Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I woke up yesterday morning to the news of the Flight 3407 crash in New York.  It was not what I needed to see on the day E was flying home from a business trip, and on Friday the 13th, no less.  I found myself possessed of a vague worry the entire time he was gone, occasionally erupting into full-formed catastrophe scenarios:  What if his plane goes down?  What if he’s in a car accident there?  What if he is victim of some heretofore unknown heart defect that is triggered by thin air, fatigue, and bad food?

None of these things are very likely to happen, of course.  They are merely the symptoms of the persistent visceral fear that I have had since A died:  Is today the day that is our last day, without my even knowing it?  Is my saying goodbye to E today my last words to him, ever?  Will I look back on this seemingly ordinary day some day and mark time from it again as the day my whole life changed?

I was never like this before A died.  But his death, so sudden and so unexpected, made me realize that any day could be the day.  His death wasn’t very likely to happen either, and yet it did; I have no protection from that reality anymore.  And now I wonder if today is it, for me, for E, for my parents, for my friends.  I was so carefree once; I resent this knowing.  For some people, I have seen, it is an inspiration to live lives with greater fearlessness than they ever dared to before.  For me, it’s a burden I cannot seem to set down.  This bell cannot be unrung.

I was walking into work the other day, and it was a beautiful morning.  The birds were chirping.  The sun was warm on my shoulder.  I had a snazzy outfit on and was having a good hair day.  The hum of the traffic seemed cheery.  I was conscious of all of this conspiring to make for one happy Girl.  It should’ve.  There was a time when it would’ve.  And overall, I would have to say that I was taking it in and enjoying it.

But I was also aware of the heaviness of my heart.  Indeed, it was the contrast of everything else being so lovely that finally allowed me to pinpoint the weight I feel in my chest all the time.  It’s a physical sensation.  As good as things may be outside, it never goes away.  Or I should say, it has not.  Will it?

Can I will it?  

It doesn’t seem like I can.  I only seem to be able to work around it, as I feel it whether I’m thinking about him or not.

I have been thinking about him.  Less constantly than I used to, but many times during the day, and more again lately.  As I sat in the airport last night, waiting for E to arrive, I thought of all my arrivals at A’s airport, and the hugs and the kisses of welcome.  Airports are major triggers for me.

I’ve been thinking about how he forgot Valentine’s day that last year.  It had been a rough spring for him, work and mood-wise, and I have often wondered since if that was prologue.

I’ve been thinking that time passes so quickly, and I can’t believe he’ll be 3 years gone before I know it.  July will arrive at a gallop, I know, because I swear it was just Christmas.

I think about my friend Claire, who has said that she didn’t really start feeling positive and hopeful until 3 years had passed, and Candice who is finding more of that for herself these days, having passed 3 years, and I think maybe I just need more time to get there, but that I will get there.

But I don’t know what to expect of myself, what is reasonable to hope for, what, if anything, I might do to move things along.  And I carry this weight in my chest every day.  It barely slows me down now, but it is not imperceptible.  I am scarred and maimed in so many ways that no one but I can see.

I took a big step today.  I traded in a guitar I’ve had for just about 5 years towards a new one.  I’ve been thinking about it awhile. 

This was my first good guitar; I bought it a week after I returned from my very first camp, having been dazzled by the array of beautiful guitars the other women had.  A lot of fine musicians and finer people have played that guitar, including A, and I always feel like guitars carry the energy of everyone who has ever played them.  When I found myself desperately, desolately, lacking in mementos after A died, I comforted myself with the fact that at least I had my guitars that he had played.  There were two of them; now, I only have one that he once held in his hands, though I daresay he liked the one I have better than the one I sold.  I will keep that one.

I was pensive during the process, but when I found out they’d make me an acceptable offer for mine, there really was never any question of backing out for sentimental reasons.  The one I traded in I can’t play; it made my left hand cramp up.  And A wouldn’t have been in favor of my keeping a guitar that hurt me.  Plus, I didn’t need another guitar; so my net guitar gain is zero, which is good.  

I haven’t had any seller’s remorse yet, just the occasional twinge of knowing one more thing has been lost, or let go, however freely.  I hope regret doesn’t find me.

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 got home from camp Sunday night, and noticed lots of cars parked in front of our house and the neighbor’s.  I asked E what was going on there, and he said that he didn’t know, but they’d been there all weekend.  After unpacking a little, we went out to sit in the hot tub, and heard someone on the neighbor’s back patio talking on the phone about a memorial service, and then we wondered if one of our neighbors had died.

Naturally, my thoughts turned to one of the parents, who seem to be a bit older than we.  They have two teenage kids.  We haven’t talked to the neighbors much—just "hi" and "bye" and when there’s been a problem to deal with, but it’s been reasonably cordial.  In any case, they were too young to be dying.

A little research turned up the horrifying news that it was their 18-year-old daughter who had died unexpectedly.  I cried as I read her obituary, which mentioned her surviving family, as well as her true love, a kind and loving mention that I especially appreciated.   Imagine being widowed at 17, 18 years old.  Not that chances were fantastic that they’d have married and lived happily ever after; but regardless, in the now, they loved each other, and the loss is huge for him and will stay with him through the remainder of his days.  An acquaintance of mine who was kind to me when A died told me of the death of his college girlfriend in a car accident, and how it took him more than a decade to even begin to deal with the loss.  People who don’t know better tend to dismiss the grief of young and/or unmarried folks, somehow forgetting that love is love, and it knows no boundary of age or paperwork, and the loss thereof cannot be other than devastating.    

And I feel for her parents and brother who remain, in a house that must seem too empty and echoing now.  This was not at all what was supposed to happen, and I found myself asking "Why?" on their behalf, knowing well enough that I wouldn’t get an answer for them any more than I got one for myself.

I don’t believe in competitive grief, but whenever anyone says that widowhood is the worst possible loss, there’s always a tiny voice in my head that says that losing a child might actually be worse, and if not, certainly equal in pain, though the dynamic is very different.  We expect our grandparents and parents to go before us; not so our partners and children.

I determined to pick up a sympathy card and a gift card to a nearby restaurant for some night in the future after the funeral casseroles have run out and the phone has stopped ringing, and the family still needs to eat.  They weigh heavily on my mind and heart, because I know their pain must be immense and immeasurable.  And though my empathy makes me hurt for them, it is clearly not my own pain; I’m grateful to be free of that.  And surprised.  Their loss, on the heels of this trip that had already made me pensive, has brought up a lot of stuff for me related to my own, but the distance is clearly evident as I am able to go about my day without being crushed by their sad turn of events.  It feels wrong somehow, to be on the outside now and have that option.   It took me 2 1/2 years (today, as a matter of fact) to get here, but I marvel at it nonetheless.

I often stop and wonder at how far I’ve come since he died.  I still don’t know how I did it, or how I keep doing it.  Would that I did; maybe that information could be some use to someone else.  I guess I just kept breathing, and hoping better days would find me.  I suppose that’s a valid life strategy, bereaved or not.

The seal broke as B and I made our way from the gate to baggage claim at SFO, when I saw a sign for Peet’s Coffee, which is the kind he always bought.  He’d stop by the store and have it ground fresh on #4.  Not a coffee drinker myself, I was, and remain, mystified about coffee arcana.  But I remember the #4, and the little shop outside of the Safeway that seemed cuter than the average Starbucks, and the tall man at my side ordering coffee to his specs.

After that, he was everywhere.  He was on the Golden Gate Bridge with me, grinning and amused at my excitement of being on the bridge every time we crossed it.  He was with me down every mile of nausea-inducing road winding through the wine country, and in the darkness of the redwood forest.  He was with me in the late afternoon light as we traveled the last few miles up Highway 1 and pulled into the parking lot.  He was with me as B & I shopped in the little town to the north, our path the same one he and I trod three years ago.  He was with me as I sang my song to my fellow campers, my voice thickening as I choked up.  He was with me as I drove into town past the B&B we stayed at together.  Oddly, seeing that on the last day was the least emotional moment of the trip.   Camp will not be held there next year, and I knew I had to say my goodbyes to the place.

He was everywhere, and memories came to me fast and clearer than I would’ve been able to consciously conjure them up.  That happens sometimes, and I’m always amazed at the level of detail and emotional accuracy they contain.  It seems the unbidden memories are clearer than the ones I rehearse so as not to lose them.  They are a gift, and I rest a bit easier knowing that those memories are in there, more than I could ever inventory, even if I cannot lay hands on them when I want them.  I do not worry about forgetting him, because my mind has proven over and over again that it was paying attention the whole time we were together.  It doles out memories I didn’t even realize I had, at just the right time.

It isn’t the memories that sadden me, usually.  They are most often good thoughts and special moments that in their remembrance make me fall in love with him again and again, deepening a love that has long since become immeasurable.  And the fact that he’s not here for me to show and express that love is what makes me sad. 

It’s a tough gig, this particular brand of unrequited love.   Losing your beloved is survivable, and life, incredibly, becomes tolerable without him or her, and even good sometimes.  But still I would not wish widowhood on my worst enemy, if only for the fact that I live every day with the knowledge that my life was so much better with him in it, and has been darkened and diminished by his death.  Not so much as to make me despair permanently, but enough to feel the difference.