Minefields & the Miles Ahead

Next week is a very big week in my world. Early Thursday morning, I will be hopping on a plane to see this new man that has come into my life. Yes, something I haven't shared yet is that we live pretty far away from each other. I'll be sharing more of the details next week, but it will be the first time seeing each other again since we met several months ago.

So yup... not only am I beginning again, but beginning with distance. Because apparently, the universe decided just being widowed and dating locally was not a huge enough challenge on its own. The distance has created a whole other set of challenges, but also a few benefits. It has created safety for me in this very scary and fragile world of trying to love again after death. I've had a buffer zone, allowing me to keep my life here the same for the most part while gradually opening the door of my heart, just a small bit at a time. It has been a beautiful experience, but not without difficulty.

Let me tell you, as soon as I began to open my heart again, oh how the triggers came flooding in. At every small step of the way... on every day that I choose to open that door of my heart just a millimeter more to this new man, the triggers are there waiting to rush in. At first this scared the shit out of me. At first, I was so terrified of having the triggers climb inside my heart that I was triggering myself ABOUT having triggers. I was in fight or flight mode about it. And then something began to happen... I realized this person was still here. Still listening, still supporting, still loving me. Doing everything he could from a thousand-plus miles away to comfort me and acknowledge my feelings. And I remembered, this is what Drew always did for me. At each turn, when I met a trigger, I shared it and it was heard. This was how he helped me to heal my old wounds. And this new person is doing the very same thing. With his patient love, I am finding there is so much room for healing.

This past week has been a grand buffet of triggers. On Thursday night, he announced excitedly that it is now just ONE week until we will see each other. And underneath my excitement the trigger swooped in. Within moments I was in tears... because Drew died exactly a week before I was supposed to go visit him up north where he was working. One week before seeing each other. It was a trigger I didn't even see coming... but one that seems obvious now. Instead of shutting down about it, I opened up. I cried to my new guy, and I told him what I was feeling, and how scary it was for me. And he just reminded me that he will be there. Just a few minutes of feeling deeply heard... it passed right through.

There have been many others splintering off from this as we get nearer to the date... like thinking about having to say goodbye at the end of our trip. Not knowing if it might be our final goodbye, because after all, I didn't have any idea the last time either. I hate that new love means new triggers... but, I'm deciding it is worth it.

We are days away from our trip now, and I am gradually learning how accept the new triggers surrounding this whole thing. I am excited beyond belief, but also emotional. I know seeing him in person again will be a trigger. The physical closeness will be a trigger. The goodbyes will be a trigger. And likely a dozen other micro-triggers I won't have even considered.

I am very aware that I am traveling into what may look like a minefield in the next week. And there is something actually very exciting about taking that risk. The thing is, I think most of the fields we travel in life may only have one or two actual mines. Yet our triggers are like signs telling us there are hundreds... telling us to turn back, not move, there is danger everywhere, be afraid. If there is one thing my life with Drew taught me, it is to question those signs. To not listen to the signs of my triggers telling me to turn back, but instead decide that love is worth walking through the minefield for. LIFE is worth walking through the minefield for.

Drew was worth the risk of having my heart blown to pieces when he died. And it is worth risking the chance that I may be blown to pieces again. It is worth it to feel the messy, uncertain, electric energy of living life fully. It is worth deciding to trust even though I have no clue whether I will be hurt... just to feel the cool rush of aliveness pumping in my veins. I know now, that I can put myself back together again. That is a gift his death has given me. And I also know, that some of the most beautiful parts of life are waiting just on the other side of my fear. I am walking ahead... into that so-called minefield with adventure - not fear - on my mind.

My Two Mother's Days

I have struggled with Mother's Day all my life. I lost my own mother when I was nine, many of you know. I don't really remember my father knowing what to do with that day anymore afterwards. We had no other family around to celebrate, and so it just kind of became a non-holiday in our house. I sometimes wish we had continued to make it about her - but maybe he had the right way of doing things. Maybe it was too hard for him, and so he changed it. And perhaps, that was just the better way for us, who knows.

Through my twenties a few times, I tried to celebrate this day again in her memory... it went disastrously. The first time I went to a little french bistro and tried to order a lovely single dessert to just take home with me. The ten minutes I was there turned out to be a festival of triggers I was not prepared for. Mothers and daughters and daughters and mothers... I was surrounded on all sides. I held it together just long enough to get my dessert and anxiously bolt out the door... upon which the tears began to flow instantly. I don't even recall what I did the second time I tried, likely I decided to block the traumatic event from my memory entirely though. Needless to say, after two attempts, I decided Mother's Day was no longer a day I was going to associate with my mother. It didn't work anymore.

In my late twenties, I met Drew. Having no parents myself, I quickly became part of his family and began instead celebrating his mother on this day. It was always fun but bittersweet for me. I usually could not get through the day of watching him and his siblings with their mom without breaking down. It was still wonderful to celebrate his mother, but also compounded my awareness of mine not being here.

In a very odd way... Drew's death changed this for the better. Now, I have a new job on this day... to honor his mother FOR him. It has brought new purpose and meaning to this day and allows me to not only honor his mother but also him. I hate to even admit his death has brought good things... but this one I cannot deny. His mother and I have a bond now that we would have never had if he hadn't died. We both wish he were here and that we didn't needed to have such a close bond, we are both eternally grateful.

Now, almost three years after his death, that is still how I am doing things. His mother, and his grandmother, are the center of this day for me. And my mom? She still has a Mother's Day... I just decided to move it to her Birthday instead. I figured out that this works better because it is not a holiday EVERYONE is celebrating... instead it is just OUR day. It makes it far easier and eliminates all the triggers so that I can just focus on my mom. I buy her a card and write something to her, buy myself some flowers, and a small piece of cake or dessert and some wine that I enjoy for her. I honor both her and myself on this day, as I think honoring me would bring her such joy. It's also a great excuse to eat some seriously bad-for-you cake.

I think when anyone we love dies, we are forced to make a decision - either adapt ourselves to the traditions or to adapt the traditions to ourselves. It sucks. But there it is. Sometimes, we might decide we don't even want to celebrate certain events or days anymore. And that's okay. We might decide to change it or even walk away from a holiday entirely for a few years and revisit it later when we are more healed and ready. Maybe not every holiday is like this, but there will be some.

The point is... We always have the permission to change things. To do it our way. To find a new way that works for us and our immediate family. Even if that means moving Mother's Day to February 26th like I did... or choosing not to celebrate Christmas at all until you are ready, like a good friend of mine did for several years after her husband died. Or assigning the job of hosting Thanksgiving to another member of the family, like my mother-in-law did after Drew died. We always have a choice to change it if it isn't working or if it feels like too much. No one will hate you. And if they do, that's their problem.

Now I celebrate my mother--in-law and all of the other mothers in my life on this day. It has taken many years and a very long and winding road through grief, but now I am able to see all mothers as an extension of my own mother's love... and so honoring them in fact is always honoring her, too.

The Missing Dress Melt Down

Week 23 of my Self Portrait series on Grief - ©Sarah Treanor

I’m completely devastated this week. There was a horrible mixup while I was out of town last week and I discovered that a dress was accidentally thrown out. Not just a dress - but THE dress which I have been wearing in every weekly self portrait I have taken for the past 7 months (shown above). It was the main prop in this year-long series about living with loss. The irony here is not lost on me. I have just lost my most important prop in a project about losing my most important person. Gone without warning. Without my having any say in the matter. Just like my fiancé and our life together. It is all too familiar a story. 

What. The. Hell.

Now the entire project must change. I cannot replace the dress - it was vintage and would be impossible to find again. I'll have to instead continue the project in a new direction. The way I've had to continue my life in a new direction. I really HATE how precisely this event mirrors losing him. It has triggered me in all sorts of ways about his death and about my having to live on. 

It is especially devastating because I left my entire career behind when he died and I set out on this journey to live my dreams as an artist. I made some terrifying sacrifices and changes to my world in order to afford to work only on my art. For about a year and a half I just stumbled around lost. But then… This project unfolded. And suddenly a direction for my future unfolded a bit… some solid ground under my feet again. It has been the first thing to bring me hope about the future, and has helped me to be able to envision a future that excites me even at times. That dress felt like my island in a turbulent sea… and now, I feel like I have been knocked back into the ocean all over again. 

I know somehow, this loss will come to mean something very deep. I know it will take things somewhere new… somewhere it would not have otherwise gone. Which is – I suppose – entirely appropriate for a series about death. This is what death does to our lives… it pulls the rug out from under us – forces us to re-evaluate everything. Pushes us to make changes and reminds us what’s important. Brings in new perspective and focus. Despite my realizing all of this deeper meaning – I still hate it. I still want desperately to have this dress back. And the love of my life back. And our future together back. And thus, it has been a long, rainy week of dramatic arm-failing, tears, and curse words. A lot of curse words. A lot of tears. A lot of reliving his death and my loss. 

I will make this work somehow… just as I’ve continued to make this life work since he died. But I'm scared shitless at the moment. I feel small, and vulnerable, and incapable. And I want him here to lean on, because he always made me feel invincible. And he isn't here. And the agony of that truth has been almost too painful to even feel this week. I guess the only thing to do is just keep on showing up every day the best I can and trust that whatever this new direction will be will come. Seriously. I’m SO OVER loss.

Crocodiles and other absurdities

Photo from here....

I live in our little house physically alone aside from my two young children and our pets. All the belongings in this home are ours and paint a vivid and accurate picture of who is housed within these walls. But if you were to dig deep enough within cupboards and closets, you would items and articles that seemed at odds with these inhabitants and their actions. It would almost seem as if someone was hiding another person's things. Things that don't match. Things that come from another time or place. Random odd articles. Misplaced and mismatched items.

Buried deep in my deep freeze is a package of crocodile....er, maybe alligator meat. I never plan to eat it and never set out to eat it from the moment it entered said freezer.

It was Jeff's. He had bought it to feed our daughter. He was determined to have his children not be picky eaters. I remember he and three-year-old Liv sharing a chair in the kitchen together eating from a jar of pickled herring or dining on a dinner of rattlesnake meat.

As with most things, he didn't face the issues of childhood sustenance halfway. Instead of insisting that our daughter dine on asparagus or cauliflower, he would thrust something at her that was barely food in my eyes. But she trusted him and she ate it.

So many of these odd and mismatched things that line the backs of closets, shoes boxes and freezers mark who Jeff was and what he stood for. His beliefs. His idiosyncrasies.

I have thought about giving the freezer-burnt crocodile/alligator meat to the dog. But I have refrained. It is a reminder of a man who was funny, loving and passionate about his little family. As all the remaining small and possibly seemingly insignificant items he left behind, they hint at who he was and how strongly he loved his little ones.

Although I have donated many of his clothes or shared some of his more memorable belongings with his family; it is these small items wedged in the corners that speak of him most and remind me while I dig for dinner at the bottom of the freezer of who he was and how much he is missed.

Layers

from here

Maybe what grief triggers do is peel back all my layers to where my original pain lies.
I might be constructing a new life for myself out of the rubble his death left behind and really kicking ass. I might go days or even weeks without losing hope or crying. Then, something will happen that may or may not be a big deal and all the progress I've seemingly made is peeled away to show me, in sharp contrast, what I am still grieving. Sometimes, the layers get peeled back to before the most recent tragedy and remind me that I'm still grieving old losses, too.

My own recent trigger peeled back the layers of growth to the original pain I carry with me - the loss of my mother and the ensuing childhood raised by someone who always seemed burdened by my presence. His behavior managed to program my child's brain to believe that I was a hardship. Many years of my own work on myself and a 15 year relationship helped to restore much of my self-worth. When Dave died, I continued to see proof of my inherent worth when the people who care about me freely gave of their love and kept me afloat during my darkest times.

But a recent grief trigger that got at my sense of worth seemingly unraveled much of this work. Not permanently, of course. And it won't take years to weave it back together again. It'll take days, maybe weeks, tops. But it's a reminder of how I carry old pain with me. Not just Dave's death, which takes up most of the space in my heart right now, but ancient hurts that aren't fully healed.

I think that's why grief triggers can be so insidious. I think they're just triggering the grief of my most recent loss, but it might actually be a compounded pain they trigger. One pain leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. They get all wrapped up in each other and almost indistinguishable.
Add that to a chronic worrier and over-thinker and it's a grief storm extravaganza.

Fortunately, with the help of dedicated friends, I know I can weather the storms. In the middle of the storm I forget this fact and need to be reminded, but after having ridden many out, I have proof that they are not permanent and that there is an end in sight.

Triggers are a part of everyday life. They will find me even if I don't open myself up to them. Unfortunately, just living life makes me vulnerable to them. And living life without letting fear rule me REALLY opens me up to them. Rejection or further loss can be powerful triggers.

But they'll be there in mundane places too. My mailbox, my iPod, my kitchen, the realty sign in my yard. All unavoidable.

Each time a trigger gets me, it builds my strength. The next trigger might not hit quite so hard and my recovery from it might be quicker and easier. None of that means it won't hurt just as much as always, or even MORE than ever before, though. That's another realization I've made. To be reminded that the pain won't last doesn't resolve the pain itself. It might give me enough hope to ride out that current storm, but it doesn't eliminate the pain and the pain grinds me to a halt. And that is okay. It's okay to feel too heavy to move. It's okay to admit that the weight of the grief is too heavy to bear standing up under and to let it take me down.

As soon as the weight lessens, though, I have to take my chance to stand up again and run with it, getting my feet underneath me again and readying myself for the next hurdle life sends me.

So today, the weight lessened enough to stand up under it and make some plans for moving forward.
Now I can build up strength again and attempt to live life without the fear of the next storm's arrival.

That is my daily challenge.

Groceries

from here

The grocery store

It's been one of the biggest grief triggers for me. At first, I couldn't bring myself to go at all. Thank god for the kindness of friends and coworkers who kept my fridge and freezer stocked for the first month or so. Thank god for my closest friends who grocery shopped for me at first.

Eventually, I managed to go on my own, but only to grocery stores Dave and I hadn't frequented too often. Finally, I was and am now able to shop in "our" stores, but every time it's a set-my-teeth, white-knuckle, hurry-up-and-get-it-over-with kind of experience. There is so much Dave in every store I go to. The items we loved, he loved, the items we argued about, the times he'd reach out to snuggle me in the middle of the frozen food aisles when I was freezing from the cold air. It seems like every damn item and aisle there has some history of Dave and me.

I went to our neighborhood IGA today to get my prescription refill and a few food items. I was standing in front of the canned beans, awash in sadness. I must've looked stricken, because an employee walked by, tapped me gently and said "Oh, today isn't THAT bad, is it?"

Inwardly, I said MY HUSBAND IS DEAD!

Outwardly, I couldn't look at him and instead just continued to stare straight ahead at the damn beans. I knew if I looked at him or opened my mouth, I'd come unhinged. So I tried to think of reasons why that day wasn't all that bad. I thought of my friends, my blog, my cats, my house, my health. I got the beans for chili and hightailed it out of that store.

Eventually, it'll get easier to grocery shop, and the holidays are making it especially dicey right now. But my plan to make it easier on me is to take some cooking classes. I used to love to cook. I think I still do, it's just that I need some inspiration. I need to get excited about making new dishes again. Once I do, I figure I'll be able to focus more on that mission while I grocery shop, than on how much I miss Dave. There will be a nice payoff when I get done grocery shopping and more motivation to get it done in the first place.

The second part of my plan is to go to a brand new grocery store Dave and I never went to together. It's going to mean a substantial drive, but it's only 25 minutes from work, so it's not terrible. It's also the same store where I'll take the cooking classes.

I figure once it gets easy and maybe even enjoyable to go there, it'll be easier to go anywhere. That's the plan, anyway. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, grocery stores could make it easier on me (and other widowed people...oh hell, on everyone, I'm guessing) by doing the following:

1. Provide a little free booze. Just hand me a glass of wine on the way in.

2. NO CHRISTMAS CAROLS OR NOSTALGIC MUSIC! Just don't play music at all. How about a comedian's stand up act instead?

3. Samples. Distract me with yummy samples.

4. Provide tissues here and there. You never know when I'll need a few.

5. I get a free magazine just for looking sad.

6. No more carts with the wonky wheels. They make me mental as it is.

Safeway? Are you listening?