe it's true. But what is also true is that I don't have my life preserver near to hand anymore, and while I do know how to swim, while I may not be drowning and don't strictly need it, I want it…just in case. Because nobody tells me nothin' about how this life and death business works, and I want all possible resources at my disposal to deal with it. And more than that, I want him, or whatever part of him I can still have. And memories are all I seem to be allowed, after all.

Not used to being used to it

2010-10-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

Nothing surprises me about widowhood anymore, other than that I am still so often surprised at how I'm not surprised anymore.

Parse that, will ya?

At lunch today, I was packing up my guitar and accoutrements because I have my lesson right after work. As is my habit, I kissed my fingers and touched them to the glass of the picture frame that holds one of my favorite (and somewhat visually prescient) photos of A. And as I walked out of the room, I shook my head at how normal that had become. That it didn't even have much emotional content beyond "Hi, sweetie, I love ya!"

This is normal: I am in love with a dead man whom I kiss by proxy through glass, and that's just how it is.

I suppose this is where I tell myself I think too much. This is where I remind myself that this is what I suffered so much for, what I worked so hard for—to create a new kind of relationship with my sweetie under our new circumstances so that I could bear to keep breathing without a pain in my chest, an ache in my heart, and guilt in my soul.

I've done it. I kiss his picture on my way out the door, with a breezy mental "I love you," in contrast to those teary 5-10-minute goodbyes every night in the early days after he died where I stared at his picture through flooded eyes and asked for the umpteenth time "Why?" It's so strange.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not complaining. I wouldn't go back to that pain again for anything; a less acute version of it finds me often enough as it is. But I can't help but be astonished at what I've gotten used to, and sometimes the surreality of it just smacks me between the eyes. In those moments, I am startled again that this story is not just any story, it's MY story. This all really happened. To me! It's still happening to me, because I'm still happening. I wonder if there's a part of me that will always stand back from my life and say "no way…no fucking way" in total disbelief.

Life, for all its mundanity and habit and sheer endurance, blows my mind on a regular basis.

Sign

2010-09-28T20:34:00.001-07:00

I walked out of my house yesterday morning to see a truck from a company with the same name as A's company. It's named after what I presume is not an uncommon term in businesses that build things, but nonetheless, of all the companies in town, and all the houses it could've parked in front of (they were actually working at my neighbor's house), there it was, in front of mine. And again today, too. And it heartened me. A always claimed he was a nudger, and it's little nudges like this that give me hope, hope enough to believe there's a point to all this, and that some day we'll laugh about it together.

Tempus fidgets

2010-09-27T10:25:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was A's granddaughter's 6th birthday, and while I knew it was coming, I hadn't given it much thought. A's daughter chose to have no contact with me beyond the initial phone call confirming what I already feared was true. I haven't been in contact with the rest of the family for probably two years now, maybe more, and I don't expect that to change. I've become an expert at not thinking about things that I know are going to hurt.

I was out shopping with a friend that day, when my cellphone rang. It was A, telling me that he was speeding south for his daughter's induction to hang out with the waiting room with other family, and that he'd washed his truck for the occasion. A and I had known each other just a few months at that point, but our friendship had recently turned into something more. I felt special at the time that I was the one he wanted to call and tell his good news. I still feel special that he did.

He was smitten with his new granddaughter, and delighted to be grandpa. He sent me all the new pictures of the baby that he got from his daughter. Some of my favorite ones of him are pictures of him and her playing, including the one on my desk at work; his face, and hers, are pure joy. I was used to getting frequent grandfatherly updates, but that all stopped once he died. And a little girl I had come to love through him just disappeared from my life. And the grandson that was on the way when A passed never was a part of my life; I was lucky to find out from A's friend when the boy was born.

Each year, I acknowledge her birthday, sending out love and a silent "happy birthday" to her. She was almost 2 when he died, a happy toddler. He had spent the weekend before he died with her and her folks; they'd gone to the zoo and had a great time, and he regaled me with stories of monkey imitations, as well as Elmo video marathons and tea parties, when he returned. She had a grandpa who loved her fiercely; I wonder if she even remembers him. I sure hope so, but I have to wonder.

And now she's 6, and probably started 1st grade this year, and it blows my mind. While I've changed a lot on the inside in the last 4 years, my life as it appears on the outside is much the same at 38 as it was at 32. We just don't change that much when we get older. But the life changes between 2 and 6 are vast; A's granddaughter has gone from toddler to schoolgirl, a baby to a real person. And that growth seems to underline just how long he's been gone in a way that numbers cannot.

I imagine that's an additional pain that widows with children deal with all the time. Their kids change so much, doing so many new things, that it can only emphasize the passage of time. It's easy enough to see the subtle signs of the years in your own face in the mirror—the new lines, the new grays, the new aches and pains—but they are not as drastic, not as surprising, I would guess, as seeing that your child has grown up by a quantum leap every time you turn around.

I suppose this is the nature of things. Grandfathers die and little girls grow up. But sometimes you live enough, and long enough, that academic truths like these become achingly poignant realities.

"To some I'm worse than an embarrassment, I am a death's head."--C.S. Lewis

2010-09-15T17:09:00.001-07:00

E and I were talking the other night, discussing the future, finances, and what the possibilities might be. I suggested to him that if we really wanted to cut costs, we could sell the house down the road and live in a tiny apartment. He responded that that would be impossible with 4 dogs, and I commented that 6 years from now, we'd have 3 dogs at most, because our eldest is very ill. He's been dealing with diabetes for almost 2 years now, and despite our vigilant treatment, the complications are getting worse. Beyond that, he has 2 likely malignant tumors, one of which would be inoperable and largely untreatable. We've decided on palliative care and enjoying what time we have with him. It is highly unlikely he will make it another 2 years, let alone 6.

But it started a bit of a fight.

"Why do you have to say that to me?" E asked. He is upset by any commentary indicating that our dogs will not live forever.

"Well, it's not like you don't know, right?"

"Yes, I know, but I don't want to hear it. Not everyone lives under a spectre of death, you know."

It came across as criticism to me, the "like you do" implied, which is how I believe it was intended.

"Yes, everyone does, because everyone and everything will die. What varies is people's willingness to acknowledge that reality."

"I know that everything does. It doesn't bother me; I don't think about it; I don't want to think about it; I can't do anything about it anyway, so I see no point in thinking about it. And you don't have to say it."

I thought to point out that if it didn't bother him, talking about it shouldn't bother him, either, but I didn't want to continue the argument, and my feelings were a little hurt. Hurt enough that I'm still thinking about it 2 days later, and writing it out.

Do live under a spectre of death? I didn't think so, but honestly, I don't know. And if I do, doesn't he have any sympathy for the circumstances that made that so?

To me, "living under the spectre of death" implies that I live in constant fear of death, see danger around every corner, and worry about dying. I don't think that's true. I don't fear death, but I do recognize that it is everywhere, that it is inevitable, and there's no sense running from it, in life or in conversation. I live in resolute acceptance that death will touch me again and again, as long as live. I never wanted to talk about death with A; turns out, avoidance of the topic provides no prophylactic benefit whatsoever.

It's funny, really; so many people will tell a widow that s/he needs to accept the death of her/his beloved. What they don't recognize (and what the griever may not either, for awhile,) is that to accept the death of your beloved is to accept death, period. Once you've reckoned with a very painful personal death, the mortality of every living thing becomes a matter of fact, and can and will be talked about like the weather. At least, that's how it's been for me, but the widdas I know seem to be equally matter-of-fact; when life rips the blinders off, you can't really put them back on. I suppose you could, but the force of will that kind of long-term denial would require is not something I'm willing to invest in. I left my sense of death being a taboo subject in the smoking rubble of my pre-widowhood beliefs in a sensible, just world, like the belief that physically active men of 55 don't just drop dead without warning one day, and the one where good people in love are immune to all manner of badness and sadness, and the belief that all the people who love you will totally be there for you in your darkest hour and the many that follow it.

My acceptance of death isn't at issue here, in my opinion; it's theirs.

I didn't have any choice in the matter; Death visited me in a personally devastating way when A died. Death could no longer be something that happened to other people. Of course, E didn't have the relationship with A that I did, and therefore, while he was sorry for me, he didn't grieve; he didn't have to. And he didn't embark upon the intimate relationship with the concept of death and the reality of being a survivor and a universe that cracked open when A left that I did. To him, I live under the spectre of death. To me, he is an innocent, and lacking in empathy and patience with my perspective, as innocents often are.

It is true that death is on my mind a lot. (They say that's true of Scorpios, but I honestly cannot remember how often death figured into my thoughts before A died; I have no basis for comparison anymore, it's been so long.) A's death, still, certainly. The possibility of death among the ill and aged people I love. Death in the world. The seeming randomness of it all. Sometimes it's my own, in those moments when I just feel so tired out by and bored with this life. Lately I keep thinking that it was the worst thing possible for me to discover that I was an eternal being; when I was an atheist with no expectation of continuing beyond my three score and ten, every moment mattered. No moments here matter all that much if life is infinite and ongoing, especially when the bad or neutral moments vastly outweigh the great ones. There's no rush when eternity is yours. My ability to appreciate the mundane (in all senses of the word) waxes and wanes, and although I am thoroughly delighted to sniff the roses in the pots in front of my house, somehow, that moment of delight is no match for the drudgery of the rest of the day. If that's a sample of life, you can do the emotional math.

In any case, if death is merely a doorway (and even if it isn't), if it is a natural part of life as much as birth is, then we should be able to talk about it as openly as we do birth. For Pete's sake, pregnant ladies are habitual oversharers, and they are encouraged to be; I see baby pictures taken in utero, and the whole world, for better and worse, discusses this particular passage, in gory detail, right down to how many stitches the episiotomy took. But if you matter-of-factly discuss the inevitable death of your dog, or anyone else, well, the world gets angry at you for being so ill-mannered, like you just took a dump on their best Persian rug.

I guess that while I learned pretty quickly that no one wanted to hear about my grief and my loss and my sweetie after whatever they determined was a decent interval, I didn't realize that the moratorium extended to death in general. I should have, because I remember not wanting to talk about it either. But my death filter was shattered when I was widowed, and I'll talk about it without a thought. I'll talk about death, and heart disease, and prognoses, and life insurance, and wills. And this makes uninitiated people immensely squeamish and fidgety.

But it doesn't bother them.

What to do, then? I can't unknow what I know, can't stop feeling what I feel. E cannot know what he's never experienced, and he's pretty typically male when it comes to dealing with feelings, anyway. Am I obsessed with death, or just through my experiences, totally in touch with it, unable to keep it at a safe distance anymore? I think of what Octavio Paz said about Mexicans' experience of la muerte, and that, unlike most of the world, they don't fear it, but rather, the Mexican "chases after it, mocks it, courts it, hugs it, sleeps with it; it is his favorite plaything and his most lasting love." I don't love death, but I love someone who died, and I am constantly considering it in many lights. The alternative was to pretend, to avoid, to fear it. And I think some bereaved folks choose that path. Maybe it works for them, but I have my doubts, and I know it wouldn't work for me. I know, because I tried it time and again, and it failed me time and again.

I don't have a lot of patience with a world (or a husband) who wants to put its fingers in its collective ears and say "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU"; my response to that is to think, "Don't be an idiot." And maybe it's because not only are they being silly, because reality is reality, but also because in doing so, they deny my experience, deny my perspective, and basically tell me who I've become and what I have to say about it is unwelcome in society. In doing so, they tell me to shut up and go away. Is my frank acknowledgement of the death's existence any less valid than their denial of it? I don't think so.

I'd like to ask some of the widows who are further out how death figures into their thoughts now. Not just the death of the person you loved, but Death, in all its forms and side-effects. Am I obsessed? Or am I just a widow?

Dreams and grace

2010-08-25T12:43:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I wake up feeling like A has been near me somehow. I've come to learn that that feeling means that I have probably dreamed about him. It's not always easy for me to recall those dreams (or any dreams), though, so when I have that feeling, I try to stay in that quiet half-awake place to see if it'll come to me. I have so few dreams of A that I don't want to miss a one; I kept a dream journal over a year to see if it would help me remember my dreams better. I don't know if it helped or not. I am well into middle-age and all the joys it brings these days; I forget a lot of things, dreams included.

I woke up this morning feeling like he'd been close, and it took me awhile to tease the circumstances out of my foggy brain. It was most definitely a dream; I've had a few that I believe were visitations, but those mostly happened in the first year after he died. He has made himself pretty scarce; so scarce that even my own mind, full of wishes and frustrated desires for him to be there, doesn't seem to conjure him up.

In my dream, a man who looked just like A, although a little fuller in the face, was hanging out with a coworker of mine in the corner office near my cubicle at work. For some reason, he was sitting on the floor instead of in a chair. Every time I had to go talk to her, I saw this man, and I surreptitiously stared. He was polite, but we were strangers, and we didn't really speak beyond greetings. I would go back to my desk and muse on how uncanny the resemblance was, and how weird it was that he wasn't my A.

As the dream came back to me in pieces, lyrics for a possible song drifted through my mind, something about "I can't touch you, I can't reach you," because even though the man in the dream looked just like A, it wasn't him. I couldn't just reach out and touch him; it wouldn't be right.

It was this I pondered as I chewed my raisin bran before work this morning, and it all kind of came together: this is my reality. I have images of him, and I have memories, and they are so close—always right there—but I cannot touch him; I cannot reach him. He is so real in my head and my heart, but he is completely beyond contact.

This is what I find maddening.

And I guess my subconscious self is struggling with it, too. It has defined the problem for me, but, as usual, hasn't offered any solutions. Solutions are thin on the ground on Planet Survivor.

I can point precisely to the place in my chest, just above the solar plexus, that feels weird when I think about him, when I think about losing him, or rather, having lost him, when I think about how much I miss him. It just never goes away. The missing him never goes away, and lately, I've been feeling it palpably. I've been awash in random, startlingly clear memories and fantasies of him doing everyday things. I've been thinking strange A-related things apropos of nothing, like the other day when I was looking at his picture and I thought, "Oh my god…you were cremated!" Like I had forgotten, and then suddenly remembered what all this being dead meant, all the little creepy details.

I fell asleep the other night asking him, asking myself, asking the universe, "What else can I do? What else can I do to heal that I haven't yet done? What am I missing?" I'm better…but I can't help but feel like I'm not better ENOUGH. Not by anyone else's standards, but by my own. It just seems to me that if there is nothing I can do about his being dead, then I should at least be allowed a greater peace in his absence than I am managing.

Where's the grace?

The wound that never heals

2010-08-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

I guess it's been building for a couple of days, but circumstances conspired this morning to bring the ache for him to a head. I saw a headline that a man had leaped to his death from the roof of the Saratoga Mountain Winery, in the middle of a show by the Swell Season. It was no doubt shocking and painful for everyone there, not to mention the man's friend who was in the audience, and his family that has to live with the aftermath of not only the death of their loved one, but a very public suicide and the attendant news coverage that goes with it. But my sadness for them was trumped by sadness that was a little more selfish.

A saw many shows there with his pals, and the combination of death and the venue brought A front and center, and I did something I haven't done in awhile. Every now and again, I google him, partly to see if his family has put anything new out there about him...an in memoriam ad or something, and (as that hasn't happened since his obituary), just to see if he's still there. Mostly, I find listings for his business, and the amazing, sometimes frustrating, preservative powers of the internet comfort me. The world hasn't forgotten him, or at least, the internet hasn't, and as long as his name continues to show up on a search, there is proof beyond the broken-hearted souls who remember and miss him that he really was here. Not that anyone goes looking for him but me. It's not exactly a sane thing to do, but still I do it once in awhile, still attempting to gather what threads there are of him that I do not have and hold them close to me because, what else do I have?

I did find a different listing than had come up before--one for some voter info website that had him listed at an address he hadn't lived at for a year and a half when he died. It had him listed as a Democrat, and while of course that would be the case, I don't know that we ever discussed what we were registered as, politically, though we discussed politics and the state of the nation all the time.

At the same time, it hurts to know that the information the web has him is so tragically out-of-date, a glimmer, a shade, of what was, so far from what is.

Other thing that has conspired against me is the random e-mail from one of my father's cousin's who found me on the web; this cousin, by my math, was born a year after A, but the cousin is still here. It makes me wonder yet again about the mortal lottery that takes some and leaves others.

I miss him. I miss him. I miss him.

Perspective: I haz it

2010-08-16T16:29:00.001-07:00

Last week, and continuing somewhat into this week was, as my husband put it, "the worst week we've had in a long time." And while that's true to some extent, I always raise an eyebrow (mentally...I can't actually pull a Spock physically--they both go up) when someone announces something as "the worst."

The last week or so has been unquestionably shitty, between emergency vet visits for my dog, to two failed attempts to have surgery, to the realization that surgery probably isn't in the cards for him and we're facing an end that will arrive sooner than later, but how soon we cannot guess. And now E is ill; he'll be okay in time, but in the meantime, he's miserable, and we didn't need more misery on top of all that's going on.

But still...is it the worst? Oh hell no. Not by a long-shot. This is life on planet earth: a fair amount of "shitty" is to be expected. I made some quiet noises to E about how my view of "the worst" might vary from his own, and he knew what I was talking about, and said that's why he qualified his comments by saying "in a long time." I thought about debating "long time" with him, as 4 years doesn't seem that long ago to me, frankly, but decided in the name of marital harmony to let that one pass.

I wondered, as I moved through my grief, if my new perspective as to what qualified as a big deal would eventually erode and I'd start bitching about little, stupid things like I used to. And I probably do, but a lot less than I did before I was widowed. I get annoyed, like anyone, but I can let it go pretty easily. "Yeah, it sucks. Next!" This is one of those "blessings of grief" the books like to talk about. When you have experienced horrible circumstances, and the pain of surviving through them, everything else looks like small potatoes by comparison. Also, I think in discovering that you have the ability to keep going when you hurt inside, when you hurt inside more than you ever could've imagined hurting, you learn your true mettle, and it's harder to get overwhelmed when bad things just keep piling on.

That is not to say I enjoy it, or greet these challenges with a smile and open arms, for they surely do not please me in the least. But I sigh and get through it because I have learned how to sigh and get through things by sighing and getting through THE thing. I survived my love's death, and through it, I learned that the people and critters I love are going to die, too. That it is almost entirely out of my hands. That I will get through it, and, in time, probably without much screaming and gnashing of teeth, because that just doesn't do any good. It doesn't make me feel better, it doesn't help me cope, it doesn't get done what has to get done.

Sometimes it's trying to me that other folks are gnashing their teeth, though. They lack the perspective I paid so dearly for, bless their hearts. In E's case, I realize that I'd have to be dead for him to get it, which really doesn't sound like too good a deal for me, then. Still, I wouldn't mind too much if everyone in general could chill and see that this, too, shall pass. In this, I see my yearning for peace. Ever since A died, peace is all I want. Joy is nice, happiness is groovy, but peace...peace is what my soul aches for.

Prescience

2010-07-29T11:20:00.001-07:00

I was searching old e-mails this morning looking for a wedding picture of my folks', who have a milestone anniversary coming up on Sunday. I thought I'd sent it to someone, and I searched on "wedding." Lots of e-mails came up, but one in particular caught my eye. It was one of several I'd sent to a dear friend just a day after I found out A had died. In the first response, he said this: "But for some reason, call it my lack of faith in humankind, I can easily see them dismissing your role in the last several years of [A's] life. This is what worries me." He was talking about A's family, who had said they wanted to meet me. I assured him that they had been kind so far, but several volleys back and forth later, I was writing about how they excluded me from the funeral.

My friend had been right, and just reading about it is so hard, even 4 years later. I don't know why I kept reading; the raw grief and the foreshadowing of what ultimately happened with his family...it made me feel sick to my stomach. I'm kind of surprised that the e-mails I wrote were as coherent as they were; maybe that was the shock, because soon enough, I would feel like I'd lost my mind. I lost so much. I feel so bad for that woman who wrote those e-mails. It's me, of course, but not.

In other news, I had a buddy at breakfast this morning. Outside the dining room window, framed perfectly in the middle and sitting on a branch, was a hummingbird. That first year after A died, I came to be able to count on having a hummingbird join me for nearly every meal I ate in there, sitting in much the same spot. I knew it was from him. But it hasn't happened in a long, long time. So it was especially nice this morning; I've been missing him more than usual lately. And I guess he knows.

Change of template

2010-07-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

When I checked on my blog tonight, I noticed that my old template had tanked, and that Blogger itself had new options, so I decided to peruse them. The very last one was this one, and clearly, it was meant for me, for this blog in particular. There are no coincidences.

Smile

2010-07-27T16:25:00.001-07:00

Last week, E and I joined some folks from the online bulletin board where I met A in Vegas, where we got to visit and get to know each other in meatspace. It was a nice enough time. I thought often how, had he been here, A would've shown up, too.

Last night, I got a private message from one of the participants about photos of the gathering. I took exactly 3, 2 of which were of my gorgeous bathroom; I just didn't feel like carrying a camera around, and I wasn't going to post them anyway. I'm anonymous at all my bulletin boards, as are most of the others in our group. I explained that to him, and he said he was sorry I wouldn't, sorry that people would miss out on my "wonderful smile."

I appreciated the compliment. No one has complimented my smile since A; no one has commented on it at all except for noting its absence or limited enthusiasm in the last 4 years. A loved my smile, loved making me laugh, and he told me so. He appreciated my smile, and he appreciated me in a way more whole than anyone has my whole life. I always felt like I sparkled in his eyes. Maybe that's because it was new love, and maybe now it would be different. I don't know. But I loved that feeling, and loved him even more for making me feel...special.

I also appreciated the compliment because it may indicate that I have learned to smile fully again. I caught myself many times while we were there laughing loudly; maybe too loudly, I wondered, but brushed it off. Laughter should be loud, and full, and uninhibited, and echo across a world where we have so much reason to weep. I have earned it.

Since Vegas, and last night's PM, though, I find A is on my mind a lot, and that I'm given to conjuring up images of him in my head, both memories of my own and imagining him in situations I never saw him in. Just bringing him here, to me. I am okay, as I told the one person who asked (she, too, is a board widow, but without the support system I've been lucky to have from a widda posse), but I miss him so much, too.

Lately, I've been wrestling a bit with this new duality--not with a lot of angst, but I can't really reconcile it. Maybe I'm not supposed to? When A first died, there was the duality of "This is cannot be true" vs. reality; then there was the duality of "I'm supposed to keep living" vs. "God, I feel so unimaginably, indescribably awful, death would be a relief." Then there was the duality of "I'm healing" vs. "I don't really want to move forward." There was a long stretch of "I'm existing" vs. "I'm living." And now I'm here, where I am largely in a good place...except for those moments I'm not. And except for the wound that appears healed from the outside but is still an empty space inside me. It doesn't hurt most of the time, but the emptiness of "nothing I can do" is palpable. It's like the space where a tooth has fallen out; it doesn't really hurt, but you can't quite leave it alone; your tongue keeps examining the space where something used to be.

4 years today.

2010-07-15T17:32:00.001-07:00

It wasn't the first thing I thought of this morning. It was about the third, and then it was "Right...the 15th."

Right. The 15th.

I think the hardest thing to deal with today is the number: 4. 4 years. I just don't like that I now have to say (on those rare occasions when I need to), "He died 4 years ago." It is so long, and yet perfectly meaningless, because I can't understand how it can be 4 years. I feel like there's some expectation I, or others, had about it, but I can't say what that is. I'm just...here. I'm okay. If I don't think about it, I'm okay. Maybe I should stop marking these anniversaries.

As if I could.

Thanks to those who commented on my last post for your support. I really do appreciate it.

Reflections at 4 years

2010-07-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

It is now officially the day before the 4^th sadiversary of A's passing. I say “officially,” because it's just past midnight, and no decent person should be awake now, but I am.

I found out tonight that one of my best friends is moving across the country. Like next week. I knew it was coming this year, but had no idea it was happening so soon. I've been awake pondering my widow entitlement issues...the ones where I think that I shouldn't have to lose anything or anyone else in any way because I lost A, and that's more than enough for one lifetime. I know it sounds ridiculous when I say it. Nonetheless, my inner widow is, evidently, 5 years old and is stamping her little foot and saying, “No, dang it! No more.”

My 38-year-old self would use stronger language.

It's what's best for my friend, and what she's wanted for a long time, and for that, I want to be happy for her. But I've cried a little, what I'm sure will not be the last tears on this subject. I will see her Saturday before she leaves on Wednesday, and then who knows when I'll see her. She hasn't even met my new dog! How can she leave now? Or rather, the real question is, "How can she leave me, too?"

So I'm awake and feeling sorry for myself. My mind is running on two tracks, though, as it often has in the last 4 years. The one track is the emotional “I hate this” track, and pity-party central. The other track is the one where I've learned that I can be faced with unpleasantness (often in the unimaginable extreme) and shrug, because, hey, shit happens and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

I am pleasantly surprised to realize that I'm in pretty good shape so far this week. I am totally aware of Thursday's milestone; it doesn't stray far from my thoughts and hasn't all month, but I'm feeling reasonably strong, even if my emotions are easily stirred. It doesn't help that I'm hormonal and I've been sweating in an 85-degree house for 2 weeks now; tends to make me cranky under the best of circumstances. I was talking to E about it tonight, and he mentioned those things, and I reminded him that it was the anniversary of A's death, too, and seriously, what else could be piled on this week?

Then I got the e-mail from my friend who's moving; why do I tempt the Fates in this manner? What the hell is wrong with me???

Where am I at at 4 years? Let's see... I finally weaned myself from the widow board in recent months. I've only been back twice in the last 3-4 months, and both of those were me testing myself to see if I would get sucked back in. I did not. Prior to insisting to myself that I walk away (for good, this time—I've tried before and always went back), I spent a lot of time there, out of habit and boredom, especially at work (see the aforementioned boredom), but I started realizing that being there, even when I was trying to help others, I wasn't helping me. Every visit yanked me right back into grief central, and even though I didn't break down in it, it had a definite effect of depressing my mood, and taking me out of the present moment, and my present life. And I had the sense that if I was going to make this life work, I had to focus on it, not just this one aspect of my life, which was becoming a scab I was reopening myself every time I logged in. The support of other widows is invaluable, even now; the raw hash of drama, demons, and death that is the board no longer serves me, nor I it, I think.

I'm not sure that I've gotten over the existential crisis that was a long epilogue to active grieving. It's not that I've lost the sense that most things in life are pointless (at least unto themselves); I still think that, but it's in a more benign way, in that I think it's supposed to be. It's that I've found a way (most days) to see that the value isn't necessarily obvious, or discernible beyond there being a value to any and all experiences. I'm trying to accept the idea that, as far as my purposes as an earthling are concerned, sorrow is as valuable as joy, even if it's not as pleasurable. It's a hard sell, but I'm working on it. My mind on that second track accepts that intellectually, but I know I don't really understand it in my bones, in a way that allows me to rejoice in it all, without a trace of self-pity. My current incarnation just isn't that evolved. Yet.

I think a lot about my potential next life. I joke about not coming back unless I have a strong, healthy athletic body that doesn't plague me, and also I want to be rich, and still play music. But more often, in the quiet of my own head, I think that I would not come back. I cannot imagine why I'd ever give up getting it, understanding it all, to come back here and muddle through life again, blind and ignorant; hell, I can't imagine why I did it this time. What was I thinking? I wish I knew.

I have had 4 years to get used to A's absence...the fact of his death. (I needed to use the word “death” at least once here...I tend to avoid it even now.) And in terms of the day-to-day, I am used to it. Even so, the other morning I woke up with that thought again, about how I sure don't talk to him like I used to...why is that?...oh yeah... I don't talk to him as much as I used to because HE'S BEEN DEAD FOR 4 YEARS. Jesus, what is that?

That's my soul speaking; it hasn't gotten used to A's absence one bit. My brain gets it, and soldiers on, but my heart....for my heart, it happened yesterday. And when my heart and my brain try to get it straight once again, and my head says “You know this...” and my heart says “Seriously? He's dead? How the fuck did that happen? That's not supposed to happen! Doesn't he know that I need him and love him as much as ever, possibly more, and he's supposed to be here?”

Because that's the truth. I've got my life all back together. I'm not wandering about in abject nihilism. I'm creating and living and my relationship with E is strong. But it doesn't matter; the missing him hits me so hard sometimes. I miss him terribly, and still have so much I want to share with him, to talk over with him; I miss his company so much, and his unconditional support, and his wit. My only defense at this point (and I'm grateful to have the strength to be able to do it) is to not let myself go there, not too deeply, anyway. But sometimes, it comes upon me so fast, I don't even have that.

It goes just as quickly, and I know that it probably will. After 4 years, I have no doubts about my ability to survive a grief wave. And I suppose that's given me the confidence in my ability to survive just about anything this life throws at me; the only question is whether I want to. I'm still tired, if I am honest with myself. Sometimes I wonder if the good parts of life ARE enough to outweigh the bad ones. It won't make the difference as to whether I live or die; it'll just make the difference as to whether I skip through my remaining years, enjoying and marveling at my experiences, or slog through wondering when I can be excused from the table. I still have these moments, these thoughts, that amount to “Sure, I'll play your little game (for the next 60 years)...what else am I gonna do? But I see that you're jerking me around; don't think for a second that I don't, and I don't appreciate it!”

After 4 years, my thoughts still tend to go instantly to the worst-case scenario. Tonight, E and I had to go get some paperwork notarized, and I ended up at the place a good 10 minutes before he did, because of how we hit traffic, though we left at the same time. By minute 3 of waiting for him, he was already dead in a terrible car accident and I wondered how I'd find out and what was I going to do about the A/C? And then his car finally rolled into the parking lot, and I nonchalantly asked “What happened to you?” Nonchalant my ass; I'm just dialing back the panic and hoping no one can see. This can happen to me several times a day, with everyone I know, and I hate it. It's the dark side of “The cup is already broken.” Everyone I know is already dead; I'm just waiting for the call. That's what it comes down to, and I hate it. I hate the scenarios I create. They are creepy as hell, and I have this deep, barely acknowledged fear (thanks to The Secret, and thousands of other guru-types that have permeated my consciousness) that by imagining them, I will manifest them in some way. I don't really believe that, but I'll be the first to admit I don't have the universe all figured out. What if I'm wrong? It's fucking neurotic, and I wish I could stop, but I can't seem to. My parents are on a 3-day roadtrip, and I start imagining them (in a bit of maternal irony) dead in the ditch somewhere across 10 states, and have to cut myself off. All I can do is try to stop the scenario in progress from moving forward by distracting myself. I suspect this is going to be a life-long battle, too. When someone you love dies suddenly, you know that anyone else can as well.

I guess the good news at 4 years is that I'm not freaking out about this sadiversary (so far), I am able to examine my feelings without being overwhelmed by them, I am reasonably content in my life, and I know I've come a long, long way in positive directions despite the stuff that still plagues me. And I keep doing it the way I've been doing it since that day 4 years ago: breathe in, breathe out, one foot in front of the other. There is no other way. I guess I've learned that, too.

I love you, Sweetie; I miss you. Stop by if you're around, wouldja, please?

Awesome

2010-07-09T00:02:00.001-07:00

What's awesome is PMSing right up to D-day. Because it just wouldn't be hard enough otherwise.

Scenic views

2010-06-30T11:29:00.001-07:00

I don't know it the picture above will show, as I'm posting this via e-mail. (Here's the link, and I'll fix it later if it doesn't.) But it's a picture I ran across in a sales listing for a house in Walnut Grove, CA. I regularly read a columnist in the SF Chronicle, and I like to look at beautiful houses, and they have some fancy house I could never afford or another listed with pictures every day.

I've never been to Walnut Grove, but I'm sure I've flown over it on my way in to SFO. What struck me about the picture, though, was its quintessential Northern California-ness. The variety of greens of different trees, the hills, and that clear, fresh light filtered through partly cloudy skies. As I looked at the picture, I could feel the cool air on my skin in contrast to the bright warm sun. I could smell the trees and the dampness of the air rolling in off the ocean. My whole body remembered it all; for a moment, I was there. And in the next moment, I was all farklempt.

Because I want to be there. I want him to be there for me to have a reason to be there.

I want him to be.

Because I miss him so damn much.

Bracing for impact: 3 years, 11 months

2010-06-15T22:24:00.001-07:00

Since January, I've been thinking of (and speaking of, when I've had reason to) A as having been gone "almost 4 years." I've been preparing myself for the actual 4 year sadiversary, in a way, I guess, but mostly it's because I think it sounds pedantically precise when I say 3 1/2 years, or 3 years, 7 months, or whatever, like a 4-year-old who has to make sure you know she's 4 AND A HALF, or the short guy who wants you to know he's 5 foot, 8 AND A HALF inches tall, because that half-year or half-inch is meaningful. I suppose to them, it is. And I suppose to me, it is, too. I guess I don't want to get too precise when I talk about his being gone to others because I don't want them to know that I know exactly how long he's been gone; that I've ticked off every hour of it, one way or another. That would indicate that I'm not as fine as I appear to be.

It's not that I'm not fine. I'm pretty darn fine, actually. Surprisingly. And I'm glad about that. Glad I can function well and that I accept my life as it is and live it. That I've largely shed that nihilistic existential crisis that dogged me for so long and am just doing my thing without constantly questioning the point of it. Of any of it.

But still, my thought processes and pathways have been fundamentally changed in losing A and trying to revive myself in the aftermath, in ways I think would scare civilians if they were privy to them. I think they wouldn't understand that I can look them in the eye and be listening while having a mental conversation with A on another channel, or understand that I talk to him at all, let alone regularly. Maybe I underestimate people. But experience has indicated that I probably don't.

I don't know what I'm trying to say here. I guess it's that while I share anecdotes about A frequently even now, I don't much share my feelings about him and his death with anyone, except those who read this blog. I don't even know if it's as if I feel I can't, but rather, I don't want to. I don't want to be judged. I don't want to be doubted. I don't want to be wondered or worried about. I don't want to be pitied, either as the woman who lost or the woman who can't let go. Even if some of those reactions might not be entirely unwarranted. I guess what I don't want is any response that will not perfectly ease my heart and mind regarding A's dying, and since by now I've learned that that perfect response doesn't exist, I just don't want anyone to try and fail. Again.

Anyway, I am in the home stretch of this third year, and am on low-level alert for any emotional difficulties that arise in anticipation of this milestone. I don't want to conjure any up, but I don't want to be ambushed, either. But with this milestone, he will be gone twice as long as I was with him. Twice as long. And once again, I am shocked at how time can pass like this. I knew it was coming, but even so, it makes me shake my head. Seems like that's all I've ever been able to do about all of this.

Silence

2010-06-01T21:13:00.001-07:00

Last week, a co-worker lost her brother to suicide. I found out through the grapevine, from a friend who herself has been the survivor of two suicides herself. No one was talking about it, otherwise. I saw no flowers on her desk. There was no sympathy card passed around for everyone to sign (despite the fact that we did just that for the widower of the co-worker who died the same day as this co-worker's brother). Even my friend the SOS said to me, "Well, I'm not going to say anything to her unless she says something first." When I talked to E about it, because he knew because of his position at the company (but couldn't tell me because of mine), he said much the same. The code word was "discretion," it seemed, but to me it read a whole lot like shame. Like our co-worker didn't deserve the care and support of the community (what little it has to offer in times like these) because of the way her brother died. We were all just going to pretend it didn't happen, the implication being, I guess, that he died shamefully and his family should feel the shame of it as well, reinforced by a good, old-fashioned shunning.

She came back to work on Thursday after four days away. I heard her voice first, and it was flat and devoid of the liveliness it usually had. When I saw her later, she had that look on her face: the eyes empty and seemingly turned inward, and the rest of her face arranged in an expression that seemed pissed and defensive and shocked. I recognized it as soon as I saw it, even though my own face hasn't looked that way for a long time (thank goodness). It is unmistakable.

I talked to E about it over the weekend, and I called bullshit on no one saying a damn thing to her about her brother's death. Where the hell was our "family company" when one of the family members had suffered a great loss? Had he talked to her then, Thursday, when she came back? No. Had he seen her face Thursday, how hollow she looked? Yes, he had. She was not doing well, which was totally to be expected only a week out, but no one was there for her. If she wasn't going to talk about it, we were free to pretend she was fine? She's not fine, and no one even cares? Or no one wants to, because they secretly judge her brother for killing himself, and they secretly wonder, like many folks who have no clue, why his family couldn't stop him.

I used to be one of those people. I had all kinds of answers about the strong and the weak, the observant and the clueless. And then I read at the widow board and learned a lot about suicide, and the lot of the survivors and what they had to go through, and what they were put through by other people as ignorant as I was. Changed my entire perception, and I realized I didn't know a damn thing about it, despite my judgments from afar. I know better now; but most don't, I guess. And they don't want to, because like any death, they want to believe suicide won't happen in their family, can't happen, and is totally preventable because they are clearly superior human beings who wouldn't allow that to happen on their watch; if they admit otherwise, they are vulnerable, and vulnerability is scary. So they just don't admit it.

Fuck that, I told E. Screw silence. Screw "allowing her her privacy" when what we really mean is, "it's all too icky and unpleasant, so she gets to mourn without even token sympathy from the people she spends 40 hours a week with." It's one thing to give someone space when they ask for it. Giving people so much unrequested space that we refuse to acknowledge that their life has just been irrevocably and painfully changed by death is plain cowardice. It pisses me off, frankly. As if grieving isn't the loneliest road a human being ever walks, we have to make it lonelier by avoiding the subject, or the person, touched by a death? THAT is what's shameful.

I was adamant about getting her a sympathy card, at the very least. She had told the secretary that her brother had passed. That made it officially "known," and it didn't matter how (though of course, the secretary had asked). E was uncomfortable with it; he's still uncomfortable with the idea of death, with the idea of grief, with the idea of reaching out to someone in it, despite all we've been through. I wanted to send a picture of his aunt, who's been widowed a number of years now, and her husband, that we'd found to her; he said no. He frequently says he doesn't want to mention this or that to someone so as not to remind them of their loss; sometimes I'm that someone. I tell him that they (we) never forget it, and would appreciate someone else remembering with them (us), but he doesn't get it. And bless his heart, as frustrating as it can be sometimes, I'd just as soon he not. But he agreed that a card would be okay.

As I was filling out the card last night, I mentioned that I was going to lend her the first (and probably most useful) grief book I'd read. He got really uncomfortable then, like I was overstepping imaginary bounds. "Don't you think you should wait until she asks for help?" I said she wasn't going to ask, and probably wouldn't know what to ask for if she did. I asked him if his house is on fire, should his neighbor wait until he asks her to call 911, or should she just make the call? It wasn't like I was going to force her to do a book report. I was offering her a book that she could read or not, if she felt like it. And that's what I said in the note I attached to the book.

What I didn't say is that I know she's lost right now, and that I know in a month no one will think to ask her about it (if they're barely asking now), and that most of her friends will not have lost a brother at such a young age, nor one to suicide, and that most everyone she knows is so fucking afraid of death that she will start faking being all right in order for more of them not to fade out of her life in fear. I did say that while our losses were not the same, I have walked the grief road, and I was there for her, now or later. I know there is nothing else I can say, and nothing more I can do unless she takes me up on it.

I got an e-mail back thanking me, telling me she'd considered finding a grief book but didn't know where to start.

Fuck silence; we owe it to each other to be there for each other. We owe it to each other to try to help; we might not get it right, but we are absolutely guaranteed to get it wrong if we wimp out and don't try at all.

Hardware, accent on the "hard"

2010-05-30T00:24:00.001-07:00

E and I ended up at Home Depot today. We were there specifically to buy a crowbar to tear up the bottom of some cabinets we have out the garage. We've had a pack rat living in our garage for some time, and the destructive capabilities of this tiny rat (or big mouse) are really astonishing. It has eaten many, many things that are not food, including parts of our car wiring, but it seemed to have gone away for awhile, and we decided to stop worrying about it. Recently, though, the little brown signs of rodent life in the garage were back, and things on my workbench were mysteriously moving across the garage. We knew its lair was under the cabinets; I tried to shop-vac a bunch of the rat's "collection" out through holes in the cabinets last summer, but gave up because it was too much. But as we cleaned the garage yesterday, we happened upon and cornered the pack rat in one of the cabinets, and a live trap and a scoop of peanut butter made him our captive sometime in the night. We set him free in the big wash that runs behind our neighborhood, but still needed to clean up the mess. Hence the trip to Home Depot.

But while we were there, we looked at a few other things: lighting possibilities for my kitchen redecorating project. Flooring for the Arizona room where the dogs have destroyed the indoor/outdoor carpet. Laminate flooring possibilities for inside the house where the dogs have destroyed the carpet. A typical Saturday afternoon of shopping for necessary projects and dreaming of others.

When we finally moseyed our way to the tool corral, there was a cart, two customers, and an employee in our way, and I had to wait while E went in in search of the crowbar. But I was stopped in my tracks anyway; the employee looked so much like A, it took my breath away. He still had some color in his goatee and hair, though it was mostly gray, but otherwise, the resemblance was uncanny, right down to the glasses. A made his living with tools, rather than selling them, but nonetheless, I was stunned to tears. Simultaneously, I wanted to stay there and stare at him forever and I wanted to flee.

I stared at him as long as I could; I had reasonable cover, as my cart couldn't get through the aisle, and E was on the far side of them. As much as I was fully cognizant that it wasn't A, I just wanted to pretend that he was there, in front of me, alive, and to appreciate that for just a minute. But even though I couldn't tear my eyes away from the guy, the fantasy couldn't quite hold. He looked so much like him, yet he couldn't be him, and that is why I got teary. Every time I thought how much I wanted it to be A, wanted him to be alive like this man, the tears sprang afresh to my eyes. And as we made our way to the checkout, I saw other men who vaguely resembled A, and I thought, you know, maybe Home Depot is a dangerous place for someone who loves an absent middle-aged guy who used to build things. Suddenly, he was everywhere I looked, but none of the others had such a strong resemblance. I kept looking back over my shoulder for another glimpse as I finally turned the cart and walked away.

E missed the whole thing, and if he noticed the resemblance of the employee, or my subdued manner when we finally reunited in the next aisle, he didn't mention it. But the tears stayed close to the surface and threatened several more times in the store and on the way home; I wasn't quite right for hours after.

It never ends. I knew it never would, but I didn't KNOW, you know? When you think you've tripped all the triggers, and espied all the ambushes, and think there can't be anything left to bring you to your knees; when you've become a veteran widow and think you can see the muzzle flash and hear the bullet headed straight for your heart well in advance enough to step out of its way; it is then that you wander down the crowbar aisle and have your heart and all the defenses around it pried open, defenseless once again, and that dull ache you've mostly learned to ignore comes front and center. It never ends; not until you die yourself. So what is a successful life, then? Enduring longer than your pain? Does that seem unnecessarily cruel to anyone else? Is there to be no mercy, ever, for the bereaved who need it most?

Of anniversaries that weren't

2010-05-25T22:26:00.001-07:00

Six years ago today, A and I "met" via a PM on a bulletin board, in an exchange of notes that soon became a true correspondence of a growing friendship, and ultimately a love of a lifetime. A too-short lifetime for his part, but still. The first anniversary sneaked up on me; I didn't even realize it, but he remembered the date. I remembered on the second one. And that was all we ever got. Now this day passes marked only by me, and my dear widowed pals who make it their sacred duty to remember these things with me. I didn't even get a sign today.

Four years ago this weekend was the last time I kissed and hugged him. We spent a wonderful Memorial Day weekend together, and then it was back to chat and e-mail until the day he didn't do either. It's a bit of a tough time, now that I think of it. No wonder I've been wanting to wear that bracelet, as I did today, plus the perfume I always wore and spritzed all my love letters with, so he could smell me from wherever he is.

Yesterday as I was driving home from work, I started thinking about how he died, how we'd made an emergency plan "just in case." And it still feels too weird to be true, even though I know it is. I tried to put it out of my mind, because it just makes me sad and miserable and I didn't want to be sad and miserable for the rest of the night. But I woke up this morning, and instantly it was back in my head; maybe in my sleepiness, my defenses were down. And I allowed myself a little bit of thought about it. It is still so horrifying to me that he was alone for 2 days before he was found. That's what my mind chews on and recriminates about; and I'm not the sole criminal in those reflections. But again, I had to set it aside. There was a day to start, dogs to feed, and my dwelling on it wasn't going to change it or mitigate the horror. It just was what it was.

It is not the anniversary that makes me sad; it's that we had so few of them, there was no time to create a ritual, nothing to remember, nothing to sustain me through all the ones I'd celebrate alone. For our second, and last, I'd bought him a functional sextant because he wanted one, and told him it would help him always find his way to me, or something equally sappy. It disappeared with the rest of his stuff. It's almost a non-anniversary, except that six years ago my life changed irrevocably, and for the better. I mean, my life, with him in it, was about as perfect as I could ever hope for. And because I met him, I have experienced the worst pain I have ever known. He was a meteor, a falling star that was so beautiful, until impact, when it devastated life as I knew it, so many dreams and hopes and futures extinct from that moment.

I miss him so damned much. I would give almost anything to have him hold me in his arms and say "I love you, Baby." Such a small thing; such a small impossible thing.

That bracelet

2010-05-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

A couple of you may remember the saga of A's bracelet, the one I made for him that he never took off; the one that was lost in the shuffle after he died; or maybe it wasn't lost at all, but the unwillingness of his family to find out where it was and get it for me made it is good as lost. The second chapter of that was that I made an exact replica of that bracelet 3 different times, and it kept coming apart, and I wondered at the time if that was a sign that I wasn't supposed to wear that reminder every day for the rest of my life.

I put the bracelet in a safe place next to his picture and didn't really think about it for a long time, until recently. I'd gotten the jewelry-making bug again last weekend, and was in the mood to make some anklets for the summer. Once I had all my beads and tools out, though, I thought again about that bracelet. I fished it out of the dish I'd put it in, washed the dust off of it, and brought it back to my desk and tried once again.

The funny thing is, as soon as it was finished and I put it on, I felt better, maybe not unlike those widows who have taken their wedding rings off for awhile, only to put them back on later. I didn't wear it for long because it was long past bedtime, but I wore it all the next day, and felt the same. That was unexpected, considering I've gone without wearing it for months...maybe years now; I don't even remember when I put it away.

As I was driving to work this morning, I was reflecting on how I've been feeling the last few days, which is kind of hard. Cynical. Shields up and defensive. And I'm not really sure why, as I cannot pinpoint any specific attack coming at me. And yet, it stands to reason that that bracelet would only make me feel better if I was somehow feeling worse, even if I didn't realize it.

Maybe it's simply the relief of having something lost returned, making me feel a bit more whole. I don't know what it means; but nonetheless, I think that bracelet is going to get a lot of wear in coming days.

Another joins the club

2010-05-21T14:41:00.001-07:00

We got word yesterday that a coworker of ours had died of cancer. She hadn't worked at the office for the last year, at least, once her treatment for cancer overwhelmed her ability to keep working, but while she did give her notice back then, it wasn't like she ever really quit. It was that cancer effectively fired her; she had no choice. She fought for 2 1/2 years, but at the end, she was ready to go home.

Home. Now that I believe that there is more to life than this particular life we're living, I am sometimes envious of those, including my A, who have been released from this world and the worries and hardships thereof. Sometimes I'm so tired, and while I try to make the most of my time here and appreciate those who travel this world with me, I think that I maybe wouldn't mind so much being done. And in those times when I wonder, if we have a choice about when we leave this world, why A would choose to cross over instead of stay here with me and others who love him, that's usually what I work my way around to. That life is tiring, and if you have any choice at all, and are given the vision to know how this universe works and that the rest of us will be along soon enough, I think it might be mighty tempting to go ahead.

Management forwarded a beautiful and loving note from her husband, now a new widower. He was very philosophical about how he would need to take some time to process not only his grief in her fresh absence, but the emotions he hadn't really allowed himself in the last 2 1/2 years. As I read it, I thought, "Mister, you don't even know what you're in for." And I was sorry, for my own sake as much as his, that I do. He must be 60-something; I was just 34 when it happened to me and while I knew the moment I found out A had died that it was going to be really bad, it was 100 times worse, in ways I could've never anticipated.

But then again, I wrote some philosophical posts in those early days, too, about how I was going write my way through the grief, about how one day I'd feel better. Of course, I had no idea how bad I would feel, or for how long, but I suppose those things were true after all. And in the shock of bereavement, maybe it's a blessing that the intellect is still able to offer us useful, coherent thoughts like these when the soul is screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" It can't hear anything beyond its own pain.

I don't know him, but I feel for him nonetheless. And maybe he will have a better handle on this grieving business than I did; maybe they finished all their business in the time they had. Maybe he's older and wiser than I, and can bring a different and greater perspective to his life that has changed so drastically in just a single day. I pray that that's the case; because even if he has all that to start with, this is still going to be one literal hell of a ride.

Ashes and dust

2010-05-20T22:44:00.001-07:00

Last night I was puttering in my inner sanctum at home (I just hate calling it an office), a task that was long overdue. Once I finally made it to my desk, which still hasn't been fully excavated, I noticed that the three pictures I have of A on a picture shelf there had grown dusty. I blew on them a little, but it was inadequate to the task, so I took a tissue to them.

On the one hand, I live in the desert. Deserts are dusty, and so are the homes in them. Reasonably, I shouldn't read into it any more than that.

Nonetheless, it was symbolic, and poignantly so. I was struck by the simple reality of dust on my love. His face, a photo only, and yet him even so. There is dust on my love. While I do believe we've communicated since he died, in a fashion, and while I do believe our love is ongoing and strong, and while I do what little I can on my end to keep him current, the fact is that there has been no day-to-day interaction like we were used to having for 3 years, 10 months, and 5 days now. I say it that way because every time I say "almost 4 years" I wince a little. Next Tuesday is the 5th...no, wait, 6th (geez) anniversary of our first "meeting" on the internet. And I have been carrying on by myself for 2/3 of that.

I'd like to state for the record that that sucks mightily. And I only say that because I lack the words to express how truly and unabatedly shitty that bit of my reality is.

Mostly, now, when I think of him, or see his picture, I just think, "I love you, Sweetie. I hope you're having a splendid time where you are. I miss you a lot." Because there's not much else to say. If he's interested in my goings on, I'm sure he can tune in, and the times when I choose to tell him are more for me than they are for him. He is with me, but he isn't. The love is there, but the lover is completely out of reach. And I feel it. I feel that distance every day.

There is dust on my love, and every passing year adds another layer of it.

There is dust on my love, and I never wanted that to happen. Never.

There is dust on my love.

Lessons on top of lessons

2010-04-27T17:17:00.001-07:00

In about an hour and a half, I will be at my very first official one-on-one guitar lesson, and I'm pretty excited about it because I have run up against my own limitations as a self-taught guitarist. The lessons I received at guitar camp were fine, but limited, usually way over my head, and only available once a year. And the only other person who taught me directly died almost 4 years ago. Beyond being my beloved, A was also my guitar guru. We could talk for hours about music and guitar-related trivia, and did. When he died, I lost all of that, too.

A few months after he died, in what I can, in hindsight, only describe as a fit of grief-soaked pique, I ordered a somewhat spendy DVD guitar course, rationalizing (as if I were rational at the time) that I would need SOMETHING to replace the guitar instruction and encouragement A had given me, since he'd upped and left me. When I get mad, I get coldly practical.

I vowed I would start working on them on January 1st, 2007, and I did. I did the first lesson, and then put the box on the bookshelf to be ignored with nary a thought until the end of last year. I resolved that I would become a better guitar player in 2010, and would do those damned lessons that I bought 3 years before. I did lessons 2 and 3 in January, and none since. Clearly, it wasn't happening.

The opportunity for lessons showed up in my e-mail inbox last week, and I took it as a sign. I e-mailed the guy, and within a handful of e-mails back and forth, I was signed up and feeling good about the whole enterprise.

My friend P was out of the office all last week, so I sent her an e-mail this afternoon explaining the appearance of my guitar in my cubicle. In it, I included this bit:

"So my first lesson is tonight, and I'm excited. And I kind of think it's a victory, too, of a different sort, that I'm ready to do this…you know, find a new guitar mentor."

I didn't realize that was true until I typed it. I had thought about A in regards to these lessons, but more in that I knew he'd be glad I was continuing with the guitar, and still learning, and that he'd be proud of his "guitar babe" for taking this step to keep improving. He would totally applaud this move. But until I e-mailed my friend, I hadn't given a moment's thought to the idea that it was another healing milestone I was passing, in allowing someone else to fill the role of guitar teacher for me. Maybe it wasn't laziness or disinterest in lessons all this time; maybe it was that I just wasn't ready to let anything, or anyone, fill that spot that belonged to him.

Lately, I've been feeling pretty good. Normal. Me. Like I've reached a good plateau, and the view from here isn't too bad, actually. So many times in this journey, I've thought to myself, "This must be it. This is all the healing I'm going to do." And every time, I've been wrong, because as soon as I think that, some new thing like this comes along and shows me that I've come further yet.

Wish me luck.

Safeway isn't safe

2010-04-26T00:22:00.001-07:00

I probably can't even remember the number of times A and I went to Safeway together for groceries when I visited. Not a lot. Maybe half a dozen, give or take? Not so many that it should matter. And such a mundane activity, too. But it's stuck with me, maybe because I appreciated doing the mundane things with him, because I didn't get to very often.

And every time I go to a Safeway (any Safeway), I see a man who reminds me of A. Sometimes there's a strong resemblance in his face. Sometimes it's the way he walks. Sometimes it's the baseball cap he's wearing. Sometimes it's a gray goatee. Sometimes, it's nothing more than being of similar age and the store lighting brings me back. That's what it was Saturday. I was walking down the Asian foods aisle, and coming toward me from the other direction was a fifty-something man with gray several-day stubble and a baseball cap on his head. And I felt the knife go right through my heart again.

The path is well-worn, though, and it only hurt for a moment, plus a lingering ache as I thought about it until I left the store. It's a powerful sensation, yet oddly fleeting now. I sometimes wonder if anyone who might look at me at a moment like that would see me flinch, would see that knife as it passed through my soul once again. Or does it all play out only inside of me, invisible to everyone? Is it entirely a private experience? I feel so alone when it happens, like I am forced to feel all of it by myself, though I couldn't tell you who else I might imagine should share it. It's mine, of course. Mine and mine alone. Whose else? I am what remains of the two of us.

I remember a time, before A died, when I was sitting in the airport in Salt Lake City on the way home from visiting him. I had been crying on and off since we said goodbye at the airport (because I'm a sap like that), and I saw my fellow travelers in a totally different light that day. I looked around at the people who walked by me or sat across from me. I looked into their eyes, and saw all manner of emotions there. For maybe the first time in my life, I didn't see people. I saw souls, souls who had their own trials and pain and worries that they were going through, and nobody around them knew, in all likelihood. I realized I had no idea what they might be dealing with right now, and it softened my heart, a heart that was usually annoyed by the people in the airports getting in my way and bumping me with their rollerboards and yakking on their cellphones. You just never know when someone in the airport, or the Asian food aisle, is having a tough time. It could be anyone. It probably is.

We should probably be kinder to each other as a matter of course, no?

"The past didn't go anywhere"--Utah Phillips

2010-04-21T16:21:00.001-07:00

My best friend from high school and I recently reconnected through Facebook after 15 years of no contact due to a falling out we had. Back then, she was involved in things I couldn't condone and didn't understand, and was too young and clueless to know what to say to her about it or how to say it. Anything I thought to say would've come off as judgment, and I didn't feel I had the right to judge her, so I said nothing. But I never forgot her, never stopped regretting how it had ended, never stopped wishing I could fix some of the damage of that ending, even if I couldn't fix the friendship.

She finally showed up on Facebook; I ran across her name as I was looking through a list of kids I graduated with, marveling at how we all had aged, and I sent a message-cum-apology. And then I waited a couple weeks, not entirely expecting an answer, but knowing I'd done what I could.

When the answer finally came, late because she's a proud Luddite, I was almost afraid to open it, but I did, and when I read her words, I let go of a breath and a weight I'd been holding since we parted not-so-amicably. She was glad I found her, and had her own apologies to offer. And with that, a piece of my past that I had always regretted was rewritten.

It was surprising to me that it was possible to change the past, I guess. As a widow, you have to live with a million things you can't change or undo, starting with the death of your beloved. It's not news, I suppose, that as long as we are alive, we can make a change; I've done it before. And truly, I have finished unfinished business with A, despite his death. But this particular reunion expunged one of the great regrets of my life, one of the kind that haunts you until the end. I thought back to those early days of grief when I wondered what the point of life was, or rather, the point of mine specifically, and realized that this was probably one of those things I still needed do before I left this world, and before I could leave this world without too many backward glances. I feel less encumbered since it happened.

If it had stopped with the exchange of FB messages, that would've been good enough, but we've had two long conversations on the phone since, and marveled that our divergent paths have not only brought us back together, but that our thoughts and philosophies are also oddly in line. The connection is still there.

As we were talking last night, my chronic pain came up, and she asked me if I was under any stress. I was enjoying probably the best day, across the board, I've had in the last 3.75 years, and I said "Not particularly." And it was true; my stress is everyday stress—work crap, physical crap, the occasional marital moment, chores around the house.

But my voice wasn't convincing, even to me, and I alluded to the last 4 years being "rough" and it being a long story. I wasn't sure I wanted to get into the whole thing with someone with whom I've only just reconnected, because, honestly, I'm not sure this reunion will be a lasting one. I hope it is, but I just don't know, and there's really no point in spilling my guts if we're just going to fade out of each other's lives again. But she said she wanted to know if I was comfortable telling her, and so I did.

I told her about A, and how we met, and how he died, and how that all worked with E, and what it had done to me; I gave her the Sgt. Friday version, just the facts, really, plus how I was actually pretty okay now, and just really missed him. So yeah, I had stress, and yes, there are still undercurrents of that that I'm sure have an effect on me. But yesterday I was having a really good day, and I didn't want to go deep and end up crying. And you know, you just can't explain all that to someone who hasn't been there. I'm not even tempted to try.

She offered her sympathy and comforting words, and hoped it hadn't hurt me to talk about it, and I told her, no, it was nice to talk about him. So few people ever offered their sympathy because of circumstances, and no one bothered soon enough. I never got "The Look," the pitying one the other widows grew tired of, or the tilted-head "How ARE you?" from all and sundry. And I'll admit there have been more than a few times I wish I would've been thrown a grander pity party than I received. Maybe the grass isn't greener, but you can't blame a gal for wondering.

But when I got off the phone, I realized that it actually wasn't nice to talk about that. That's no fault of my friend's; it's just that I realized in hindsight that I don't really want to talk about his death anymore. What I really yearn to talk about is his life, who he was, what was so great about him, why I fell in love with him and remain so to this day. I want to talk about my awesome boyfriend and all the little things he did that were so hilarious and clever and brilliant and loving. But it's kind of late to do that; people don't mind when you share the occasional amusing anecdote about a dead person and everyone can nod and say, "Yep, that was A…what a guy…" if they knew him, or "Ha, that's great!" if they didn't. However, if you want to gush like a schoolgirl about your dead lover, people are going to question your grip on reality.

I think it's that, as much as anything, that cements him in the past-tense, and I feel like I've just bumped up against that hard enough to bruise. To me, the love is alive, the connection to him is still present and strong, and I know he's out there, somewhere. Maybe he's reading over my shoulder as I write this. I don't know. But while our love is as much "now" as ever for me, every story I have is "then," and with every day, it gets further into the past. How do you share that past/present reality with another person and have it make sense? How do you explain how you're still giddily in love with someone who you haven't conversed with, who hasn't walked the earth, in years now?

You don't. But that doesn't mean you don't want to.

That's the bitch of widowhood (well, one of a gazillion); so many of us were left with a love unsullied. We are loyal dogs waiting at the door for a beloved human who is not going to pass through it. When they left us, we were in love, and they haven't done anything to wreck that beyond their absence, so the love remains intact, if frustrated. If anything, my love for him has deepened as I've processed my grief and our joint past, and understood and forgiven both him and me for all kinds of things.

He was tall and thin, but muscular, and I loved to run my hands across his back. He had a million freckles. He had beautiful blue-green hazel eyes and a white goatee. He looked awesome in a tool belt. He always held my hand, and when we'd drive anywhere, he'd kiss the back of it as the spirit moved him. He was a good cook. He was respectful and good, but swore freely. He was funny as hell. He loved to dance. He made me hot chocolate with 2 packets of mix. He always opened my door on his truck and handed me my seatbelt. He felt things deeply. And I adored him more than words can ever express.

Shit. Crying now.

The Widow's Dilemma

2010-04-12T15:10:00.001-07:00

You broke my heart. You really did.

I've patched it up as best I can.

It works pretty much like it's supposed to now, I think.

But I know if I could look inside me, I would see it criss-crossed with scars,

atrophied and dark in some spots, skipping beats here and there.
My heart works again; but you broke it good.

And even if it's not your fault that you did,

part of me may never quite forgive you for that.

I hope you can forgive me.

Beautiful music, not together

2010-04-08T15:57:00.001-07:00

Last night I attended the concert of an artist A had introduced me to early in our friendship. He was the king of buying full albums based on a single song he'd hear on KFOG, only to find that he'd heard the sole good song on the record, and while he shared her with me, he confessed that she hadn't quite grown on him yet. I think his complaint was that she was a little countrified for him.

I was instantly smitten by her music, though, and quickly got the rest of her albums. I remember being in Akron, Ohio, sitting in a hotel room that had been fashioned out of an old grain silo, listening to her album and being inspired to write a song of my own. I don't play the song out anymore; it's not that good, but she truly was an inspiration to me. My interest in her piqued A's, and he grew to like her upon subsequent listenings.

I was really excited when I found out she was coming to town, and though I was buying tickets three days after sales opened, I was the first person to buy any, and I couldn't have asked for better: front row, first two seats of the center row. I didn't know who was going to go with me, but I am always prepared to go alone if need be, and I wasn't going to miss this show. Even as I bought the tickets, I thought of A, and how he would've enjoyed seeing her, or been satisfyingly jealous of my going. That's how it was with us; he saw tons of great shows by virtue of being in the Bay Area; the whole world came there. Pickings are slightly slimmer here in the desert, and I complained of how musically spoiled he was; he responded that it was my fault for living in the boonies.

God, how I loved that man. Love him still.

My mom ended up being my date for the show; we were two of a relatively small crowd. When the artist finally took the stage, though, I was unprepared for the waves of emotion that washed over me as she entered and began playing. I love her music, but I don't know that it's ever had a visceral effect on me. But this time, it did, and I felt like I was going to cry, my heart and soul full to brimming. I don't know what it was, though I suspect it was that all the disparate connections between her, him, and me came together when her fingers touched the guitar strings. It kept happening through the first few songs, and then I guess it passed. By the time she played the cover that was important to us (and that I wouldn't have expected to hear, but really hoped I would), I was just giddy and grateful. I clapped really fast when I heard the opening chords, like a big dork, an especially noticeable dork considering the small, quiet crowd and the fact that I was front and center. But it was a gift, and I appreciated it.

As time has passed, I have relinquished the fear that I would forget, that somehow he would fade for me as the result of his persistent absence. Even so, I am still surprised at how meaningful pieces of our life together converge sometimes, overwhelming me with a sum so much greater than its parts. It is breathtakingly poignant, but comforting, too, in that I know I am really not alone, that he is still out there, that love remains our unbreakable bond. I miss him so much, but in moments like those last night, I can almost imagine him holding me up, my entire life wrapped in his love, almost a tangible thing. Almost.

These dreams

2010-03-28T22:27:00.001-07:00

It happened again last night, or, rather, in the early hours of this morning. I was in that place that is not awake, but not fully asleep, either: cognizant of my thoughts, despite their rapid, seemingly random swirling across my brain. It was almost like a dream, but not that fully formed--just thoughts, rather than events. But I was thinking that I needed to get A's mail for him, because he'd been away so long. And then I thought, I haven't heard from him in awhile. And then somehow I became just conscious enough to clear up my own confusion. That's right; he died. That's why I haven't heard from him. Boom!

Weirdness abounds in this. The primary weirdness is that I've had this exact same barely conscious conversation with myself twice now in the last 6 months or so. In my entire life, I've had three recurring dreams: one was of being chased through houses of many, many rooms by something/someone I can't see but I know is there. One is of moving back to my childhood home in Upper Michigan. And the last is of driving without my headlights on, and I can't see, and yet I still keep driving, panicked because I can't seem to stop the car, and I still have no idea what is ahead of me, and I'm trying desperately to see but just can't.

So it seems strange that I've got a new one, and it's strange that it would happen now, as I head towards my fourth year without him. Is a part of me still expecting to hear from him like I always did? Or is this about the visitations and the big, obvious signs that stopped some time ago? Has it been so long now that its just too long for even my subconscious to take?

And what's weirder yet is that somehow, somewhere, just for a moment in my sleep, I managed to forget. I managed to forget that he was dead. I managed to forget the tear-soaked last 3+ years. I managed to forget all the trauma around his death and dealing with his family. I managed to forget how his absence has colored my every day since then to varying degrees. It was only for a moment, and I wasn't even really awake to enjoy it, but there was a freedom in that moment. There was endless room to move in a casual musing of, "Hmmm...I wonder why I haven't heard from him?" like he'd been on a trip, and was slightly delayed in contacting me.

Until I remembered. I wouldn't say that the remembrance came back violently. Just irrefutably.

I have spent all this time getting used to the idea that he is gone and is not coming back. I have done all this work accepting the reality of his incomprehensible death. I have lived (begrudgingly) with the truth of his absence every single day for the last 1,351 days. So how is it even possible that part of me is still fighting it? How could I forget, even in the fog of sleep and dreams? How can I still be confused on the point?

Why am I bothered by this? I guess I'm annoyed and feeling a little betrayed by a subconscious that would tease me like this. It seems cruel.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie. I love you.

2010-03-15T16:24:00.001-07:00

The other day, as I was blowing out the candle I light for him every night and kissing his picture to say good night, I surprised myself by not really feeling sad. I mulled it for a couple of days, because, frankly, I thought it odd, and I realized that it wasn't just that I wasn't feeling sad; it was that I wasn't feeling anything at all in that moment. There was zero emotional content to that context; I was...not numb...just...vacant, I guess.

It was then that I realized that it wasn't that I DIDN'T feel anything; it's that I WOULDN'T. The facts are always available, and I never shy away from them. But I don't let myself delve much deeper than that these days, it seems. It's as if I can look into my heart, and see the locked box that holds the hardest feelings: the pain, the emptiness, the missing him, the sorrow. It's right there, in plain enough sight. And I hold the key to the box in my hand. But I walk right on by. I don't deny it's there, but I don't open it.

Because what good would it do? Will it do me any good to cry about it for the millionth time? Will it change anything if I let myself hurt for him some more? Will it do anything but ruin my day and make my nose stuffy and my eyes puffy? What's the point of stirring up the yearning that cannot be satisfied?

It's a coping skill, to be sure. Self-protective. The triumph of intellect over emotion. I always say "feel what you feel when you feel it," but I'm not sure how that works when you don't feel it, or rather, when you've chosen not to feel it because you've felt it eleventy billion times and it never feels any different. It never feels anything but bad.

I've been thinking about this on and off ever since, about how I'm actively keeping the emotions at arm's length at this point. And what's funny is that I was actually keeping the thinking about actively keeping emotions at a distance at arm's length, as well. It was an intellectual acknowledgement, with only a brief consideration of this new insight about myself and how I'm dealing (or rather, not) with grief at this point in the journey. (I must say, I've joined those who dislike the word "journey" for this, but I don't know another word that comes close enough to this indescribable path, so I'll keep using it for now.)

But the truth of it hit me today as I posted at the board about it being A's birthday. In my post, I wished him a happy birthday, and expressed my gratitude that he was born. It was this last bit that saw that locked box fly open of its own accord; it didn't even need my key. I felt that tell-tale heat behind my eyes, and the ache in my throat. It's all still there, even if I don't take it out and look at it every day.

So what then? Where is the fine line between stuffing your feelings down and accepting what control you happen to have over your feelings?

I suppose I have to trust the process; it's gotten me this far. I've got no other ideas, and I'll only overthink it with no answers if I try; I've had enough of that particular hamster wheel.

In a slight tangent, E and I were watching Caprica last night. There are several bereaved folks in the show, one of them the mother of a daughter connected to the terrorist organization who set the bomb that killed her daughter, among many others. As she mused under the effects of potent wine, she said, "Surviving is the punishment for leaving things unsaid."

It rang like truth to me, and, I imagine, to any other survivors who happened to hear it.

Not that I actually believe I'm being punished by some divine authority; but that's how it feels, regardless. The maelstrom of killer feelings that we so neatly label "grief" could never be neutral, let alone benign.

Happy F'ing Birthday

2010-03-10T14:24:00.001-08:00

My mother, whose birthday is Friday, has informed me on several occasions in the last couple of months that she is not having a birthday this year; neither will she be having any more birthdays, ever. I suppose this is just typical of women of a certain age in our youth-worshipping culture, but I have to say, it really annoys me.

My mother was born exactly 1 year and 3 days before A, which means he also has a birthday coming up. But he will never be 59, like he should be this year. He will forever be 55 years and 4 months old. And that's why I'm annoyed: Because there are people who truly are not having any more birthdays. And it's not because they're vain about their age, or squeamish about admitting the number. It's because they're dead.

It's because they're fucking dead.

I recognize that I obviously have issues about this, but I kind of want to shake my mom. Shake her right out of her bullshit vanity and her petty self-pity about getting older, because she should appreciate every additional birthday given to her. Not everyone is so lucky. As of Friday, she will have received 5 more years of experiences than A got. I joke with her when she gripes about it that getting old sure beats the alternative. But only the tone of my voice is joking; I'm serious.

Serious as a heart attack.

I mean, seriously, none of us grows younger. It's not even an option, so you're much better off considering only the realistic options. And when it comes to birthdays, you have a choice of getting older, or dying. Would she rather be dead?

I want to scream, "Shut up, and enjoy your god-damned birthday cake, and the fact that the people who love you still get the chance to show it!"

Of course I don't.

Everywhere I go, there he is

2010-02-27T22:51:00.001-08:00

My family recently took a group vacation to Mexico; my folks and I shared a condo, and one night E and my dad were discussing the upcoming World Cup. I don't care a thing for soccer, but it rang in my mind for a moment, and I tried to figure out why. The World Cup had been going on around the time that A died, I thought; was that right? And then I did the math: 4 years ago. Yep, it was right. It's going to be 4 years this summer, and I'm trying not to think about it, which means, of course, that I think about it all the time.

The next morning, E and I were out to brunch, discussing this and that. I mentioned A, and the conversation got around to E asking me how A came to be found, and how I found out he'd died. It seems he didn't realize I was instrumental in that, and I wasn't sure why. I know I told him. Had he forgotten? Had I been so out of it that day that I never did tell him? Was that time, with his wife in crisis, a blur for him as much as it was for me?

I told him the story in a calm voice, but inside, my guts were churning. They do that whenever I think of that day, so I try not to. It was hard to tell him, but I was also glad he asked; or rather, that he cared to know, that one of the hardest things I've ever done (putting the wheels in motion to find A) was being noted and recorded somehow.

We don't talk about it much; not directly like that, anyway. Me, because E lived through the worst of it with me, and it seems unfair somehow to foist more of it upon him too often; him because...I don't know--I'm afraid to ask. Maybe because it doesn't occur to him. Maybe because he thinks he's protecting me by not bringing it up. Maybe because he's lived through the worst of it with me, and doesn't want to go there any more than strictly "necessary." He always listens quietly, too quietly, maybe. I have no idea what he's thinking, but my paranoid heart worries that it's "Christ, this again?"

But my deepest heart knows it isn't; my deepest heart knows it's "Christ, this still."

Sometimes I wonder if I don't give him enough credit; it's a hell of a thing for a marriage to go through, and we are here, still standing. He's generally a sphinx on the subject, and I'm a coward; I don't ask questions I might not like the answers to. I guess we give each other the benefit of the doubt; can't really ask for much more, can we?

My obit

2010-02-11T16:06:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article today about a gala event in memory of Natasha Richardson. Donna Karan remembered her as "a woman full of joy and happiness." And I thought that was about as good a memory as one could hope to leave. I would love to be remembered that way. I really would.

I don't know if I ever was that person; I might be too sarcastic to ever achieve that. In my own recollection, I can say that there may have been a period of time in my life where that was true; maybe a few. But what I know for sure is that should I die tomorrow, that is not how I will be remembered.

That saddens me. I wish it weren't true.

But in my own defense, I don't have any idea how to become that.

I spent half an hour last night, maybe more, taking apart game pieces for the Albertson's Monopoly game. I played last year, too. I opened all the pieces and dutifully separated the stickers and put them on the game board. 17-18 of them, only to find that I did not, in fact, win big or at all. But wait! There were the online codes I could try, too. I "won" one prize: a coupon for a couple bonus stickers the next time I shopped. That was another 20 minutes. I couldn't really think of anything better to do, though, at the time.

Along with this, I have been entering online daily for the HGTV dream home. I don't play the lottery; it's not that I don't have the same urges and wealth fantasies that other people do; I'm just cheap, and I understand math, so I'm unwilling to blow my cash on impossible odds. But apparently, I'm willing to play if it's free, or money I've already spent anyway. Even as I've been wasting my time on these fantasies, I've been kind of laughing at myself, while genuinely wondering why I seem so serious and diligent about these two ridiculously long shots. And I think it's that I really want, maybe need, to believe that something really hugely and unexpectedly awesome can happen to me again. Because the last thing like that to happen to me died three and a half years ago, and deep down, I wonder if that was it for me, as far as lovely cosmic surprises go. Or rather, fear that it was.

Intellectually, I could say to myself that, as lucky as I've been in life, in love, I have an audacious amount of nerve asking for more. But what I feel is that it's going to be a long rest-of-my-life if I have nothing better to do than drag myself to a job I hate because it kills me with boredom and daily stupidity, drag my tired ass to the grocery store afterwards, and spend my few free hours trying to win sweepstakes prizes. (I certainly wouldn't be alone in this feeling; Powerball jackpots wouldn't be as high as they are if a lot of folks didn't feel this way.) For a long time, I had no hope that I'd survive losing A. Now, I'm looking for the hope that is the spark that keeps us going through adult routine year after year. Once you hit a certain point, there aren't so many milestones or changes that shake up your life for the better, like when you were a kid, or when you have kids. I've got menopause, retirement (if I'm lucky), and death left.

It seems a ridiculous whine, even to me. But while I've learned to live again, I don't have my groove back. I am distinctly lacking in joie de vivre. Am I just spoiled to think that that's something I'm entitled to? People in Haiti are living under tarps, having their legs cut off without anesthetic, and I'm moaning about my severe case of ennui? Maybe I don't need a spark; maybe I need an attitude adjustment; problem is, I don't have either at the moment.

I am so much better than I was. So much stronger. I enjoy my life so much more than I ever thought I would again. Or, more accurately, I enjoy enjoyable moments in my life, if that makes sense; I'm not sure of the life as a whole. And yet...jeez, there are some dark, sad corners within my head. Makes it kind of hard to be a person "full of joy and happiness," no?

Pix

2010-02-03T21:46:00.001-08:00

Querido A,

Your pictures flashing on this digital frame have really gotten to me tonight. I just miss you so damn much. Your beautiful face, and all your different expressions. I just can't believe it's been 3 1/2 years since I've seen any of them happen live. I still can't accept that I'll never get to again. How is that right?

I loved you so much then. I love you so much now. It never stops hurting, you being gone. I never stop missing you. Sure, I do fine; but when I think of you, I never stop wishing you were still here.

I love you, Sweetie.

Tu J, with tears in her eyes

Excavating, at 3.5 years today

2010-01-14T22:34:00.001-08:00

I think I might've written about this before, but I had decided to give Proactiv a try for my skin not long before A died. The package arrived a couple days after I found out he'd passed and sat on my desk for awhile. I don't know how long; my sense of time during that period is slippery, if not nonexistent. I started using it eventually. My skin started looking pretty good, but I didn't know if it was the stuff I was putting on it, or the fact that no other chemicals beyond soap were touching my face--no hair goop, no makeup, nothing. I was lucky to be showered and dressed most days.

Time passed, and I stopped using the stuff, because it had not only stopped working, but seemed to be making my skin worse. So I tossed most of it out, but kept one open bottle of cleanser. Just in case I changed my mind.

Long after A had died maybe a year, or even two...it's all so foggy now...I decided to use that bottle. As soon as I had the cleanser on my face, I knew it had been a mistake: the scent of it brought me right back to those early days of grief, the days when I cried until I couldn't breathe in the shower, a place where privacy and the running water protected both me and E from my endless, body-wracking tears. It was like a physical blow, and I reeled. Once I was almost steady, I washed the stuff off my face and literally threw the bottle in the trash from the shower.

There were still a couple of sealed boxes in the cabinet, and I knew then I would never use them again, so I brought them to work and left them there for anyone who wanted them to have. And that was the end of it, I thought.

And then tonight, I decided I was finally going to straighten out my cabinet in the bathroom, spurred by my efforts to put together some travel stuff for my run up north tomorrow. Apparently, I had not thrown all the Proactiv stuff away; there was one bottle of the zit cream still in there. And just seeing it nearly launched me into a panic attack: my chest tightened, and my breathing was shallow, and I just wanted to get away from it. I threw it into the garbage bag quickly, and now I know that there isn't any more to surprise me down the line.

Sometimes it's a scent; sometimes it's the weather; recently it was being in my mom's new apartment building. Bodies have their own memories, tied viscerally into our consciousness. If I could be totally academic about it, it would be fascinating that the sight of a small plastic bottle I had long since forgotten I had could have that kind of effect on me. And I guess it is. But it is also shocking to realize how much I am at the mercy of such small things, deceptively dangerous as they are.

Imperative vs. Subjunctive

2010-01-13T15:55:00.001-08:00

I haven't done a scientific study or anything, but having observed the well-wishing of friends for a fellow widow today on an important date for her family, I suspect you can tell who is a widow and who is not by the way they frame their notes.

The non-widowed command: "Remember the good times." Implicit in the command is the idea that you shouldn't remember the darker matter of life, as well as a complete lack of understanding that it is often the memory of the good times that brings on the most tears. It is the tone that annoys me most. It's bossy, and I don't dig people commanding others' feelings. "Remember the good times!" As if you don't? It's easy enough to remember good times--they are ephemeral by their very nature, and were always meant to be fond memories. But people aren't supposed to be, and when they starred in those good times and aren't here to reminisce with you about them, it's going to hurt. When you know you won't get to make any more good memories with them, no matter how much you'd like to, it's going to hurt. I'm not sure how that piece escapes people.

The widowed, though, if they offer anything at all beyond love and hugs, wish: "I hope your day is filled with good memories." Implicit in that hope is acknowledgement of all the difficult memories that are now attached to a loved one that has passed on, memories that are hard to avoid when you think of them: days, or weeks, or months in a hospital watching their loved one slip away, often in pain; or for those of us who lost our loves suddenly, the hours and steps leading up to finding out the worst, out of the blue. These are our last memories of them. Those who wish know to hope that the good memories outweigh the bad ones, because they hope the same for themselves.

I remember the last day of my last trip to visit A. As was my habit, I was quickly packing my suitcase as soon as I got dressed so I didn't have to think about leaving for a few hours until it was time to leave for the airport. I was always sad to leave him, and would get teary. He hated to see me cry, so I would do my best to hold it together, but the fact is, I have no poker face at all, and wasn't fooling anybody. He knew that morning; a few tears had already leaked out. He told me that there was no need to be sad; we'd see each other again soon. (Ha.)

I was sitting on the floor of his bedroom putting things in my bag when I saw something flash, out of the corner of my eye. When I looked to see what it was, I found the red face of a Buddha statue peeking at me sideways around the doorjamb, and a deep voice saying "Buuuudha" as the statue wagged. Then the Buddha disappeared, only to reappear a few moments later lower in the door frame. "Buuuuuuuuudha." This went on for a minute, until Buddha and his puppetmaster came in to harass me directly. By that point, I was laughing instead of crying. Mission accomplished.

And as I sniffled on the plane, the thought of that Buddha cheered me. But now, even as I smile remembering what a great guy he was, how he cheered me up that time and so many times, the smile turns to a smile with brimming eyes remembering what a great guy he was. Because I miss him. Because love is forever.

25 years later

2010-01-11T22:49:00.001-08:00

Saturday marked the 25th anniversary of my maternal grandmother's passing. We were living on the opposite side of the state from her then. I was 13 years old, and just home from school when the phone rang; it was my grandma's county sheriff. He asked for my mom, who wasn't home yet, and when I told him that, he asked me how old I was. When I told him I was 13, he said to have my mother call when she got in and had me take down the number. When I hung up the phone, I went into a quiet panic, (a panic I realize only now is "my way." I recognize it now.) Young as I was, I knew that a call from the sheriff wasn't going to be a good thing. And it wasn't. My grandma's death was not the first for me, but it was, until A died, the most significant, and the one that left a deep mark. I still remember the winter light coming in the window, and where I stood as I answered the phone, and how I hid out in my bedroom until my mother came home, locked in that terrible knowing that something was very wrong, but not yet knowing what.

My grandma's was a sudden death, though she was 75. We'd just seen her at Christmas, and she'd had a cold, but otherwise seemed fine. A heart attack took her. I worked myself into a tizzy every night for months after she died, fearful that my parents would die, too, and leave me and my brother alone. One night, after lying in bed, scaring myself into tears thinking about it, I finally got up and went out into the living room to talk to my parents about it. They swore to me that they weren't going anywhere. And eventually I came to believe them. Thank goodness, they're still here.

I started worrying about my parents again after A died. He was a year younger than my mom, two years younger than my dad. Sudden death had stolen from me again, and I was too old to believe my parents, or myself, or anyone else, had any kind of immunity to death. Anytime the phone rings unexpectedly, I brace myself. Such are the continuing dividends of sudden death.

I still miss my grandma. I miss all the good times we didn't have. I mourn all the conversations we didn't have as I grew old enough to get to know her story better, to ask questions. I wish she could've known me as an adult. 25 years later, when I talk or write about her, I get misty-eyed. I still love her with the unquestioning love of a child who thinks her grandma is the greatest, because we didn't have the time for me to ever know otherwise. And because she was the greatest.

Sometimes, new widows will panic, worrying that they will forget their loves. I've worried about that, too--how can I know what I'll remember in the future? But then I think about my grandma, and how a quarter of a century has passed, and I still remember all the little things she did for us, and all the love she showed us, and I still love her so very much. And I know that where there is love, there can be no forgetting. And though there may be tears, I find that comforting in regards to A. He isn't going anywhere either.

I had a dream awhile back where my mom, my grandma, and I were having lunch. At some point in the dream, my mother left the table, and my grandma and I were left to talk. During the conversation, I looked into her face, and her eyes were not her own; they were A's--startling, intelligent, blue-green hazel. It was a gift, no doubt from the two of them. The loss of them both has carved deep lines and valleys into my soul, and for that, they are intertwined: my experiences of loss and grief. By the time I've spent 25 years missing A, I'll be 60 years old, and probably have lost others I love. I have no idea who I'll be then. Hell, I'm not sure I know who I am now.

This life; my life; I can only shake my head at it, because I sure don't understand it.

Death double-dips

2009-12-30T16:17:00.001-08:00

I arrived at the widow board today to learn that we'd lost one of our own, a new widow. It is not clear whether it was a suicide, broken heart syndrome, or she just went to bed and refused to get out again. I remember that last option seeming so appealing in those early days, seeing as the first option was impossible to me, and the second seemingly wasn't going to happen. But I had E; I had no choice but to heal, though I remember telling E that should he leave me widowed again, that's what I would do: crawl into bed and never get out again. I figured that fatal dehydration probably wouldn't take more than a week. I hurt so terribly that I was sure I couldn't survive it happening again, because I wasn't sure at that time that I'd survive it the first time.

Obviously, I have, and now I'm not so certain about the fatality of a second widowhood. Would it damage me incredibly? Without question. Would it kill me? I don't know now. I would just as soon never find out.

I have been thinking about this poor dead widow all day, and I find myself angry at her for some reason. I know she was in terrible pain. I know she said she wanted to die. I've felt that pain myself, and I feel for her. Lots of widows say they want to die, and every time they do, I wince. I wince for the survivors of suicide who have to read that. I wince for all those other widows who may be too close to the edge already and are just waiting for that kind of reinforcement to check themselves out of this life. It always seems irresponsible to me, like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.

Honestly, I'm really not sure what my objection is to suicide, active or passive. I don't believe there's a hell she'll go to for it. I do believe that we come to this life with free will, and that we have the right to exercise that free will even in how long we choose to be here. So on principal, I don't believe that people should force themselves to live through crushing pain, physical or mental. And yet it still seems so very wrong to me. Is it cultural conditioning that says that giving up is not an option that is so deeply ingrained in me? Or is it something more petty: if the rest of us have to stay here and fight it out, why does she get to choose the "get out of jail free" card? Is that why it bothers me? That if I had been widowed and left with no one who loved and relied on me, I would've done the same? Is she my living (and now dead) shadow that I'm forced to confront? I don't know; I just know how I feel.

And yet how can I be angry at someone who hurt so bad, and was hopeless? How can I expect the hopeless to have faith that there is reason to hope? That's not even logical. I guess it's because I really don't believe that people who will themselves dead really want to be dead. What they want is for the pain to stop, and to be with their loved one like they used to be. I understand that, and the pain will stop (mostly). But there is no cure for death; their loved one can't come back the way it was. And there's no getting around that. What hope do we really have to offer to new widows, then? Life will get better, you will get stronger, but some days you're still going to cry out of the blue, and that's how it is? How is that going to lift anyone up? I know a lot of widows who have learned to enjoy life again, to be happy. I'd like to think I AM one of those widows. But I have to say, I've yet to meet one who is just ecstatic about life. All of us have that quiet knowing behind our eyes that can be seen by any pair of eyes who shares it. Is a "pretty good" life all we have to offer each other? Is that enough to make the difference for a person on the edge?

She had no children, but she had other family, and they will now have to feel that horrible, soul-gutting pain, and I am sad for them as much as for her. I am sorry she couldn't hold on long enough to find a tiny shred of hope that this would get better. And I am sorry that I know that the widow road is such that there are few enough shreds for even us veterans to offer her; even those of us who know life gets better still struggle.

I worry for the other noobs, too. My hope is that this death will shake them out of their death wish; my fear is that it will make that death wish seem slightly more reasonable. And I can't really think of anything to dissuade them, other than "You shouldn't." If I am asked why, I've got nothin'.

Swiss cheese

2009-12-27T13:56:00.001-08:00

As part of our Christmas weekend, E and I decided to rewatch all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. (Last year it was the LOTR trilogy.) We watched the first one Christmas night, and the last two last night. We had originally seen them all in the theatre. As the second film began and played on, I kept thinking, "I don't remember any of this." There were minor bits and pieces that seemed vaguely familiar, but overall, it was as if I'd never seen the film before.

Only I had. I had seen it the afternoon of July 16, 2006. It was a Sunday afternoon. The Sunday afternoon after the Saturday I didn't hear from A all day, and he missed our chat time. The Sunday afternoon after the morning where I called him again and again, and didn't get ahold of him, nor did he answer my e-mails. The Sunday afternoon after I'd called his apartment complex office and asked them to check for his truck, or knock on his door, and they refused to help me. The Sunday afternoon I was frantic, but still had a tiny bit of hope that maybe he'd been in some kind of accident and wasn't yet able to contact me. So E asked if I wanted to go to a movie to try and distract myself from my increasing panic, and we went to see POTC: Dead Man's Chest (until just now I didn't appreciate the foreshadowing, and I have to say, I don't much like it), and I left my phone on in case A called. When the phone rang, I was overcome with relief as I sprinted out into the lobby, only to see that it was my cousin calling me. My heart sank. She wanted to talk to me about her wedding a month hence, and I told her I was in the middle of a movie and would call her back. I didn't really care about the movie; I wanted the line open in case A called.

I think that was then I really started to suspect the worst. I was upset, and E was angry at A for being so inconsiderate and putting me through this. I told him A was never inconsiderate, and that this was bad. Really bad. Despite that feeling, I still waited for A to show up on chat that night, as always. He didn't show, and as I went to bed that night, I knew that as bad as that day had been, tomorrow was going to be worse. Tomorrow I was going to have to put our emergency plan into action and contact his family, who had no idea who I was. Tomorrow would be the day I called the police to check on him. Tomorrow would be the day my life changed forever.

Given the panic I was in during the film, and the daze I was in once "tomorrow" became "today," I guess it's not surprising that I would've blocked out that movie. But I didn't know until almost 3 1/2 years later that that had happened. It is so weird, this onion I am peeling. What else have I forgotten that I've forgotten?

Reading is dangerous

2009-12-21T21:40:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to limit my computer usage when I'm not at work so that I don't cripple myself right into unemployment, so I've been reading a lot more lately, curling up with the dogs and a hot drink by the glow of the Christmas tree. I'm afraid literacy has been kind of tough on me lately, though. I was given a book as an early Christmas gift by a friend, so I decided to start that one immediately the next night. It's a wonderfully written book that kept me turning pages; however, it's also a book that not only has a dead spouse, but also a dead dog. Awesome!

I love the friend who gave it to me, and I know she loved the book herself, but more than once since I finished it, I've had to wonder what she was thinking. I mean, honestly.

As hard as the book was to finish, and as hard as I cried at the end for my little dog who died nine months after A did, that wasn't really the remarkable moment for me.

Rather, that was the point late in the book where I turned the page and at the top of the next was my sweetie's name, shared by a minor character in the book who was never to be mentioned again after that. But it kind of stopped me in my tracks. I couldn't stop staring at those five letters, though I wasn't aware of it until I shook myself out of my reverie, kind of stunned that it had that effect on me. And my eyes kept drifting back to his name as I finished that page, the next, and even after I turned the page I found myself flipping back to it. I'd been hypnotized, it seemed.

I think it was because I was desperately thirsty to have someone say his name other than I. I mention him daily, I'm sure--I don't keep track, but his name crops up in a thousand stories or experiences. But I am the only one in my life who speaks of him by name, who tells those stories, because, his family and friends having drifted away, I am the only one who has stories of him. And he will never write his name on a post-it note and send it to me again.

Obviously, the author didn't know my A. The writer didn't put that there for me, but nevertheless, I drank my fill of A's name on the page as if he had, reading and rereading it, as if it were some kind of marker that he was here. I have no other. I have the carpet of ferns that cover the floor of the redwood forest where his ashes were scattered by others, and the rain there that mixed with my tears, and the fallen tree burgeoning with a million other lifeforms that I tried very hard to make a symbol for my fallen self, a reminder that much life comes from death...all life, really.

I don't need a gravestone. I don't need his family and friends who have gone on without me, forcing me to do likewise. But I didn't know until that very moment how much I needed to hear and see his name, not his pseudonym, not even the nickname I called him out of love. But him before he even knew me; him as a living, breathing person who walked this earth and mattered in his own right.

It's funny, how I can still be surprised at how grief works on me, and through me, and I through it. Just when you think you've seen it all, you find out otherwise.

No Escape

2009-12-15T15:18:00.001-08:00

**Spoiler Alert** If you're planning to read or watch Nights in Rodanthe, you probably don't want to read this post.

----------------------------------------

I've been trying to slog my way through this book for a few weeks now, and it's not been going well. It's a fascinating topic, but the writing is so dense and so heavy on 50-cent words that one needs a machete to get through it. I'm not averse to a challenging non-fiction book, but when a book is good, you can't bear to put it down. This one, I can't bear to pick it up.

I tend to buy and read a lot of non-fiction, so when I went to my "unread book" shelf (okay, shelves,) to find something a little easier, a little lighter, something I could breeze through, there wasn't much. And then I found Nights in Rodanthe, a book given to me by a friend who had developed an allergy and was divesting herself of all her paper books. It's probably been in my possession for several years now, maybe even pre-widowhood. All I knew about the book was that it was a romance novel, and that they'd made a movie of it.

A few pages into it, and I already knew it was typical romantic schmaltz that is a lot like potato chips: no nutritional value, but you can't stop eating them. It wasn't much further, though, when it became clear that the daughter of the main female character, Adrienne, had been recently widowed and, after 8 months, was "still" a wreck, and not adequately taking care of her kids, by the lights of the rest of the family. So mother invites the daughter over for a come-to-Jesus meeting, opens a bottle of wine, and tells her daughter of a weekend romance she had once upon a time with an older man, Paul, with whom she found the true love she always dreamed of and never thought she'd have. He feels the same, of course, but has some unfinished business with his son in Ecuador that he has to deal with, and he vows that he will return to her in a year.

I was seated in my recliner in the library last night, reading and planning to finish the book before bedtime. The Christmas tree was lit, the pine-scented candle, too, and I had Christmas tunes playing. I had a lapful of dogs; all three of them were snuggled in as I read, keeping me warm. It all struck me as perfect, and I stopped to take it all in and appreciate it. I was, in that moment, really and truly content, and counting my blessings. I marveled that I felt that way; I remain amazed that those moments are even possible for me. I cannot quantify the amount of healing that has taken place to allow me to have them, but I know it's staggering, because I remember how desperate and empty I felt. How did I get from there to here? I couldn't tell you, honestly. I meet such moments with grateful surprise.

I can't say exactly when I knew this romance novel would have an unhappy ending. Maybe around p.180 it occurred to me that there weren't enough pages in this relatively slim volume to have one, and the clues had started to add up. As I got closer and closer to the end, it became clearer and clearer that Paul was not going to make it back after a year, and that, in fact, he wasn't going to make it back at all.

My perfect moment of contentedness kind of fell apart when he died, heroically (natch). Against my will and intent, I could feel my face start to crumple in that tearless pre-crying stage, until the page blurred in front of my eyes. An older man. An unexpected, whirlwind romance that packed so much feeling into a short time. A connection like none other. And a widowhood she went through silently, because she couldn't share it with anyone.

Let's just say, I could relate.

It didn't really wreck my night; it just made me pensive, at least once I dried my eyes and blew my nose. I am no longer surprised or much derailed by my tears; they come easily and go quickly now; I may have reached professional cryer status. But I had to laugh, chagrined that my efforts to find something light, fun, and entertaining on my bookshelf were not only completely thwarted, but thwarted by unexpected widows. I read their story, but I feel my own. Even when you think you're avoiding the tiger pit of grief, even when you think you're being careful, you can misjudge.

I am put in mind of the archetypal little old Sicilian widows who wear black for the rest of their lives. I suppose until just now, I always imagined them with pity as professional widows, defined by their loss, souls buried with their husbands though their bodies continue with the business of living. But perhaps their apparel is there as a visual reminder to everyone else that they are, and will remain, different. Losing a great love changes you on a fundamental level, and I think it may be in the unprecedented empathy (for better and worse) you can access now that you've been ripped open, flayed alive, and put back together slowly and painfully by your own cold, fumbling hands. When you lose a partner and live, eat, and breathe with Death at your side for an extended period, you gain a knowing of the kind ascribed to mystics who understand things on a totally different level. I could never explain what I mean to someone who has not been there. And I would never have to explain to those who have. I cannot count the number of times I have wished that I was oblivious, that I didn't know what I'm talking about, that crappy romance novels couldn't reach into my history, grab my heart, and wring it out.

It's not him, it's me

2009-12-09T14:08:00.000-08:00

I was brushing my teeth the other night, and thinking about A, and how much I wish I could share with him, how much he's missing in my life. And then I thought, "he isn't missing anything." That's my belief—that he knows what he needs/wants to know about what I'm up to.

I'M the one who's missing out, on him, and what he's doing. I'm missing out on the events of his life, his stories, his adventures, some of which I would've been sharing if he were here rather than wherever he is. I don't get any hints. No postcards. Right or not, I feel sorrier for me than for him. He was such a great person. I am missing out big.

Double-edged Swords

2009-12-08T22:16:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I kind of started going downhill in October. I thought maybe it was grief, or a true, clinical depression. A chance encounter with an internet article made me reevaluate, and my current self-diagnosis is actually Seasonal Affective Disorder, appropriately acronymed as S.A.D. I know I'm prone to seasonal depression. Have been for years, and moving to the sunny desert made such a difference in my life, which only confirmed it. My mom has it. My cousin has it. I've even blogged about it elsewhere, years ago. I posted how I was always vigilant about it come fall, and A sent me a sweet note telling me that he would've never guessed that bubbly ol' me would ever have a problem with periodic depression. He vowed he would do all he could to help me avoid the darkness, and I have to admit, he did a damn fine job of it.

That is, until he died.

And that's the complicating factor. It didn't even occur to me that S.A.D. was what was going on with me, because for the last 3 autumns, grief HAS been the overriding emotional theme. I really didn't wonder why I felt down, depressed, wanting to hide out and avoid the world. I knew, clear as day. I was grieving, and I was taking my own not-so-sweet time about it. So when the shadows crept into my life this fall, I had long since forgotten about S.A.D., because it never had a chance against the other emotional darkness I was grappling with. When I figured it out, it was kind of a slap-your-head realization: Oh. Of course.

I've been making a point to sit out in the sun at lunch every day since (with the exception of yesterday, when it was dark and cold), and stripping down to minimal decency to work on my Vitamin D production out in the sun, and I am pleased to find that it seems to be helping. I have felt less hopeless, and have had an easier time prying myself out of my bed each morning. And I can see what else is going on with me now that the fog has lifted a bit.

I realized lately that I haven't really had much to say, to think, to do about A's absence. There hasn't been a lot of grief. There hasn't been a lot of self-talk, which is odd for me--my head is a busy place most of the time. At most, there's kind of been a regular acknowledgment that he is not far from my thoughts, but no actual thinking about him in many cases. It doesn't feel like there's nothing there, though--it feels like it's locked behind a door, and I'm not opening it. Like I'm pretending it's not there, even though I know it is. I feel like I'm holding him, and his constant absence, at arm's length. Maybe because there's nothing I can do about it. Maybe because I've done all I can. Maybe because it seems futile to gnaw on it anymore. I feel like I'm self-protecting by not engaging in those thoughts. Maybe because they are so bittersweet. The bad memories of when he died and the aftermath of that make me sick to my stomach. The wonderful memories make me cry. So, 3 1/2 years out, I'm finally practicing active denial. Awesome!

I don't really like it; it feels like I'm being fake with myself, somehow. But as I've advised others, a person's got to feel what they feel when they feel it; grief has its own wisdom, and the wise griever just follows it, trusting it'll take her where she needs to be. Ah, if only I would attend my own lectures.

I realized the other day, as I was busily decorating for Christmas and wrapping gifts, that this Christmas, my 4th without A, I haven't stumbled across a gift for him yet. The last 3 years--or maybe just 2; I really can't remember that first year so well--something in a catalog has presented itself to me as the perfect gift for him, and I cut out the picture and put it in my journal to "give" it to him. It satisfied that urge. But this year, it hasn't happened yet. So I guess I don't need to do that anymore? Or this year, anyway. So many of these survival rituals I put into place, only to slowly let go of them over time. And every time I do, I am sad to be letting something else go, while at the same time recognizing that it heralds healing, and should be celebrated. But I never really feel like celebrating it. It's more of, "Well, I suppose that's a good thing. Carry on."

I miss him. But I'm tired of missing him, I think. It's exhausting, and made more so by the fact that there's no relief in sight. I will miss him until I die, which could be a very long time from now. I can't always deal with that truth, so I just am setting it aside, even though I'm not really. I'm watching the scary movie of my own mind through my fingers--not watching, but still looking.

Practicality

2009-11-20T13:52:00.001-08:00

So my parents are coming into town tomorrow, which means that sometime before I leave to pick them up at the airport, I have to put away some of my pictures of A. I have a lot in my office, and one on the dresser in our bedroom. E's never said a word about them, and I'm grateful that he understands that I need them, even if he doesn't understand why I have to have so damn many. (He may not have ever given it a second thought, but I wonder sometimes. I try to avoid crossing the line of "too much A," much as I did when he was alive, and I did the same with A in regards to E. E is understanding and supportive, but I have no desire to abuse that understanding and support through insensitivity.) I had a single picture of A in the house when he was alive, but after he died and we couldn't chat every night on webcams, I still needed to see him, and suddenly, I had a bunch of pictures of him framed and displayed. There are the 3 pictures amongst the guitars, the one on what amounts to an altar, the one with my family pictures in my photoscreen, the 3 little ones on my desk, and 3 more on a picture rail across the room, and then there's the digital frame, when it's on, though that one includes pictures of E as well, and all the dogs.

It is enough pictures to make anyone wonder. Why so many pictures of one man in one room? Why so many pictures of a man who is not E? I don't want to have to answer those kinds of questions, even unspoken, so I will put away about 6 of them in the office, and maybe the one in the bedroom, as I did the last time they visited. I resent doing it, and I feel disloyal to A doing it. But I tell myself I'm doing it in anticipatory self-defense, and that A never had a picture of me up anywhere in his apartment or office. That he wouldn't disapprove of me doing what I feel I have to do to keep my own peace, because he did the same. I wonder sometimes if he wishes he'd gone another way. Would it have made this easier? Or just hard in a different way? I suspect the latter, honestly. But maybe we would've felt braver in our honesty, and that would've made up for it.

When new people come over to my house, I always ask myself if I should put some of the photos away, for the same reasons I put them away when my family comes. I don't generally bother, counting on people's hoped-for manners keeping them from giving voice to whatever nosy questions that they might be thinking. I can't blame people for being curious; I am curious about a lot of things, too. But if they're rude enough to to interrogate me about it, then they'll get whatever answer I feel like giving them at the moment. So far it hasn't been a problem, fortunately.

But family, at least my family, is rarely bound by such conventions, so best to avoid encouraging them to ask questions they really don't want the answers to. And at this point, I am long over the fantasy that sharing the details of the death of a loved one is likely to lead to great support and greater closeness with anyone other than other widows. People get bored with it so fast as it is.

For the most part, it doesn't come up anymore. Everyone who needs to know does. The people I worried most about telling, I'm no longer in contact with. But still, I have to keep this secret, and I hate it as much now as I ever did. It's the practical thing to do, of course, when you don't know how someone's going to react (or you do, and you know it won't be good). It was practical of me to stop hoping his family would be kinder than they were. It was practical of me to stop reading his horoscope. It was practical of me not to go to camp only for sentimental reasons related to him. I am practical, but I'm not practical enough to feel these things as actions that don't really matter, that don't really comment on how I truly feel about A and how he felt about me, and that they are simply actions taken to minimize potential problems. Not and believe it, anyway. I get it in my head, which is why I do it. But my heart doesn't like it. So often, being practical seems like a betrayal of my own soul. A small and temporary one, but they add up nonetheless.

Excuse me while I ramble

2009-11-18T15:31:00.001-08:00

It is my 38th birthday today, and I couldn't be less interested. I mean, it's a given that birthdays stop being the big deal they once were starting at about 25. You get to a certain point, and nothing new happens just because you get older; or rather, nothing new that's good happens; nobody really looks forward to aching bones and menopause and death. But this is different. Deeper. Approaching this week, I thought of a hundred things I had to do, and kept forgetting that my birthday fell among them. It wasn't important and I didn't care.

I'm not in a good place, and I haven't been for about 2 weeks. I have no idea if it's related to this birthday (though I don't generally have birthday/aging angst), to grief, to life, to Seasonal Affective Disorder, to the physical pain I again find myself in more often than not, or perhaps just plain old depression. Of these, the latter scares me most, because I've been there and done that, and it was pure misery. Maybe it's all of the above, or none.

But I don't know what's going on with me. I don't know why I am exhausted, and yet am having a hard time falling asleep. Why all I want to do is watch TV and not think, because thinking only has me mentally running in circles. I am seized by a cold apathy, and I just don't give a damn. About anything. I had a birthday dinner with friends last night, and basically faked my way through it (because it was too late to cancel it and stay home and eat a peanut butter sandwich, which is what I wanted to do). I don't want to talk to anyone, and spend a lot of time just staring into space. I have even less motivation to get my tasks done at work than usual, which is to say, my motivation can only be detected by electron microscope at the moment. At best right now, I'm going through the motions. All of them. The only time I feel at peace is when I'm curled up in my beanbag and a blanket, watching TV. I prefer watching other people's fake lives to living my own. I keep waiting for someone to notice, to notice my dropped hints, to hug me, and ask me what's wrong. But it doesn't happen. And I don't know what I would say even if they did.

It's not the numbness or emptiness I felt in the early days of widowhood. It's kind of a resignation that this is it. This is life, and I've lost hope that if any surprises remain, they're likely to be good ones. It's an overwhelming neutrality, a giant shrug and sigh, but instead of feeling the joy the Zen monks do of accepting that things are exactly as they should be, my acceptance of that merely leaves me asking, "Got it. Now what am I supposed to do with all my free time?"

I am not feeling any overt grief, nothing that I can identify as having set me off, but I am irritable as hell, and there are only two reasons I get like that: PMS and grief, and I am definitely not PMSing. The trigger and target for my irritability is most often E, and it's been pretty difficult for us lately. And as much as I hate to admit it, sometimes I think I get double-angry at something he does because a) he did it, and b) A would've never done such a thing.

Now, I never lived with A, and intellectually, I know that if we had lived together, day in, day out, irritating things would've cropped up between him and me, too. That's how it is. But the reality is that we didn't, and we never had to deal with that dynamic. I'm not romanticizing the relationship overmuch; that's how it was. He and I never bickered. That's how it is when love is new. I totally get that it's an unfair comparison, but it's there, nonetheless.

Maybe it IS the birthday. Maybe it's because now there are 17 years between me and my sweetie, instead of the 20 there should be. Maybe it's because when I met him, I was 32 years old and I felt young and invincible, so young that sometimes I felt like a big dork and wondered why he'd put up with me, and now 6 years have passed and I don't feel young. Not at all. My friends, so many of them older than I, mock me when I comment on how old I feel, like I'm being overdramatic. But I'm not; I feel ancient and weary in my soul. I understand what "world-weary" means, and I am there. I look at the future, and all I can see is me slogging through it day after day. Sheer endurance trial.

I have achieved every dream I ever had, and I don't know how to dream up any new ones. And I don't know how to protect my wonder from the mundane erosion of days and weeks and years. I can still see the things that have inspired me. I can see the love that surrounds me. But it's not getting in; it's not touching me; it's not setting anything aflame within me. I've got a big ol' "that's nice dear" to offer the world right now, and not much else.

God, I need something really good to happen. I need it like air.

Changes

2009-11-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

I got my flyer for guitar camp in the mail today. Ordinarily by this time I would've had mine filled out, sent in, and my flight reservation made, but B and I decided after last year that if the camp were held in the usual venue, we wouldn't be going. Camp is held in Northern California in an antiquated farmhouse that is so cold that you can see your breath indoors, thanks to a single inadequate woodstove meant to heat the whole place. There is also something in the house, some combination of age and the ever-present dampness, that has made the place into a sick building. Several of us suffered severe allergy attacks last year, including myself, and it was bad enough that a couple people actually had to leave.

The place was quaint the first and third year; the second year I spent cozied up in a B&B in town with A. The fourth year camp was cancelled, and B and I were comfortably ensconced in a hotel in The City, and last year, though I loved camp and my fellow campers, I was really over the quaint, and the cold, and the tricky toilets, and the allergies.

But although our presence at camp was debated between us, I really wasn't ready to NOT go last year. I wasn't ready to NOT make that pilgrimage to the roads A and I had wandered together. I wasn't ready to give up my only reason for going to northern California anymore. I'm not sure I'm ready now, but I do know, at least, that practical considerations are outweighing the nostalgia. All told, it costs me about a grand to make the trip. I don't want to spend that kind of money to find myself wheezing and freezing.

I knew before I left last year that was the case, and I made a point to say my goodbyes to the place. B was a dear, and walked through all the shops A and I had peeked into, and ate at the restaurant he'd said was good with me. Some places I had to do on my own, like the B&B. I can still remember how the rain sounded on the street outside our window as we cuddled in the yellow flannel sheets.

There are ghosts of memory there, and in some ways, I think it might not be such a bad thing to not keep going back and stirring them up. I had hoped that camp would be moved, as it was discussed after people left camp early because of getting sick, and then I'd still get to go to Northern California, but in a new context. But that plan seems to have evaporated.

The flyer arriving sharpened the point of my awareness of what is NOT happening this year, and I have to admit, I'm a bit wistful. One more thing I'm letting go. I've felt so much anguish over being forced to let go of all kinds of things beyond just A himself, but there's a quieter angst, a resignation, to those things I have let go voluntarily because it's no longer sensible to hold on to them. It's easier, because those things I've tended to do in their time, but it's not exactly easy.

B and I have plans for that weekend anyway, involving a little road trip up the interstate and music, and I'm looking forward to that. Still, it will be different, and I will feel it. It's a sigh and a shrug and another step. So far, I'm not regretting not going; I'm regretting that things just don't stay the same. I suppose that it was foolish to ever think they would, but I can't help but notice that there are a lot of things in my life, mostly annoying things, that seem to have unbelievable endurance. I suppose its some kind of blessing that I'm one of them.

In My Dreams

2009-11-11T18:42:00.000-08:00

In the beginning of October 2008, I started keeping a dream journal, in the hopes of becoming a more lucid dreamer, and remembering more of my dreams. But the real reason I wanted to remember my dreams better is that I don't, and haven't, dreamed much about A since he died, and I feared that perhaps I WAS dreaming about him, but forgetting those dreams. And I hoped that if I was more aware in my dreams, perhaps I could talk to him more, instead of just fondling the frayed bits and pieces of memory of the dream the next morning.

I dutifully wrote down every dream I could remember, even if it was just part of it. In over a year of recording these dreams, I have had maybe 4 dreams about A, a couple of which felt more like a visitation, and less like a dream, and a few others that had symbols connected to him, always hummingbirds. Despite my being a diligent secretary of my dreamscape minutes, it hasn't really resulted in any increased or improved contact with my love, which was really my hope when I started the whole project. Instead, I have pages and pages of whacked out dreams (the only kind I ever seem to have), and the feeling that he is indeed more distant from me now. Not so far that I feel he's completely gone, but far enough that I know I'm not going to get the kind of contact I got, and needed, early on. He has never done command performances in my dreams; I have gone to bed asking, begging, wishing, hoping for him to show up, and 999 out of a 1000 cases, he's been nowhere to be found.

Stubborn, he is. I tell myself that he doesn't come because he can't for some reason. Or because he can see that I'm strong enough to handle even the low times now on my own (regardless of how I feel about it). Or that I'm supposed to rely on the living for my support now, and tend to those relationships more. I tell myself a lot of things to excuse his absence. But I suppose that I wouldn't have to do that if I accepted his real and valid excuse: he's dead. And whatever that means on a cosmic level, it does mean that I don't get to talk to him all the time, and I don't get any choice or appeal in the matter. If I could just solve the "dead" part, there'd be no problem. I guess I'm still looking for a loophole, however tiny, that would make "dead" a little less final, a little more fluid. I want to reach through the veil to the other side and hold his hand, and I keep looking for ways to do that. I don't really know how much of that is spiritual and how much of that is just a continuing bit of denial. Regardless of what else it means, I know it means I miss him. I miss him so damn much.

A lot of folks don't believe in any of that, that the dead can reach us here, in this world. I wasn't sure I believed it either, and some days I still have my doubts, but I know what I've experienced. And I know how it's changed; it is the change, the withdrawing of that, that seems the clearest proof that it ever existed at all.

In any case, I've been having some weird, somewhat disturbing dreams lately, and I've written a couple down. But the most recent one, I didn't bother. I started a dream journal with a goal in mind, and a year's worth of practice didn't lead to my achieving it, so for me, the experiment is over, and it was a failure, though I will admit to being far more aware that I'm dreaming WHILE I'm dreaming, and usually able to wake myself up if the dream goes bad. But I don't dream of him more, and that's what I wanted. The dreams I had were interesting, to a point, but many of them are scary, at least while I'm in the dream. I have always, always been prone to nightmares. I used to tell myself that my waking life was so good, I had to have all my crap in my dreams. And then I lived a waking nightmare when A died, and I STILL didn't get more good dreams to even it out, so I had no choice but to deem myself (or at least that theory) full of shit.

I don't dream of him. I don't have sweet dreams. I don't even really have dreams for the future.

Somehow, that seems wrong.

On cynicism, new widows, and being old

2009-11-05T11:57:00.001-08:00

Alicia's comment about being touched through her cynicism on occasion by the plight of a new widow's pain struck a chord for me. I feel that cynicism, and frustration, too. Part of it is being a widow further out. Part of it is being a woman further out in life. Part of the problem I have with some of those folks is that they were obviously a mess BEFORE widowhood; the disaster area has only broadened with the introduction of widowhood, which is a nightmare even for people who are pretty together in their lives when it happens to them.

I was a pretty together person, in my own estimation, prior to widowhood. But when A died, I was leveled to crumbly bits. I had never felt so weak, so lost, so unsure of everything, in my life, including that miserable stretch known as puberty. My intellect of which I have always been so proud was useless to me, and I had no idea where the strong woman I thought I was had gone.

As time wore on and I healed slowly, I came to realize that I WAS still strong; if I hadn't been, I probably wouldn't have made it. And all the things that had contributed to my pre-widowhood strength were still in play; it's just that the task I was applying them to was so monumentally huge, it didn't seem that way. It was true that my coping ability wasn't equal to the task of grieving, but it wasn't the lack of ability that was the problem as much as it was the staggering power of the grief. It's hard, if not impossible, at this point to voluntarily conjure up that pain fully again, even in memory, and I suppose that's to the good, but I do remember that it was bigger and worse than anything I've ever known, and I had no idea what to do or where to begin.

But where I was lucky, if it can be called lucky, is that I'd done a lot of personal development over the years that put me in a place where, eventually, I could put most of my energies into dealing with the grief. Not everyone has that place to start from, and it's no wonder they have what appears, to me, to be an even tougher time.

I read posts where people have no sense of boundaries, either in protecting their own or not encroaching on others'. I see low self-esteem that causes folks to habitually accept behavior they shouldn't tolerate, and low self-control that causes people to habitually engage in behavior that is counterproductive at best and self-destructive at worst. I see people seemingly trapped by conventions and various matrices of external control, with no idea that they have the ability and the right to overthrow them to their own greater good and that of everyone who deals with them. And this whole mess is swimming in a sea of grief, which only makes things a million times worse for the aggrieved, as it must.

But I read those posts and it is often clear that grief is only a fraction of their problem of the moment. But they can't parse that, because they haven't ever bothered to parse their emotions and behaviors in the past to see what was what, and whether it was serving them. All they know is that they hurt, and hurt bad. So the elder widow who desires to be helpful has a couple of options, neither very good: to parse it for them, give them a little tough love, and come off as unsympathetic, or to give them a hug, telling them it'll get better, knowing that, for this one, it very well might not. I suppose erring on the side of comfort is probably best, but then you wonder if it would be a greater kindness to help them see how some of this pain is self-inflicted and unnecessary. Kind of like, "give a man a hug, comfort them for a day; give a man a different perspective, maybe comfort them for a lifetime." We can't avoid all pain, but there'll be plenty of that no matter what, so I tend to think it's a good idea to avoid the pain we can, and help others do the same. But maybe where I'm wrong is in thinking that's my job, or even if it is, that I've been doing the job right.

Am I judging? Sure. But what I'm judging more than the people I observe is my own adequacy to the task of doing my little bit to help them, and lately, I find it wanting. It isn't that I don't believe their pain is real and deeply felt. It isn't that I don't feel for them, and with them. It's that I look at what I have to offer them, and lately, I come up with nothing. I do think part of that is self-protective. When I'm vulnerable in my own grief and my own life competency, as I have been recently, I cannot wade into the rising waters of someone else's flood. Sometimes I'm only treading water myself. If I reach out to someone who is thrashing about wildly in fear and panic, we're both likely to drown.

Sometimes it's just the impatience of the experienced with those who don't know thinking they know better. This is part of my personality, increasing the older I get and the more I learn, and I know that. I fight this a lot, not just when it comes to other widows, but in my life in general; it's easy for me to swap compassion for curmudgeonliness when dealing with people who lack self-knowledge and perspective, and (and this is the crux of it, really) seem entirely unwilling to do what's necessary to gain either. I have to be vigilant against arrogance, because it's a little too easy for me to go there, and I really don't want to be an ass. But I'm often overcome with a feeling of "You can't tell these kids nothin'" when I've read at the board. When I was a new widow, people told me it would get better, and while in my deepest, darkest heart (or what was left of it), I feared that they might be wrong, I HAD to believe they were right. I HAD to recognize my own cluelessness in the face of this catastrophe, and my weakness and the very real temporary insanity that goes hand-in-hand with grief, and put my heart and my hopes in the hands and words of those who had regained their strength, their sanity, and had seen the future that I could only fear in my pain and understandable ignorance. I HAD to do it to survive, because the despair of the alternative was frightening. It's one thing to say, "I don't know how I'll ever feel better; it seems impossible," and quite another to assert that "I will never feel better; it's impossible" anytime anyone dared to tell me otherwise. And when I run up against that anywhere, I just withdraw. Damn kids'll figure it out eventually, same as the rest of us, I reckon. I only care to talk when people are actually listening; when it becomes clear that that isn't happening, I tend to just shut my mouth. I hate to waste my breath. And when I've gotten into that mindset, my offering "words of wisdom" to anyone is ill-advised; they'll be sharp and likely to do more damage instead of mitigating any. I've lost count of the times I've started responding to a thread, stopped to reread what I've written, and thought, "Well, that's not going to make anyone feel better!" and closed the window entirely, lest I be tempted to go ahead and shoot from the hip.

I really don't know. I guess the pertinent question is, what is our responsibility to our fellow humans? Are we obligated to do what we can, even when it's not enough, quite possibly futile, and we know that going in, because every little bit helps? Philosophically, I would agree with that. And yet, is there a point where you can safely say you've done your part, knowing that every day, you're going to run across another wounded soul? I love to talk about boundaries, but am having trouble finding this one. It's a moving target, if it exists at all.

These are existential and self-evaluative questions more than grief questions, I realize. It's just that they've come up again and again in the drama-filled crucible that is the widow board, and I'm still mulling them, despite withdrawing there. I feel like I'm going to have to figure out an answer for myself if I hope to have any peace. And I guess that's where I am now in this grief journey. A's death is no longer an "event" I am directly responding to; that part is largely done. However, it is an omnipresent influence that informs everything I do and think and try in my life. Maybe I'm in the lesson-learning portion of this course, where I'm in a position to start taking what I've learned and synthesizing it with everything else I've ever learned and applying it to my life looking backward and going forward. Every time we have an epiphany that changes our perspective and our understanding, we tend to review everything that has passed so far through that new lens, and reimagine what is yet to come through same. So the existentialism and the grief are inextricably tied together now for me. I suppose that's what happens when you have to face mortality as reality instead of theory. Does it happen to all of us?

Dia de los Muertos

2009-11-02T14:18:00.001-08:00

Today is the Day of the Dead. Every day is now, to greater or lesser degrees. I really hate that that's the case.

And that's all I have to say about that right now.

Guess it won't cost me that much after all

2009-10-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

So the VCR we've owned since before there was a “we” has finally proven to be kaput, despite my best efforts at head-cleaning. We haven't used it much in recent years because everything has been on DVD, but we still have a small collection of beloved VHS movies that I'd like to play. And now I can't.

I sent E a text message tonight that the VCR was dead, and wondered if he'd like to replace the machine, or just replace the tapes with DVDs, which might actually end up being cheaper. Out of curiosity, I went through the titles and pulled out the ones I was sure I'd want replaced. It was a smaller number than I expected, but what was interesting were the ones I had loved, but that I didn't think I would watch again. Or rather, I didn't think I could watch again.

Untamed Heart—Christian Slater dies, living his girlfriend Marisa Tomei behind.
City of Angels—Meg Ryan dies spectacularly awfully at the end, leaving her love Nicolas Cage behind.
Heathers—Wanton murder
Fargo—Gory wanton murder
Sommersby—Richard Gere is hanged on principle, leaving Jody Foster behind.
Dead Poets Society—Suicide of sensitive young man.
La Bamba—Untimely death of Richie Valens
Fried Green Tomatoes—Mary Louis Parker dies, leaving her partner Mary Louise Masterson behind.
Somewhere in Time—Christopher Reeve wills himself back in time for love, only to be forced back to his own time, where he wills himself dead in his grief.

That last one I've probably seen 50 times, maybe more, since it came out in 1981 and I was just a child of 10. I have long loved that movie, and thought often of Christopher Reeve's character sitting unmoving in a chair, staring blankly out the window after losing his love, until he finally died of grief, in the early days of my own grief. But I have not watched the movie since well before A died. I haven't dared. At some point, your grief becomes largely under your control, and you become reluctant to create your own ambushes. You cannot avoid all the triggers, all the tiger pits, but you can be smart enough to avoid the ones that announce themselves with big flashing neon signs. Which is why I haven't watched Titanic in years, either.

I saw most of these movies as a much younger woman, before I was ever married, long before I ever met A, before I ever knew that people I loved could die far too young, and I cried through them then. I was sobbing so hard at the end of Sommersby that my chest hurt, and I couldn't see through the tears and my swollen eyes. I was a mess. And I was just a 22-year-old college kid, happily engaged, not a care in the world. Now I'm a 37-year-old widow, and I don't even think I could get through any of them without falling apart. It's just too much. It's just too close.

I have found that my sensitivity to death and violence in my entertainment has increased a lot since A died, even though he didn't die a violent death; he just slipped away, as far as I know. But the senselessness of it was—and remains—so hard to wrap my mind around. I can find no entertainment value in death now, and I wonder how I ever did.

I used to be really into vampires. Loved vampire shows and movies. For many of the same reasons, I loved mafia movies, too. Mobsters and vampires seemed to operate by similar codes, and maybe that's why I liked them. But since being widowed, I just have no taste for either. Empty, meaningless death inflicted by selfish animals is how it comes across to me now; there is no romance in death. Not now that I've suffered the death of a romance.

It's not that I avoid, or can avoid, death in everything I watch. But I feel it so sharply now. I comment on the violence, the gratuitous gore, of what some people refer to as “murdertainment.” And in storylines where someone just dies of an accident or a disease, I just cry through it all. Because even for a fictional body, I imagine a fictional family to go with it, one who feels the horrendous pain of losing someone they love, and I wonder, “This is entertaining?” I've spent years now trying to recover from such a pain; I haven't found a moment of it entertaining in the least. Death isn't funny; it isn't amusing; it isn't diverting; it isn't glamorous or glorious. It is, for the survivors, nothing but sheer misery for a long time, and then a pain that never entirely goes away thereafter.

I understand that the stories we tell are the lessons we as a culture must teach, and learn; we must confront death in our art, because it is the scariest unknown we face. It's not really that that I object to; it's the exploitation of it, the numb, unthinking acceptance of its commonality with no consideration for the toll it takes in so many ways, that bothers me.

Maybe I'm just hypersensitive now. Maybe there's no maybe about it. And maybe that's the natural result of being touched by death, and I couldn't avoid it if I tried. I don't know. I know my mother has been the same way since she lost her mother and her sister over 25 years ago now. But it's a change I've only recently recognized in myself, as I questioned why I wasn't interested in the latest vampire craze. I am just now beginning to recognize the seismic shifts that have caused permanent changes in me. Previously, my emotions changed so constantly as I grieved, that I soon realized that to assume any feeling or observation or thought I had should not be taken for the new status quo. And as that all swirled through and around me, I couldn't see that my foundation was settling in new and very different ways. I assumed it was, but I couldn't see the topography of it until the dust settled. There are cracks, to be sure, and whole sections of me have shifted.

It’s funny, the things that get you.

2009-10-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

Today, it was Brad Pitt and Sarah Vaughan.

If you haven’t seen Brad Pitt lately, you might not know that he’s sporting a longish goatee that is far grayer than the hair on his head. As a People.com junkie, I’ve seen a lot of pictures of him like this lately, and it’s always been striking to me. But it wasn’t until today that it became clear why. His goatee looks like A’s when he’d let it go shaggy and it needed a trim. That earned a silent “Aha.” Not much of a reaction; just a mental acknowledgement.

Not so the Sarah Vaughan song, “Make Yourself Comfortable.” It triggered a flashback where A and I were sitting at his dinner table eating, like normal couples do every day, except that we weren’t a normal couple; or rather, we were, but our circumstances weren’t. When you live in two different states, you don’t get to sit down to dinner every night. So when we did get the chance, it was magical. To me, anyway. He was far less likely to gush about things, including dinner at the same table, so I don’t know what he thought about that. But because we only got to do it every few months or so, I tried to soak in every minute of being close to him, to memorize him for the times in between when we were apart.

I guess it worked, because the flashback wasn’t just a memory I was having here; I was also there simultaneously, sitting in that chair, with him within arm’s reach, steaks cooling on our plates. And then my eyes felt hot and prickly. It’s not the loss of it that hurts me; I cannot lose that dinner. It’s remembering how good we were together and cannot be anymore that is the knife’s edge. It’s the good stuff that gets me most often.

I’m long past the point where everything is a trigger for tears and hurt, but I guess I’ll never be to the point where nothing is a trigger. And I whined in my journal about the unfairness of it—again. Still. 50 years of missing someone seems cruel and unusual punishment for the offense of loving him. I’m just 3 years into a life sentence, with no chance for parole. What do I do with that?

About the title of this blog (with respect to Roger Daltrey)

2009-10-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

What’s it like when your sweetie dies?

It’s like this:

This is a picture of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and it is more than a little apt. When you’re widowed, everything you thought you knew is now a smoldering ruin. Like the people in the street above, you’re still there, still breathing, but you cannot even begin to comprehend the devastation. You cannot begin to guess the thousand things beyond the obvious that were lost in the fire, one of which, you come to understand in time, is yourself. And you have no idea what to do next, let alone where to start rebuilding. Your eyes are red and your lungs hurt, and all you can do is hold your hand to your mouth and whisper “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”

You do that for a long time, taking tentative steps through streets littered with obstacles and emotional hazards. You sift through the wreckage and see what can be saved. You recriminate about the past and mourn the future. You have days where you can carry the usable bricks from your life before he died to a fresh pile intended to make a new shelter, and days where it hits you again and knocks you to the ground.

Oh my god. Oh my god.

The aftershocks are never-ending and sneaky, the wobble in your step seemingly permanent as a response to the shaky ground you realize you’ve been living on all along. There are no guarantees. Safety is an illusion. You can live right and decently your whole life, and all it gets you is the same roll of the dice each day that any loser or criminal gets.

It’s a long hard slog, one I’ve amply described elsewhere, to get to a place where you can see through the smoke, where you can start to rebuild. You do it a little at a time. 3 years out, I can look back and see where it happened, gradually, and the quantum leaps of healing I took at various points along the way. I am grateful to be alive, to have survived. In the early days, I wasn’t sure if I would ever make it out on the other side of the fire of grief. And I didn’t know who I’d be if I did…or didn’t. That was probably the scariest part of all.

But despite the loads of perspective I now have on life, on love, on death, on planning, on priorities, the marks of that fire are still on me. The flames have long since subsided, but in my mind and in my soul, that fire still burns. And that is what I deal with now. Because he’s not going to stop being dead; best-case scenario from a reunion standpoint is that one day, I’ll be dead, too. I know it’s better for me not to think so much about all of this; but how do you not? How do you forget things you never wanted to know?

The city of San Francisco has been rebuilt. It’s a beautiful, strong, thriving city. And no one who lives there can forget what can happen. No one who lives there can forget that they are vulnerable; that a tremor can bring it all to the ground again; that life is a precarious business and every castle we build is upon sand and rubble, destined to fall in its time, whether we’re ready for it or not.

I have a deep love for San Francisco, and maybe it's in part because its story is my own. I do not fear the unknown; I fear the intimately known coming to pass again. It's easy enough to dismiss the former fear as wild imagination; not so the latter, which I know is real. I am widowed again two, three times a week when my husband is home later than I think he should be; I live whole miserable lifetimes in those waiting minutes. I know I do it to myself, but I don't know how not to. I know too much now.

I have been through the fire. I have rebuilt my city. But I am ever on guard now, and that brings its own troubles.

3 years, 3 months

2009-10-15T00:40:00.001-07:00

I really thought I had nothing left to say on the subject of surviving the death of my sweetheart. I thought I was done blogging about it, because what more could be said that I hadn't said a hundred times already in print, and a million times in my head? But I find myself isolated lately, both in that the passing years have made the reality of my continuing grief, such as it is now, seem, I would guess, stubborn to those who have to put up with hearing about it still, and in the fact that I have disengaged with previous sources of support, namely, the widow bulletin board. And I find I am still struggling on some level, still trying to make sense, to make peace, with this bit of reality that is never going to leave me. And so I turn once again to words, because I do need to talk about this thing that doesn't go away. Ever.

Regarding the bulletin board, I was an active participant there up until a week ago, when a young new widow was broadcasting suicide threats across the internet. I tried to help. A lot of people did; and she brushed all suggestions and offerings aside. And I struggled with the conflicting ideas that here was a true tragedy about to happen that all of us were helpless to stop, and here was a manipulative, dramatic kid who thought this is how you get attention. And while I knew her pain was real, I wanted to shake her, regardless of whichever was true, because you just can't just choose to die. Well, yeah, you can, but it's a bad, wrong, sick choice, which is to say, it's no choice at all. Even at the worst of my grief, I never made a plan to kill myself, no matter how many times I thought it wouldn't be so bad if I just didn't wake up the next day.

Life is hard, and you just don't get to give up, dammit. That being my feeling, and the constant drama of the board suddenly becoming too much for me, I've pulled back. I peek in once a day or so, but it is more of the same, and right now, I just can't deal with it. It was this girl who was crying out for help, but refusing to hear the answering cries, that was the last straw, I think.

I kind of feel like a jerk for walking away, even though I think I have given back to that community. But you can't give what you don't have, and right now, I don't have much. I'm pulling my energies inward and trying to cope with my own stuff. It's not overwhelming, but it is October, and I'm feeling it. October was when my sweetie came to visit my town; we'd hoped to make it an annual event but didn't have time. October was when I traditionally started planning for my January trip to his place; now there is no trip to plan. October is when the days get shorter, and the darkness lengthens until it can reach in and touch your heart. It is a time of melancholy and memories, at least for me, though I doubt I'm alone in this. I guess we'll see.