Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I was paying bills this morning, trying to get paperwork organized in the secretary desk that holds it all.  There were deposit slips and paperwork from the hospital and retirement stuff to be filed.  As I sat there writing checks, I was aware of how emotionally neutral the task was today, and what a blessing that was.

Thanksgiving 2006 was a totally different picture.  I was still a wreck.  It’d been only 4 months since A had passed, and I had informally abdicated my role as keeper of the family finances.  The bills were disorganized, unpaid, overdue, and stacked with other mail to the point that I couldn’t get the desk shut properly. I really had no idea what was in the pile.  I knew I needed to take care of it, knew I didn’t want to pay late fees, knew, just like breathing, this was something I needed to keep doing whether I wanted to or not.  And still, I walked past the desk thinking “Later.”

Now it’s “Later,” and I felt satisfaction getting the bills paid, other things organized, and walking envelopes out to the mailbox.  No dread.  No avoidance.  No cloud hanging over me, other than my recuperation which of course is going more slowly than I would wish.

It’s funny to me that for so long, every single thing I did was tainted by grief, and even the most mundane things were remarkable because of it.  And now, every single thing I do is remarkable because the grief is absent from it, and it gives me pause as I consider (happily) the change.  I wonder at what point every single thing I do will be entirely unremarkable.  I must say, I’m rather looking forward to that.

I am 37 today.  This is the first birthday in maybe forever where I realized just how loved I am.  I received birthday greetings from friends and family across the globe.  I spent the evening with some of my favorite people.  I am fortunate.  I don’t know if I’m more blessed this year, or if I’m just more appreciative.  I suspect it’s the latter, both in that experience has taught me (brutally) to appreciate the good, and that I have healed enough in my grieving journey to be able to see and savor the good.  A would like that; he was all about savoring.

This is my third birthday without him here, but A sent me a gift.  There are these catalogs that are wholly connected to him, and they do not come regularly, and they do not come randomly.  They come when I really, really need to hear from him, or for special occasions. It’s really uncanny; you don’t have to believe me.  It’s enough that I believe.  The one that arrived yesterday was from a company he bought my birthday present from in 2005.  He also messed around with my iPod, playing DJ; he hasn’t done that in awhile.  I felt him near today, a stronger presence than I’ve felt in awhile.  I am loved.

I always liked the round 20 years that separated us.  I like evenness and multiples of 10.  I realized this morning that I was gaining on him now.  We’re only 18 years and an infinity of distance apart now.  I meet that fact with resignation, like so many others.  There is no “over it”; I regularly shake my head at a reality that I do not understand and live with regardless.  My understanding is evidently not required, however much it may be desired by me.

Tonight I sat and ate cake at my friends’ table in their new home, surrounded by boxes…my friend who, it seems, was the other reason I was meant to go that guitar camp in California…and she told us the story of her widowed grandmother, who felt her husband’s arms around her waist as she did dishes one night, and who saw the dog wagging his tail eagerly as he stared intently at the empty space behind her.  And I know that it is not in all of our heads; that this is a UNIverse, where nothing is lost, and in that, there is hope and the strength to endure.

They get me every time.  Twice a year with the time change, I’ll turn on KFOG to listen to 10@10 only to find it’s not there in the fall, and that I just missed it in the spring.  I was an hour early today, so I listened to the radio until the show came on.  That and the fact that there’s now only an hour time difference between me and my folks again are the only ways that the end of DST affects me.

Last year I made the same mistake, of course, and the change was just another sad, sorry reminder of how my life was so unappealingly different.  I got to lunchtime today, though, and my reaction was totally different.  My first thought was, “Dang, having 10@10 on at 11 made the morning go faster, because by the time it’s over, it’s nearly noon, and then it’s only an hour until lunch.”  For the first time since he died, the time change was not immediately associated with him, and was not a grief trigger.  I thought about it later in reference to A, but it was more of a passing acknowledgment than a deep mulling over of my sad state.

Progress.  I stop and take a picture of every milestone to remind myself how far I’ve come, in case I forget.  I never believed it possible I could come this far until I realize that I’m here.

Last Saturday at yoga class we did some focused breathing.  We paused between each inhalation and each exhalation, at the top and bottom of each breath, and I wondered if this was THE metaphor for life on earth, and whatever comes next.  Each inhalation is a lifetime here.  And then a pause to rest before coming back.  Then each exhalation is another lifetime.  And then a pause to rest in between.  And over and over, countless times.

What if it’s that simple?

E bumped into our across-the-street neighbor on his morning walk the other day; she informed him that our next-door neighbor’s memorial service was that day.   We hadn’t even known he’d passed.  He was an old man, though he did go out from time to time and drove himself still, his oxygen tank in the passenger seat.  He lived with his adult daughter, whose car restoration hobby frequently fumigates us inside our house and has made my working in the garage impossible some days.  Her dearly departed father engaged in several months of harassment about our trees that were, according to him, ever in imminent danger of crashing into his roof (though they weren’t) and wouldn’t quit until we had the tree guys out to trim them out of season.  First big summer storm that blew through resulted in his palo verde out back being cracked and the greater part of it crashing over the wall into our yard for us to clean up.  Palo verdes are prickly, as was our relationship with these neighbors.  So it was not a surprise that we were not informed of his death.

Still, our remaining neighbor had lost her father.  “Should we do something?” I asked E.  We didn’t know; we didn’t even know her name.  I looked up his obituary and found that he’d passed two weeks ago, at the age of 87.  He had lived ten years widowed, having lost his wife of 54 years.  And I learned his daughter’s name.

But to find him, I had to go through seven pages of obituaries looking for him, because I only knew his first name; his full name had been on a piece of his personal stationary on one of the notes he sent us, but I’d long since forgotten it.  I knew I’d probably recognize it once I saw it, but I had to skim every obituary until I got to him, in the S’s.  And what struck me as I did is that we all die of the same things:  heart attack, accident, cancer, some other disease, accident.  That’s really it.  

I think I had this idea that each death was unique, and of course it is, in its way, but overall, the list is short, and therefore universal.  And I keep coming back to the idea that anything that universal an experience is probably meaningful.  I took comfort from that idea.  It implied to me some kind of cosmic exit strategy.  I wish I understood the timing; I wish I understood why my 87-year-old neighbor left having lived almost my entire lifetime in years longer than A.  If only we could understand, perhaps it wouldn’t be so vicious, this forced rebuilding.

I watched ER tonight, as we’ve been doing every Thursday night for years—at least a decade.  This is the last season, and there are all kinds of guest stars and former cast members revisiting the show for one last hurrah.  Watching the preview for next week’s show, I learned Dr. Greene would be returning in the next episode.  Mark Greene died of brain cancer in 2002.  But somehow, maybe through flashbacks, he’ll be on next week.  I admit, I get very attached to TV show characters, and I cried when he died.  And I got goosebumps as I watched the preview and saw him again.  And I thought, “If only it were that easy.” 

I seem to be angry.  I didn’t realize how angry until I e-mailed my friend B about the cause of my anger, and my words carried a venom I wasn’t sure I’d intended, but could find no fault with.  It was too late anyway; I’d already hit “send.”  Fortunately, the anger was not directed at her.

In October of 2004 I made the happy discovery that there was such a thing as camp for adults, specifically, guitar camp.  I’d had no idea, and determined that I would like to go to a guitar camp.  At that point, I’d been playing for all of 3 months.

I did a little research and was surprised to find a fair number of guitar camps in California, and an idea formed.  At that point, A and I had been talking for almost 6 months, and I was in love, and suspected he was right there with me.  I really wanted to meet him in person, and I decided I would try to find a camp as close to him as I could and see if we couldn’t actually share space for a bit.  When I found a women-only guitar camp in Mendocino, I knew I’d found exactly what I was looking for.

Last year, the camp was cancelled at nearly the last minute, the result of an acrimonious break-up between the organizers and attendance too low to make it worth them gutting it out.  My friend B and I went to San Francisco anyway, as we had non-refundable tickets, and we had a great time.  Last year, I wasn’t too broken up about not revisiting that context; I was only 18 months out, and still actively grieving.

We were given vague hope that perhaps the organizers would manage to get it together for this year; the August camp I never go to happened through the efforts of one of the women, and so we planned on going this winter to check out the new version and make any decisions after seeing for ourselves.

But they have not gotten it together; in fact, they’ve decided to “handle” things by offering competing camps a week apart in the exact same venue, essentially forcing campers who come to this camp because they really enjoy the sisterhood to choose between them.  Camp isn’t cheap, and it’s unlikely many, or any, of us will go to both weekends and hang out up there in the January rain for the week in between.

On the surface, I resent being forced to choose.  I understand that they cannot stay together, or work together, or live their lives to suit my preferences; but this solution is, in my opinion, a pretty poor one.  I’m also pissed because they jacked up the price, and if I choose my preferred camp, I will have to take more time off from work than I would have to if I went to camp at the normal time.

But it’s deeper than that, and so is my sorrow that it has come to this.  That guitar camp was really the only reason I had to go back to northern California now that A is not there.  Losing that means that I will be unlikely to get back there with any regularity, back to a place that holds so many sweet memories.  And camp is so inextricably tied up in A; I probably never would’ve been at that one if not for him.  And I wouldn’t have looked for a guitar camp at all if he hadn’t been instrumental (ha!) in my learning to play the guitar.

And what really makes me upset is that I loved camp.  All of us do.  As soon as we do our closing ceremonies, we are all looking forward to next year; it was that good.  And now it’s falling apart.  It can never be the same, and I’m facing the loss of camp I could’ve realistically mourned last year (but didn’t) now.  Another loss of something I really love.  Another loss of a place that felt like home.  Another “lesson” that everything ends.  Nothing can ever stay the same; not even the things we love most.  Especially the things we love most.

That’s why I’m angry.  Because I’m losing again, and it’s their fault, despite my knowing that it’s not personal; it’s not something they’re trying to do to me.  My unhappiness is a side effect of theirs.  But I feel like I am to be allowed nothing but memories from those places.  Perhaps somewhere down the road, I will say to myself that it was a good thing I was forced to stop haunting that hallowed ground; right now, I just feel robbed again.

I don’t know yet what I’m going to do about this; I can’t realistically make a decision until after I’m back to work after my surgery; the amount of time I have to take off to recover from that will be the major determiner.  Part of me wants to say “fuck it,”  but it will have to reckon with the part of me that wants to hold on to whatever I can.