Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

Camp is in 3 weeks.  I dug my sleeping bag out of the closet and threw it in the washer, because it hadn’t been washed since the first and last time I used it, which was in January 2007, 6 months after A had died.  In 2008, plans changed, my friend B and I stayed in a hotel in San Francisco, and I didn’t need it.

I washed it, and now it’s fluffy and smells good, and then I worked on stuffing it back into its compression sack.  And as I did, I kept up a running monologue towards A’s picture.

“I don’t like this sleeping bag.  I don’t want it.  I want yours, like I’m supposed to have.  Screw that, I want to be spending the weekend with you in a B&B and not need a sleeping bag at all…”

The first year, I borrowed his bag so I didn’t have to schlep one with me.  The second year, we stayed at an inn, and fell asleep together under soft flannel sheets to the sound of the relentless northern California rain.  The third year, I bought this damned sleeping bag, and struggled through the airport by myself, without my love and sometimes caddy, trying to find B who had promised to take care of me if I made the trip.  I was none too sure I could handle it, and by the time she found me at the rental car counter, I was wiping the tears from my eyes with my scarf as I sat on the floor and waited for her.

I love camp and am excited to go.  And I hate this trip, because he is everywhere, and nowhere.  

Bittersweet.  Such is the flavor of my life these days.

This was our trip, and half of “us” isn’t here, but in spirit.  And while other bereaved folks fight the holiday funk, my December funk is due to this being a time of preparation for camp, a time that for two beautiful years was filled with anticipation and excitement of being with him, and of unlimited kisses.  And now that’s all gone.  I can live with it; I have no choice.  But I never really stop hating it.

I’ll be fine on this trip.  But I used to be so much better.

You may recall the replica bracelet I made in March, and then remade again in June, a bracelet that was just like the one I made for A early in our friendship, one that he wore every day after, and one that disappeared when he did.  Ultimately, I’d decided to make another for me to replace the one I couldn’t have, like I’ve done with other things.  When you cannot have the man himself, one symbol of him is probably as good as another. 

Since June, I think I’ve remade that bracelet at least 2, maybe 3, more times.  One time, one of the dogs caught his claw in it and snapped the elastic, so I remade it with strong silk cord and had E tie it on me with a tight knot, my intention being never to take it off.  Then I had to take it off for surgery.  I wasn’t sure if they really would’ve insisted, but I didn’t want to find out they were quite serious about the “no jewelry” rule after they’d cut it off me and lost it.  I slid it off my hand, and back on later, but I loosened the knot, and it fell off my wrist again.  There wasn’t enough string left to retie, so I restrung the beads again, this time putting a magnetic clasp on it.  But the magnet wasn’t strong enough, and I’ve nearly lost the bracelet a dozen times today.

I could restring it yet again, with a different clasp, but I can’t help but wonder about the fact that that bracelet just doesn’t want to stay on my wrist, for one reason or another.  One could chalk it up to shoddy workmanship on my part, but perhaps it’s just not supposed to be there.  I don’t know.  My world view includes a lot of subtext and no coincidences, and this particular motif has my attention.  The bracelet sits on his shrine until I decide what to do with it.  It may join the collection of tiny, meaningful things that sit next to his picture in a small hobnailed goblet of pink Depression glass.

As I consider what I want to do about the bracelet, I am also considering the possibility of selling a couple of my guitars, the ones that look beautiful on my wall, but never get played because I play favorites.  One of them is no great loss, other than that I bought and embellished (with an excessive amount of labor) a case that I can’t use for any of my other instruments.  I bought both for a specific purpose, to be used basically once a year, and we have not bonded as player and instrument.

The other was the first “real” guitar I bought, having started out with a Walmart special.  A lot of people have played that one, not the least of which is A, and there was a time I would’ve sworn I’d keep it forever for that reason alone.  There was a time when I told people that selling any of my guitars, all of which have names, would be akin to selling one of my children.  Now I’m not so sure.

But lately, I keep coming back to the idea that perhaps it would be better for them to be in the hands of people who would love them and play them than for them to continue their neglected lives as expensive wall art.  And I kind of surprise myself that this thought should be so insistent, as much angst as I had about not having A’s stuff, stuff he touched.  And now I’m considering getting rid of something that was, in all fairness, not his but mine, but he played it.  His energy lives in the wood of that guitar as sure as mine, and everyone who’s ever played it, does.

It seems that the lesson of “it’s just stuff” has sunk deeply into my understanding after all.  Or maybe it’s easy for me to consider letting go of some things, because I have others.  He also played my red electric, which I’d keep, and I wear every day a ring I bought in his memory, so perhaps the bracelet isn’t so crucial at this point.

I really don’t know whence comes this shift, and what I should do about it.  When I told E I was considering selling, and put in a request for a quote from a used instrument buyer online he was flabbergasted.  I don’t understand me, myself.  I only know how I’ve been feeling.  Is this the impulse other widows feel when they start clearing out their loved ones’ things?  In this case, they are all my things, but his things were never mine to clear out in the first place.

I don’t have to decide today.  I don’t have to decide at all.  So I wonder why I feel like I do?

I was chatting with an acquaintance yesterday, and she was regaling me with the details on the recent gifts her new boyfriend had given her.  She dropped brand-names and hints as to their expensiveness, and I imagine I was supposed to be impressed.  I wasn’t; brand-names aren’t that important to me (unless they are "Charmin" and "Oreo"—accept no substitutes), and I’m still Midwestern and middle-class enough to find that sort of thing gauche.  My people tend to brag about how little we spend on things:  "I got this for a nickel on clearance at my neighbor’s garage sale, and it’s almost brand new!"  Paying full price for expensive things is not something to be proud of; it’s indicative of a lack of shopping savvy.

I was thinking about how she missed her mark with me, and I started thinking about one of my most valued possessions, which is a vase filled with these funky, spiky little seed pods.  On the last day of my last trip to visit A, we were walking around his neighborhood and I found them littering the ground.  I was delighted, and started picking them up, collecting them until my hands were full.  And then he picked up more until his hands were full, and then we headed back to his place where I put them in grocery bag and schlepped them home and put them in the vase they live in now.  It sits on a picture ledge between two photos of him.

The gift he gave me that day was to help me pick them up, with infinite patience and care.  He never thought anything I did was silly or trivial, and he never knew how much that meant to me.  And he seemed to appreciate that I could appreciate simple things and small joys.  He once thanked me for being okay with traveling around in his truck.  I don’t know if other people might’ve expected to be driven around in a limo, but it never occurred to me to think about his vehicle and whether it was an appropriate conveyance for me.  It was his; he was in it; what else could I want?

My little seed pods cost us nothing but time, but the time we had together that morning bending down to pick up free treasures from the sidewalk is priceless, and more so because it was our last day together in the same space, though we didn’t know it at the time.  I wouldn’t trade it for all the expensive gifts in the world.

I miss him more than I can say.

Querido A,

I’ve been having a lot of tough moments in recent days, and I’m not sure why.  Is it the holiday season?  Is it the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross book I was reading?  Is it just time?

We’ve been watching The War, by Ken Burns.  Tonight, there was a story of a woman whose brother will never forget the "unearthly howl" his sister gave when she received the telegram informing her that her husband had been killed.  And I was brought back to that morning in E’s office.  I didn’t howl; I was just stricken.  J said she’ll never forget the look on my face.  I don’t think of that time much if I can help it.  it was the most terrible day of a long stretch of terrible days to come.  I really don’t know how I survived it; shock, I suppose.

But as I watched and heard the story on TV and remembered my own moment when C called me, I realized that despite almost 29 months of you not being here, I still don’t understand how this can be true, how it can be that you’re not anywhere on this planet that I can reach you.  The reality is as incomprehensible as it’s ever been.  Shouldn’t it sink in at some point, and not be so astonishing every time I give more than a passing thought to it?

I live my life with the understanding that you live on elsewhere, and I keep watch for signs of you here, assuring myself that our separation is only temporary, and only apparent anyway.  And many days, that’s enough to get me by.

And then there are nights like tonight when I look up from the day-to-day and wonder again, where the hell are you?  And why did you leave me?

Last night as I lay waiting to fall asleep, I asked you if you left the way you did because you knew I’d never willingly let you go?

That’d be just like you; you did things in your own time, your way, without needing a committee to weigh in.  And you always said that it was struggle we learned from.  If that’s the case, I’ve learned plenty.  And yet I can never learn the answer to the only thing I really want to know:  Why?  Why does it have to be this way?  Why does life have to have so much pain in it?  Why do people die before they’re old and leave a wake of injured, devastated people behind them?

I miss you, Babe.  I never stop.  I don’t know how much healing I have left to do.  Most days, this feels like about as good as it’s going to get.  And I remember the tears in your eyes as you spoke of your beloved grandfather, and I have no reason to believe otherwise.

The rest of my life is seeming very long again.

I’ll keep going, and it will be good, and bad, as always.  I’m not hopeless.  I just miss you.  And I can’t believe it’s been so long since we talked.  But there’s nothing I can do about that.  I can’t fix or change it.  I’m not hopeless; I’m helpless.  Which is not really less shitty, you know.

I love you, Sweetheart.  I miss you.

Tu Chica Dejada

I heard back from my sister-in-law today regarding my e-mail titled "Benign."  She commented on the end that I could now get back to my life, but it might never look the same again.  I responded to her, somewhat cryptically, a bit dramatically, and entirely honestly that my life hadn’t looked the same for a long time now.

It bothers me that my family does not, and never will, understand the depth of my loss of A.   I know that’s my fault; I could’ve been open, and honest, and up front about it, and I was too afraid to do so.  Afraid, and maybe stubborn, too; I don’t discuss things about myself with people who I know are going to disapprove.  Why go there?  If I don’t want to deal with your censure, I don’t let you in to those parts of my life.

But they are less aware of how I’ve changed than just about anyone else in my life.  I live far away, so they didn’t really have a sense of the before- and after-death me, or rather, they only know the before, and can only assume that that’s who I am still, having no conception of why I might not be.

I often feel like a coward for not telling them that A was my love and my lover.  And then I doubt myself and think telling them would have been merely self-serving, because the only reason I’d tell them is so that I could feel more understood, that maybe I could’ve had their support and sympathy.  And it makes it hard, I guess, to explain where I’m coming from when I share some perspectives that I only have because my beloved died, when I have not yet explained that my beloved died.

As frustrated as I became in the aftermath because A never told his family about me, I could never blame him, because I was the same way with mine.  And that was not surprising; we both handled things our way, and felt no need to justify ourselves to others in anything in our lives.  We kept/keep our own counsel, and did/do as we see fit.  And for the most part, that still works for me.

But there are moments, sometimes, when good people who love me say something like my sister-in-law did, completely unknowingly, that make me think, "Lady, you have no idea…"  I can’t blame her, either.  It’s just another reminder of what a damn mess this was.  Not that anyone has a neat, tidy, uncomplicated epilogue to their death, but I guess by now, the rawness of the mess has gone away, and I don’t really focus on the time right after he died anymore.  I think about the man much more than I think about the man’s death, because the man I loved and adored, and the death I hate.   So I don’t think about it, and sometimes sort of forget about it, until those moments arrive, and I am reminded…reminded of what silence has cost me, and what it will continue to cost me as the years pass.  I wish the world had been ready for us, so we could’ve done things differently.  I wish we had been ready for the world, so we could’ve done things differently.