Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

We have these cute little ground squirrels around here, ground squirrels that climb trees, too.  They are small and sandy brown and sleek, with big black eyes.  There’s a colony of them behind my office building, and it’s fun to watch when the babies arrive in the spring.  I watched a pair of youngsters tackle and body slam each other one morning a few weeks ago for a good 15 minutes.  I love these little guys, and they’re everywhere around here.

On the way home from lunch today, we came upon one that had just been run over, messily, by a car.  That was sad enough, but what really upset me was the other little ground squirrel that was standing near his fallen buddy, checking on him.  People (people who don’t know animals, I think) caution us against anthropomorphizing animals, but that’s what he was doing, trying to figure out what happened to his friend or relative while still in danger himself, standing as he was in the middle of the street.  We slowed down and he noticed the car, and was torn between running out of the way and staying with what was left of the body of the dead ground squirrel.  You could see him turn towards the side of the road, then look back to the body several times before he scampered off.  Once he was out of the way, we drove on, subdued.

I was in tears for the little ground squirrel left behind, checking on his friend.  Concern for our fellows and upset when we lose them is not limited to us human types; it seems to be inherent  in the whole animal kingdom.  It was so poignant, and I identified with this little rodent, perhaps overmuch, but there it is.  I hated that he had to walk away from his dead friend, that there is little other choice; you cannot just stay in the middle of the street.  You have to run for your life, sooner or later, whether you want to or not, or know where to go.

I was upset throughout lunch.  I have to admit, I am easily moved right now.  The death of my friend’s father has brought a lot of stuff up for me again, and the fact that it’s July as of tomorrow has brought its own sensitivity.  I heard from her yesterday, and the memorial service will not be held here; it’ll be held in his home state, where all the daughters still live.  I didn’t realize it until later, but the service is scheduled the same week A’s was.  While I would’ve gone to the service had it been here, for my friend and her mom’s sake, I am relieved that I will not have to go.  I’m not good with funerals to begin with, and the timing is just a little too fraught with emotional peril for me.

I feel it coming; the irritability, the hair-trigger on my emotions have arrived already.  I am not the first bereaved person to note that the anticipation of the milestone date is worse than the date itself, and while I’m not trying to psych myself right into a full-blown breakdown, I am aware (and wary) that milestones like this are grief triggers.   I am simultaneously unprepared for the reality that he’s been gone two years, and have been talking about it in terms of "nearly 2 years" for months now, as if in preparation.  Like maybe if I say it enough times, it won’t be such a blow when I have to remove the "nearly" from that time stamp.

It doesn’t seem like two years, and I think that’s because the first year was lost entirely, as if I were in a coma.  I know that I slowly healed and existed through that time, but it was entirely outside of time, outside of myself.  I was lost in ways I find it hard to describe.  If you know, you know; if you don’t, I couldn’t explain it to you anyway.  It’s only in the second year that I’ve been able to start finding myself again, to really feel like I was living my life instead of watching it.  And I’m still not sure what to make of it.  I suppose my level of activity is about the same as it was before he died; what hasn’t quite rebounded is the gung-ho, go-get-’em enthusiasm I once had.  I don’t know if this slowing down is a function of grief, of low-level depression, or just the expected side effect of the fire, where innocence, the illusion of control, and the irrelevant are burned away in the conflagration of spirit that is grief, leaving only what is essential.  As my perception has widened, my world has contracted to those people and things that mean the most to me.  I’m not in much of a hurry to do anything or go anywhere, because either there’ll be plenty of time, and it’ll get done, or there’ll be no time, and it won’t matter. 

I think about all the projects for himself that A had planned to do—bookcases for his apartment, a guitar rack, refurbishing an old acoustic guitar of his—that he never even got to start, and I wonder if he cares now.  If we can be taken right out of the middle of our lives, taking nothing with us, and the world keeps spinning, how important can any of it be?  They are merely the means by which we do and learn what we’re really here for, I think.  This thought has taken a great deal of the urgency out of my life.  The up side is that I feel a lot freer; the down side is that I often feel adrift.  If nothing is urgent, it’s easy to bob through life with no particular direction, especially when you remain unconvinced that you’re even supposed to have a specific direction.

I looked through his pictures last night, for the first time in weeks.  I have a bunch around all the time.  But I have over a hundred on my computer, and from the day I found out he’d died, I had them on as my screensaver every single night, watching his face drift by on my screen.  When my dog died, I added her photos to the virtual memorial.  But when I switched to the new laptop, I didn’t set up the screensaver the same.  Part of that was that I wanted to see if I could stand it, and part of it was that the new computer goes into power-saver mode before the screensaver kicks in, so I wouldn’t see it anyway.

To see his sweet face, smiling, laughing, frowning in concentration—to see him so alive and changing from picture to picture—made me smile.  He was such a beautiful man, and a beautiful soul, and I realized how much I’d missed that slideshow every night.  And how much I miss HIM.  He was so here, so alive, so vibrant, so present in this world.  In my world.

I was lucky to meet him, lucky to know him, lucky to love him.  I just wish he hadn’t gone away.

After A died, I got very serious, maybe a little manic, about getting my affairs in order.  I always knew any of us could go any time, but his sudden death made me understand it on a visceral level, and "I’ll do it later" no longer washed.  His sister had told me of her trials trying to get A’s business sorted out; A was not the most organized of businessmen, by his own admission.  The entire time I knew him, he intended to get his shop cleaned up and totally organized.  He’d make efforts here and there, but never quite finished the job because there was real work that needed to be done.  It became a bit of a running joke, and I have teased him posthumously for having gotten out of it.  That, and jury duty, though he chose a helluva way to go about it.

Additionally, I found myself wishing over and over again he’d written a note and stashed it somewhere someone could find  it regarding me, and the things he wanted to go to me.  I didn’t get anything of his, and I didn’t get anything of mine that he was borrowing back.  No one even asked.  And if there were things I wanted to go to specific people, I wanted to get it written down so that no one did that to anyone I loved once I was gone.  Of course, there’s nothing but their own consciences to compel them to honor my wishes, but at least I will have tried.

A month or so after A died, I bought a workbook about getting your affairs in order.  I did pretty well working through it, writing down information about bills and assets and people to contact.  What remained was to get a will written.  I talked to E about doing it, but he balked.  He’s good about financial planning, but doesn’t like to talk about estate planning.  I remind him that not talking about death will not prevent it; I didn’t like to talk about it with A, either, and you see how well that worked for me.  Granted, this is a community property state, and as we are childless, it’s probably not a high priority.  But I don’t want there to be any question about anything, or for it to have to go into probate. 

I didn’t have to, or get to, deal with any of this stuff for A; his family did it all.  I would’ve helped, and offered to, and wanted to, but was left out of it. That said, it was a wake-up call of just what a mess it is for those left behind to try to sort everything out if you’ve made no effort to do it yourself.  A kept everything in his head, so he knew what was what, but he took that information with him when he passed.  I didn’t want E to have to deal with that if something happened to me.  I pay all the bills, and he barely knows where I keep the checkbook.  That’s not good.  The stories I read at the widow board regarding people who meant to get life insurance, change beneficiaries on old policies, change deeds and ownership papers, but hadn’t gotten around to it only reinforced for me the importance of making things as easy as possible on those left behind.  Dealing with a mess when you’re falling apart is not what anyone wants to do, and it’s not necessary.  E doesn’t know exactly how much that kind of loss takes out of you, other than how he saw it affect me.  He misses me terribly when I’m out of town for a day; I don’t think it’s egotistical to think that my being dead is going to take him down for a long while, but I suppose I could be wrong.   He also doesn’t realize that as much of a basket case as he saw, I protected him as much as I could; he didn’t see it all.  I do know how bad it is, and like everything else in this journey, I am trying to learn the lessons of all this and put them to use, to give A’s death meaning, to get something useful out of a tragedy, at least for me.  

It became clear in time that if I waited for him to be ready to write a will, we’d never get it done, so I bought some will-making software, installed it, and then we promptly had several months of computer and network problems.  So it happened that my good start 1 month out had become 23 months and still no will written.

It’s been on my to-do list in earnest for the last few weeks.  I sat down last night finally to do it, and you know, it wasn’t so bad.  I clarified with E what our major plans were in regards to the disposition of our stuff, and then I went to work.  It was, in an odd sort of way, kind of fun to make the bequests, to think about what I had, personally, that I wanted to give to my most beloved family and friends to remember me by.  I still have to talk to my brother about being a back-up executor, and get the thing witnessed and notarized, but the main work is done, and I feel better for it.  It had been hanging over my head, and now I feel like my affairs are largely in order so that if I die, no one will have to be turning the house inside-out looking for important papers and such.  I also completed a Durable Power of Attorney document, and worked on my final wishes, which is done but for my obituary, which I thought I wanted to write myself and now think I don’t care to.  And I need to finish the "Funeral Mix" CD that I’ve been slowly compiling over the last 2 years to be played at my service.  I don’t give a damn about the obit, but there will be good music, dammit!  All this stuff and a letter of explanation will go into the workbook, and I’ll make its location known, and then I’ll be done for the time being with mine.  I’ll review it from time to time as the years pass, updating it as circumstances change. 

The software I used allows you to make an identical one for a spouse, with certain changes, so I started his, too.  All I’m waiting is his list of specific bequests of his stuff for his dearest friends and family, which I’m sure I’ll have to ask him 10 times for.  The lightning struck close to him, but it didn’t strike him, and so he still keeps death at an illusory distance, like all the uninitiated do.  Not me; I can still smell the fire and see the scorch marks on my soul where the bolt hit me.  I can never again engage in that kind of denial of inevitability.

For years, my mother has been telling me where she and my dad keep their wills and important papers, and for years I’ve told her I didn’t want to talk about that.  But now I appreciate their efforts, and understand why they’ve done so.   It really is a kindness to those left behind, and I think they’ll thank us for it.  If nothing else, it gives me peace of mind.

I don’t get a lot of phone calls, so when my phone rang at 9:15 this morning as I was driving to work from the chiropractor’s office (to send an e-mail and tell them I was going home to get cozy with my ice pack), it surprised me.  When I saw who it was, I knew something was wrong.  My friend B is supposed to be on a cruise a thousand miles away and completely incommunicado, NOT calling me on a Wednesday morning.

I am never wrong when I want to be, and it was B calling me from port to tell me that her father had passed.  While B lives in the Midwest, her parents live not far from me.  We’ve had dinner together, and they’re lovely people, the nicest 80-somethings you’d ever want to meet:  engaged and engaging, ready and willing to discuss anything and everything at dinner.  But now her mom is widowed, and 3 girls have lost their father.  I don’t know what’s that like, but I know it is terrible.

I remember when my paternal grandfather died; I was 13 years old or so.  We were at my dad’s family home, doing the post-funeral gathering, and I noticed my dad smoking.  He’d quit years before, due in part to my mother’s insistence, and I knew he wasn’t supposed to be smoking.  I ratted him out to my mom, and she told me, “Leave him alone, his dad died!”  Of course, I was 13 years old, and had no conception of what a loss like that would do to someone.  My only experiences of death up to that point were the loss of a great-uncle whose funeral we children didn’t go to, an aunt I never liked, and my puppy who was hit by a school bus.  The first two didn’t really register for me nearly as much as my puppy did.  I had little-to-no relationship with my grandfather, and when he did speak to us, it was at us, usually yelling about screen doors and our blocking of his view of the TV.  I wasn’t aware of my father being close to his dad, either, so in the typically self-centered manner of a teenager, it didn’t really affect me, I didn’t understand why it would affect him, and so I went through the motions, without the emotions.  I didn’t know then that when people are important in your life, for better and worse, grief can be massive and complicated.  Funny how we receive lessons in loss and grief all our lives, but it sometimes takes us decades to understand those lessons in full.

B’s mom doesn’t know that I’ve been widowed, and while I understand to some extent her loss, I really don’t know what it is to lose someone you’ve lived with for the last 50-60 years.  If I have one fear, it’s that I will find out one day.  I have said to others, when I tried to explain what it was like to lose A, that the only loss in my life that could ever compare is to lose E.  E has been put on notice that he may not depart this world before me; given the longevity of his family, I might be safe from living through this twice.  But I don’t count on it; I don’t count on much these days.

I am frustrated with my inability to know what to do here.  I told B that I would call her mom and ask her if she needed someone to shuttle folks in from the airport, but I didn’t get ahold of her this morning when I tried.  I’ll make a lasagna and bring it over at some point so they don’t have to cook, and I’m planning to invite her for dinners down the road, after the crowd has left.  B asked if I’d be willing to be on-call for her mom, since we’re here and her mom is now alone, and I said of course.  But it doesn’t seem enough.  I would treat her family as my own, but I’m closer to B than to her folks, and I’ve never met her sisters, so I worry that my efforts could seem intrusive.  And then there’s B herself, my beloved friend.  She won’t be here right away, at her mother’s insistence, but my friend has lost her dad, and was obviously in shock when we spoke.  What can I do for her, when I can’t even give her a hug?  I’ve been through a loss, and recently.  Shouldn’t I know what to do?

I ponder what I wanted and needed when I lost A, to see if that would guide me.  The problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted early in my loss, or if I did, it was often contradictory and it changed by the minute.  I wanted sympathy and acknowledgement while simultaneously wanting to be left alone.  I wanted to laugh or feel something other than the pain, but needed to cry until my chest hurt.   I wanted people to take care of me, and I resented the fact that they thought they knew better than I did what I needed.  So if I was that filled with mixed feelings and antithetical needs, and I know that everyone grieves differently, where do I start for someone else?  

This is why people pull back from survivors when someone dies; they are paralyzed, even those of us who have been through the fire and feel like we should know better.  And yet, I am committed to NOT being one of those who disappear; I want to help.  But I don’t want to get in anyone’s way, either.  I suppose this is what rituals are for; to give people the things to do so we don’t have to think about it.

I need to call again and express my condolences myself, instead of just on the answering machine.  I need to ask about the funeral.  I need to offer my services as chauffeur or phone caller or…what else?  I don’t want to tell them, “Call if you need anything.”  I want to be ready to offer to do specific tasks that need  doing, and it seems to me someone largely removed from the emotion of the loss might be better able to help handle the practical realities thereof, taking some of the burden off the family.  Anybody out there, what do you wish someone had stepped up to do for you and your family at a time like this?  I know I can’t make this any easier for their family, but maybe I can make it slightly less hard.

You may recall that three months ago (dang, has it been that long?) I created a semi-faithful replica of the bracelet I’d made A.  That bracelet was the only thing I asked his family for, but I did not get anything from them at all.  I’ve always assumed the bracelet went to them as one of the personal effects on him when he died, and I asked almost immediately to save it from the crematorium.  It occurs to me today for the first time that maybe it did go into the fire with his body; I would actually prefer that it went with him, his for eternity, than for it to be sitting in some box in someone’s basement, if it could not be mine.

But I made a new one, using different dark beads because I didn’t have more of the black ones I made the original with.  And I rationalized all kinds of healthy, “moving on” symbolism in the differences, which at the time I believed whole-heartedly, and I still do see my point.

However, today when I was working on a project, I was looking through my miscellaneous bead bin for a small black bead to use as a bird’s eye.  The first potential bead was too big for my purposes, but it  looked familiar to me.  It looked for all the world like one of the black beads from the African necklace A gave me, and that I’d shortened, using the beads I’d took off the necklace in the bracelet I made him.  And then there was another one, and another yet, and I realized that was exactly what they were.  They were not the standardized beads you can buy in bulk at any bead store; they were slightly irregular, each one unique.  I spent several minutes picking through the entire bin and found I had a bunch of those beads I was certain I had no more of.  Enough to remake the bracelet, the one I’ve been wearing non-stop for 3 months, as I’d originally intended.

As I picked beads out of the hodge-podge, I pondered whether it was worth it.  Was it going backwards?  As I said, I’d come up with some good reasons why the hematite beads I ended up using were just fine, and symbolic in their own right.  Was I just full of shit that day?  To a certain extent, yes; I was looking for ways to lessen my disappointment at being unable yet again to have the bracelet I wanted, even in one I was making myself.  It got me over the mental hurdle, and I needed that help.

I also considered the significance of picking those beads out of a riot of other beads and junk in that bin.  That junk bead bin was, in that moment, my life—some pieces a tangled mess, some pieces missing parts, some glimpses of sparkling beauty, some parts entirely beyond repair, and me looking for just one little thing, not sure if I’d find it.  And then I found that the ones I had lost, and had been sure were gone forever, were right there.  Little pieces of him everywhere I looked in my bead bin of a life.  Nothing, it seems, is really ever lost, even when you think it is.

By the time I picked out all the black beads, I had decided that I am going to redo the bracelet, and make it as close to the original as possible.  Regardless of anything else, it’s what I wanted to do to begin with, and I know it will be a comfort.  I was willing to settle for a reasonable facsimile when I had no choice, but now that I have the option to, I want the beads he touched closest to me, pressing close to my heartbeat.  

Jesus, I miss him.

Friday night after work I went to a local used bookstore to hear a concert by a musician whose music has been playing non-stop in my car since I picked up her CD at a gig last month.  After her show, I wandered to the back of the store to hit the restroom prior to driving home, and popped into a section of the store that can only be described as an eternal rummage sale.  This bookstore buys more than just used books; it buys quirky stuff of all sorts.  I found a great print of the Golden Gate Bridge there, and as I wandered through last night I found the perfect birthday gift for a friend of mine who’ll be turning 70 this year.  I didn’t pick it up, though, because E had untold dollar amounts of trade vouchers for this same store in his wallet across town, and I wasn’t going to pay for it when I could have it for free, so I determined to return for it today.

We brought in a bunch of other books to trade in, but it was a busy Saturday and they told us it would be 35-40 minutes until they got to our pile, so we wandered the store.  The clock I’d spied the night before for my friend was still there, so I grabbed it, browsed the New Age section and the magazines, and then settled into a chair to wait for our stuff to be evaluated and E to be done with his shopping.  As I sat there, they announced that at the front of the store were 3 psychics that would be giving free readings.  

I have wanted to hear from a medium since A died.  Well, that’s not quite true…a couple weeks after he died, one night the word “Medium” popped into my head quite out of nowhere.  I didn’t really believe in them, never considered going to one, and I was surprised I would even think of it; I wondered if A had put the idea in my head.  I started doing research and read a lot of stuff on the web, eventually finding my way to George Anderson’s books.  From what I’ve read, I have to say that I think George Anderson is the genuine article.  I believe that some people really do have these kinds of gifts; however, I also believe that 90% or more of those who claim to have them do not.  I am a wary consumer of the paranormal, as anyone should be.

I have gone back and forth with myself about talking to a medium.  Part of the reason is money—it ain’t cheap, especially if I wanted to sit with George Anderson himself.  Part of it was something of a matter of faith—I have received so many signs and even a few visitations from A since he died that I am convinced that he’s out there, still loves me, and it almost seemed ungrateful after all that to ask for further confirmation.  And finally, and this really was the true sticking point, I was afraid I’d have an experience where it was clear that the person was a fraud, and my newly found belief in the next life would crumble to dust around me.  Frankly, my heart couldn’t take the potential disappointment; that belief, that he was not over, but rather just in another room, was (and remains) one of the things keeping me going instead of succumbing to despair for the duration.

Two months after A died, I had my first run-in with a self-proclaimed psychic.  It would’ve been comical if I hadn’t been in the middle of a complete emotional breakdown at the moment.  However, it was my experience with that woman that formed the expectation in my heart that should A desire to reach me beyond the messages he’d already sent me, he would find a way, and a true medium would bump into me some day somewhere, look up at me, and say, “Oh my goodness…I have message for you!”  And it would be exactly something he would say, and they would go on their merry way and that would be that.   I decided, however unreasonably, that if I was meant to speak with a medium, the opportunity would fall into my lap, and wouldn’t cost me a dime.  When you think about it, it’s not really any more unreasonable to expect that than to expect to receive messages from a dead person in the first place.  If you’re going to dream, may as well dream big.

So I sat paralyzed in my chair, trying to decide what to do.  What was the likelihood that 3 legitimate psychic/medium-types were setting up temporary shop in a used bookstore on a hot Saturday afternoon in June?  Not very, it seemed to me.  And yet, was it not strange that they were there on a day that I was, having no idea they would be (their space had been in use by the Red Cross Bloodmobile when I walked in the store), offering their services for free?  There are no coincidences, right?  Wasn’t this exactly what I asked for?

While I was thinking about it, staring into space, one of them walked past where I was sitting and asked me, specifically, “Are you going to get a reading?”  I decided as I said, “I am,” and got up to go sign up on the list, with a little nervousness, but knowing I’d kick myself if I passed up the opportunity, and would continue to wonder.

It turned out that one person was a tarot reader, and the other two were psychics and mediums.  I read their pamphlets and decided to sign up with the latter two.  They introduced themselves, and sat down to work.  There were a few people ahead of me, so I stood around to wait.  And listen.  

The medium I had the greatest hopes for asked a lot of questions, and the lady sitting with him helped him out quite a bit.  A true medium doesn’t need to get the information from you; they will be told it by the soul trying to reach you.  By then, E came to see what I was up to, and I told him I’d signed up, and it shouldn’t be too long a wait.  I explained that I’d long wanted to do this, and my reasons for not having done so.  He’s a total skeptic, but was willing to wait, as our books weren’t done yet anyway.  I told him I wanted to wander behind the other gal and listen to her session to see if she was any better, and E wandered off to look at magazines.

As I eavesdropped, I heard her giving such specific advice as “He’s saying, ‘follow your heart.’”  And I noticed the sitter talking quite a bit.  Again, if you’re doing all the talking, the only person you’re communicating with is yourself, not the other side.  I was disappointed, and went over to tell E that it didn’t look good, that I was going to listen to the other guy a little bit more, but that we might be done there sooner than expected.

I went back to listen, but before I could, she called my name.  I sat down, and she explained that I needed to write down my name and birthdate and those of anyone I wanted to know about.  A little sketchy, I thought, but she didn’t have a computer open to Google available, so I figured it couldn’t hurt much.  I wrote down my own info and A’s.

She read the names and instantly asked, “Is this your father?”  He was old enough to be my father, as she’d ascertained from the birthdate, no doubt, but it seemed that her psychic powers had failed her out of the gate (especially since I’d put down my maiden name as asked, and it didn’t match his name).  I answered “No.”  She looked at it again and rubbed her fingers across his name, then looked at me and said “This isn’t a romantic thing, is it?”  I just smiled enigmatically.  She went on, “because it isn’t going to work out.  He’s not right for you.  He’s a nice guy, but he’s not intellectually your equal.  You need someone who is better matched for you intellectually.”  There was more along those lines, but she’d already lost me.

The fact of the matter is, A and I were perfectly matched on every single possible level, including (and probably to the greatest degree) intellectually.  It really was uncanny, and beautiful.  Granted, we don’t have quite the give-and-take we once did on that score; he’s been pretty quiet for almost 2 years, but the fact that a psychic medium didn’t grok that he was actually dead doesn’t say much for her abilities.  Nor did she ascertain that I DO have someone else in my life who is an equal intellectual match, probably because I didn’t put his name on the paper.

She went on to say that while I am strong, she sensed I had been hurt in relationships before (I haven’t had that many romantic relationships in my life), that I had emotional baggage from my childhood, and that these issues made it hard for me to be vulnerable, and that I needed to be with someone who lifted me up and helped me with my self-esteem.  

I suppose all of these could be said to be true of me, but they are no doubt also true of every single other person in that store.  Who hasn’t been hurt?  Who doesn’t have emotional baggage from childhood?  Who doesn’t need to be around people who lift them up instead of putting them down?  

And anyone who knows me knows that self-esteem is NOT my problem.  A superiority complex used to be my problem, but a strong dose of Death will teach you humility like nothing else.

I didn’t give her much beyond the occasional “I’m listening” nod and a non-committal smile.  I thanked her and got up, neglecting to put anything in her “love offering” basket.  The other guy had called my name while I was meeting with her, and since I didn’t answer, the lady that had been there before me came back for further reading.  I had one ear on their conversation, and when he said, “Was he a quiet man?” and she answered in the affirmative, he responded with “Because that’s what I’m getting.”  At that point, I found E and said “We’re done here,” and we got our credit slip, collected the books the store didn’t want, and checked out.

While I didn’t hear from A as I’d hoped, I think the experience was valuable.  My greatest fear had been that my disappointment with an obvious fraud would make me doubt everything I’d come to believe about there being more after this life, and negate the encouragement I take from knowing that A’s life continues in another form, and that didn’t happen at all.  As I walked out of the store, I could laugh at the experience, as it deserved, and I still feel sure that A is out there.  I may not trust the “medium” I talked to today, but I trust me and my own experiences.  If nothing else, it’s good to know that my new understanding and…I guess you’d call it…faith, are not as precarious as I feared.  In that, I got much more than I paid for.