The Death March Part 2

 Starstruck by the immensely talented and all-round nice guy, Aaron Aldrich.

So I am still feeling mostly .... fine.

A few extra tears have crept in though.  Not those snot drenched sobs that come from my guts and leave me heaving and shaking, but the silent, delicate raindrops that leak from the corner of my eye as I remember all he was and all I have lost.

I seem to dwell more on the mechanics of how he died at this time of year.

It still kills me that I kissed him goodbye at 7am, just like I did every single day ..... and never saw him again.
Ever.

It still kills me inside to know that there was nobody there but his workmate (who died shortly afterwards) as his life and consciousness drained away with all that blood.

It still kills me that I didn't insist on spending time alone with his body before the funeral.
He was so badly hurt that everyone from the policemen who attended the scene to the mortuary assistant were all adamant that I could NOT see him.  At all.  Not even his hand.

It kills me that I had to tell my very small children that their beloved Daddy had died.  I can still remember them looking at me like I must have been playing some sort of mean trick.

It still kills me that instead of feeling the love that I know was being poured on me, I felt hundreds of pairs of eyes boring into my skull as I entered the church at his funeral.

It kills me that I never looked up from the carpet to see the packed church and all the people who loved him.  I saw only my children, my family, my best friends, the ministers (there were three of them) and the screen that failed to capture his essence in pictures.

But despite all my regrets, he remains dead.
I don't get a do-over, nor do I want one.

....and that's where I am in this part of the death march.....

Slow Dance. Last Dance.

So, here I am, writing my first blog right before Valentine's Day.  Right before what would have been our 24th wedding anniversary. I'm getting ahead of myself, I know. I was going to introduce myself, give some back-story, and I promise I will.  But maybe, because of the timing of this first entry, I'll give you a glimpse into the world that was mine with my beloved husband, let you peek through the keyhole so you can understand the missing-ness of him in my life.  This, dear ones, is the memory I carry with me in my heart and soul.  The only memory, really, that I can easily call to mind. (Why is that?)

As I remember him, and me, and our full-time travels of the last 4 years, this Death Valley dance lingers in the nooks and crannies of my heart.  Exploring Death Valley National Park in California was a dream of ours, and for 3 days we drove up and down the Valley, exploring the muted colors of the Canyons. Chuck was already sick and in pain; we thought it was the die-off from a fungal infection.  We thought it was a pinched nerve.  So this last day was taken slowly.  He'd managed a short hike back into the rocks.  Our last hike, but we didn't know it then.  All we knew was that it was getting late, he was tired, and it was time we returned to our ranch cabin.

But, as I steered the car over the road to the ranch, looking at the changing colors of the rocks around me, my instinct told me that here was a memory that we needed to imprint on our hearts.  I'm relieved now that I listened to that instinct that made me maneuver the car to the dirt on the side of the road and say to him “Let’s dance”.  We loved to slow dance, and Chuck was a master at it.  He wasn’t quite sure of the footing on the rutted ground but I said let’s do it anyways.  And he smiled and got out of the car.

It was that most beautiful part of the evening that the Scots call “the gloaming”.  The quiet moment when the day is done but right before full dark sets in.  Silence surrounded us as I met him in front of our Ford Escape.  The strains of “You’re My Inspiration” by Chicago wafted from my IPOD.  Our song.  He put his right arm around my waist and clasped my right hand in his left, wrapping his fingers around mine.  In spite of everything, his body was strong against me.

And on the side of the road, there in Death Valley, in the setting sun, we danced what would be our last dance.  

Chuck's romantic heart met my even more romantic heart and we kept that passion alive for the 24 years we were together.  This Valentine's Day is my first without him.  Our 24th wedding anniversary is the 18th.  I don't know if any one particular day is more painful than another because right now every day is filled with immeasurable pain.  I miss him kissing me and holding me and dancing with me and loving me and that slow wink at me from across a room. 

I miss him with every beat of my heart, with every painful breath that keeps me living without him.

First Thursday

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February 11 is a happy day for me (also marked with some trepidation) ... it's my son's birthday.  He who is so much his father, is turning three.

But since I generally write ahead of time, making use of the time I can sit in front of a computer screen uninterrupted while he's in child care, and I'm writing on February 7, John's birthday is not at the forefront of my mind. 

Last night is.

I love my first Thursday of the month.  But I don't like why I have it to look forward to.

It's when my local younger widows group meets.  Usually we meet for a discussion or workshop, but sometimes we take the opportunity to go out for a meal with adults that get why sometimes a sadness or silence comes over the conversation (and aren't phased by that lull swinging quickly to laughter and chatter again). 

We talk about how and/or when we struggle with our grief, get angry or indignant for each other as we deal with the bureaucratic or family/friend issues that arise, cheer each other on as we tentatively or boldly take steps into exploring our new lives, gripe about the things that our partners did that drove us batty, talk about what we've learned from our loss and grief - about ourselves and life in general, and we nod in agreement or recognition of similar experience so much, you think you should be a bobble head on a car dashboard.

You know when you don't see a young child you know for a little while and your usual response is 'they've grown/changed so much'?  I find I have a similar reaction each month, particularly those who came for the first time after me, initially came in the depths of their grief.  Month on month, I can see the grief-fog lifting, the smiles and laughter become more frequent, the reaching out to someone not as far on the journey and connecting them to the group. 

I can see what maybe I couldn't/can't see in myself, but in acknowledging how far they've come in their journey, I can see how far I've come in mine.  And maybe can identify where some of the brick walls blocking my path are.

One thing I've learned is reaching out and connecting with others in person for peer support has been invaluable on this journey.

And I've also become conscious that good days for me may well be difficult or bad days for someone else.  So while I celebrate John's birthday, I also send hugs, prayers and positive thoughts to one of our group who today marks one year since her loss. 

Time

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Finding ways to fill my time after Dave died was a huge challenge. I needed to stay busy and connected to others, but I wasn't any good for social situations, especially early on.

 I was zombie-like and had difficulty relating to anyone else who hadn't experienced widowhood. I couldn't talk about what I used to talk about. Gossip, work-related issues, griping (especially about spouses!) were nearly physically impossible for me to sit through. I'd have to escape for fear I'd scream at people.

Also, I'd always hung out with other married couples and suddenly felt completely wretched hanging out as a single with all those paired up people. 

So, my life suddenly narrowed down to this small, lonely existence. I had to fill it with something. I had to break away from the old and start building the new. I decided I had to find new friends. 

That's when I turned to the internet. After a few fevered "young widow" searches, I found, with huge relief, Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation and registered for Camp Widow. I figured that I'd find my people there and that's all I cared about. I had tunnel vision. Nothing mattered but finding a place where I felt like I belonged. I wanted to ask other widowed people how they did it, how they survived. 

I wanted proof that I'd survive too. I wanted hope. 

I got all of that and more. And when I returned home and had to go back to spending my nights alone on that couch I used to share with my husband, I had new widowed friends to call and text. They were my lifelines. 

It was the most important part of my healing. I also used the internet to find a local young widow support group where I made other important connections. 

The hope, support and love these people gave me helped propel me into a new life. 

When I did still have lonely nights at home, I began to find ways to make the most of it. I found that comedy helped heal me. I watched the entirety of 30 Rock two times through. I watched How I Met Your Mother, every funny movie I could find, and stand up comedy. I hunkered down and allowed myself to be completely lazy and anesthetize myself with funny TV. It was not a time for broadening my mind or learning new things. 

I also wrote. A lot. I wrote every single day for months. I'd wake up and write before I did anything else. It helped to process my thoughts and feelings and made the alone time feel a little less empty. After I'd write for a while, it would feel almost as good as having had a conversation with someone else. 

The other way I filled my time was by joining a gym. I began taking crossfit classes several mornings a week. The exercises were so challenging and exhausting that for the hour of class, the only thing I could think of was staying upright and not throwing up, so my mind got a rest from all the grieving. 

It also allowed me to be around other people, people who didn't know me before. Plus, it seemed to help me sleep at night. 

I was also lucky enough to move to an area overflowing with things to do and people to meet. I went on hikes, went to meetup groups, wandered around my new neighborhood, joined another gym, tried new restaurants and museums and traveled whenever possible. 

However, the lonely nights and weekends were still a regular part of my life. I could spend time with new friends, explore my new town, stay busy all day and STILL come home to an agonizingly lonely, dark house. The silence of it was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.

They felt impossible to survive, those nights, piling up on each other in the days ahead of me. But I did survive them. Sometimes I just suffered through them, crying for hours on end. Sometimes, I numbed myself. Sometimes I'd obsessively check my phone for invites that never appeared. Eventually, though, something happened to me that changed everything. 

Somewhere along the way I began to find a quiet peace and contentment in my nights alone. I didn't love them or long for them, but I made friends with them. They didn't feel so intolerable anymore. I began to imagine how things could be worse. 

I began to see the beauty in my quiet little life. I began to feel loved and a part of everything even when I was alone. It's not always that way, but now it's more often that way than not. 

It can happen. 

Just hold on until then. Fill your nights with whatever comforts you. Make connections with others. Reach out. You are not alone even when you think you are. There are millions of us out here, living this, too. It won't always feel so excruciating. There is life after this. 

Signs of Flight

Since Drew was a helicopter pilot, helicopters and anything to do with flying are always the biggest signs I get from him. I even found a tiny toy helicopter in this shack on the island of Barbados last spring while vacationing there with his family. It had washed up on the beach and the guy collected it to sell in his shop. No joke!

And just a few months after he died, in the fall of 2012, I stumbled upon this artist's creative business e-workshop that was called "Flying Lessons". Drew was also a flight instructor, so it was all too obvious that he was telling me something. I signed up immediately. The Facebook group for the course truly carried me through those early months. Because of the theme of the class, all the women in the group would write cheesy encouragements to each other like "keep flying!" or "I'll see you up in the clouds!". It always made me smile, and confirmed he lead me there for a reason.

All things flight definitely seem to follow me around now, but it's been a while since I've had any signs that made me stop in my tracks. Until yesterday…

I was tinkering away on a new sculpture at a local clay studio I just started working with. It was midday and pretty cold, so the place was empty. After about an hour, I took a break to take some process photos of my work, and as I framed the picture, I noticed something written on the worktable just a foot above where I was working. As I read it, I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped to the floor…

I was speechless. For those who aren't aware, Drew died in a helicopter crash. Of all the places for this message to be… on the work table in a clay studio??? In front of the exact woman who's fiancé had died flying? And it wasn't even the spot I usually work at. Because it was so cold out, the owner told me to work in that corner because it was the warmest spot in the studio. So I took his suggestion and moved there. For about 20 minutes after reading it, I just sat there totally stunned. I kept looking around the room - my mind saying a bit humorously, "Are you SURE you're dead?!?". When I first read it, of course my interpretation was something like "flying is pointless unless you die doing it". Well, what a totally demented and Drew-like thing to say, lol. Of course as I sat with it longer, I realized it was really talking about living life. If you don't die really living life, then what's the point of living? Damn. That's SO HIM to say. And SO how he lived his life. 

I realize someone else's hand wrote that message - but somehow, that message found its way to me… in the far corner of an art studio an hour from where I live, out on a 20 acre ranch that I'd have never even known about if it wasn't for Drew's mom having taken classes there and introducing me to the owners.

For me, it is a sign to keep doing the things that make me feel alive. To keep taking big chances and doing things that maybe totally scare me, just to see where they take me. It is definitely the sort of advice he would always give me. And what's also crazy, is that I had that exact talk with my counselor a few weeks ago. I've been in a real slump since my job ended a month ago, and he recommended I focus on things that make me feel alive - not happy - but ALIVE… which is somehow way easier to focus on in the midst of grief than the idea of "happy". There isn't much that makes me feel truly happy since he died, but there are lots of things that make me feel alive. That I can do… in fact,  that was the reason for going to the clay studio to begin with. Man, you can't make this stuff up!

And then of course today I am promptly slapped in the face with an opportunity to leap into the air and try to test this message out: A job opening to teach art lessons to a young boy. I have no experience teaching AT ALL and am completely terrified of stepping this far out of my comfort zone. Despite that, I cannot stop thinking about how much I want to share art - my deepest passion - with other people. So, I guess I'm gonna listen to the writing on the table… here's hoping I fly.

Lost

I was having a farewell dinner this evening with a friend...which usually equates to sharing our thoughts on life and all that it teaches/has taught us thus far.

At one point during our conversation, he looked at me and said, "Taryn, there was a quote from a book that changed my life. I want to share it and I want you to absorb it."

Intense!

That was the word floating into my head with such a preface!

"Ok." I responded, taking an exaggerated inhale as some sort of sign to show him I was prepared.

He opened his mouth and the words poured out:

"All that is not given is lost."

I repeated it aloud. I repeated it again.

I sat silently and dissected it in every which way.

It hit me. I dare not say in which way, as I think it's a line that will bring to the surface the things deep within ourselves that we may have lost....which will be different for each of us.

The things we have failed to give.



I know since Michael's death, there is much that I have given and much that I have received.

I also know that there have been parts of me that I have held so close that had/if I did/do not let go, I would never know all the true beauty still awaiting me.

I want to give.

Every aspect of every ounce of every part of myself.

I refuse to die with any lost part of my being.

I've lost too much to lose anymore by my own hand.

I want to give it my all in giving my all.

I owe it to myself.

Philip Seymour Hoffman - What a Waste

 How could he be so selfish? He had a wife and 3 kids. Didn't he care at all about them? Why would he throw it all away to do drugs? Life gave him everything. He had money, opportunity, talent. He had it all, and he still chose to do heroin anyway. Why didn't he just stop? What a waste.  

Pretty harsh, right? Yeah. Just writing it and then reading it back gave me shivers. I didn't really feel how cold and judgmental and superior the above thoughts sounded, until I wrote them out and then sat back and read my own words. Yes. These are my words. My thoughts. Well, sort of. These are the thoughts of the "old me" - the one that existed before July 13, 2011 - the early, earth-shattering morning of my husband's sudden death. If actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's death had occurred back then instead of now, the words typed above would have been some of the very first thoughts that popped into my mind. Of course, the "old me" wouldn't have been brave enough to share thoughts like that, so instead, I would have jumped on the much easier bandwagon of posting careless and borderline cruel jokes about the famous person's shocking and untimely death. The comedian in me would have been pining away for that best tweet or that most shared Facebook status of the day, ending, of  course, with a very sincere #RIP so-and-so. And although my joke of choice would not have been of the cruel type, (mean-spirited humor has never really been my thing) it still would have been my only immediate instinct - to post a silly pun about it, get a cheap laugh, and make it go away. After a day or two of posting my favorite clips online from some of Hoffman's best acting roles, and saying to other friends in a concerned whisper: "Can you believe it? He was only 46 years old!", I would have then, very quickly and without much confetti or fanfare, proceeded on with my otherwise self-involved, naive little life.

It wasn't my fault. I didn't know any better. I didn't know anything at all about hurt or loss or death. I didn't know that one second I could be ecstatic and in love and planning our life together, and the next second, riding in a taxi cab on my way to being told by the E.R. nurses and doctors at the hospital, that my very healthy, paramedic, 46 year old husband suffered a massive heart-attack an hour after arriving at work, and that he didn't make it. I didn't know that in one moment, the word future would be replaced with the phrase What the hell just happened to my life? I didn't know that losing my spouse would transform every cell in my being, and that it would change every single thing, forever. I didn't know the first thing about being a 39 year old widow. I didn't know that there was a pain this deep, this all-consuming, this frightening. I didn't know that my husband's death would cause me to not want to be alive any longer, and I didn't know that it would take so long to no longer feel that way. So please forgive me, universe, for my past behaviors. I didn't know a damn thing.

Until, of course, I did.

The thing about knowing something that you didn't know before, is that once you know it, you cannot unknow it. It is impossible. Instead, it sits inside of you and it alters the way that you see the world around you. For me personally, once the shock and fog of my own pain finally began to lift some, I could suddenly see and feel all of the pain that others held in their hearts. Where there used to be judgement, there is now compassion. Where there was assumption, there is now empathy. Where there was celebrity, there is now human being. In my "before" life, I saw the death of someone like Philip Seymour Hoffman as the death of a famous person. In my "after" life, he is just a person. He is a person struggling and crawling and wailing and guessing through life, like all of us. He is a person with addictions, and unless you are a person with addictions yourself, you cannot possibly comprehend the hell of that particular demon, and the control and the hold that it must have over you. This person, this extremely talented and flawed and real person- had been clean and sober from drugs for 23 years. And then, just like that - he wasn't. I am not an expert on addicts, but to me, that says a lot about how fragile the world of an addict has to be. I would imagine it is something like living your life inside a house of cards, just always waiting for that one card to topple over and ruin all your hard work. A simple gust of wind, an unexpected emotion, or even something as simple as a doctor's prescribed pain medication - could be that card that knocks your house down, and sends you once again running toward the familiar destruction.

 In my new life as a widow, I have met many other widowed people, lots of them way too young to even be thinking about or using that  awful "W" word. Many of my fellow widowed friends lost their partners to alcohol or drug addiction. Some of the deaths were suicides, some were overdoses, all were the result of someone being in a massive amount of pain. I am a 42 year old woman, and I know way too many people whose partners lives ended because of addiction. It is heartbreaking. It is terrifying. It is real. The demons are beyond powerful, and sometimes the demons win.

Every single one of us has demons. If you look inside of yourself - really look - you probably know what yours are. We all struggle with something, and some of us win that struggle. Others don't. But the very fact that we all have a struggle makes us all the same. And in that way, you are only a few threads away from being Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's true. You are him. He is you. Or, he could be.

I am still a comedian, and so I will probably always make silly jokes when someone dies. Comedy is a huge part of how I cope with my own husband's death. But now that I am a widow, posting a funny comment is no longer the first thing that pops into my head when a famous person dies. The first thing that came into my head when hearing about Hoffman's sudden death was: His wife. His poor wife. I wish there was some way I could connect with her and just tell her that I get it. I wonder where she was when she found out. Was she alone like I was? Did somebody tell her personally? Were there cameras on her and her children in that moment when they found out the absolute worst thing you could ever find out about your loved one? What will happen to them? How will they live inside of the pain? 

Believe me when I tell you that I wish I didn't possess this knowledge. I wish like hell that I could go back to the days when a celebrity death was just a blip in my radar, and when I thought it had nothing at all to do with me. I wish that I could talk to my husband about what a great actor Hoffman was, and that we could watch his DVD of Charlie Wilson's War together, and remember with fondness. But I can't. That life is gone now, and so is that naive person who was too quick to judge people and make assumptions.

I am different now. I know better than all that, and I know that I cannot unknow what I now know.
And now that you've read this, neither can you.