In Which I Rage at the Universe
I. Want. My. Life. Back.None of our pathetic attempts to give death meaning make the slightest bit of difference. Gone is gone. I dropped out of physics, but now I know what a black hole is.
I don't want any fucking "new normal." I want my old normal. I want my life that had meaning and made sense and was shared with the man I chose, and who chose me.
I want to be my husband's Wife again.
I fucking hate being a "single" woman. I hate leaving work without anyone to come home to. I hate the loneliness that follows a good marriage. it's entirely different to be "post"-married than to be pre-married.
I Want Him Back. I have no one to talk to, because I only want to talk to my husband. I am lonely for him every minute of every hour of every day. I wake up crying.
I send myself emails from his old account, just to see his name in my inbox.
I agonize over the things I would have shared with him. How can they go on without him?
posted by Unknown @ 7:11 AM
9 Comments:
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
It sucks. Period. Embrace the suckage. Embrace your anger. Embrace your grief. That is the best thing you can do.
It doesn't make any sense. It's horrible and unforgivable. I wish I could help.
Donald Hall, who lost his wife, poet Jane Kenyon, to leukemia, wrote his way through deep grief in two volumes of poetry. The first, "Without," speaks raw grief; the second,"The Painted Bed," was written farther out from loss and is more "collected," though no less deeply felt. I have these two volumes, along with Jane Kenyon's "Otherwise." I cannot read them now without tears, and never could, though I have neither had nor lost so much. They are cathartic, perhaps too much this soon, but I can't judge that. You will appreciate the title of the first poem in "The Painted Bed" - "Kill the Day."
In "The Painted Bed," Hall writes a series of "Distressed Haiku." This is the one I remember, the one you are living:
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.
***
I've never known what to do when it's worst except to breathe in and breathe out and hold on. I'm so sorry there is such pain, such emptiness. I know it could not be otherwise now, given the magnitude of the gift love is.
Your husband taught you how to love you. If you are very still, I think he will teach you yet even now, because he will never cease to be a part of you, will never stop being a voice in your head. Life stops, but the work of love in a life does not. To deny that would be to put the person who loved us twice to death.
I know nothing anesthetizes the pain of his daily absence. Rage. Write. Cry. Just breathe.
I know that you don't know me, I'm just another lurker but I just... I just really needed to tell you that I'm here, quietly, with support and an inbox to rant in if you need one. I just wanted to say that there are no words for how I feel about what's happened to you; all I know is that you've been robbed of half of yourself. It's senseless and tragic and I have no idea how anyone could ever tell you to get over it. No words. No words except I am so sorry. And I know that it doesn't mean anything because it doesn't bring him back, but we're all here if you need help. I don't know how you're doing this, but I'm proud of you. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings with the world; maybe if (god forbid) a tragedy happens to someone close to one of us, we'll know a little better what to do, what to say, so we don't end up robbing them of more than they've already lost.
Still reading/listening.
Thank you for listening, and for letting me know that you hear me. Thank you for the poems, the anger, the wisdom. Thank you for being here while I rage, weep, despair. Thank you.
Dorcasina, what you're feeling is so normal and so healthy. But grief is ugly, grief is uncomfortable, grief is tough to take, so people don't want you to feel it. But you must. My husband was in the hospital for his lupus, and I raided the hamper for one of his dirty shirts and slept with it. The love for a spouse is so primal and deep. You will love him forever.
So many people have made such eloquent, heartfelt comments here that I feel mine pale in comparison. But I'm thinking of you. And I check your blog almost every day to see how you're doing, as many of us do. Keep on letting us listen.
Thank you for your post.
You helped me make it through the worst time in my life to date -- when my dad died.
Your words expressed what I was unable to say because I do not possess your ability with the written or spoken word, but I felt with my entire being. Thank you again for expressing yourself on-line.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home