Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I was in the kitchen this evening making hummingbird nectar.  I make 64 ounces at a time, now.  I’m going through it pretty quickly these days, because while the hummingbirds sip it during the day, the bats have found my feeders and they drain them at night.  These last two weeks, I’ve had to refill them every morning.

I’m an impatient cook in most circumstances, and I poured the sugar in once the water was nearly boiling, and then let it simmer a bit, for hummingbird safety.  Once the sugar was in, though, it precluded a rolling boil.  Instead, little bubbles formed at the bottom of the pot and seemed to disappear before they ever broke the surface of the water.

I’m easily amused, and I turned the light on over the stove to watch the bubbles form and disappear over and over, so fast my eyes could barely keep up.  The lifespan of each bubble was a second or less; but there were always new bubbles forming, “old” bubbles popping.  The activity in the pan was furious, continuous, predictable, with just enough variation to keep it interesting. 

(I really know how to have a good time on a Friday night, don’t I?)

As I stood over the pot watching all this happen, I wondered if the perspective of A, and of the universe itself (god, if you prefer) regarding the world and this life was much like my perspective over the pot of boiling water.  In ten seconds, I watched thousands upon thousands bubbles being born, growing, and dying, followed by more that did exactly the same.  And while for any individual bubble it was an entire lifetime, for me, they lived and died almost instantaneously.

As I considered that, I felt something like patience come over me, and with it, the potential for deep peace.  It struck me more deeply than that, and more lastingly, but every attempt I make to articulate it fails.  Perhaps that’s to be expected when you feel like you may have stumbled upon the ineffable truth in your kitchen when you thought you were doing something else entirely.

I had an insight the other night into the ennui I’ve been feeling for the last 2 weeks, after a short interlude of peace following another down time.  (Jesus, I’m a moody cuss.)  What it looked like was complete lack of motivation to do anything.  It looked like laziness.  It looked like apathy.  It looked a little like numbness.  It looked a lot like a mid-life crisis.  It looked like the slippery slope toward a full-blown depression. 

So I fought it.  I’m so tired of being down, so afraid of slipping into a real depression (been there, done that, never want to go there again), that I attempted to fight the lethargy.  I tried to force myself into activities, only to drop them moments after I started them and wander around the house.  And my efforts didn’t make a difference.  It wasn’t getting any better; in fact, I was getting crabbier by the day.  So, finally, I gave up fighting and decided to sit with it awhile and see what happened.

Sunday I attended the first session of a 4-day yoga workshop I’ve signed up for, by way of mainstreaming myself from my private lessons into regular classes.  As the class started and the teacher started speaking, I found myself quite pleased to be just listening to her, and to be learning from someone else.  I haven’t been in the presence of that kind of spiritual gathering since my women’s circle broke up a few years back, and much like I feel when I crest the hill in Duluth, Minnesota coming from the south and see the lake again, I don’t realize how much I’ve missed it until it’s in front of me.

Other than recognizing that enjoyment, I really didn’t think about it again until later that evening, when I had settled in with my book.  I’ve been reading Seven Choices, another recommended by Candice, and it may well be the best grief book I’ve read (and there have been many); I don’t know that I would’ve thought so when my grief was fresh, but it hits the spot right now.  I’ve been hard-pressed to put the book down, to the exclusion of most of my usual activities.

I was in a Crosby, Stills & Nash mood, so I turned that on while I read, and just let the music wash over me.  When I started to sing-along, I surprised myself.  I haven’t been doing much singing lately; my guitar has barely been touched in the last two weeks.  And that’s when it all came together, and I thought about all the things I’ve not been doing in the last two weeks, and about the things I’ve been doing instead.

• I’ve been enjoying reading, and the book I’m reading has given me a lot; I haven’t felt like writing; neither have I felt like I had much to say.
• I’ve been happy listening to music; I haven’t felt like making any.
• I have wanted to watch TV and movies; I haven’t felt like performing myself and haven’t been to open mic in awhile, nor have I felt like going.
• I was happy to listen to and learn from the yoga teacher, instead of talking and teaching, which I feel like I do a lot of in a casual sort of way.
• I have wanted to be alone; I haven’t felt like socializing or going out.  I haven’t been chatty at home, either.
• I’ve been craving sleep; I haven’t felt like moving a lot.

What all these things have in common is that the things I’ve chosen to do lately, that I’ve taken any pleasure in, are about taking in, instead of putting out.  And it occurred to me that maybe I haven’t been lazy, unmotivated, and apathetic, but rather that I’ve been running on empty, and need to start refueling, and pulling my energies inward for awhile to do so.  Maybe I slowed down to a crawl because I was too busy trying to activate myself out of my emotional state to get the message; trying to cajole myself into feeling better through activity may well have been the exact wrong thing to do. 

It’s hard to know when you should boot yourself in the ass and get moving whether you really want to or not, and when you should just rest.  I tried the former, and it only seemed to exacerbate the situation, in that not only did I not feel any better, but I felt like a failure for not being able to make myself feel better.  However, just going with what I feel like doing (or not doing), I feel better.  I’m not doing a whole lot, but having had the epiphany that perhaps I need to stop doing and start receiving, I no longer feel like a failure, and that alone is an improvement.   Letting go of that, I can see that I need to recharge, rather than charge forward.

As I was writing this post, my weekly horoscope came in, and it seems I may be on the right track: 

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): What reasons might you have to celebrate your own private holy day? Why might you want to go off by yourself or in the company of special people and conduct a reverent ritual that reinvigorates your knack for having fun? Here are some possible answers:  1. You’re overdue for a break from everything you usually do. 2. You’re hungry for the magic that happens when you take refuge in the sacred. 3.  It’s time to stop the world and jump off long enough to break the trance you’re in. 4. You would generate uncanny blessings by paying tender attention to your origins, returning to your sources, and examining the foundations of your life.

I’ve long believed that horoscopes that seem to speak loudly to you are just memos from your soul coming through back-channels because they can’t get through to you via regular, conscious, logical channels.

Slowing down and resting has also given me room to do a little thinking, and some new and heretofore invisible griefwork issues have made themselves known to me; I have been mulling them.

The first, which was a huge surprise, was the issue of identity.  Many, if not all, widows struggle with the concept of identity–who am I now that he is gone?  That never entered into the equation for me, because of the unusual circumstances of my relationship with A.  We weren’t married, nor did we share a name.  We did not share a home.  We did not share finances.  To my great sadness, we didn’t share 20 years of intertwined lives, though it often feels as if we managed it somehow.  Few people in my sphere knew he was my lover, and no one in his sphere knew I even existed until after he died.  There was never an "us" as far as the outside world was concerned.  Our relationship was pure essence, personality and love, and I don’t think either of us defined ourselves in terms of the other; maybe that’s just because we didn’t have time enough.  Perhaps that was unnecessary as well, because we were so very much alike; I have never met a person with whom I was so instantaneously and easily comfortable as he.  Even after he died, I was not defined by him.  The "widow" identity was largely denied me, because I couldn’t claim it publicly, openly.  How could I?  My husband was standing right next to me. 

So while other widows struggled with their identity as a newly, and unhappily, single person, I really did not, because I was never allowed that identity in the first place, really.  And I thought I’d gotten by unscathed by that one, at least.  However, I should know by now that while the details may differ in bereavement and the grieving thereafter, there are universal realities to the experience that one cannot just dodge. And I had not, though it took me over 2 years to realize it.  It’s not something that anyone is going to have a lot of sympathy for, especially other widows, but as my experience is the only one I can talk about, I shall sally forth nonetheless.

I had been feeling kind of bored and listless in my life, and I wasn’t sure why.  I am happily married.  I have a good standard of living in a house I love, hobbies I like, furry children I spoil, friends I love and who love me back.  I have what most widows want (again).  Hell, I have what most people everywhere want.  What exactly was my problem?

It finally dawned on me, in a flash of insight I cannot account for, that my status as a plain ol’ middle-class monogamous married lady was eating at me.  I realized that I LIKED living counter to the rules of what love and relationships "should" be, that I liked rebelling against what I felt were potentially limiting social mores and living freely by my own lights, and that the three of us had successfully managed to pull off something that the rest of the world can barely understand, which made us interpersonal rock stars, in my mind.  Plus, it’s exciting to have a secret life.  While that’s not why I was in it, it was a positive by-product of the arrangement that I recognize only now.  I don’t have that anymore; now, I only have a secret sadness, and it’s hard to be excited about that.  I’m living in my home with my husband with my 3 "children," and I expect I will remain so until one of us dies.  The Rebel, at least when it comes to romantic relationships, she has gone.  And I didn’t realize how much she played into my view of myself until mere days ago.

There is nothing to be done for it, of course.  It’s just another loss I have to mourn; however, until I could pin it down, I couldn’t mourn it.  Just admitting it to myself eased the gnawing.  Like Rumpelstiltskin, once you can name something, it tends to lose its power over you.

The other thing that’s been getting to me is a thread at the widow board from people who are 5 years out, some more, some less, who say they don’t think about their loved one much anymore, and usually then only in reference to their children.  Some went so far as to say they don’t miss the person, but they miss the life and the habits they built with that person.

I don’t know what 5 years will bring me in regards to continued healing, and I don’t condemn anyone who feels that way.  However, at this point, I cannot imagine that for myself, not ever.  Because who I miss IS the person.  As I described above, we didn’t have a shared home, shared children, and had relatively few shared meals, even.  We had our daily habits like any other couple, naturally informed by the physical distance between us, but those I let go some time ago.  But the man with the singular personality, the wonderful sense of humor, the considered intelligence, the sense of wonder undimmed by time…my A…it is his unparalleled company I miss so deeply, not the constructs around us, which were, admittedly, far from ideal in terms of romance, despite our ability to make them work.  I miss talking with him like I have never missed anyone or anything in my life. 

I don’t know whether to hope that will change or not to; both edges of that sword can cut.  In any case, I’m not entirely sure that my hand is on the handle of that sword, so it’s not worth worrying about.

Anyway, that’s what’s been rattling around the ol’ gray matter lately.  Amazing what you find out when you stop and listen for awhile.  I think I’m going to do some more of that, so if you don’t hear from me for a bit, that’s where I am.  I’ll be back.

I don’t dream of him often.  I don’t dream of him close to often enough.  Some mornings, I wake up and I have this sense that he was here.  It’s vague, something I feel more than remember, but it is unshakeable.  And then I have to ask myself why I feel that way?  It is usually then that the dream comes back to me.

It happened this morning, and as I lay in bed, I kept my eyes closed and tried to piece together the dream, and when I did, I had to smile.  I’m not sure if it was a visit or a dream; in visits, we are usually alone, and in this one, there were other people watching us.  Which was a little awkward, given what we were doing in the dream.  ‘Nuff said.  And usually when I feel like it’s been a visit, I know throughout the exchange that he’s dead, but I enjoy the moments we have together anyway; it’s like being paroled from material reality for awhile.  I don’t recall being conscious that he wasn’t supposed to be here in the dream, but I also don’t recall being oblivious to that fact, either.  It may well be that I am so used to him not being here now that there’s no expectation otherwise, that my subconscious no longer needs reminding of reality.  Also, I remember visits in great detail and they’re usual very normal, mundane circumstances, in contrast to my my dreams, which are exceedingly surreal in general, and they are often nightmares.  (I dreamed two nights ago that my boss was going to execute me and 3 other women from the office; we were all wearing wedding dresses.  Mine was beige.  We seemed to be convening in a Quaker meeting house.  I wish I could say this was an unusual dream for me, but it’s not.)

But it matters not, because I am always glad to see him regardless, and in the space between him and me, everything was fine.  It was better than fine.  I was so pleased to see him, and he was his usual charming, funny self, and I was happy.  Deep-in-my-soul happy, and just plain delighted we could be together for a little while.

After remembering the dream, I’ve revisited it on and off all day, because it was nice.  Any time I can spend with him, even in dreams, I cherish.  I know some people find dreams of their loved one extremely disturbing and painful, especially when they have to wake up from them to a harsher reality, but not me.  I have been grateful for every single one.

What also stuck with me from the dream is that deep-in-my-soul happy, that pure delight, that emotional freedom that I don’t feel much of in the last 2 years.  Don’t get me wrong; I have many moments of delight.   All things considered, I haven’t much to complain about in this life, empirically, in this moment.  But what I have not felt since he died is that carefree, unburdened, no-subtext happiness.  Only an innocent can have that, it seems to me, and I lost that innocence the day he died and I learned that my heart and my world could be pulverized in the space of a single phone call and stay that way for a long, long time.

In my dream, I was happy in the way I was happy before death found us, took him, and left me behind.  The human mind and body make no distinctions regarding the “realness” of emotions in the conscious state and the dream state; they are one and the same.  So it seems my soul remembers that kind of joy, even if my thinking mind does not.  And if it can, that means it must be real, and cannot be beyond my ability to recapture.

Now if I could just figure out how.

After work today I stopped by the grocery store for a few things.  As I was putting the groceries in the trunk, I caught sight of a little girl and her mother in the McDonald’s parking lot that adjoins the grocery store lot.  The little girl was stamping her feet, and I watched a moment to determine if she was throwing a tantrum or what.  She wasn’t; she was doing what I always call "the little girl happy dance of joy."  I’ve been known to do it myself sometimes; my inner child isn’t so much inner as right up front.  She was at McDonald’s and she was literally hopping with excitement.  It made me smile.

Little kids are like that.  When they’re happy, they dance and hop and generally let it be known to all within earshot and visual range. When they’re unhappy, they wail and scream and throw their whole bodies into expressing their displeasure and sadness.  What’s amazing about little kids, though, is that they can do these things 15 times a minute, with complete sincerity.  They really feel their feelings, as they have them, and it’s not unusual to see a kid smiling around a popsicle as the tear stains dry on their cheeks.  And you know, you very rarely run across a kid with a relatively normal home life who is neurotic or self-conscious.  Children are Zen in ways we can barely remember; more’s the pity.

It’s part of growing up that we don’t express every emotion as we have it; and for the most part, I’d say it’s a good thing.  I don’t have much patience for adult temper tantrums.  But there are more emotions than just being frustrated.  Sometimes I wonder what that learned reserve costs us in mental health.

I have had a headache for 3 days straight now.  Sometimes it throbs, sometimes it’s barely noticeable, but it hasn’t gone away.  The longest I ever have a headache is maybe half a day, and some aspirin, a couple Benadryls, and a good night’s sleep make it go away.  But those things aren’t touching this.  It could be allergies, though then I would expect it to be in the front of my head and in my sinuses, not lodged in the back lower right quadrant of my head.  It isn’t getting any worse, though.  That’s probably good news.

When I was maybe 25, 26 years old a neighbor of ours went home from work with a sick headache one day.  She died in a day or so of an aneurysm, and ever since, any unexplainable headache makes wonder if this is it for me.  She and her husband were about our age, and they had a 3-year-old daughter.  It was a new neighborhood, and so far, we were the only 2 houses on the block.  We brought him and his little girl a lasagna and a sympathy card, and thought we were doing a good thing.  We were so naïve in terms of what we saw as our “helpfulness.”  I haven’t thought of him in years, this first young widower I ever met.  But it didn’t compute for me then; it would never happen to me, right?  I wonder how he’s doing.

I tell myself in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, “It’s not a toomah.”  And chances are excellent that it’s not.  But I can no longer operate under the self-protective myth that things like this won’t happen to me or people I love, because they have. 

So far my choice of treatment is to wait it out, and assume the windy weather is what’s brought about my worsening allergies and this headache.  But I question myself even on this; time could be of the essence.  Then again, I’ve learned enough about brain tumors from the widow board and other books I’ve read that I assume if it went from non-existent to constant headache overnight, it’s probably too late for me anyway, and no point in worrying about it now, other than to be pissed at myself that those unsigned, unnotarized wills are still sitting uselessly on my desk.

Do other 36-year-old women think this way?  I do not say any of this to anyone; they would panic, and think I’m morbid, if not insane.  I dare say E thinks I’m now the most morbid person he’s ever met, and I don’t let slip even a fraction of the things I think.

If it lasts through the week, I will go see my doctor.  But I have almost no faith left in local medicine.  I recently found myself at the ER at 12:45 a.m. on a Saturday night, having done myself the improbable injury of dislocating my jaw by yawning.  I got it mostly back into place, but my jaw wouldn’t seat properly, my teeth wouldn’t touch on the left side, and after a call to the ask-a-nurse, I decided to go in.  4 hours later of waiting, lack of communication, staff not doing what they said they would and doing what I asked them not to, an X-ray and a CT-scan, they sent me home with a prescription for a narcotic pain reliever I couldn’t fill at 5 in the morning even if I’d wanted to.  It was a complete waste of time, for which they billed my insurance company over $2K, of which I’ll pay 10%.  They were also billed by a doctor whose name I’ve never seen before, and who was not the doctor who saw me.

This would be the same ER I found myself in 3 years ago when my face inexplicably started going numb, and the numbness spread from nose to lip to cheek and outward toward my ears, then started moving down my arm.  It was unlike anything I’d ever felt, and scary.  In triage, they saw a 33-year-old woman who was too young to be having a stroke, despite her symptoms, and they sent me out to sit in the waiting room for 4 hours.  When the numbness started to resolve into a mask pattern around my eyes, I felt almost sure that I’d had some kind of massive allergic reaction.  And since no one was seeing me anyway, I told them I was leaving.  I didn’t die that day; but I could’ve.

Beyond the fact that I will never go to that ER again, my most recent experience is just another in a long line of medical disappointments, to the point where I don’t even want to bother.  It’s a waste of time and money, and I’m not getting any actual medical care.  It is highly likely that I will have to have surgery on this ovarian cyst of mine, as it grew by 30% in the last 6 months, but given my feelings about modern medicine these days, I intend to put it off as long as possible, lest they kill me outright.

E has been frustrated in the last year or so, with all my aches and pains, at my reluctance to go to a doctor, and my belief that it won’t make a difference.  He thought I was being obstinate.  His views somewhat changed after the most recent ER trip, fiasco that it was.  I told him him tonight that I feel I owe it to him to make at least some cursory effort at keeping myself alive for his sake, despite having zero expectation that it will do one iota of good. 

I’m at odds with myself, metaphysically, as well. If I’m meant to find and fight some biological intruder, I should think I will.  If I’m not, I won’t, and sweating it in the face of a headache seems silly.  I’m so over thinking I’m in control here; at least, my human consciousness is not in control.

It occurs to me that I had a recent skull X-ray and CT-scan of my jaw that would’ve gotten the lower back of my head as well, so if they’d seen anything of concern, it would’ve been noted.  Maybe. If they bothered to read the films beyond their own expectation of what they would see there.  Which they may or may not have done.  The doctor told me he was going to prescribe a pain reliever, a la Vicodin or Percocet.  I told him I’d had Vicodin and had no bad reactions to it, so let’s try that.  5 minutes later the nurse handed me a prescription for Percocet. 

Shit, I may be doomed.  I’ll let you know.