Now what?
It seems I have run out of words regarding all this. Not only am I posting here but once a week (if that), but even in my personal journal, where I’ve been writing to A for the last 2 1/2 years, I’ve stopped writing to him every day; it’s more like once every week and a half at best. Not because I have nothing to say, but rather, I am at a loss.
I still feel the gravity of his absence pulling at me every day. I still miss him all the time; he was one helluva man. I still don’t understand why things happened like they did. None of those things have changed, despite the passage of time. And that, I think, is the issue: I have nothing new to say about them, and don’t anticipate any fresh epiphanies.
What has happened in the last couple of months is that I speak to him in my head, and sometimes aloud, rather than write to him. As time has worn on, my feeling that he’s all that interested in hearing about the minutiae of my days has waned. I give him the short version. I think this may be what people are talking about when they say they tried for awhile to carry on a unilateral relationship with their loved one and finally had to give it up as unsatisfying. That’s not exactly where I am; our continuing relationship is not in doubt for me. But when you’re talking to someone who doesn’t talk back, eventually you start to say less and less. Now, I give him the highlights, tell him I love him and miss him, and that’s about it, unless I’m in crisis mode regarding a grief wave or something else. The conversation I offer has changed in light of the full significance of our circumstances settling into my mind and heart, I think.
That is not to say that I believe my grief journey is over. I doubt it will ever be because the answers I need will either come later in my life, or when I, too, pass on, but the early years of grief seem to me a steep climb up a dangerous mountain to reach the plateau I find myself on now. There is very much a feeling of my catching my breath, and wondering “Now what am I supposed to do with myself?” I suffered a fairly serious, if short-lived, existential crisis last week, and for a few hours I had no idea what the point of my being here was, and what the hell I was supposed to do with my life. It was a little scary; I understood how impulsive suicides could happen, though I knew I would not take that route. I confess that I have no idea, even now, what my purpose here is, other than to know that it is not a lofty one. My name will not be remembered when I’m gone, and that doesn’t bother me in the least.
What bothers me is that, barring catastrophe, I can reasonably expect to live another 50 years or so, and I don’t know what I’ll be doing with that. More of the same things I’m doing now? Is that enough? Some days, I think so; right now, I’m not so sure. As I am not a mother, the milestones and changes that come with rearing children and sending them out on their own will not be mine. We live the lives of empty-nesters, rather than newlyweds, and will for the duration. I look at my life, and I have accomplished pretty much all the goals I ever set for myself, and a few more besides. I’ve already been widowed. What do I have to plan for, look forward to, that matters?
I live in fear that I will be widowed again, but it is a fear yoked with the acknowledgement that that is out of my hands. I frequently have mini-fantasies about my life after that feared second widowhood, and I am appalled at myself and wonder why I even think of such things. I asked myself that question the other day, and what I came up with is that I think I’m rehearsing, trying to convince myself that the unthinkable will be survivable again, trying to convince myself that if I have a plan now, perhaps I will not be so pulverized should I be unlucky a second time.
Of course, that’s total bullshit. But I’m not above playing head games with myself to deal with the spectres that haunt me.
I have come to the point where the old saw “It is what it is” is a vibrant, insistent reality more than a cliché. Things are what they are, and they’re not changing at the moment. I am a married widow who’s got her home life back into reasonable shape, her professional life as good as it’s going to get, has friends she loves and trusts absolutely, and who is engaged in all the hobbies she’s interested in again, who lives with the constant absence of a beloved friend and soulmate never far from her consciousness or conversation. I cannot reconcile these things, and maybe there is no need, but the affect of each is very different, and it divides me emotionally. They are nominally integrated in me, under the umbrella of “my experiences” but within my own self-perception, I feel that even now, there are two of me sharing my skin, the widow and the rest, swapping stories rather than engaging in all of my reality and history as a whole being. Is this the fracture of grief? And is it permanent?
I have always felt fractured, so I can’t speak to that. I think that loss changes us though and we can go with it or not.
I used to imagine widowhood before Will died. Even before I knew for sure that he was sick. I sometimes imagine what it would be like a second time. Would the first experience keep me from making the same mistakes? But I have always been the kind of person to project and imagine scenarios. I never saw it as strange. It’s what we do as children and I just never stopped.
I think people integrate their experiences by choice and when the time is right.
The right of passage, the dark night of the soul, the hero’s journey — by whatever name, there are some common phases. First, there is the total shattering of what was, when all we’ve been identified with is stripped away. Second there is the liminal zone where chaos reigns, nothing makes sense, and normal is MIA. Third comes “re-integration” — reconciling one’s scattered and fragmented identities, pulling them together into a new form, redefining oneself and reorienting in the new reality. Finally comes the stage of bringing the gifts of one’s journey back into the world.
Sounds to me, if this model makes any sense or holds any truth, that you are on the cusp of reintegration. Is the fragmentation permanent? I don’t think so. But there’s no timetable to say how long it takes.
What now? Well, just as it’s been all along, there will be more “one foot in front of the other” as the new you unfolds.
I think all your words, over the last couple of years, have been part of your gift to the world. It may seem like small return for all you have lost. Yet you have no doubt helped many people to sort through their own losses by following your posts. I know you have helped me.
Hang in there and let it be what it is. That’s all we can do…
Oh, and just like with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief, I don’t think any of these maps are set in stone. It’s never step one followed by step two and on through each step in sequence. It’s more like a spiraling through, like a labyrinth — just when you think you’re at the center, suddenly your back out at the edge.
I read this several days ago, and couldn’t come up with words succinct enough to put into this little box.
And now my poor head is about to explode. But I have to acknowledge what you’ve written and say that THIS is why we need to have lunch together soon.