grief

Time, Timing and the Healing of All Wounds


There are essentially two camps of thinking when it comes to re-partnering or finding love again after being widowed. The first camp is loud and belligerent in its conviction, believes that time must pass and grief work must be done and that all parties involved must be consulted beforehand. I don’t belong to that camp. I find them to be irritating and sheople-like. But then again, I don’t believe that time heals wounds or that such a thing as grief-work even exists (it sounds suspiciously like those “camps” that Dr. Phil holds, tapes and uses as filler when he can’t come up with real topics to discuss). I am also a firm believer in not allowing friends and family, who are merely appendages to your life really, to have say over the general direction my life. In-laws will get over you. Parents and siblings have lives of their own that should occupy them more. And children grow up and go out into the world to live lives that they won’t allow you to input to, so why do you owe them input into yours when they are essentially not mature enough, or self-less enough, to give meaningful input? The second camp, my camp, believes that love will come along again if you are open to the idea and living your life minus the drama of single twenty-somethings who read Cosmo for the man-snaring dress and sex tips and visit their tarot readers monthly to see if their bar-hopping is going to pan out. And the grief part? The idea, prevalent among first campers, that if you wallow in it hard enough and long enough it will diminish to a corner of your psyche where you can wall it off and pull it out only on anniversaries is the most simplistic thing I think I have ever heard. Grief is. And it continues to be. Forever. It diminishes, if you want to use that term, as you begin to reclaim your life and rebuild it. Nothing short of that works. Could that be the “grief-work” everyone talks about? Perhaps. But what does love have to do with it?

When I was single, and I was for forever and a day, it seemed to me that the more time I spent pondering my single state the more single I remained. It was only when I was busy living and moving forward that the opportunities to fall in love and have that love returned presented themselves. The same held true after my first husband died. And what love has to do with grieving is that it is made easier by being able to share the load with someone who cares about you in a more intimate manner than your children or your mother-in-law can. This is true of most everything in life.

I am not going to pretend that I didn’t think about falling in love and marrying again early. In fact I thought about it even before Will died. Ours was a Terry Schiavo-ish situation with him first suffering from a rapidly progressive dementia until within little more than a year, he couldn’t communicate or understand at all. At that point, I spent well over an additional year on my own before he died though the man I had married was long since gone. Though I can intellectually understand those with terminal situations who refused to contemplate the future before their spouses died. I don’t get that kind of denial personally. So, when I read things other widows have written about time lines and respect for one’s late spouse or the need to make your children the epicenter of your life until they are grown or “working” the misery as reasons to not date or begin relationships, I chalk this up to the fact that some people aren’t me.

There was a recent flare-up on the widow board caused by a poster’s plea for others to not casually toss about absolutes when replying to other people’s queries. I watched the thread for a day or so because I knew it would dissolve into the age-old debate between the daters and the not-daters. Everything widow eventually breaks down along those lines when the subject is moving on. A woman I have little patience with leapt upon this topic, as she always does, to criticize and shame those people who haven’t followed her example of simply living for her children and waiting for the day that she no longer misses her husband. I have always felt there was a story behind that and to my surprise, those who usually support her vitriol, openly or through their silence, chastised her to the point where she admitted that she was the hypocrite I suspected her to be, an early dater. Her relationship however didn’t work out and she is essentially carrying a torch for this man still. Not at all unlike what happens to the single and divorced in the world. We are not as unlike them as we like to think in this respect anyway. So much for the idea that waiting is the given though, and those who begin to feel again and act on those feelings are horrible people and bad examples.

Rob finds the finger-waggers as irritating as I do. Not because he worries about what people think. He doesn’t. But because it is disrespectful and presumptive of others to claim knowledge of his heart and mind simply because they share his widowed state. As he is fond of pointing out, widowhood does not make saints out of assholes generally, nor does it give any special ability to guide or give counsel to people who had social issues or issues at all to begin with. So, I resisted the urge to re-register and comment. Easily as it turns out but I couldn’t let it go enough not to blog on the topic because, personally, I feel that the vast majority of the bereaved are back out into the world sooner rather than later and it is those who cling to their grief via arbitrary timelines and “rules” and absolutes who are the ones who really need help. The rest of us are doing all right without them.

Bursting into Song


One of my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a musical with all the characters bursting into song and dance like Singing in the Rain or West Side Story. I got to thinking about this when I came across a group on Faceback called “Why yes, I do just burst into song”. It reminded me too of when I was young and I would string together popular songs to tell stories in much the same way they do in the movie Moulin Rogue. I would imagine my characters singing songs to tell their stories alone or in duets. I was a very odd child. When I was older, and even now, I used songs to cheer myself up or onward, narrating my own life through tunes. If my life were a musical today the musical narrative would be comprised mainly of love songs. I caught the end of Faith Hill’s Breathe on the way to deep water aerobics tonight and it captured perfectly the way I feel about Rob. Sometimes these days, I am so happy that I almost feel guilty. However, it’s not as though I have forgotten. You never forget, but I am done letting those moments that crop up on occasion dominate or interfere with my life. There will always be memories and anniversaries and times of the year that prick at the underside of consciousness in an attempt to awaken the past.

I awoke the other morning shortly before the alarm from a dream about Will. I have gone from never dreaming about him to dreams where he is part of the white noise to the current state of affairs with him turning up on occasion and interrupting dreams already in progress. He is never who he was though. Not the man I fell in love with or married. He is the sick and demented version of Will. What he became after the disease took hold and had eaten away significant portions of the white matter that covered his brain. In these dreams he is like a child or a little old man. I can’t communicate with him in any meaningful way and I spend a great deal of time comforting and caring for him. In the latest dream, he begged me to just hold him as though he were a small child and I woke up from the dream in tears. Though there is something to the theory that dreams are your unconscious mind trying to tell you something important or the way your mind problem solves while you sleep, there isn’t much to this dream that needs deep analysis on my part. I have always wished that we could have known what was wrong sooner so that he and I could have had a chance to talk about his wishes and say goodbye, and I wish I could have been able to care for him instead of putting him in the nursing home. I also wish I had been able to take time off work to be with him those last months he spent in hospice. But I couldn’t and I can’t fix that now. And I also know that it’s October. The month that Will went into hospice; where he died two years ago this coming January.

Last year around this time, I began living most of the “firsts” that lay grieving people so low during that first year. Nearly everything important was packed into those last few months of the first year and it was very hard to cope with these events when I was also dealing with personal illness, raising a small child and working a full-time job. I did it though. Not well, and I would never counsel people to do what I was told to do, which was to wallow in my misery. I was fortunate that my innate tendency to question “authority” and my inner musical buoyed me up enough that I didn’t get stuck in that mode. I know there will be moments in the coming months that will bring up memories, good and bad, but isn’t that just part of life?

The trip we took back to my folks recently provided me with a chance to visit places from my childhood. The farm where my uncle and grandmother lived for instance. By chance the call of nature (yeah, I pee outdoors now like a Canadian) put me behind the car-shed, and as I walked back to the homestead from around the barn I paused for a moment to look up at the door to the loft. It was closed and the ground beneath was covered with ankle deep grass. It was just a over and month and 35 years ago that my uncle fell to his death from that loft after having a seizure. Later that same afternoon, we stopped at the cemetery where he is buried. The first person I was close to and really loved who died and left me. And it’s been thirty-five years. I can still feel that pain. Remember with clarity the last time I saw him. Regret that I never got the chance to say goodbye. People might argue – widows would argue vehemently – that it’s not the same as losing a spouse, but they are full of shit. Loss is loss. And who is anyone to say that one type is worse or more painful? It took years to get to a point where Jimmy’s death wasn’t part of me every day. It will take as much time or more to incorporate Will’s passing into my psyche as well. And there will be more dreams. And they are just dreams. But the musical that is my life is what I hear when I am awake and living and loving and laughing, and that is what counts.

Going to the Movies


Going to see a movie, even watching dvd’s at home, is always a hit and miss affair. I think it is safe to say that Rob and I haven’t managed to find a film yet without references big and small about death and grieving. Last night’s movie was in keeping with the trend. Despite the fact that we were running late from dinner, we decided to catch the new Naomi Watts and Viggio Mortenson flick titled, Eastern Promises. About ten or fifteen minutes had passed by the time we walked in and found seats on the left wall. The theater wasn’t very crowded but we found ourselves sitting behind and in front of couples. Not an awful view despite the lack of stadium seating, but I did hear the woman behind us make a disgusted sound when Rob sat down in front of her and then proceeded to quickly peel off his pullover. Some people don’t deal with the “public”aspect of cinema very well. The simple truth is if you want to view a movie without the inconveince of other viewers possible spoiling your pristine cinematic experience, stay home and wait for the DVD.

The Mortenson character in the film was a Russian named Nikolai who worked as a driver for the Russian mafia based in the city of London. The first scene we took in was of this character being called upon to dispose of a body. To say that there were grisly and violent scenes in the movie would be understating quite a bit. There were only a few deaths, but they were graphic. I am not exactly more squeamish since the death of my first husband. But once you have actually watched someone die, the “Hollywood” take will never seem quite as realistic no matter how well done because you know that it’s not real. The actor got up when the director yelled “Cut” and went home to family or out to dinner with friends. It can never be as real as real is.

Naomi Watts played a midwife in the story who gets involved with the mafia, Nikolai, after the death of a 14 year old Ukranian prostitute. The girl had jut given birth and it stirs up memories for Anna (Watts) because she has recently miscarried her own baby. Between the grief and the murdering, it was a good movie. The acting was wonderful and it was visually interesting. The story was well told.

After the movie, we sat and watched the credits, listening to the soundtrack too because we like to collect soundtracks that are particularly well done. As the credits rolled it came to a dedication to the production unit manager, Lisa Parker, a 40 year old Irish woman who had died suddenly this past June. The woman behind us had been babblingly loudly to her companion during this time. Mostly about nothing and it occurred to me that perhaps she and the gentleman she was with were on a date. Maybe even a first or second date because women have a tendency to talk far too much in early dating situations out of nervousness. It’s only later when you know a man well and are sure of him that you can let the quiet be quiet. The dedication rolls on and the women reads the dates of birth and death and does the math to come up with Parker’s age, which she announces too. Then makes some inane comment about what might have happened. It wasn’t what was said but the conversational tone that struck me and told me that this women had never lost anyone. If she had, it wouldn’t have been a matter for trivia or simply filling spaces in the air.

We got up to leave after the screen went black. The woman and her companion were still seated and she made sure to give Rob a dirty look. Of course he didn’t notice. If this woman knew my husband at all she would have saved the effort. Rob pays no attention to strangers because the things they have to say or the “looks” they might throw at him aren’t of interest to him. It’s one of the the things I love abou him, the fact that he doesn’t let random people get to him. I noted her look. I also noted that she was my age but trying to look younger with heavy make-up and dyed blonde hair styled to the point of being wind-resistant. She was jowly and her belly rolled over the waistband of her too tight pants. I don’t know what my look said to her. I think I smiled.

Among the widowed there is a small sub-set which treat grief as something you can “self-help” your way out of with a bit of effort. They refer to this as “griefwork” and certainly there is wisdom is the early months and through the first year and a bit to let yourself be sad and mourn all the losses that come with losing a mate, but I reject the idea that the intensity of grief is something that will consume years – two and three and four – at a time until a person can hope to rebuild and reclaim. At some point, in the second year, normality, and the need for this, take over and grieving becomes intermittment and usually triggered by the memories that the randomness of our lives throws at us. But, it’s not long-lasting or crippling and not reason to schedule an intervention for yourself. Like last night’s movie showed me, again, that I will never look at some things in the same way.