Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I received the essay at the end of this post in an e-mail from a member of my Yahoo grief group, a widow who has shared her inspirational story of healing one last time with us and is ready to retire from the telling of it.  But not before she sent this found gem, for which I bless her.  It lightened my load, and my heart, today.  It brought tears to my eyes, but not sad ones.  I was so touched because this articulates what I want to believe, what I hope for.  It doesn’t matter to me what our relationship is on the other side; I don’t imagine that things are the same there as here.  What would be the point of death and birth, then?  I just want to be close to A’s soul.  His was, and remains, an amazing one.

I’ve been thinking about faith, and what it means when I say "I want to believe."  For me, that is what faith is.  Because I do not believe anybody’s faith is so strong that it is never rocked or subjected to doubt, which is the opposite what I’ve always been given to believe is the defining element of faith.  The concept of faith is a tough one for me, and has been for a long time.  I have realized in recent years that when push comes to shove, I have trust issues.  I believe I can trust myself and my judgment, and everyone else is suspect to greater and lesser degrees.  I don’t know where that comes from; maybe everyone grapples with that in the darkest corners of their minds.  In any case, it makes faith as a concept a hard sell to one who has always seen and questioned the subtle agenda of those who would exhort me to have faith (usually their particular brand).   Also, I need a faith that is not mutually exclusive with thinking, which is how it’s generally spun.  "Don’t think too hard about it and just accept" is the perennial suggestion of those who would have power over me, be it advertising, my government, or the church I grew up with.  And it’s a hard sell to one who has had her world pulled out from under her with the loss of her beloved.  Faith?  In a universe that would do this to us?  Are you kidding me?

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile–all my life, but especially since A died–about how I can have faith in the unseen, in the intelligence of the universe, when it so often seems like such a bullshit gamble from where I stand here on the earth.  It seemed impossible for me, honestly; I knew I’d always fall short of true, unwavering faith in anything, particularly the greater existential and metaphysical questions.  But quite recently (in the last day, really), I’ve come to a new understanding of faith, one that works for me.  

I think that, along with understanding the world we can see and experience, hope and faith and desire intertwine to get us as close as we can possibly get to knowing what is, to the human mind, truly unknowable in the whole, even if it is glimpsed in part all the time.  So the best we can do, I think, is to want to believe.  Faith is not something one has, as much as something one chooses.  We choose to believe.  We operate with that belief in mind.  And I choose to believe that some day I will understand all this, will have the perspective to understand this blink of the cosmos’ eye that is my human lifetime, with all its apparent pain, loss, and confusion.  The joy is easy enough to understand, or rather, I’m not sure we worry about understanding it; we just enjoy it.  And I choose to believe, because he’s given me reason to believe, that he is still with me.  It is not as I hoped or imagined, but he is here, and indeed, death has pressed me on to greater understanding of what is, even if I don’t understand the how or why of it.  He often spoke of our "endless conversation," and when he first died, I was angry and called him a liar, because the conversation had certainly and abruptly ended.  But I know now that it has not.  It is different, obviously, but it is not over.  We are not over.  And he is worth living through even this. 

The piece below is written as a letter from the loved one who has passed as guidance and encouragement to the one left behind.  I like to think this is what A would say to me (this, and that he misses my kisses, too).  He was always good at talking me in off whatever ledge I found myself on.  I choose to believe that he would tell me this, if he could.  And I choose to accept the peace it has to offer my heart.  I hope it offers a little peace to yours as well.

I AM HOME by Mike Dooley

And now,

I am HOME;

And I am supremely happy, in a "place" of profound and unspeakable beauty. A place where all are bathed in showers of unconditional LOVE. I am home, and before long, you will be too, and we will be together always. But until we embrace again, let me also share this with you…so that you can better understand those things that may trouble you the most:

I now know that the love I feel here was at all times on earth too, and all one must do in order to feel it, is to KNOW it is there. This love that shines on you now is there to comfort and console, to heal and restore, and to bring laughter and joy. You have set lofty goals for yourself and the challenges you’ve chosen are admirable, but with this love and the faith that you can do all things, even these noble callings will one day soon be little more than baby steps in your march to gaining dominion over every time-space illusion. You will prevail. Your dreams, as well as the obstacles placed on your path, are gifts given you so that you might sooner see this Light that now surrounds you.

Of these gifts, my parting was one. You need not be sad, for even now I am with you - though you must close your eyes to see me. The illusion of death presses one on to greater understandings, for only when faced with darkness can you begin to properly seek the light. A light that will reveal that there can be no endings, goodbyes, or sadness, without beginnings, reunions, and happiness, and that you and I are unlimited Beings of Light adventuring throughout creation so that we may rediscover the magnificence of our own divinity. We are Gods rolling like thunder through the heavenly landscapes of eternity, where there are only miracles, there is only love, and Everything is holy.

Before you on earth there remain infinite possibilities for the most fulfilling time of your life, in a universe conspiring on your behalf. The world is indeed your oyster, though your "work" is not yet done, and you will be happiest if you cling not too tightly to the past. But if you must, take solace in your times of sorrow by knowing that I am always there, that I will be at your triumphant homecoming, and that I too have prepared a place for you in a blissful celebration that is only just beginning.

I love you so. I am happy. God speed.

In the last week I’ve received 2 reminders that I need to go in for an eye exam.  I need new glasses, anyway, because mine are scratched all to hell and it’s actually beginning to interfere with my vision.  I don’t think I really need a new scrip, just new lenses.  I actually tried to get them replaced months ago, but was told that because my prescription was out of date, I would have to see a doc and get a new one before they could sell me any glasses.  Which just seems dumb to me; it’s a prescription for glasses, not morphine.  What do they think I’m going to do, overdose on vision?

In any case, I haven’t made the appointment, and the months have passed, and I wondered what was holding me up.  Mostly, it’s just the hassle of getting in to the doc, and I didn’t really want to blow $300 on glasses at Christmas when I was already spending a fair pile of cash.  But I realized there was another little stumbling block.  Just when you think the myriad small insanities of grief are behind you, another one pops up and says “Not so fast, lady!”

I realized that I am loath to get new glasses because these were the glasses I was wearing when A last saw me.  I’d had them about 7 months when he passed.  

How can I get new glasses?  He liked these ones.  Maybe he won’t like the new ones.  Maybe he won’t recognize me if I change them.

It’s silly.  I know that.  It won’t stop me from getting glasses; not now that I know that’s what was stopping me before.

Thursday afternoon I had an ultrasound to check out a cyst, despite my physician’s assistant telling me it was probably nothing.  It was nothing, but she thought an ultrasound and a follow-up with my doc would be a good idea, which I appreciated.  While they were checking that, they found another cyst, a large one, on my ovary.  Again, everyone tells me it’s a frequent occurrence for most women, usually goes unnoticed, and will probably clear up on its own in short order.

They’re probably right, but having had my fill of docs who cannot be bothered to actually do a full work-up of a problem (or even listen to the whole problem) before they write a prescription or pass you on to someone else, I hope I’ll be excused for not trusting them.  They’ve been wrong before, telling me something was “impossible” when it turned out I was right and they were wrong.

So I wheedled copies of my films to send home to my mom to review, as she’s been an ultrasound tech for 25 years, and she actually cares what happens to me.  It was a bit comical, actually.  First, I asked for them outright from the receptionist, because the techs had disappeared.  And she said, “Well, they’ll go in your chart,” as if that settled the matter.  I said, “Well, I think I’m entitled to see anything in my chart, according to HIPAA.”  I love that within two sentences, I have to invoke federal law.  So she asks the doc if I can get them, and he seems puzzled as to why.  “Will she know what she’s looking at?”  I tell him that my mom’s an ultrasound tech, assure him that she will know what’s she’s seeing, and what’s more, “She’ll ask.”  I don’t know that she would ask, but I really didn’t think I’d get very far with “Well, I’m sure you’re all professionals, but I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, and since I happen to have—this one time in my life—someone in my family who can give me a professional second opinion, I’m just going to go ahead and do that, mmmkay?”  

So the techs reappear, and he asks them if they can get me copies of the films.  I’d already told them about my mom, so I repeat that she’d be curious, and I can tell that they’re not thrilled about doing so.  Maybe because they felt they were being second-guessed, maybe because they’d already shut down the computer for the day, and would have to reboot to give me what I asked for.  There was a weirdness in the air as we waited, and I played up the mom angle, and they reassured me that it was nothing to worry about, and that lots of people had this, and on and on.  Finally, I decided to use humor to diffuse the discomfort, and said that I need copies of my ultrasounds to keep up with all my girlfriends who delight in showing their babies’ first pictures (in utero), and as I was not having kids, this was the best I could do.   “This is my cyst; we’re going to call it ‘Paula.’”

I was amused.  But I guess some of these are just for me; I think they thought I was serious.  The lot of them must’ve thought I was a little weird and insistent, but I got what I wanted, so I can live with it.

I called my mom to ask her if she’d read the films and reassure me that I wasn’t about to be someone’s fatal mistake.  Cancers of the female bits are too frequently deadly, and by the time you’re symptomatic, it may well be too late.  She, too, said it was pretty common, and probably nothing to worry about.  Which I’m sure is true, but I feel better hearing it from my mom.

In any case, this whole process has brought home in a very concrete way something that has slowly become true again since A died, which is that I’m in no hurry to die.  People who don’t care if they live don’t harass their medical providers and mothers to make sure that they’re fine.  I know that, for the most part, it’s out of my hands, and that when my time comes, not even my mommy will be able to save me.  But I know now that, faced with the possibility, I’m prepared to do what I can for my own sake.  That’s good news.

There’s something else, too.  And that is this feeling I’ve been carrying around for years that I am going to die young.  I felt it in my 20s, when I was always cracking the whip at my own back, trying to pack a lot into some kind of life résumé, because I felt like I didn’t have a lot of time.  I let go of that for a long while in my late 20s and early 30s, figuring that it had more to do with trying to be someone my mother could at long last approve of than any sense of my own mortality.  That may still be true, or not; I don’t know.  But since A died, since I was dosed with a large amount of nasty-tasting reality that people die young and unexpectedly, that fear is back.  And honestly, I don’t know if I’m a budding psychic, or if I have merely internalized my shock and bewilderment at A’s untimely death and this is how it manifests.  That is, do I think I’m going to die young because A died, and I have no faith that the universe won’t do the same to me?

There was a time in my grieving journey when I felt bad enough that death seemed like a blessed release, particularly since one of my favorite people in the world would be there to greet me when I arrived in whatever comes next.  But I never could spend much time thinking that way, because I was not alone in the world.  And as horrible as the soul pain was, it was educational, because I knew I would spare E (also one of my favorite people in the world) that pain as long as I had any choice in the matter.  When it comes down to it, I’m not afraid of death.  I just don’t want to leave anyone behind feeling as awful as I felt.  So I’m going to try to stick around as long as possible.

I’ve been wrestling for some weeks with a bit of blogger identity crisis, related somewhat to the identity crisis all widowed persons face:  if you pull yourself together and try to have a reasonably normal day, or try to string those normal days into a normal life, you must be “fine” and if you fall apart “after all this time,” then you must be mentally ill, or at least in need of a kick in the pants.  You can’t win for losing, and you are as likely to be judged by your fellow widows as the uninitiated. 

There is, for many widowed, a very small box that constitutes proper widowhood.   Naturally, those who would draw these boxes fit comfortably inside them and are looking askance at all those outside their own experience of loss.  Your spouse had to have been largely perfect in action, profession, and manner of death to be worthy of mourning, and for those left behind, there are even more expectations as to how you should be acting, thinking, feeling, planning, and if you step outside the lines drawn, you do so at your own peril.  When I had lunch with Alicia, I told her how I was careful at the widow board, believing that full disclosure would’ve resulted in my being virtually lynched.  She agreed that would’ve been the case.  We live in a contradictory society that thinks nothing of saying “Be yourself…just not too much.”  It affects our grieving as much as any other aspect of our lives.

Honestly, I find it a little strange that widows would hold to, and attempt to enforce, their set of rules so strictly, since I imagine the rules they had before went out the window as soon as their beloved died.  Rules like:  Young people don’t die.  People who are deeply loved don’t die.  People who eat well and exercise don’t die.  People who were not sick and showed no symptoms don’t die.  The universe rewards the good and decent and punishes the evil.  Children in loving families do not lose parents.  Things like this don’t happen to ME.  For me, all the rules I thought I knew regarding how the universe worked evaporated when A died, because his death broke every single one of them.  I haven’t replaced them with new rules, because what would be the point?  I’ve gotten pretty used to “I don’t know” being my response to most situations now.  And I snort inwardly at anyone who pretends to know the answers to the big questions.  They don’t know any more than I do.

I have largely absented myself from the widow bulletin board since the new year, because I didn’t think it was helping me anymore, but I still go back from time to time, usually when I’m killing time at work.  This going back has only reinforced my decision that it’s not the best place for me anymore—it’s gotten somewhat Jerry Springer-like lately, which is entertaining, I suppose, if I could get entirely past my horror at some of the behavior.  Apparently, a group of widows who have, if you’ll pardon the expression, a death-grip on their identity as “Widow” with a capital “W” have sent hate mail to a woman who described her divorce as a “death of a marriage,” and put a paid advertisement in the paper to that effect.  They sent angry e-mails to her personally and to the newspaper editor as well.  How dare she compare divorce to death?  They were extremely offended, to a level of torch-and-pitchfork outrage.

I don’t get it.  What does this woman have to do with them?  I know that A was wrecked when his wife asked for a divorce, and it took him years to work through the pain and bewilderment, both of which made occasional reappearances in his life.  Was it the same as my pain in losing him?  How the hell would I know?  I’ve never been divorced.    These, I suppose, are the same kind of folks who feel their marriage would somehow be threatened by gay marriage.  Their widowhood is threatened by anyone who isn’t packed into their very tiny box with them.  For my own part, I’d be happy to have passed on widowhood entirely.  It’s not an identity I ever hoped I would apply to myself, nor, given my circumstances, have I been able to do so anywhere but here.  I hope I never have the opportunity to experience it again.

I have been disheartened to find that the one-dimensional view of what grieving is is as likely to be the perspective of those who should know better as those who are clueless.  And I am chagrined to find that I have been spending a considerable amount of energy walking the fine lines that describe that box. 

What concerns me is that I have become somewhat too audience-aware as I do my writing here.  It started a few weeks back, when I shared some other writing I’ve been doing with someone who really only knew me through this blog, and the context of our meeting, which was at a grief group.  It was a bit of a shock to that person, to see other facets of me that aren’t necessarily evident here.  This is, and has always been, a grief blog.  I write here when I’m chewing on something related to A’s passing and my dealing with that.  That is why I post irregularly.  It’s not a general “life” blog, nor should it ever be taken for one.  Why is that important?  Because if this is all you knew of me, you might assume that this is all there is, and that mine is a pretty sad and stagnating life.  I hadn’t considered that until my friend’s perception made it shockingly clear that that’s what was being conveyed.  I knew that this blog represented only a single facet of my life, so it never occurred to me that any other reader wouldn’t get that, given the title, the purpose, and the URL.  A little clueless on my part, I admit, but I think it’s a forgivable and understandable myopia.

But with that realization, I began to feel I owed it to myself and my readers to give a broader perspective of who I am, and also where I am, grief-wise, and maybe even to write more positive posts to encourage those who are earlier in their journey.  But when I sat down to write them, it often felt forced, not because I lack positive feelings, but because, for me, that was never the purpose of this blog.  This blog exists for my therapy, first and foremost, and if what I write here resonates and comforts anyone else who may be reading it, I am glad.  But where I went off the rails is when I suddenly felt a duty to try to make comfort and hope priorities in what I’m doing here.

Where I went wrong was in forgetting that what you think of me is none of my business.

All the crap we get from others about how if we’re smiling, we must not miss them that much, and if we’re crying, we’re just not coping (and often it’s the same people who make both judgments), I started putting on myself, at least as I chose what to express here.  I was dancing the line between being too sad and not sad enough, at least as I imagined you reading and evaluating my words.  I fully admit, it’s a little neurotic, which is why it’s been bugging me, and why I’m writing this post today.  I am shining a light on this particular neurosis, in the hopes of disinfecting my mind.

My inner life is complex.  This makes me different from absolutely no one on the planet.  It was complex before A died, and it will be complex the day I die.  Grief has added a level of bizarreness to the general ups and downs of daily life that I couldn’t have anticipated, of course, but my emotional state is rarely an all-or-nothing proposition, and never has been.  No one’s is.  Hell, even in the midst of the most painful periods of grief, I wavered between nervous breakdown and numbness.  There is more than one note in my song.

I laugh a lot.  I crack a lot of jokes, and take pride in the fact that most of the people who know me think I’m very funny, and those who don’t clearly lack a sense of humor.  I lost that for awhile, but it’s back.  The return of my sense of humor was the first sign I had that I was healing, and that there was hope yet for me and my broken heart.

I’m as competent as ever at my job, even if my devotion to it (always questionable) is purely mercenary.    

I have a lot of hobbies that satisfy my creative impulses.  The return of creative impulses is by itself a cause for celebration.  Some I was doing before A died, some I started after to fill the many hours that used to belong to him.  I cuss a lot when I do some of them, but even so, I feel pride, and accomplishment, and growth as I engage in them.  

I love and am loved, in this world and from the next, and appreciate that whole-heartedly now, rather than merely intellectually, as I did early on in this journey.

I have a full life, with a lot of good stuff in it, and I enjoy it as much as possible.  And some bereaved folks don’t want to hear that.  I didn’t want to hear that when I was new to this road.  And yet I did, because I needed so badly to have hope that I wasn’t going to feel that awful forever.  But I say “as much as possible” advisedly. 

I have my tough hours, days, weeks.  I am “better,” not “all better.”  I lost a true love and I miss him every hour I’m awake, and a few when I’m asleep, too.  There is not much to say beyond that now, although I think it’s enough.  I don’t think one can overestimate what it is to miss someone this much, but it’s mostly a silent thing for me now, and if I don’t broadcast it, I think people assume it’s not there.  I guess what I’d like to say to the world is “Assume nothing.”  If I am not crippled by my pain anymore, do not assume that I don’t hurt.  And if I have misty moments when something seemingly innocuous has been said or done, do not assume that I am not moving forward in my life.  I am.  It’s just that my whole life comes with me, just as yours does.  I’m living with the loss; but I am determined to live.  And that determination is evidenced by choices.  I didn’t have a choice in whether A died or not.  But I had other choices to make after.  I had to choose to re-engage in my life in progress, and rebuild the parts that had been totally destroyed.  I have to choose it every day.  I have had to choose to claw my way out of a very deep, dark pit, and have worked hard for every ray of sunshine that now falls on my face. 

I think have made significant healing progress in these 18 months.  I don’t spend a lot of time rehashing the awful days at the end now.  I don’t spend a lot of time asking “Why?” now.  I don’t spend a lot of time wishing for things that cannot be, like him coming back.  I don’t spend a lot of time being angry at his family, or at circumstances, or at myself.  That is not to say I don’t spend any time doing that; I’m only human, and of course I do.  But I have done all that, and plenty of it.  It was necessary to the process, I think, but for the most part, I’m done with it.  My journal entries to him are growing shorter each night, because I only need to tell him what I did with my day, thank him for any signs he sent my way, and tell him I love him, I miss him, good night, and I’ll talk to him tomorrow. 

But the loss of him, and the feelings that go with that, will always be there, because there is no undoing it.  I will never not miss him.  And some of those who haven’t lived through a major loss don’t want to hear that.  It scares them.  And those who are newly bereaved don’t necessarily want to hear it, either.  They’d like to believe there’s going to be a well-marked exit off this highway, unaware for the moment that each of us builds the road we’re on from the crushed boulders of our respective pasts.  I wanted to believe that, too, but I suppose that life now isn’t any less linear or tidy than it ever was.  It just seemed cleaner and easier in comparison to the unprecedented upheaval and unimaginable pain that losing A brought. 

I do not define myself by my loss, but neither do I deny the deep and lasting effect it has, and will have on me.  It is the Colorado River to my Grand Canyon.  Time may fade the memory of the river that cut it, but the result is indelible and spectacular. 

I don’t have it all figured out; I don’t expect to anymore.  At the end of the day, I’m just muddling through.  I pay attention when I fuck up.  I pay attention when I do something right, and I do the best I can at any given moment, just like everyone else. 

As the plane descended into Oakland over green, rolling foothills, an entirely unexpected thought flashed through my mind:  Home.  I was home, a home that became mine because of him.  Because he lived there, because he showed it to me, because he loved it, I love it, too.

Previous trips there since he passed have felt like coming home to an empty house, familiar enough, and yet somehow too hollow to be borne.  The heart and hearth that had made it home no longer burn there for me, and his absence has been all too conspicuous.  And so that is what I expected:  emptiness, and loneliness, and disconnection, and, at best, wistfulness.  Not “home.”  Not without him.  

And yet I was excited to be there, to see the city and the bay and the bridges.  I love San Francisco after all.  I feel like it was given back to me at that moment, to enjoy instead of mourn as a place I once enjoyed.  How did that happen?  Did he give me that?  Is it just a function of healing, allowing me to recollect, in the most basic sense of the word, those things that I thought I’d lost to pain, and pain avoidance?  Another mystery, but a good one for a change.

I had a wonderful trip, with a dear friend who is so good for me in ways I don’t understand but am grateful for.  We had a lot of fun, and the melancholy I feared would overtake me was largely absent until it was time for me to leave.

It hadn’t been my intention to talk about A constantly, but I ended up talking about him quite a lot, and I felt a little self-conscious about it.  It wasn’t even all about the loss of him, though that came up, too.  But the place, and the trip, and the guitars, all conspired to make him front and center in my thoughts and words.  I worried that I talked about him “too much,” and now that I’m home, I am reconsidering that self-evaluation.  I think I’m just not used to talking about him much these days, so talking about him at all seems like a lot.  And also, there is the fact that he’s still very much a part of my days and my life, if only in spirit.  He is a reality, and therefore, it only stands to reason that I would mention him when it was pertinent, as I would E, as I would anyone close to me.  And the frequency of his pertinence is more a testament to how close we were, and how broad our connections, rather than evidence of my forcing him into the conversation.  He’s just…here, in my heart if not on this earth.  He doesn’t go away.  And I like that.  

I suppose I could just be rationalizing what was nothing more than my taking advantage of a good-hearted friend willing to listen to me yap endlessly about my boy.  On the other hand, I’m unable to feel wrong about it.  The whole world goes around doing whatever the hell it wants, broadcasting its need and damage to all and sundry.  I know, because I am frequently the recipient of true confessions from near-strangers; I guess I have one of those faces.  I rarely engage in such declarations of need and pain myself, because, frankly, I don’t trust the world with my heart and soul, and I do not trust it not to disappoint me.  My friend is one I can trust, and do, and, feeling safe, maybe I just could be entirely myself without self-censoring for a change.  That kind of freedom does wonders for a soul.  We also laughed ourselves silly, ate good food, and rested when we were tired.  All good medicine for world weariness.  I think I’ll write myself a prescription for some refills on those.