grief

Unshed Tears


Tears have been close to the surface all day long. So many memories to sort through, pack, and give away. I found the binder they gave me when Will went into hospice. It has been moved from place to place, lost, forgotten and resurfacing with regularity ever since. It was time to take it back. I have been meaning to do so since the first of the year, but now it really was time. I could have thrown it away, I suppose. It’s just a binder with information on the process of dying. What is normal. What to expect. I am sure they didn’t need it back. But it felt wrong to throw it away, so I took it back.

When I walked in there was no one at the front desk. There hardly ever was though because they depend on volunteers to do many things, and this was one of them. I had hoped that one day I would be able to volunteer at the hospice. Give back a bit. But I haven’t been strong enough. My compromise has been trying to be supportive of people on the board. I succeed about half the time, I think.

I checked the staff rooms, but they were empty. I went into the chapel and looked at the book with the names of the deceased, but the book was for this year only and Will’s name wasn’t there. Finally, I ventured back towards the rooms. Will was in room 5. I could see that the room was occupied so I didn’t head towards it, but a part of me wanted to look in. Not because I thought he would be there, but because it is the last place I ever saw him. And I don’t miss seeing him the way he was,especially that last year, but as I prepare to move away and truly start a new life with Rob, I have this homesick feeling for Will.

A nurse appeared from the kitchen then and asked if she could help me, and I handed her the binder, explaining that I was moving and wanted to return it. She looked a bit confused. I guess most people just throw the binder away. I couldn’t really explain that I had given enough away for the day.

As I headed out the front door to my car, I could almost hear him tell me that I shouldn’t have gone there, That he wasn’t there anymore. Indeed he is rarely around at all. I don’t feel him in the house or at the cemetery or even hear him much in my mind. It’s like he is telling me with his absence that it is time we both got on with the present we are living and head towards the futures we are meant to have. And he is right. I have been absent myself. Living and planning and being happy. It’s time.

More Packing



I am not packing as much as I am disposing of and giving things away at this point, and you would not believe how difficult it is to give things away. I am speaking of nice things too. The temptation to rent one of those giant dumpsters and toss everything into it that I don’t need grows stronger by the minute. But I just must man up and do this. No more procrastinating. No more whining. A week from today we will be hooking up the moving trailer to the truck and heading for home. It’s been four years since Katy and I have had a real home and not just somewhere we lived.

This morning before I took her to the daycare that has been her second home since she was seven weeks old, Katy made the comment that Rob was eating his breakfast alone. It occurred to me that over this last weekend she finally had a real glimpse into what a family is. From the inside. She was so calm and content. And you know what? So was I. Even moreso than when Rob has been here with us. It’s such a wonderful feeling to know where you belong. To know you are loved and wanted and needed.

I need to get back to my boxes and totes. I can hear them calling from every room in the house. I have a very tired warhorse on his way here, and I want to greet him with less work than he is expecting. 

Facing the Truth


Heaven

“He’s dead, Jim,” Dr. Leonard (Bones) McCoy (2227-?) chief medical officer on the starship, Enterprise

During the first year, when I was trapped by responsibilities I did as best I could to keep hopelessness at bay and anger to a minimum. But I longed to live life again. To be happy. To set goals and reach for them. To be out in the world and experience things again. Certainly I would have preferred to have had Will by my side, but that wasn’t the reality. He was gone, and I was still here.

Why do some of us see the world for the possibilities it holds for us as opposed to some sort of solitary confinement to be outlasted?

My husband’s dead. I don’t expect phone calls. He isn’t going to turn up in the kitchen one morning when I come down to get breakfast for my daughter. Although there are moments in the beginning when there is a Twilight Zone feel to this, I have a difficult time with widowed people who are further out than I am and still talking about grappling with the reality of their now. They talk about “diverting” themselves with projects and dating and getaways. How does one “divert” grief? It hangs on you like a too large coat, smothering you almost with its omnipresence. I guess what most annoys me about statements like these, and it is annoyance because I can’t empathizewith it  and it is for the rare one that I feel pity, is that they refer to life as a distraction. Living is a distraction? Reality is a time filler on the way to the grave?

Reunification seems to be the goal of many widowed people. While it is a nice thought, I am not so sure that it is the reality that awaits any of us when this life is over. I often have the feeling that Will is farther and farther away from me all the time, and that he is moving forward in much the same way that I have. A dear friend of Rob’s told him that he shouldn’t worry about the configurations of the next life in terms of our earth bound relations. The next plane is not bound by the rules that reign here. I don’t worry about it much myself, but I wonder how I could ever give Rob up. He is too precious and too much a part of me now.

A common question of the widowed is how do you make room in your heart to love another? There is a feeling that a broken heart is just not capable of being repaired to a point where this will be possible. The thing is, though, that your heart isn’t really broken. It still beats. It still feels and aches and has love to give. There is just no one to ease the ache or accept the love anymore. Fear is what holds us back from loving again at some point. Those who have trouble reconnecting with their ability to love and risk not being loved in return more than likely had difficulty with this before they married. I know that when I first tried to date I fell back into the bad relationship habits of my life before Will. It was as though I had forgotten everything I had learned from him and with him about relationships. It was only when I stepped back and acknowledged what I was doing and made an effort to put the lessons of my marriage into practice again that I found my footing and ultimately was able to build a relationship with Rob.

Often I hear widowed people say that though they are in a new relationship, or open to one, they will never love someone else as much as they loved their late spouse, or be loved as comparably. I just cringe. I love Rob as much as I ever loved Will, and I feel as loved as I have ever felt. Beyond that I can’t make any other comparisons. It is not possible and it’s not wise. “That was then and this is now.” Mark says that to Byron in the S.E. Hinton novel of the same now when he is asked why things can’t be the same between them. In the novel it is a rather cynical and very hard assessment of the reality experienced by these teen-aged characters. The two boys had survived hard childhoods and yet the severing of their near-familial relationship was one of the most difficult challenges either had faced yet. Life is hard sometimes, but reality must be acknowledged for what it is. Life is not static. It is ever changing, and it’s direction is only marginally ours to control.

I can’t imagine who I would be were it not for Will. I can’t imagine a future without Rob. My truths.

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