Returning with New Eyes

This morning I went for a hike out on the ranch scouting my next location for a photo shoot. I started out at a particular dry creek bed. Parked the truck, walked down a shallow slope and stood a moment taking in the world around me. This was where Drew first taught me how to shoot a gun. Back when I was so terrified of them that my hands would shake just to hold one. I have only been back here twice since he died… always I can feel the absence so strongly here. This time was no different.

I stood looking out at the steep slope where old cans and barrels still lay in the dirt – full of bullet holes and rust. It’s an empty place to go to now… with nothing left but these small aluminum reminders of a past life, now decaying slowly in into the earth. It all looked smaller now – the way childhood places look to you when you visit them for the first time as an adult. Only I wasn’t a child when I was here… it was only a few years ago when we last came here together and shot a few rounds. But how strange it all looks now. As if the life is gone out of it. Despite the creek bed being full of winding mesquite trees and dusty green cacti and a hint of the first rush of wildflowers of spring. To see it with my eyes… there is no life in it.

I look down at my feet and notice a few bones, vertebrae of a deer or a hog likely. I have a thing for animal skulls, so my mind is immediately on the search for a skull to collect. I find none… but the thought of one “out there” somewhere ends up getting me wandering.

I follow the creek bed about a half a mile or so – somewhat still looking for a location for my photo shoot… but mostly not. By now the clouds are clearing and the harsh sun coming out – so my chances of getting the light right for the photography are blown anyway. I really do need to start getting up earlier for this stuff, when the low morning cloud cover offers the perfect light. I wander… Enjoying the cool breeze on my skin, enjoying the birds singing all around me, and the crunch my boots make in the residual dead leaves from winter. For a little while at least, I am lost and enjoying it. Enjoying being alone and the feeling that no one knows where I am. Why is that such an appealing feeling? The freedom of it, I suppose.

I find a few more bones… a shoulder blade, likely from a hog, a large femur from a cow long ago passed. No skulls. I find an old dead tree that looks like a cross, and pull my phone out to snap a picture and note its location. It might be something worth capturing in different light. Then I make my way back through the creek bed to my place or origin… listening along the way to a recording on my phone of an artist friend talking about life. He is saying how each day is a new day, a chance to make a new choice, to be reborn. It’s comforting… even as sad as I am today, still this idea is comforting. To even live somewhere where I have the opportunity to choose so much in my life, is really quite remarkable.

I am back at the beginning of my trek before I know it… and as I’m crossing the creek bed to return to the truck, there, right at my feet… is a skull. Wild hog, in very good condition. It is laying only 4 or 5 feet from those first bones I saw, yet somehow I missed it? There all along. I smile, and I think about this all for a while. They say that which we may spend our lives looking for, our peace, our happiness, acceptance, love… we need not search it out, for it is always right where we were to begin with. Sometimes maybe we just need to look a bit closer to find it. But maybe at times we do just need to go on a search outside ourselves in order to return back to our hearts with new eyes. I know it has helped me to do so since he died. It’s far too treacherous a landscape to stay inside myself for too long.

As I returned, and looked around at this place that felt so alone before, it felt different… transformed somehow by my journey outward. I could see it with new eyes that were able to notice all the life around me – the birds, the wildflowers, the insects. Amazing how I hadn’t been able to see any of that before… only the loss, only the memories which I can no longer recreate there with him. And now I was seeing everything else. I suppose sometimes we need a good venture outward in order to see ourselves and our loss differently.

The Backpack

(Image from here.)

The other day, a post-Maggie friend asked how I became so well adjusted, having put all the stuff that happened behind me. I was careful not to snort my drink through my nose upon hearing her well-intended question; such a reaction might have been confusing to her. When I asked what she meant, she described how she thought I had such a great perspective. Ah, perspective, my consolation prize.

It’s been more than five years now since the last day I kissed my lovely wife. She’s been physically absent from my life now more than half the total time we were together. That makes me sad. How can it be possible for my heart to hurt still so much? Of course (and thankfully), it hurts now less than it did. And it hurts indescribably way less than it did watching her slowly grow ill and eventually die. That’s perspective, too.

The oddest things strike me now. For instance, I get very confused about which TV shows we used to watch together or which movies she had seen. My brain innocently assumes that if I had seen them, then so had she, magically ignoring any minor little details about timing. My brain still has us inexplicably woven together and creating memories. Oh, silly, silly brain.

I have different friends now. Sometimes I can’t recall which of my friends had known her, which can create some remarkably uncomfortable social situations, especially with post-Maggie friends that never even knew I was married. Oh, silly brain.

How is it possible that my brain can’t keep these things straight? I’m pretty darn clear on when the “with Maggie” time transitioned to the “without Maggie” time. Despite that crystal clarity, the crisp edges of truth blur as if somehow my sanity is protected by gentle reminders that these little things don’t matter. Does this mean I’ve reached some state of acclimation to the New Normal? If so, I should get a sticker or something. Maybe I’ll make a t-shirt that says, “You think I’m awesome now? You shoulda met me before my wife died!” It’d be a big hit with a very select subset of society.

To my friend who asked how I seem so well adjusted, I asked her to imagine donning a new 250-pound backpack. For an unpleasantly long time, it’d be a dramatic struggle to grow new muscles and learn balancing skills. But with determination, help from friends, and hard work, she’d learn to walk, run, and maybe even dance again. Eventually she’d live a new type of life that only subtly hinted to that ever-present backpack.

Then I told her, you know those pesky rocks that life occasionally drops in your path - those little 1, 2, 10 and even 50 pounders? Those won’t seem like much of a big deal any more. In fact, most of them you won’t even notice.

Two Years Ago

Two years year ago this week, I had no concept of time.

Nor of my life any longer as I knew it.

Two years ago today, I was making funeral arrangements

For the man I had planned to grow old with.

And going from pain to disbelief and back to pain every 10 minutes

Like an endless loop

Two years ago today, I was two days in to being an unwedded widow.

Nothing will ever erase the memory of this week -
of the phone call
of falling to my knees in the hallway
and screaming into the phone those animal sounds.
Of lying awake at night in horror and waking up in confusion -
praying to God each morning that it wasn't real.
That delirious pain slamming into me like a freight train from hell.

I had no idea what kind of life i could possibly have beyond this ending.

None.

Two years ago today, I was lost and terrified for my life.
For the first time ever I met a pain so immense that I feared it actually might kill me.
And that was a very real fear.
That - even if it didn't kill my body - it would surely kill my soul
and leave me behind as nothing more than a dark, empty shell of a person.
God, was I scared.

Two years later, and I'm sitting at a local festival,
having drinks with a whole buffet of artists and musicians
whom have become part of my comminuty since he died.
Not only it is a night and day difference from my life before -
it is a world I always belonged to at heart
but one I was to afraid to open myself up to.

That life I could not imagine beyond his death? 

This is it. 

Somehow in these two years
I have started to carve out a new place for myself in the world
a place where I want to be -
where I make a difference in the world
where I say important things with the work I do
and where my soul feels most free.
A place with loving, devoted people who aren't afraid of my pain.
Creative people, emotional people, kind people.
Two years later, I'm still here.
And it didn't kill me.
or turn my soul black beyond repair.

It did quite the opposite as it turns out.
It broke me and it broke me open.
It made me crumble and it made all the walls I'd built up over a lifetime crumble, too.
And I decided not to rebuild them.
And instead, to leave my brokenness open
and my fallen walls fallen.
And now, that is where the love flows in.
Their love, and his love, one in the same.

I'm not certain what I think just yet of this "new life" I was forced into.

All I know is that at this very moment, there's a fire dancer to my right

And a man with a bright blue afro to my left,
a band playing, people laughing and crying and sharing and dancing.
It's quite possibly some of the most wonderful weirdness I've ever enjoyed -
because my heart is open enough now not to judge such things
but instead to let it flow into me and wash over me…
to open to the whole kaleidoscope of experiences and human connections
that are out there to be had in this life. 

It's still new and scary at times
and completely overwhelming, and always exhausting.
I still feel alone in a crowd
and my eyes still search for him, as does my heart.
But I think, just maybe, somehow…
I'm where I was always supposed to be
doing what I was always supposed to be doing - helping people.
and most importantly,
I'm still here.
And to my surprise… I'm actually okay.
And the one thing I know now that I didn't know two years ago,
is that I am always going to be okay.

It's a matter of perspective...

source

A: I'll be devastated if they don't play

B: I'm sure Mick's more devastated

A: It's all a matter of perspective.

......

The Rolling Stones were due to play my city on Saturday night just gone and this was one exchange that appeared on my Facebook feed in the first 24 hours of Mick Jagger joining our ranks.

My jaw was on the ground and I thought "I'm pretty certain Mick's grief is greater than your disappointment that the band's not playing". 

There seemed to be a whole heap of discussions over the inconvenience the cancellation would cause because of travel and hotel bookings for people to attend the concert, and concern over what would happen to the massive amount of public money that had been spent on this concert as it was meant to be the grand opening event for our upgraded sports ground before competition begins this weekend. 

But I saw very little sympathy or empathy towards Mick and the band.

One thing I've gained from my widow experience is greater empathy, and perspective between what's a crisis, disaster or catastrophe versus what is an annoyance, an inconvenience or a disappointment. 

For concert-goers and organisers, it's very much the latter. 

For Mick, it's the former, and quite frankly, my heart went out to him, not just for his loss, but the circumstances he was in when he learned of L'Wren's passing.  They're nothing like my own experiences, but I can now comprehend the impact of the news.

He's away from home on what is, for all intents and purposes, a business trip.  Thankfully he has old friends with him for support, but he is away on business.

He's the focus of the media and social media commentary which was probably difficult to escape, and of course there's all the attempts to get photos of him in his grief.

Private plane or not, he had a very, very long flight to get from Perth, Australia to New York.  The one up-side... the flight would effectively be a media block-out.

He's probably feeling no end of guilt over being away from home, and yes, for disappointing fans.  The poor guy was probably torn in all directions, and I wouldn't be surprised if the call to cancel the shows at this time was made by either band mates or management. 

We all have experiences of comments that scream the speaker has no comprehension of the impact the loss of a partner/spouse has on a person.  What got me was the impression in social media that Mick would not be suffering because of what he does.

That he is somehow inhuman. 

And the complete inability of people to even consider the situation from Mick's perspective.

Weighing the Days

Source

Yesterday was a hard day. Exactly a week until Drew's birthday, perhaps I don't remember how hard it was last year… but I could swear it's hitting me harder this year. My body seems so much more aware of the lack of his body, but also just the feeling of him in the space is far more distant now. I downplayed that first sentence… it was a hard week actually. And next week I'm sure will also be hard.

There are some good things though. The first time I had to face his birthday (and all the other special occasions) after he died, I was filled with anxiety for weeks beforehand. That horrible tight chest and the racing racing racing thoughts that just wouldn't stop. I have noticed though, as hard as the second year has been, when those special days come… this part no longer comes. There is still sadness and still a broken heart and a broken life to try and hold together, but there is no longer the paralyzing fear. I first noticed it last Thanksgiving, and went around like a weirdo expressing how happy I was to JUST be sad. Yeah! What a messed up statement… I'm happy to JUST be sad. But yes, I really am actually.

This really got me thinking about relatively and just how much we can change our perspective on certain things by what we choose to relate to it. It's like measuring your day up in one of those old balance scales. When you choose to relate today to one of your best days, it just adds weight to today. But when you choose to relate today to one of the really hard days - or perhaps even THE hardest day - we add weight to other side, and suddenly today might not seem as heavy as it did before.

In relation to a week before his birthday in 2012 - when he was alive and perfectly fine - this week has been unspeakably horrible. A hell no one should endure. But in relation to last year, when all the anxiety and fear and rawness twisted itself around inside me… this year  the coming of his birthday is so much better. I know I won't always be strong enough to choose to weigh today against the heavier days… but somehow I think this visual might help me remember better. And hopefully it'll help someone else out there too.

Commitment

I am calling myself out on my crap.

I've been doing it all week.

While talking to a friend, I realized I have commitment issues.

I’m not talking about relationship – commitment – issues.

I’m talking about committing to life.

I've realized I have a major problem seeing past today.

A friend will ask if I want to do something, go out and have fun, say, a week from now.

And I can’t really commit to it.

I think to myself “That sounds like fun. But that’s a week away. Today I just need to focus on today”.

This week I've been struggling with – is this the “grown-up” version of me, or is this the “widowed” version of me?

I've gone back and forth in my head, trying to figure out when this commitment issue started.

And why?

I guess it started about a year ago. A year after Seth died.

When Seth first died, I used to keep myself far too busy. I think to avoid my grief and pain. For almost a year straight, I was far too busy.

Then I crashed. Fell flat on my face in depression.

Suddenly I had to stop my life from spinning. I had to slow down, and just grieve.

I had to just stop. Stop everything.

Make my life stand still, so I could grieve and breath.

Now I’m afraid of being too busy.

I think the fear comes from “What if I have plans, and I’m riddled with grief, and I don’t feel like going??”. 

Then I have to pull the widow card, tell my friend I don’t feel up to it, and feel slightly embarrassed that something fun is too much for me to handle.

It’s embarrassing.

So instead of making plans, say a week from now, it’s easier to focus on just today. Because in a week I might not feel well. I might be emotionally sick next week.

So instead of dealing with the embarrassment of having to cancel plans, I have trained myself to not look past today.

Everyone says – “Take it one day at a time”.

I don’t think this is what they meant.

I think there is a silver lining in it. Stay focused and present with just today. Not next week.

Also allowing myself to be un-busy, and just be, with my grief. Rather than avoiding my grief.

But am I missing out on life in the process? Am I missing out on something amazing – a week from now?

I can’t tell if my commitment issue is a good or bad thing.

I do know not being able to look past today, isn't exactly a great thing.

But I realized that my brain and body have naturally figured out how to handle my grief, even if I don’t like the process.

It’s amazing what the human brain and body can do.

Forcing me to focus on just today, is ironically a good thing.

Thank you my dear, tired, body.

I appreciate it.

Disillusionment? Or Enlightenment?

One of my best friends was admitted unexpectedly to the hospital Friday-before-last.  His mysterious symptoms were baffling a week’s worth of doctors enough to trigger admittance orders.  Over the phone (just minutes after his wife sent out the bat signal via Facebook), she described to me the symptoms.  With my medical-doctorate-degree-in-training, I immediately assessed the situation as “OH CRAP!” and cleared my schedule.  Of course my thoughts slid right down that slippery slope.  The quick slide to crisis felt comfortable, like coming home.  (And it makes me sad to realize that.)

When Maggie was first diagnosed, we spent (if I recall) 14 consecutive days in the hospital.  Over the next two years, we spent another 12 more days, giving me more experience there than I’d prefer.  My weeks spent as an guest in a place designed for examinations, not comfort, trained me for survival in a less-than-friendly, sterile climate.  I knew what my friend and my friend’s wife were in for and what would best prepare them for their time.  So I packed a hospital kit, both for the patient and his wife.

The trip to the hospital was easy.  The turn into the hospital parking lot was not so easy.  Then autopilot took over: push the little parking ticket button, in through the emergency entrance, through the secret door to the main hospital, through the winding halls to the back elevators….  Inside the elevator I pressed ‘5.’  But I looked hard at the ‘7’ button.  The 7th floor at Seton is the cancer floor, sort of.  Turn left off the elevators and you head to the baby wing.  Turn right, and you head to the cancer wing.  Life and death sharing a floor – life’s bookends, yet again.  (Back during our initial stay, I spent many an elevator ride feigning smiles and pulling punches while trying very hard not to punch at all.)

My visit with my friend was short and sweet.  I remember all too clearly both how nice it was to get a visit but also how awkward an extended visit would turn.  Multiple short visits were the key.  And food.  Always bring food.  So I brought Taco Deli breakfast tacos.  Everyone, including the nursing staff, was happy about Taco Deli. (Pro tip: Always bring extra flowers, candy and food for the staff.  A happy staff makes for a better hospital visit.)

My friend was released after two days with a green light and a nice bill to pay.

Not that long ago while things were pretty darn bad for Maggie and me, my grandmother told me she was sad that I was learning about things I shouldn’t have to know about for a long time.  I’ve often wondered if, because I’ve seen how things can end, my perspective has been negatively affected, or at least had some of the magic rubbed off.  Will I ever again be able to innocently approach life with giggles and stars in my eyes?  Will the mystery of love and life charm my heart again?  Or will I be a “been there, done that” person who slides quickly into comfort with how quickly life can end?  Or am I free now to jump in and be fully immersed in what life has to offer, knowing that I've survived the unthinkable and that my fear of death has been forever vanquished?

My friend, the one who was in the hospital a few days ago, the one for whom I was imagining the worst outcomes, is currently traveling around Italy with his wife and another couple.  They left two days after he was released from the hospital.  The pictures they are posting on Facebook are amazing.  (The picture for this post is one of their pictures from their trip.)