grief

Seven Months Ago


Rob and I were married seven months ago today. I find it interesting that we count the months. I was never much for month counting. Not when I was first married to Will or when I was pregnant with Katy (though the count is generally by weeks for that life event). I had to stop and count when people would enquire how old Katy was even. Consequently, I have never numbered my days as a widow. It was actually quite a relief to be beyond the first anniversary and able to just count in years. So, it’s interesting that I, Rob too, counts the months of our marriage. Perhaps it’s just that this time we are so fortunate to have seems too precious not to keep track of every minute of it. Maybe that is even part of what drives my blogging. I want this on the record, so to speak.

 

We are “celebrating” by taking our old sofa to the dump. Neither Rob nor I can bear to sit on it since the nephew and his lice lounged all over it. And, it isn’t coming with us to Texas anyway. Rob hasn’t been able to pawn it off on either of the older girls. So to the dump.

 

Then it’s on to the mall for walking shoes. I finally talked Rob into starting a walking program with me on the two nights of the week that the gym offers child-minding. In between we need to make yet another library run, returning dvd’s, cd’s and finished books. I love that we are establishing library time as a family with Katy. When I was little, I loved our trips to the library. I want Katy to see the library (and bookstores) as fun and wonderful places full of adventure and a place to exercise one’s imagination. After that it will likely be dark and time to come home.

 

It’s staying light longer now. It was after five before dusk hit in earnest yesterday, but it’s still a short day in terms of daylight and sunlight isn’t plentiful yet. I will so miss the long sun days. I loved being able to watch the sunset at 10:30 or 11PM. The day we were married my mother was amazed to see the sun only just setting when back in Iowa it would have been dark for hours already.

 

We are planning a sauna for later and perhaps a movie. A comedy. We tried comedy last night, the Aniston flick about the family who were the real Robinson’s from The Graduate. We kept our widowed character streak alive as the dad in the story was widowed in his mid-thirties.. Rob assures me that widowhood is not a theme in tonight’s pick.

 

But it’s a beautiful day. Not quite 2 C (mid-thirties for you American folk) and we are set to enjoy it as they are predicting our first brush with -30 C on Monday and Tuesday. It’s a good day to hang out and be a family and remember it’s our anniversary.

Choosing


Happiness

Image by 4nitsirk via Flickr

From time to time the topic of choice comes up on this grief journey. There is a camp, and I fall squarely into it, that believes that happiness is something you choose. The other side of the coin is the belief that you cannot make yourself “get happy”. The reality, as it often does, lies somewhere in between the extremes. I made the choice to be happy again long before Will died. Happiness has always been the light at the end of my tunnel. If it hadn’t been there. If I couldn’t believe in it. I wouldn’t be here right now. So in some ways it is rather simple. But, in others, it is not. I didn’t wake up happy one day. My decision to pursue happiness actively didn’t get me to the state of bliss quickly. Indeed, I would say that though much of my life is on track and I am quite happy with where I am heading, there are still pieces of the puzzle out of place or missing altogether. The idea that happiness is achieved simply by the act of making the choice is one that is most common in those who refuse to choose. Those of us who have chosen, know better.

 

Happiness is not handed to anyone. There is work involved and in the beginning as many setbacks as there are steps forward. The happiness seekers are criticized for wanting to distract themselves from their grief or avoid it altogether. It’s not possible to do this however. You can’t make the milestones and memories disappear. When I sold the house, it brought out of the shadows the memories of that summer we bought it. Of Will’s rapid descent into dementia. Of learning he was terminal. All the financial difficulties. Worry about how I would care for a dying man and a not quite toddler and still hold down a full time job because we needed the money and the health insurance. I am planning a major move and preparing to marry. I don’t need to go back there right now, but I do. Those memories would have stayed put otherwise. And you might ask, what does that scary time and sad, painful memories have to do with happiness? Aside from provide a contrast? They are a reminder not to take now for granted. To be thankful for the love I have found with Rob and the life we are starting. Because grieving is not just about leaving someone behind, it is also about taking stock of where you are and deciding where you want to be. Some of us decide that where we want to be is stuck. More of us, I think, choose to push through and pursue a course that, though harder at times, is ultimately more rewarding. Grief work is not about wallowing. It is about living. And if that sounds simplistic, it is because most things in life are rather simple. It is we who complicate matters with over-analysis and supposition.

 

“Thinking makes it so” is what I believe Shakespeare wrote in his ode to being stuck in grief, Hamlet. I never have liked that play. I loathe the character of Hamlet. I had a professor in a summer humanities course who waxed endlessly about the intricacies of the character and the profundity of his thought processes. I just saw someone who was more content in rationalizing and second guessing because it was safe. In the great “to be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet ponders the question of seeking refuge in death and wonders why he cannot. He surmises that it is the dilemma of trading the known for the unknown. It is the same for those mired in grief. To make a decision to seek happiness is to trade the safety of your known misery for the uncertainty of finding a life beyond it and in seeking happiness, end up more miserable.

 

When you choose to be happy, you are in no way guaranteeing that happiness will be the outcome. Too many variables. However, in not making the choice you are assuring that you won’t be.

 

 


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The Perfect Widow


Photo of Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, J...

Image via Wikipedia

I wonder if Jackie Kennedy wrote all her own thank you cards in the days after her husband’s murder? I imagine she did. Perfect widows write thank you’s to everyone who express even the most rudimentary acknowledgment of their loss. Perfect widows don’t make any important decisions during the first year. They don’t date. They live only for their children, who represent the only reason for rising in the morning, and they adhere with the fervor of a convert to the stages of grief. Following them lock-step through that first year, the perfect widow is all about preparing herself for that second year, which she expects to be only occasionally as awful as the first, but certainly as melancholy.

I am so not the perfect widow. And it goes well beyond the fact that I didn’t write a single thank you card. As a matter of fact after I shook the cash out of each card, like my four year old does whenever she receives mail of any kind, I put the cards in a bag and never took them out again. I don’t think I even read any of them. I needed the money to pay for my husband’s wake and to bury him, but I had no use for expressions of sympathy from people who had ignored, abandoned or treated my daughter and I as inconveniences during the two and a half years we watched Will die.

When I say “we”, I mean that almost literally. It was just she and I most of the time. There were a few people who stuck close and were beyond helpful and generous, but very few.

I am continually floored by the Grief Rules mavens who seem to think that being widowed entitles them to bully all others into accepting their interpretation of bereavement. I am make no claims to wallflower status myself when it comes to expressing an opinion, but I would hope that no one ever felt as though I was telling them how to mourn from my perch high atop Mt. Perfection.

It shouldn’t surprise me that people seem to possess a fair amount of entitlement when it comes to having their tokens of sympathy acknowledged. It seems that we are not able to simply do the right thing by family, friends and neighbors without being handed a gold star to wear in return. To my mind, sending flowers or food or cards is for the comfort of the bereaved person and never done in expectation of acknowledgment of any kind. I can’t recall exactly the chapter and verse (I am a Catholic after-all) but I am sure that Jesus had something to say about those who needed to have their good deeds and pious ways well published.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to surviving the death of your spouse. Because it is about surviving with the hope of one day moving forward and living again. It is in this way that we honor them and not through the writing of thank you cards.

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