4283 Hours

It’s been almost six months since you died. Oh, how I miss you. Six months ago today I could still curl up next to you, I could reach out and touch your cheek. Six months ago today we were still making plans for our future.

I am halfway through my first year as a widow. The term “widow” still sounds so odd. I don’t feel like a “widow.” I feel like it’s supposed to apply to other people, not me. A widow is supposed to be some tiny, ancient lady, dressed in mourning. Not someone even remotely near my age.

I’m still working on acceptance. I still have a long journey. But at least I’ve made it this far. That’s something, I think.

Kything NaturesZen

I Am the Queen of Sticky Notes

They're everywhere...

On the fridge.

Stuck to the kitchen cabinets.

On the computer.

No surface has been safe so from all my little reminders to breathe. To smile.

They remind me to remember that even though he's no longer be with me in this life, the feelings we shared will never fade. I will always carry him in my heart.

So I leave little reminders to have courage. To hang in there.

I wonder if they're doing me any good. A friend says that these must be working, or I wouldn't be making them. Maybe they are having a positive influence on me.

Whenever I think of something I need to keep repeating to myself I grab a notepad and write it down. Whenever I begin to feel like everything is hopeless and I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel I try to write myself an encouraging note. Whenever I want to focus on the sort of energy I want to bring into my life I write it down. I am capable. I am creative. I am confident.

Sometimes I just have to remind myself that I can be strong, even if I  have a lot of trouble believing it.

That's when the notes are most important.

I think I'll continue pasting them all over the house for a while.

At least until I run out of surfaces.

cross posted from Kything NaturesZen

Reflected

I caught sight of my reflection last night, in one of the photos of Jeff I keep on the desk. I was looking over his shoulder, and it was as if we had traded places. He is vibrant and alive, and I am the spirit, watching over him.  I felt like I should be able to reach out and touch his cheek, and run my fingers through his hair, and call him sweet, silly names. And then I stop to cry again.

I fell silent towards the end of February and couldn’t think of anything to blog about, even though I wanted to write. It seemed like there was nothing left to say.

I think as the initial shock that carried me along for the first three months began to wear off I just ran out of steam, and my brain finally shut down. I stumbled backwards a lot, I felt worse than ever and the house seemed to always be closing in on me. I kept telling myself that it was just the bad winter that was keeping me down. I wanted the weather to change, I wanted it to be warm and pretty, but it occurred to me that as spring arrived I would no longer have a good excuse for hiding in the house. Deep down I don’t think I’ve really wanted to see warm, bright days. I know I’ll have to start moving around again, doing chores, interacting with people, and dealing with all the day to day things on my own that we would tackle together. Sometimes, in those moments when I haven’t managed to totally distract myself with some pastime, I realize that eventually I’m going to have to accept that he’s really gone, it’s not just a dream.

Of course my solution to these sudden realizations is to run away from that reality, drink the chocolate milk of forgetfulness, and bury myself under cozy blankets of denial.

It really is all a bad dream, Melony. Really it is. Close your eyes, take a nap, when you wake up it will all be okay. And if it doesn’t work the first time just keep repeating, eventually you’re bound to wake up out of the nightmare. And have some more donuts in between naps. You’ll feel better.

I often find myself wondering how long this feeling persists. Does it go on forever? I sometimes feel like I’m the old fashioned, stereotypical reclusive widow: forever dressed in mourning, never leaving my house, sitting in a dark room with the curtains drawn, perpetually weeping…

Well, I do wear a lot of black, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Today it has been four and a half months. 136 days. And yet it still feels like a day or so. Sooner or later I will have to step forward into the sunshine and try to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.

Jeff is gazing at me from that photo. He knows I can do it. I know I can do it, deep down there's an optimist inside me, I'm sure of it. I've pasted sticky notes with motivational comments all over the house: You can do it! Be the confident, self assured person Jeff always knew you could be!

I'm not sure they've started to help yet, but I'm not giving up.

I can do it.

cross posted from Kything NaturesZen

Just a Scribble

This morning I picked up a notebook. I was going to jot something down, but found it already had a couple pages filled with Jeff's mind mapping exercises so I stopped to look through them. He liked mind maps, he would make one when he was thinking about a project, or trying to organize his thoughts. He always thought I should use them to sort out my jumbled mess of mind chatter, but I never quite got into them. He thought they were great, though, I find them around now and then. He was always overflowing with ideas, and he'd write them down whenever he had a chance.

This map was focused on our hopes for our future. He had noted things we wanted to have in our lives, and possible steps to achieve that. There were bubbles and lines all over the pages, filled with ideas about things he wanted to learn, and goals he was setting for himself. In the middle of the page he'd scribbled a little drawing in a circle to use as the focal point of the map. It's a simple little sketch, not meant to be artistic or even to be saved forever, it was just there to represent the future us, having succeeded and enjoying the fruits of our labor. In this doodle we've realized our goals. He has his arms raised up in triumph, I have my arms around him. I can even picture the image with us in place of the little scribble figures.

I can feel the joy and fulfillment he intended in the sketch. We've achieved our personal success, we have made our dreams come true. We're standing in front of our dream house, near mountains, beside a lake. He has a little wind turbine and some solar panels too, because he always had this dream we'd have a self sufficient place one day, off the grid. This is our happily ever after, the place where we will grow old together.

These are the hardest things to find, for me. The to-do lists. The dreams. The hopes, in the form of a little sketch, for a future that will never come.

It's completely undone me today.

cross posted from Kything NaturesZen

I Heart U

Leaving important messages for the world.

Yesterday I was at the grocery and saw a handful of guys wandering around the gift displays, eyeing the candy boxes and stuffed animals and balloons, trying to figure out what would be an acceptable gift. I was a little amused by it, they all looked vaguely confused and frustrated, no doubt in part because they felt like they were expected to come up with something romantic. There may have been a lot riding on that gift. I hope it worked out well for all of them today.

We never really did much on Valentine's Day. Sometimes we'd go out for dinner. One year he bought me wonderful gift that I'll treasure forever, but mostly we didn't really treat it as a special day. We were mushy and romantic all year, we didn't need a holiday for that.

Still, I wouldn't have let the day pass unnoticed, I would always take any excuse to be a little extra mushy and leave little hearts all over the house. This year I'll be cuddled up with a blanket and pillows and plushie doll, but Jeff, you are still, and always my Valentine. ♥

cross posted from Kything NaturesZen

He's just over there

When I first come downstairs in the morning I always hope, just for a split second, that I'll see Jeff sitting on the couch. Sometimes I pause on the steps and try to will him into existence. I'm not having much success with that so far... I know I won't find him there, of course. But still, I still must look.

His presence in this house is very, very strong. I am often struck by the feeling that he's just left he room, or that he's right there with me, and I would not be surprised if I turned and found him standing in the kitchen. It's not that I'm so used to seeing him in a certain spot that I still feel like he's there, I think it's that his presence and his influence was so strongly imprinted on me that I will always feel like he's with me. In this house, in the car, out shopping. I still feel him around me.

Everyone we've ever gotten to know changes us in some way, and I like the idea that he is always going to be a part of me.  I talk to him all the time, and sometimes I can imagine his responses, his suggestions, his comments. His words flow easily through my thoughts, shaping my own reactions and giving me another perspective on things.

Maybe he is there, just beyond my sight. Maybe when we feel someone near us we have a sense of that.

 

image created with Bitstrips

cross posted from Kything NaturesZen

Happy Birthday

Today is a tough day to greet with a smile. Today is one of those "firsts" that I have to get through alone, today is his birthday. Today he would have turned fifty. Today would have been one of those big milestone days. We never made much fuss over birthdays, usually we'd just go out to dinner, but I think this year I'd have tried to do something special. And there would have been teasing, lots of teasing, I'd been getting a head start on that shortly after his last birthday. "I can't believe you'll be fifty! You're sooo old!" I told him. Of course he'd have given it all back to me when my time came, but I'd have had a lot of fun out of it before that happened. :)

I considered writing about what turning fifty was going to mean to us, what we'd hoped to do, what was left undone, but instead I just sat down this morning and worked on a digital painting. I'm still learning my way around the program, but I think he'd like it. He'd like that I'm trying.
Happy birthday, Jeff. I love you more than I could ever express. I miss you every day.

cross posted from Kything NaturesZen

Leaving Memorials

Jeff's photography, from his Facebook

This week I began to think about what to do with Jeff’s Facebook account. I have access to it, we always shared passwords with each other and I can access most of his online accounts, so I have a few options. I can leave it active, as it is now, I can delete it entirely, or I can ask Facebook to memorialize it. That will lock it down, frozen in time, a memorial to the thoughts and images he shared. I had always considered that the best option, but I’ve been resisting it for a while, it would be another way of acknowledging that he's really gone, and in my heart I still don't want to do that.

It also occurs to me that by memorializing Jeff's account it will probably cause the relationship status on my own account to change. Now I'm not entirely sure about this, it might still read the same, but it made me wonder if it might be time to change that status over to read "widowed."  That's a label I've been resisting, it sounds so permanent and final. I don't feel like a widow, I still feel married, I'm just married to a man who seems to have always left the room before I came in. I know that there's no need to make any changes to the way I label myself on something as relatively insignificant as Facebook, in fact there's no need to display any relationship status at all. Still, I'm thinking that maybe this is another step on my journey of healing. I'm rebuilding my life, and perhaps taking ownership of the term "widow," even if it is only a mental acknowledgement of my new identity,  is a small step in continuing to work on accepting that Jeff has died, and my life is not as it was.

In preparation for changing over the account I went back through Jeff's timeline and read through his status updates. In the process I found myself reliving a lot of little moments of the past few years. He didn’t update his status often, so each post is extra special to me. Each was an insight into what he was doing, what he was thinking, into which technologies he’d stumbled across and found so cool he just had to share them with everyone. I could feel his enthusiasm in each update. I could feel his optimism and his hope for the future. I could remember every time he told me about something that he’d just found, and how excited he was about new ideas and innovation. Reading through that was much harder than I would have imagined, It made my grief feel very fresh again.  I cried not just for my own loss, but because the world will never know what he could have made of his plans, and what he might have created. It’s not fair. He should have had forty more years to pursue his dreams.

Even though it's hard to look back at things that prompt memories I don't want to hide from them. Remembering him and talking about him is important to me. But there are times that all of the memories do become too difficult, the pain is too much to bear and I have to step back and find a way to distract myself and try to bring my mood back up. My challenge this year is to curb my instinct to use comfort foods to do that. A little treat is fine, a never ending stream of high fat, carb laden food is not. At least, it's not for me, the temporary happiness I gain from that 1400 calorie pint of ice cream never seems to make up for the way I feel after I eat it, and the fifteen pounds that have joined me in the past couple of months are proof that I need to find a better way to comfort myself. I need to spend less time thinking about cookies as a mood lifter, and more time losing myself in books, in hobbies, in music, in idle, silly daydreams.

75 days have come and gone, but I'm still breathing. It's an ongoing battle, but I'm holding on.

cross posted from Kything NaturesZen

New Year. New Everything.

Jan 1, 2013. Fabulous hats. Bright new year.

2013 is just about to slip away, and I barely noticed the past two months.

That's not a bad thing, I don't think there has been much to notice. I've hibernated, I've put off doing things that I know I should have begun, I've spent vast amounts of that time watching TV, or sitting in front of the computer with a half dozen tabs open, checking pages every few minutes to see if there have  been changes. Has anything happened here? Refresh. No? On to the next tab then. Why isn't anyone online? Do these people have lives or something? Geez!

I have done exactly what I was talking about in one of the previous posts. I've time traveled my way through November and December. It's okay. I needed to. I might still do that for a while. There are still things to binge-watch on Netflix.

Sometime sent me a note last week to say they hope I'm getting through this, and I realized that for the first time I'm beginning to believe I will. It wasn't that I never believed I could until last week, it was that I didn't care, I really didn't. Oh, I've tried to talk a good game about all of the plans I have, about following Jeff's advice, being in the moment, not allowing my mind chatter to get the better of me... but really? For the entirety of November and for a large chunk of December, probably right up through Thursday or Friday, I really didn't care. For the first few weeks every time I woke up I was disappointed that I had woken up because there was nothing, not one single thing, that I could find to look forward to.

Now, well, maybe the world isn't quite as dark as it was.  This is not to say that I have suddenly emerged on the other side of the tunnel and am filled with fresh new hope for the future, I'm still far from that. I'm still having the awful mood swings, the sobbing fits, the experience of walking into a room and feeling astonished that he's not there. But the other day there were a few little passing moments where I realized that I do care about the future, just a little. There are things I look forward to. Things I want to see, do, and experience. Places I want to go. People I want to meet. Friends to visit. It may not seem like realizing this was a big step, but for me this felt like a huge revelation.

So here I am, getting ready to begin a new year on my own. I don't usually make a list of resolutions, but there are things I'll try to do this year. I know I'll slip backwards more often than not, I'll fall in and out of bad habits. I'll battle with my anxiety about the future every day. I'll cry, complain, whine, and feel miserable because I miss Jeff so much it makes my stomach hurt. But I will also find joy and fun in little things. I'll try to reach out more to people, something I've always been extremely afraid of doing because I'm convinced I'm being a bother. I'll chatter constantly about whatever pops into my head and share whatever pastime I become obsessed with until I drive all of my online friends completely insane and they begin to wish my internet would fail. I'll set goals that are so far beyond my reach that they're just silly but I'll cherish them anyway, and I'll realize that others are more attainable than I'd imagined. I hope I'll surprise myself.

I have no idea what's going to happen in 2014 and I'm terrified, but maybe, just maybe, there will be a little more light in my life.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

Infinite Time

I thought we'd have more time. More time for vacations. More time for photos. More time to live our lives to the fullest and make our dreams come true.

treasured time

I feel like my life was interrupted and just isn't back on track yet. I look at my phone and expect to see a text from him. I wonder, briefly, if he's left work. He always called when he was on his way home, to give me a ETA in case I needed to start dinner, and just to talk about the day. I miss him calling in the middle of the afternoon because he'd had a sudden idea about some project we could start and he was so excited he had to tell me right away. I continue to expect to find him somewhere in the house, standing in the kitchen or sitting on the couch watching TV. I have a hard time moving things around because in the back of my head there's a voice saying "No, he might still need to use this." I miss his physical presence in my life.

 I miss being wrapped up in his hugs.

 I'm thinking about him constantly. I find the happy few minutes every day, but I'm hit with chest crushing, screaming, pounding my fists on the floor grief at unpredictable moments. I look at photos that span the past few years, from our first date to just a few days before he died, and in all of them he is so alive, so present, so full of hope and dreams and goals for the future. It feels impossible that he isn't here to carry out his plans. I cry when I think of the things he was planning to learn, because he will not have that chance now.

I miss hearing him talk about all of his ideas for the future. I miss laying in bed and talking about what we hoped we'd do in the coming years. I miss that so much that I'm constantly fighting off the feeling that if he isn't here to help visualize our hopes and dreams and goals then there's no point in dreaming big, it's easier to just give up and accept a mundane life and never try anything new again.

A friend had mentioned things he'd hoped we could all still do together, and commented that this reminds us that our time here is brief. I agree. I'd always believed there would be time, endless amounts of it, to be together, to enjoy each other's company. Time felt infinite in relation to all of our goals. There would always be time to plan for things, time to learn new skills, time to work on hobbies, time to pursue our dreams and make them come true. And of course if there is always time to do something tomorrow then there's no need to worry about it today. A belief in infinite time fed our procrastination, even though we vowed to make changes they would always be for another day. Today would be spent watching a movie or two, or surfing for another hour, or doing nothing in particular until it's time to fall asleep.

Jeff called this time traveling. Rise in the morning, do your work, eat, watch TV, go to sleep. Repeat the same routine every day without varying it, never trying to break free of that pattern, and never feeling as though you've accomplished anything. We each spent a lot of time doing this, moving through the day without making any attempt to work on our plans. This was what we wanted to break free of. We wanted to stop traveling through time and start living in it.

The desire to wait until tomorrow to start something is very strong in me, and this will be a hard lesson to work on. Between the two of us we had a lot of things we hoped to accomplish, a lot of dreams we thought we could make come true for ourselves. Some of those I will continue to hold, some will be replaced by new goals and dreams as I try to rebuild my own life from the ground up. Some will always remain daydreams, but some are attainable if I am willing to put in the time and effort to pursue them.

As I sit here Jeff is gazing at me from a dozen different frames, smiling gently, encouraging me. I'm going to try to manifest the optimism we had that we would one day be doing great things, but now I will try to couple it with action. Optimism is lovely, but unless I take action I won't accomplish much. I have high hopes that in six months I'll be reporting that I'm well on my way to achieving my goals. Time will tell. Hopefully I will make good use of it.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

Thumbies, Bills, and Rollercoasters

Grief seems, so far, to be an unending rollercoaster ride. Just when you think you’ve reached a point where you’re feeling okay you find yourself plummeting to the bottom of the hill and into a dark tunnel. I spent a couple of days feeling sort of calm, not good, not happy, but okay. Then last night it all fell apart and I found myself doubled over and wailing and screaming as if I’d just lost him. It took a while but it passed, but I know that devastating, acute grief will come and go and all I can do is allow myself to feel it. So many people assure me that he’s here with me, watching over me, his spirit is ever present. I tell myself that as well. One of these days I will look at a photo or think of a memory and I’ll smile, but I’m not there yet.

I’ve been on the rollercoaster again today. It was fairly up for most of the afternoon, I think of it as the part of the ride where you’re going up and down the tiny hills, it’s a little bumpy but mostly even. The day was feeling a little brighter when I got the call that my Thumbie, the necklace I’d ordered when I was making Jeff’s arrangements, had arrived. The memorial jewelry I’ve seen when assisting with funeral arrangements for others was mostly focused on vials that would contain a sprinkle of your loved one’s ashes. These are still available (and with dozens of new styles to choose from) but I didn’t really feel like going that route. Instead I opted for the Thumbie, where they take a fingerprint from your loved one and make a cast, and then can make jewelry with the fingerprint. I’d encourage anyone who is faced with a loss to consider these, the higher end pieces can be quite expensive but there are a lot of really affordable ones too. In the end will having a necklace with his thumbprint help me through my grief? Well, probably not a lot. But it was nice this afternoon to reach up and touch it and think of him.

My rollercoaster car carried on smoothly for a while longer, until I arrived home to find a bill from the ER visit, from that night, advising that his treatment took place after his insurance was terminated so they were asking for all the cash. Yikes. There goes my coaster car down a steep hill into the dark tunnel of anxiety and worry. Um, no, ER treatment team, he had active coverage right up until he died, which was certainly not prior to his being admitted. I was there, I know. As I recall the ER admissions clerk had assured me I didn’t need to give her any info because he was on file, which I regret not asking about now. I’m going to suspect they couldn’t have up to date data, as he hadn’t been to the hospital or to any physician since he’d changed jobs and insurance a little over a year ago. So I will send their huge bill back to them with the most recent insurance info included and see what happens next. Fingers crossed.

The lesson to be learned here is this: if you go into the ER (or anywhere) don’t assume they have everything they need already. Or at the very least, if they say they’ve got something on file ask them to verify to you what they do have. Might save some work later on.

And as my ups and downs even out again to a relative calm again I’ll go back to reading, and I’ll talk to him. I talk all day, constantly. To his photos, to the air, to the presence that I sometimes think I can feel around me. And I’m still periodically experiencing the feeling that this is all a bad dream. I wonder when that feeling fades. I wonder if that feeling ever fades.

I realize that’s something I’ll find the answer to on my own, with the passage of time. For now I will just hold on to my heart and feel his thumb pressed against my finger.


(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

Hold My Hand Forever

I miss holding his hand.  We held hands whenever we walked anywhere, even if it was just from a parking lot into the store. I miss reaching across the table in a restaurant to take his hand, and the times that he’d rest his hand on my knee as he was driving and I’d put mine in his, as I’d done here. It was one of those safe, secure, warm feelings. I always imagined one day we would be one of those cute little old couples, still holding hands as we walked through a park.

I remember a couple of hours into our first date Jeff had a little thing that he thought he’d try: he held his hand up to me, palm out and said “Could you hold your hand up? I just want to see something.”  And so, of course, I did. I put my hand up to his, palm to palm. He then moved his hand slightly, and laced his fingers through mine. “I just wanted to see how that would feel,” he said.


It felt perfect.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

One Month

November is behind us now. Somehow I’ve gone through a full month without him. I won’t say things have improved, or even changed much, over the past few weeks. The fog hasn’t lifted yet, I’m still caught between worlds in that odd place where I haven’t fully accepted that my life has changed.

A month ago I’d had very different plans for November: We were going to start de-cluttering the house and take control of the years of accumulated stuff. I was going to learn more of his design programs so I could be a bigger help with his freelance work, beyond just doing text editing. We were going to try to build the foundation for a business of our own. We were feeling really optimistic. 2014 was going to be the year we really got our lives in order and set in motion business plans that could carry us through to retirement and beyond. A month ago we were heading for the first day of the rest of our lives.

I had plans for myself as well, I was going to devote some time each day in November to trying to complete the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge. Even if I didn’t expect to finish a book in 30 days I thought it would be fun to try, and it would give me incentive to write every day. As it turns out I think I have written something every day, whether I published here or on another blog, or just wrote privately for myself. This was not what I had in mind, however. This was not the way I wanted to spend November. The universe had other plans for me, clearly.

I’m contemplating tiny goals today. I’ve queued up a few books to read. I finished my re-read of The Power of Now, which I found myself relating to much more this time than I did several years ago. I attribute that to Jeff’s influence, obviously I was paying more attention to him than I’d realized. It made me realize what a challenge I must have been for Jeff, always resisting any change that would bring me closer to a calm mind. I can see how much of an influence my ego mind has on me, even now, but at least now I do recognize it. I still have trouble staying in the present moment, my thoughts are always clinging to the past or worrying over the future, but I’ve gradually gotten better. Not this month, I don’t think I’ve made progress doing anything this month, but over the past few years. I still have a long road ahead, though. It would be wonderful if we could experience instant enlightenment after just a couple of books and a quiet evening, but it’s going to take much more work than that. Currently I’ve just started on Thich Nhat Hanh’s “No Death, No Fear” which is reinforcing and teaching me more about being mindful and present.

I know I will still reflect on the past, but I need to try to let go of the regret and disappointment about the things left undone. That will be hard, but instead of thinking of everything we’d wanted to do as a dream that will never come to pass perhaps it’s time for me to consider what parts of our goals I can hold on to and make my own. Instead of starting off with immediate worry and fear and concluding that I could never do these things, maybe it’s time for me to look at what I can do right now, in the present moment, to prepare.  I’m not yet sure how this will work out, lately I’m lucky if I can go for an hour or so without having a tidal wave of grief wash over me out of the blue, but in those moments where the fog lifts a little I will begin taking my baby steps.

This, I believe, is Jeff’s lesson plan for me this week.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

Am I Thankful?

Thanksgiving has arrived, and I see lots of people making note of what they are thankful for. For the past few years Jeff was at the very top of my list of things I was thankful for, I was so thankful that I had found the love of my life. I was thankful for our health, for our love, for the life that we were building. Everything was a blessing.

This year? To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel thankful. I do feel robbed, cheated, numb, angry, terrified, and heartbroken. Even through the pain I recognize that I have things to be very thankful for. I am not utterly alone, I have friends and family who are  supportive and loving. I may be having a hard time reaching out to take the help that people offer, but I will when I’m ready, and I know I’m surrounded by clouds of good thoughts and prayers. I’m thankful for those. I am thankful for all of my friends and family, even the ones I have only ever ‘met’ online. All of them are more important to me than they can probably imagine.

Today I’m also a little thankful that Jeff and I never really paid much attention to Thanksgiving, so I won’t really feel that I’m missing a big celebration, or even an intimate gathering. But Thanksgiving is only the beginning, I still have a month of festive holiday cheer to deal with.

The holiday season seems to start earlier each year. I was starting to see Christmas decor in stores before Halloween, but it will really be in full swing after Thursday. Fluffy blankets for everybody!I don’t know how I’m going to handle that. While we didn’t go all out decorating at home we had our little holiday things we enjoyed, and I always looked forward to Christmas.I looked forward to the decorations, and the colors. Jeff liked find a way to make presents for people, he thought they held a lot more meaning. I remember our first Christmas was spent trying to sew fluffy blankets for everyone. Okay, Jeff did most of the sewing, but I did cut the material. And every year we’d pick a night and drive around to look at Christmas lights, and mark the best ones on the GPS so we could remember them from year to year. It was the little things that I looked forward to so much. Big fancy celebrations didn’t mean a lot, it was the little touches that I will miss.

This year I find myself dreading the season and the imagery of happy family gatherings, festive songs, good will and holiday cheer. While everyone else decks their halls and enjoys the Christmas music I’m still suspended in that strange, heavy fog where I feel like I’m not connected to this world, where it’s all still so surreal that there’s no way it’s actually happening and I want to scream for someone to please just wake me up. Where I look at a photo and cry for a half hour, and repeat that several times a day. Did you know that if you cry constantly you begin to feel like you’ve developed a permanent sinus congestion headache? You do.

I remember in years past I’d occasionally hear about someone who lost a loved one near the holiday, and I always felt awful for them. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like.  Now that I am facing it I can’t imagine how I will make it through the month. This will be a month of discovery as I try to work through this and find coping strategies. I’m not sure what they’ll be, Perhaps I’ll pester people on Facebook. Read. I found my art pencils so maybe I’ll attempt to draw, or at least doodle. (Hopefully the self portrait with an artichoke doodle from two posts ago will not be the pinnacle of my artistic endeavors).

I’m still taking each day on a moment by moment basis, and I am thankful that people are allowing me the time to work through this and allowing me to feel what I need to feel. And I am thankful that they are sending me their good thoughts and love and light.

In turn, my wish for all of my friends and family is for a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thank you for being here for me.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

What Would Jeffrey Do

I've spent a lot of my life being worried, anxious, and afraid of the future. Most of it, really. It comes in part from my mother, I’m sure, she was a chronic worrier, so I grew up always afraid of what could go wrong.

Jeff, on the other hand, was the calmest, least worried person I've ever known. His goal in life was to live each day as if it was the only important moment, just focusing on life in the present. Not long before we met he’d read the book “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle and it profoundly impacted the way he would come to view the world, and the philosophy of his life. It is the foundation of his belief that one needs to live in the present moment, that dwelling on things that happened in the past, and worrying over what might happen in the future, served no purpose except to possibly keep you unhappy.

Although everyday anxieties and worry can slip into almost anyone’s thoughts, Jeff really did his best to dismiss them. He worked for a long time to keep that constant mental dialog that many of us have, at bay. He often said his moment of clarity, the moment when he realized he could silence the mind chatter, came when he was on his motorcycle. Being on the bike required him to always be aware of his surroundings, to be completely and totally present in each moment and not allow himself to be distracted by anything. Once he realized it was possible to silence the chatter he began to apply it when he was not on the bike, and gradually he was able to feel the same peace in everyday life.

His advice to me was to not let myself get caught up in my thoughts, to not listen to that negative voice in my head that always told me I couldn't do something, or reminded me of past mistakes, or began constructing endless scenarios about what could go wrong in the future and why I was sure it would be awful. Whenever those thoughts come up, he said, just notice them. Notice the thought, maybe remark to yourself, “That’s very interesting,” and then just let it pass. When I started to dwell on a thought he said imagine that as I hear it over and over in my head that it gradually begins to trail off. The words start to fade out, the volume just reduces to a hum and gradually disappears. I’m still trying to incorporate this into my life, now more than ever. He was always confident I could do that, and I was always confident I couldn't. I would get so frustrated when he’d put these suggestions out there, I’d tell him I could never do it, I can’t be calm, I’ll never be at peace and free of my negative mindset. I’m still skeptical, but I’m going to try again, really try, to understand how he approached this.

For now I’m re-reading The Power of Now, partially because I couldn't quite absorb it when I first tried, several years ago. Over the years Jeff had drifted away from talking about it as much, and he didn't follow Tolle’s further books all that closely, but the basic concept of the Power of Now remained a central part of his life. Perhaps I’m ready to absorb the message now, and even if not I’m finding that as I reread it brings me a  little closer to the way Jeff regarded the universe.

Whenever I would complain that I’d never be able to get rid of my negative mind chatter and find that same calm he would tell me, only half jokingly, to ask myself What Would Jeffrey Do?  He said we’ll write a book about this one day. Maybe I still will, if I can manage to make his calmness a part of my own life.  So what would Jeff do?  I honestly have no idea how he would be reacting if the situation had been reversed, if he were in my place now. But I am going to do my best to follow the example I think he would have set.

Sobbing Over Artichokes

So in the past three weeks I have ventured out of the house a few times, mostly if I need to go to the store or need to take something to someone. I never know at the beginning of the day if I’m going to accomplish anything, most mornings find me crawling back into bed and hiding for a few hours. Today started off much like that but I finally managed to rouse myself enough to make a trip to the grocery.

It’s funny where you find the grief triggers. I've accepted that just about everything is going to set me off at home, from moving something that belonged to him to seeing his handwriting on a scrap of paper to looking at the movies he still had in his Netflix queue. I listened to some old voice mails today and was unable to function for a long time. What I didn’t expect today was to have the grocery store do me in. Yet there I was, standing in the produce section and looking to see if they had any artichokes, and feeling my stomach begin to knot up.

I was never an artichoke fan, but my husband absolutely loved them. It became a standard thing when I did the shopping, cruise the produce, check the artichokes, and if they looked suitable I would always grab a couple for him to enjoy during the week. For a second my instinct was to grab one, even though I’d never eat it. Then I wanted to cry because they represented another thing he would never enjoy again. It all went downhill from there, everything in the store that he enjoyed became a new trigger for me. I managed to avoid shopping in tears, but I did exit with a bag of crullers that I didn't really need. I've already eaten most of those, by the way. I’m not proud.

I think the triggers are going to be the hardest thing to deal with, and I’m realizing that we shared so many interests and activities that I’m going to find them everywhere. I’m nowhere near the stage where I can imagine enjoying things that we once shared, or smiling at a memory instead of bursting into tears. So often I feel like I’m not only grieving the loss of his presence in my life, I feel like I’m grieving every time I think of things he won’t get a chance to do, projects that will forever be a dream, plans he was making to help out friends… and I scream at the universe because it is so unfair that he was taken away when he could have done so many more things in life.

I know my feelings, all of them, have been experienced by everyone who has lost someone they loved dearly, and I have been assured that in time, I will begin to emerge from the worst of it and find a path to healing. On day 22 that path still seems to be a long way away from me, but I will do my best to be confident that I will find my way to it when I’m ready.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

Time

I’m wondering if every Friday evening I’m going to be marking time by what I was doing on November 1, and remembering how until almost nine o’clock at night it was all okay, the world made sense, life held promise, and I could still put my arms around my husband and hold him and know that we would be together forever.

I haven’t cleared my phone history, so I know exactly when I called 911. It was 8:54pm. 8:54 when things suddenly became so terrifying that I knew he needed help. 8:54pm when I began to have the first flares of panic as I worried about what would happen and the world began to crumble around me.

Sometimes time seems to stand still, but as I look back on that night it feels like it moved at breakneck speed. The paramedics arrived, gave him oxygen, everything seemed to be improving. He was having a lot of trouble moving without getting out of breath, but they got him into the ambulance and he was stable. He was talking with them, giving them the information they needed. He was still stable and talking as he entered the ER, it wasn't until after they brought him in that his heart stopped. Because I’d have had no way to get home I chose to follow the ambulance in my car instead of riding along. I regret that deeply, I regret that I wasn't able to sit with him and spend his last alert moments holding his hand, trying to lend him energy, just being with him. I feel like I abandoned him, and I will always wonder if my presence would have made any difference. Or maybe I just grieve for myself, that I didn't have the chance to hear his voice one more time, that I couldn't kiss him on the cheek and embed that in my memory. That I couldn't hear him tell me he was going to be fine, he was always fine, he could overcome anything. What if I had just went with him... These are things I realize I can never know, but I will always ask myself those what if questions.

By the time they brought me into the ER they knew it was too late, they’d sent a Chaplain and a nurse to prepare me, and I know they were just bringing me in so I could be there at the end, with him. He was unconscious by then, but they still worked furiously on him. I've never been so terrified in my life, I felt like i was outside myself, but I didn't fall apart. I held his hand tight, I kept rubbing his right leg because I could reach him, and I needed to do something. I wanted him to know i was there, even though I couldn't tell. I wonder if he knew I was holding his hand as they tried to restart his heart, I wonder if some part of him heard me talking to him, telling him how much I loved him. People who have had near-death experiences talk about seeing themselves in the ER, observing what’s going on. I wonder, did he see me there, with him? Could he feel how much I loved him?

Three weeks have passed. It still feels I just spoke to him a moment ago, and the entire event still feels like it has to be a dream. Someday, maybe, I will stop marking the days by how much time has passed, and maybe the feeling that it is unreal won’t be as strong. For now, though, I look at the clock and all I can think is that three weeks ago, at this moment, there was still joy in my life.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)