Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I noticed the other day that a lot of my readers read from work.  That’s not terribly unusual when it comes to blogs; if you’re chained to a desk all day, you find ways to distract yourself.  But it got me thinking about the in-cubicle sabbaticals I have taken since A died.  I was not able to take time off when he died; I was at work the day I found out he had died, and I missed very few full days in those early months, because I didn’t have the time to take, and because of our unusual circumstances, there was no way to explain to anyone why I needed to take a month off for the death of “a friend,” however dear.  I went in every day, but I accomplished next to nothing.  I was a zombie in my desk, crying silently all day when I could, escaping to the restroom when silence was beyond me, and finally leaving early to hide out at home in my bed.  Sleep was the only escape I had, and I was grateful for the peace unconsciousness offered me.  When I read of all the widows who suffer insomnia, I feel so bad for them, because I can’t imagine how I would’ve survived without the respite of sleep.  

I did enough work that, along with a word to my boss that I was still struggling but was doing my best, no one had any audible complaints about my productivity, but only I knew exactly how much time I was wasting.  Or maybe they do know, but nobody wants the answer to why I would be spending hours a day reading at a widow bulletin board, so they don’t ask as long as the work gets done.  The reality is that, without ready support via the internet, I wouldn’t have gotten as much accomplished as I did.   It was my lifeline, without which I wouldn’t have been able to stay at work.  At first, it was just research about heart disease and grief resources; I wouldn’t even find the widow board until a year after A died, and it was there I found other widows’ blogs, which I couldn’t read at work, but devoured at home.  What I found kept me tethered to the world long enough to learn that I was still alive, and could survive what seemed unsurvivable.

Slowly, over time, I have managed to get back to accomplishing my full workload.  The thing is, though, that my focus at work is still not on work, after just short of 23 months.  23 months have passed with me still spacing out, still reading the widow board on and off all day long, still looking for anything to distract me from my work.  It used to be celebrity gossip sites, but I swore off them after I realized that those people didn’t deserve to be stalked by paparazzi for my amusement.  I’m a little irritated at myself that I’ve drifted back to one of them lately, and I’m wondering why.

When A’s marriage fell apart, he lost all focus at work.  He told me about it, beating himself up for still having those bad habits and lack of productivity that started when he first started processing the breakup, and were still continuing 5 years later; he felt that it was hindering him financially, and he couldn’t afford to keep doing it, but hadn’t managed to kick his own ass sufficiently to stop it.  I was sympathetic, because I could see how something like that could mess up your work ethic in a big way—how important can this be in the face of a crumbling marriage?  But after he died, I was empathetic; I have lived…am living…what he told me about—how important can this piece of paper I’m pushing be in the face of the death of someone I love?  The fact that the only part of my job that inspires me is the paycheck certainly doesn’t help.

For some, work is an escape they can throw themselves into to hide from the worst of grief for a little while.  For others, including myself, work that seemed of questionable merit in the best of times seems ridiculous now, but for practicality.  And as long as I stay where I am (which, given this economy, will be for awhile), that will be the case.

I don’t know how much of my time spent off-task is me still processing grief, and how much of it is habit, now.  I know there are aspects of both, and the proportions vary with the day.  Why the return to the celebrity sites, and more and more time spent at the widow board?  Maybe because it’s June, and while I’m holding steady for the most part, I can see the clouds gathering on the horizon as I remember a June 2 years ago when I was depressed, weighted down with a feeling of doom, the provenance of which I couldn’t discern; doom that seemed prescient as I considered it in the months after A died.  

I often think about all the computers around the world in front of people who have been crying at their desks today, yesterday, and those who don’t even know that they will be joining us sooner than they ever imagined.  While it may look like most of us get back to our regular lives in progress, I think it more likely that we’ve just learned and engage in more sophisticated coping mechanisms that allow us to keep up appearances sufficiently and yet allow us to access support as we continue to need it.

Anyway, to those of you who are reading this from your work desks, know that I am thinking of you when I am at mine.  I send out mental hugs to the IP addresses I see over and over again, hoping that you’re holding up.  (I don’t imagine there are many non-widowed or non-grieving people reading this blog.)  We may not know each other’s names, or anything about each other’s lives, but somehow we found each other and are connected anyway.  Some of the deepest, most understanding support I’ve received in this journey has come from people who don’t know who the hell I am.  If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.

I suspect that, for every grieving person, there comes a point, usually after somebody has been spectacularly insensitive or colossally clueless regarding your loss and pain, that you think, “Enjoy your ignorance now, but the day will come when you will understand only too well.”  It’s a thought I had with a strange combination of bitterness, resignation, pity, and just a drop of satisfaction that life would teach the jerk in question the same lesson it was pounding into me, and s/he would remember this moment.  I think one of the things grief teaches you is that no one gets out of this life unscathed

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ex-friend who lost her friend.  I only hear bits and pieces regarding how things are going for her, and I recall how she didn’t really know what to do with my grief.  Nobody ever does; in all fairness, I haven’t known what to do with it either.  I just live through it and with it and hope to gain clarity, distance, or both in time.

Granted, losing a friend is different than losing a spouse, so our experiences of grief are different, but I remain unwilling to quantify and compare grief and pain of loss, and just assume that everyone who loses someone they love is hurting a great deal.  I think when I had those thoughts of “Some day you’ll know,” I expected I’d feel some sense of satisfaction, if not outright vindication as others who didn’t know how to be there for me were initiated into this particular mystery.  Not so, after all.  I think I’ve come far enough along this path to have not only given up wanting others to understand my emotional experience, but to genuinely wish that other human beings can postpone their own understanding of it as long as possible.  It’s unquestionably a bitch, this knowing, and if I had any question before it happened where the the final loss of innocence in life happens, I know now that it is in the death of one who is dearly loved.