Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

It started raining sometime Tuesday night, and continued into yesterday morning, coming down in sheets by the time I was ready to leave the house. I battled terribly flooded low spots on the way to the chiropractor and wasn’t sure I’d make it through in my car. I scoped out the counselor’s office as it was on my alternate route back to work.

I do a lot of thinking in the car, which means I do a lot of crying in the car of late. I have a tentative date for a visit to A’s family and friends for September 16th. I’m waiting for confirmation. Seems like all I’ve been doing for a month is waiting. But when I have a date set, I am going to ask his buddy to bring me by A’s shop and his apartment. It will be hard, for both of us. I have visions of myself crumpled in the hall outside his door that I can’t go in again. But I have to. I am unlikely to have a reason to ever go back there again, and so I must do it this time, ready or not. It’s all so abstract, me being here, and his life being boxed up and locked away without my input there. I don’t even know where most of his stuff is. I couldn’t say goodbye to him; I couldn’t see him one more time, even after it was too late; I couldn’t see the urn and be at the memorial. I need to see these places and mourn them, too. I have tried to be ultra-considerate of his family and friends; their feelings matter to me, but I think I’m owed a little consideration myself already.

This line of thinking left me crying in the office parking lot, which was safer than crying while I was driving, and it took me a bit to pull myself together enough to go into work. Like a highly destructive earthquake that shakes you and your whole life to their foundations, leaving everything a shattered shambles, there are aftershocks when you lose someone you love. There are new griefs you weren’t even expecting on top of the grief you’re already living with. Like never going back to SJ again and having to say goodbye to the places where happiness once dwelled. Like skipping a concert you’d talked to him about going to, because you cannot stand the thought of going to listen to good guitar music at the venue you saw another show together and you won’t be able to e-mail him the review the next morning. Like the realization that this meeting with the family and friends is probably a one-time thing, and then you will have to say goodbye to yet another part of him that he shared with you. You feel him slipping away bit by bit, and you have no control over that loss, just as you had no control over the loss of the man himself. And you realize what a vast web of connection to things big and small love creates. When he was here, I thought it sweet and romantic and wonderful that so many things reminded me of him every day. Now every one of those equals pain, another potential loss.

I want to cry out “Haven’t I lost enough already???” I’ve lost too much.

My book tells me that 8 million Americans (JUST Americans) lose someone close to them every year, and I have often wondered in recent weeks just how the world continues to function when there are uncountable numbers of people grieving every day. I suppose I should see that as a sign of hope, but hope is a very slippery concept for me these days.

I went to my counselor appointment, and not much happened today—she took a history and made sure with a battery of depression questions that I wasn’t going to hurt myself between now and next week. I’ve got 3 appointments scheduled over the next 4 weeks. She seems all right—no bad vibes. There is a part of me that feels better for just having something, anything, however small, in forward motion instead of stuck in pain or looking backward with no hope of regaining what has been lost, even if it’s a long process.

At the same time, I’m acutely aware that my goal in going to counseling, my goal in healing, is to get used to the idea that he’s gone. And there’s a part of my soul that rebels violently against that. I don’t want to get used to that idea. It’s a horrible idea. And yet that is the task before me. It’s creepy as hell. Hurting is hell. Grief puts you into limbo; you don’t want to stay where you are, and you don’t want to leave your loved one behind. I guess she and I will talk about that at some point. Maybe sooner rather than later, because I can see that unarticulated inner conflict sabotaging the work. My goal is to eventually let go of the worst of the pain without letting go of the man, the love, the joy that is rightfully mine to keep and enjoy in memory for my lifetime; it is literally my consolation prize. I own that. I don’t want to give it up.