Et al.

Anger (Mis)management

Congratulations to those of you who marked the third anniversary of my husband's death. Yes, it's been three years, and even the most patient members of my support group are visibly ready for me to GET ON WITH IT, ALREADY. I won't lie; the anniversary was easier this year--less fraught. No weeping. Very few phone calls or messages, but those that I did receive were lovely and necessary and reminded me that I am not the only one in the universe who is truly and deeply sorry that he is gone; nor am I the only one who remembers how smart, funny, and caring he was.

I even managed to "reclaim" my birthday, which, since it falls on the day after his death (his final gift to me was to try to live to my birthday, and he came so close), has been a dreary affair. This year I had a nice dinner, cake, wine, and good friends to help me move ahead into life with him.

Snickollet has a very moving post about anger (as always, she's a far more reliable, informative, and skillful writer about these things). I have to say that my own anger continues to sneak up on me and take me by surprise. Just yesterday we took our dog to the off-leash park. He's been woefully underexercised and undersocialized this term, because of the kindergarten commute and my schedule, so he needed to play. There were too many dogs there, which gets him excited. And while he's not vicious, he does seem to be sort of a provocateur--minor dog interactions sound a bit nastier and seem a bit more frequent when he gets involved. Combined with his pitbull heritage (those jaws are scary, whether or not he intends to do harm) and the fact that this is a "ghetto dog park" (lots of folks with very minimally trained, powerful breeds, and too many un-altered dogs), he's scary, especially to those who don't really understand dog communications. So I keep a close eye on him, and remind him constantly that I am there and that he can't be too rough. He's never rough with smaller dogs; he just tends to be annoying in trying to persuade others to play. After about 20 minutes, there was one scuffle which he didn't start but butted into. One dog assumed the submissive position, and mine was on top. I rushed over and called him off, and no one was injured--in fact, tails were still wagging. But this was clearly out of line. As I leashed him up, a fierce looking guy with a huge dog started chewing me out, rudely, and threatening to call the cops. I was leaving, so I said "we're leaving" and walked away.

But by the time I reached the car I was breathless with rage, and crying almost hysterically. I was furious at the guy, for being rude, at myself, for thinking my dog wasn't being a jerk, at the other owners, for not saying "hey, your dog is a little rough" if that was what they thought, or for not defending me, furious at my dog, for making trouble, at the world, for making life so hard.

This seems to be more common than not these days, and is, perhaps, one of the longest, slowest, most persistent manifestations of grief. As aware as I am that so many people suffer more, and that it's high time I got over myself and on with whatever the next phase of life is going to bring, I still get caught up short by rage: at never having a day off; at my daughter for her constant demands; at the house, which seems to be falling apart out of sheer spite; at the woman who wrecked my car and had no insurance; at my crappy health-care that runs out in November leaving me with $800 worth of sudden bills; at the delivery company that will only deliver during [my] work hours. But just as often, I'm angry about nothing at all. I use the film "Crash" in my teaching, and every time I am brought to tears (for myself, not for her), when Sandra Bullock's character admits that she is angry All The Time.

I know that even if my husband were still here, things would break, bills would come due, my daughter would be demanding (and, of course, she's supposed to be). But the anger doesn't really have anywhere to go, even if it's no longer serving whatever remotely useful survival function it used to serve.

And yes, my schedule next term should allow me to take a yoga class.

Labels: anger, grief, snickollet

posted by Unknown @ 11:37 AM 3 Comments

"Happy" Mother's Day

Especially for those to whom this day is as bitter as it is sweet.

Labels: grief, joy, Motherhood

posted by Unknown @ 9:38 AM 1 Comments

Betrayal

Hi Babe,
We went to one of your favorite places this weekend--the beach where you and I spent some of our happiest days back before our daughter, before cancer--just the two of us and our hapless adopted dog, the one who couldn't be let off the leash except for on this one desolate beach. It was so strange to be there--to visit places I had only ever been with you, and to be there with our little girl, and with a new dog. I felt so acutely the loss of you, and the loss of so much from the era of my life, in spite of all that I have gained. It felt like a betrayal, visiting restaurants and shops where you and I had spent time. Yet I managed to enjoy myself; which makes me feel worse.

Your daughter is now 5, which means that she has lived more of her life with you gone than she got to live with you. This makes me sad, and furious. She is so much like you, and I can't help but imagine all the ways you and she would make each other happy. I know that I would feel left out, and that she and I would not have quite the bond we do if she had you around; you had a greater sense of wonder, an ability to lose yourself in watching a small, beautifully textured caterpillar, a disregard for things like getting to school on time. With you here, she'd have so many more opportunities to ask those pesky "why" questions and to get better answers: why we have gravity, why we can't see the world turn, why plastic ponies have purple hair, why some people have papas and some don't.

We spent the weekend with several good friends. At one point, one of the husbands spent some time downstairs with our daughter, playing "Daddy." She said, "I'll call you Daddy, and you help me mow the lawn." It's good that she has (and I have) these warm, gentle men who will help a lonely girl and her lonely mama with the "man tasks." And it's good that she knows that a Papa is a great thing to have, and that hers was among the best. But for me, there were many, many tears in the shower.

This is our third Christmas without you. That seems impossible, yet there it is. You have been showing up in my dreams a lot, lately, looking healthy. And I am having more and more spontaneous memories of the good times, before cancer, so that in my memories, you look happy and well--even a bit plump, at times. These memories make me afraid; it feels as though you are getting ready to move on to wherever you go once you've been gone so long that, awful as it is, your absence has become normal. I can barely remember being happy any more; I'm not unhappy, exactly, but it feels like I've been lugging around all this sorrow and weight forever, and that my life with you wasn't quite real. I want to remember the realness: the fights, the mishaps, the dozen different little ways in which our lives meshed together. But it gets fuzzier, and more and more like a movie montage, but without the appropriate soundtrack. Please don't go too far away, wherever you are going--we need you still, and we love you.

Your girls

Labels: grief, widowhood

posted by Unknown @ 1:35 PM 10 Comments

Grief hurts

But not very many people talk about it. It's exhausting, the constant clenching of the jaw, the tightening of the shoulders, that defensive crouch that one assumes as if--ha!--to ward against further blows, greater losses. It's a dull throb in the base of the skull, inexplicable sharp pains in the joints. Compression in the spine. Twinges in the tendons. Those who haven't experienced it can't know--and those who have "recovered" forget--but grief is as much a tactile disturbance as an emotional one. It's dry, swollen eyes, tender sinuses, sudden cramps in the toes. Oh, and, of course, that great gaping empty wound at the center, the jagged aching hole left behind, with edges that are still raw and won't heal over. The absence that hurts more than any presence ever could.

My daughter is having an overnight at her grandma's tonight; great for her, but for me, the empty house, the bleak days stretching forward in this worst week of all, and the absence of my one link to warm, physical connection is unbearable. No, she doesn't make up for the loss of my husband (not that she should have to); yes, she saves my life, every day.

Labels: grief, Motherhood

posted by Unknown @ 7:44 PM 5 Comments

TKO

Apparently, my university does not support the mail program I have been using. After enough harassment by the tech folks, I resigned myself to the new-to-me program that the rest of the world was using. By some evil twist of fate, this new account shows me ancient messages left on the campus server from umpty-ump years ago, when I was first teaching here as a part-timer (except I was full time. But I was temporary. Whatever.) Among some random emails to and from students in my first-ever, second-ever, and third-ever classes were those daily emails that constitute so much of contemporary relationships: the "Hi Babe, how's your day?" and "Can you be sure to get home in time to let the dog out?" and "Have they fixed your direct phone line?" and "What kind of take-out shall we get for dinner?" and "The car is making X noise; should I worry?" And there were some emotional doozies--queries about our adoption dossier. Wedding planning. But most of all, there were multitudes single-line messages: "Love you." "Love you much." "Hasta tonight." "Call me." The kind that testify to the deep, wonderful, everyday quality of our love for each other and our life together.

Everyone says grief comes in "waves." They're right: it overwhelms you, surprises you, pulls your legs out from under you, suffocates you, and rolls you around on the gritty ocean floor. It takes your breath away, panics you, and confronts you with what it really means to cease to exist.

How? I asked myself. How do I get up every day? How do I manage to do anything, without him? How have I continued to breathe, teach, shop for groceries, walk the dog, and drive? How?

Because I have forgotten what it was like to be happy. And I was happy, in a way I thought I was incapable of--optimistic, relatively easy-going (please, it wasn't a lobotomy), and occasionally unobsessed with my personal failings and inadequacies. What KO'd me, opening those messages, was less the sense of what I had lost than the visceral remembrance of what I used to have. In that moment, I had a clear, immediate sense of how diminished I am by his loss--how inferior my existence is, and how much less I have to give to the world.

I've saved the messages, of course. But next time, I'll approach them in the way I have learned to approach almost every other memory I encounter--carefully, gingerly, and without the urgent shock of surprise.

Labels: grief, life part II

posted by Unknown @ 7:07 PM 4 Comments