2. Grief

Grief

            Loss, the never having again, never seeing, never hearing, never knowing, never, never, never, never, gone forever in material form, losing the connection, losing the “other.”

            Grief becomes common as I age. More people slip out of life at later ages and come holes in the world. I need to learn to accept loss as inevitable, as part of life as I go on living past the lives of others.

            Grief is a hollowness that never gets filled. It does not close; closure is a cliché that doesn’t warm. Grief is its own homecoming. It comes for all of us and takes different communal forms. I keep being drawn to abstraction, to reporting someone else’s experience, someone else’s feelings. The feeling inside is too chaotic. The language of closure implies a set way of feeling, a schedule to be followed. If you don’t follow the schedule you have fallen too far into grief. You have allowed grief to control you, you have lost control of your feelings, of yourself.

            Death is the ultimate loss of control, “you” are no longer here, only your body, cold, motionless, stiffening. The death of someone I love, or I have known for a long time, or a member of my nuclear family is the notice that it can happen to me. Perhaps I am next in line. The moment of my death is a mystery. Another loss of control.

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It’s NaNoWriMo Day 2. I will be writing about feelings, because that is what I have the hardest time articulating. One feeling a day.

SOL15: Bereavement

            I am still going to the VNS bereavement group, three-plus years after Jack died. I’m fine, but there is something about being in a group of people who share the same experience—in this case, grief at losing a spouse, partner, or close family member—that is unlike any other relationship.

            The group met this morning, and afterwards I went to lunch with two other members, A., whose husband had Parkinson’s and died after complications after a fall, and C., whose father, mother, and sister (her entire family) all died within the past few years, the mother and sister within four months of each other. A. is close to my age, mid-70s, while C. is around 50.

            During our long lunch and conversation, I related the circumstances around Jack’s death: his fall, complications, hospitalization after edema for unknown reasons, multiple myeloma diagnosis, more complications, and his ultimate decision to stop treatment and go into hospice, dying just five days later.

            As I related the sequence of events, especially my extremely mixed feelings about Jack’s decision, my great reluctance to lose him, yet my understanding that the decision was his to make and that I shouldn’t, couldn’t force him to continue living in a way he couldn’t accept, I started crying. This was such a terrible moment for both of us, and I’ve gone over it so many times since, while Jack, of course, is unable to second-guess himself.

            A. and C. were so comforting and so reassuring, and I knew that they understood my feelings in a way that someone who hasn’t been through this experience can only imagine. This is why I keep going to the bereavement group.

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLTuesday: Washing Dishes

The last couple of years of Jack’s life, he washed the dishes. When he first came home from the hospital and rehab after his fall on the ice, he couldn’t do much of anything, and he hated that.

            We had always shared household work: in our early years, our practice was that one of us would cook and the other would wash the dishes. But after many years, when it became clear that Jack usually washed dishes as he cooked, while I used lots of bowls and utensils and pots, and didn’t wash as I went along, he rebelled. We then switched the plan to whoever cooked also washed dishes. And in our later years, Jack always wanted no dishes left in the sink in the evening, so if we had a late dessert, someone would have to wash those dishes.

            After he died, I was left with many conflicting feelings. I now had to cook and wash the dishes all the time, and in the first couple of years I would sometimes feel irrationally angry at Jack for leaving me to do all the work, all of the time. At the same time, I felt relieved that I didn’t have to wash whatever dish I put in the sink late in the evening, and often left one there just because I could. And when I went out in the evening, I often didn’t think about there being dishes in the sink that would have to be washed, sometime.

            Lately, I have started thinking about that. If I come home at 9:30, or 10, or 11, I don’t want to wash dishes then. I now plan to wash any dishes in the afternoon when I know I’ll be out later. Tonight, I went into the kitchen a few minutes before leaving and saw those dishes sitting there in the sink. I stopped and washed them, and it only took three minutes. I felt good. 

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

 

SOL Tuesday: Grief, Revisited

I met with my financial planner today at TIAA. She was looking through her folder for me and noticed that all the statements there were from 2012. I said that was probably from when Jack and I had our meeting with her after our former financial planner at TIAA was promoted.

            I then had a memory flash of Jack sitting in the other chair in our planner’s office, a memory that felt so solid I could almost see him. The presence of the memory against the absence of his physical self felt so jarring. Is this what grief is? The presence of absence, and the absence of presence.

            There’s nothing comforting about this, but I don’t want to lose my connection to the loss that creates the lack of comfort. Is this morbid? Is it healthy for me? What does “healthy grieving” mean? Why even think in those terms?

            I so want to talk to Jack about this. We had so many family members die in the past 10-15 years: his older brother and sister, and his uncle Bill; my mother, father, and sister. We talked about it, but I doubt I wrote anything based on our discussions. Our words went into the ether, and Jack has joined them.

SOL Tuesday: Labyrinth Therapy

I’ve been feeling blue the past week. Two years ago this week Jack went into the hospital for what turned out to be the last time.

            Yesterday I went down to Battery Park. Jack loved New York City, as only a convert to the city can. We sometimes went to Battery Park and wandered along the waterfront. I wasn’t exactly retracing our steps, because the park has changed. There’s theSeaglass Carousel, sea-creature shaped sculptures one can sit in; it wasn’t running when I walked by, but it looked like something Jack might have liked.

            I sat facing the harbor, the Statue of Liberty across the water, Governor’s Island to the left and Staten Island beyond; Ellis Island, Liberty Island, and New Jersey to the right; and in the far distance the cranes that lift containers off the freighters and put them on trains. Seagulls perched on pilings, backs to the wind.

            Nearby, I found the labyrinth I had walked last summer. Walking it yesterday, it felt like a way of moving forward while staying in the same place. Is that where my grief is taking me these days? I do keep moving, but I seem to be still in the same place. Maybe that’s where I need to be right now. 

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

#AtoZChallenge: G Is for Grief

Empty

Disoriented

Unmoored

Lost

Found

Alone

Free

Open

Wandering

Wondering

Remembering

Forgetting

Floating

Silent

Shifting

Shuddering

Shiftless

Unwound

Mixed-up

Exploring

Foundering

Touching

Locked in

Tentative

Tears

Joy

SOL Tuesday: Grief Insight

Last weekend I had several insights, but this is the most interesting so far.

            I’ve noticed how I’ve wanted to have the radio and often the TV as well on whenever I am in the apartment. I was not always like this. At first I thought it was just to replace Jack’s voice, which wasn’t constant, of course, but was available.

            The other day, with both the radio and a fan on, the fan almost drowning out the radio, I remembered as though connected by an umbilical cord to the fall of 1961. I  was 19, on a job with my college in Los Angeles, as far as I’d been away from anything or anyone I knew in my life. I had just moved into a rooming house, brought groceries home after my job, and I had no radio. I had never been so alone. The silence of the room terrified me, and I cried for maybe half an hour. I ended up going home,  a decision I always regretted.

            After that, I never lived alone again, except for a couple of weeks between a roommate and moving into a commune. And then I got married.

            My 74-year-old self is still connected to that 19-year-old self afraid of the silence. I’m trying to get used to silence now. Listen to music or talk, or baseball, if there’s something to listen to, but not just to fill up the silence.

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Memorial Time

            I’ve finished writing up my comments about J. and now I’m getting feedback from my writing groups and friends. Now I am gathering together other comments from friends who aren’t able to come to the memorial this week, and also putting together what librarians call “ephemera,” materials like the newspaper clips my husband wrote as a reporter, letters he wrote to friends that they saved, family memorabilia, as well as a large matteboard of photographs.

            While doing all of this work, I felt myself slipping into a relationship with time rather like that I felt when I was pregnant with my daughter, 44 years ago. It feels like this period of time is outside the usual stream of minutes-hours-days passing always in one direction. This “memorial time” feels static, not moving, containing within it all the time J. and I were together but all lumped together.  One moment of time holding all of our moments, which I could bury myself in if I chose.

            I want to be there... yet I don’t, I can’t. I can’t stop living, I have to keep moving forward along with everyone else. Yet somehow I want to keep a connection to that parallel memorial time. Just to touch it, touch him, now and then. 

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It’s the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, hosted by the wonderful people over at Two Writing Teachers! Every day this month, hundreds of writers will be posting their stories. Head on over and check out the other slices!