Chop Wood, Carry Water

There is a saying in Zen: Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

After Mike died I couldn't function coherently at all for about a week. I couldn't focus on the basic necessities of cooking, cleaning, errands...even driving. I really could not drive for at least a week. Thank goodness my family and friends were around to help. They literally had to do it all those first days. It's why I understand now the Hawaiian tradition of immediately showing up at someone's house after a death, bringing food, and staying around to help out with whatever was needed. Back on the East coast where I grew up people may be more likely to think they should leave you alone to grieve - I don't know, maybe some people might prefer that. But I don't think I would have made it that way. I am so grateful my house was full that first week.

I see people writing and talking a lot about "widow's brain" - that state of mind where you forget, you're confused, discombobulated...your mind, your spirit even maybe, is elsewhere. You forget why you went in that store in the first place. You forget who you just called on the phone, and why. You forget appointments, you forget to call people back at all...I've heard of people realizing they aren't even wearing matching shoes or socks.

I used to be a very organized, reliable person - but this happened to me for sure after Mike died, and in fact I still have that experience some days. I am still, 16 months later, finding I have to write down every single thing - every appointment, every needed grocery item, every message...or I will forget. Even so, I sometimes still forget; I forget to even check my schedule, or I leave my list at home. But at least the philosophy of chop wood, carry water has returned to my consciousness.

This phrase was, in fact, one of the first things I was reminded of that Mike used to say all the time, after he died. Anyone who knew Mike knows this saying, and what it means. Right. Just git'erdone. Get up. Make coffee. Wash dishes. Get the mail. Pay the bills. Run the errands. Feed the dogs. Feed myself.

For awhile then, this was in fact how I survived, after those first horrific days. And it wasn't easy. But I forced myself to move forward. To get in the car and drive downtown, even if I forgot why I was going there for a few minutes along the way. To go into the store even if I started crying in the aisles. To sit down and balance my checkbook; to return those phone calls waiting on my message pad.

To begin to think about what life was going to be like without Mike.To figure out how I was going to survive this, because so many days I thought I might not be able to.

Another saying I think about often goes something like, when we make plans, God laughs. Whether we believe in God or not, somehow this makes sense. Life leads us on its often unexpected journey. We widowed folk surely understand that. But as scary and unpredictable as it may be, I'm going to continue working on recreating my future. I'm going to continue this new task of personal transformation. I'm going to continue to move forward with my life. I may never "move on" from Mike in my heart, but I guess I'm going to keep walking. I might fall down, but I'm going to get back up. That's something I couldn't have said a year ago.

Now, though, I'm going to allow life to happen, and realize I can't control everything. All I can do is try to dot my i's and cross my t's, so that bigger - and hopefully more positive - changes will have appropriate space to happen. To chop the wood for the daily fire, and collect the water for the daily wash.

To keep my space tidy and warm, so the next chapter of my life can feel comfortable, and welcome.

Grief Rising. But Love too~

Tomorrow my daughter Rachael-Grace and I leave on our 6 month Nothin' But Love tour.  It will be quite an experience for both of us, filled with every emotion of the alphabet as we honor and remember my husband/her dad, meet people along the way and hear their stories, offer workshops to women around the country and, well, who knows what else.

Someone used the word vacation to describe what we're doing.  As in, my daughter and I are going on a 6 month vacation.  There have been other people (not many, thank goodness) who, upon my arrival here in Phoenix, asked me if I'd enjoyed my travels from the East coast.

Hmmmm.....

All of them know my husband died recently.  Did I enjoy my travels from the East coast?  Maybe not so much, what with the urn with his cremains riding shotgun with me, his folded flag draped with his ID tags hanging on it.  Maybe not so much as I drove the roads he and I drove for 4 years together, the grief ripping through me with every mile.  Struggling to breathe through it.

Going on vacation?  Seriously?  This entire Odyssey is about fulfilling Chuck's last request to me.  He mentioned 3 places to visit and knew I'd know the rest of them.  That final request of his is the primary purpose of my life now.  Its the driving force behind what my daughter and I are doing.  Possibly (do you think?) it will be emotional.

Along the way, we'll also deepen our mom and daughter relationship.  Rachael is a hoop dancer and yoga instructor and we'll do that each morning to help work out the beinginthecar kinks and to move the grief energy around.  I'm sure we'll smile and laugh along with the tears.  That's how grief is, isn't it?

But vacation?  No, I don't think so.  Every moment of this next 6 months is going to be intense in every way.  Light and darkness and shadows and love and more love.

Today she and I went out to the desert with her husband and my son to take pictures and shoot some video.   My grief spilled out and my heart poured blood in the process.  Which is okay, in the midst of not being okay because nothing really is okay and I'm kind of okay with that.

Tomorrow is the day we commence this Odyssey of Love.  Grief.  Love.  Magic.  And the open road.

Hello Year Three

John at our local swim centre - part of how I spent the 2nd anniversary.

I'm struggling writing this week.  I know the general gist of what I want to say, but some of it keeps seeming harsh, uncaring, like I'm an insensitive bitch.  Because it's about the relief and positivity I've figured out I find in Ian's death anniversary.

This past weekend was the second anniversary of Ian's passing.  And although it may sound odd to many, my experience of it was a positive time of transition.  I was sad, and there were some bitter sweet moments, like me mentioning to John that daddy played field hockey, while we watched some highlights from the world cup, so John went up and asked which was daddy... little hard.  I explained again that daddy died, but stifled a bit of a giggle, since daddy wouldn't have been playing women's field hockey!! 

But I also felt a weight had been lifted.  And in general living life terms, it was just another ordinary Saturday with swimming lessons, me working on uni stuff, cleaning, laundry, playing with John. 

Having now passed through 2 cycles of anniversaries, I'm certain my really hard period is March, when Ian got sick and I went through what was for me the most traumatic part of the illness that lead to his death.  He should have died that day, and I spent most of the day feeling the weight of that.  And I began to grief the loss of what our life would have been from that moment.  But as much as March is my heavy anniversary, there is a weight that sits in the background up until his death anniversary.

By the time he did pass away, it was a relief for me.  He wasn't being put through test after test, and wasn't lying in a bed, paralysed and unable to speak. No more seizures robbing him of his cognitive ability bit by bit. 

As harsh as it sounds, I knew I'd reached the point that I couldn't carry on with the uncertainty, the stress, the roller coaster that had been his illness. It was keeping me from being the best parent I could be for John, even though I was doing the best I could given the circumstances we found ourselves in.  I didn't want him loosing two parents, particularly since we reached a point that loosing one was inevitable.

By nature, I'm a planner.  When it looked like Ian would survive with decent cognitive ability, but be in residential care for the rest of his life, I was looking at options to keep our family as intact as possible. 

Then we reached the point where that wouldn't happen.  And I was lost.  I couldn't plan.  I couldn't find security for John and I in anything.

So when he died, although I was and still am, sad, it was a huge relief.  In fact the first words I said were 'Thank God it's over" - for both of us.  And I could transition to the immediate practical aftermath of the death of someone - I had stuff that needed to get done, rather than sitting and waiting with nothing I could do.

So the upshot is, the anniversary of his death for me is a time of renewal, where I feel like I can look forward to the future - in terms of years now, not just days, weeks or months that I had in the initial loss. 

I guess another part of it is knowing I have 9 months of less weight on my shoulders, without the anniversaries looming over my head.

The Box

source

I put a blue sticky note on it so the movers wouldn't pack it. I carefully carried it to the car, hefting its astonishing weight, and placed it gently in the back seat.

Alone for a few moments at the new place, I picked it up again, and carried it close to my body up to the new bedroom and found its new spot where it snugly fits. I closed the door to the closet, pressed my hand against the door and then my forehead, breathed in...out. I sent it thoughts. Gratitude, disbelief, anger and a remnant of the shock I felt in every cell that day three years ago.

 Memories flashed through my mind, a succession of snapshots. Our first apartment together, our second and third apartments too, and then finally our house. Our beautiful country house. The house I came home to without him. The house he labored over and loved. The house his ashes, in this oaken box, came home to several days later. His carbon, his bone fragments, in a plastic bag which is tucked into a heavy wooden box: hard, and cold to touch and unreasonably heavy.

My last thought as I made this strange moment into a small ceremony to honor him and us and our great loss, was that it was time for even his ashes to be free.

It is time.

No longer trapped in a box but back to the earth where they belong.

I don't need them to feel closer to him anymore.

They don't feel imbued with as much power. They are inert to me now. He is not there, in that box. He is securely in my memories and my heart.

There's no grasping anymore. He had to go on in a place where I can't be. Our paths split on that day.

Those ashes in that box do not bring me closer to him. My heart does. And it always will.

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.

A Beautiful Day

 

This week brought with it a major milestone - my first wedding anniversary. A special day that I should have been celebrating with my darling but, instead, had to spend alone, as his widow. I've had a pretty busy few weeks so even though I knew it was looming, the reality of the day really snuck up on me.

One year ago I married the man of my dreams. A man I never dared to imagine existed. A man I still adore and have a ridiculous crush on. A man who, even in death, makes me want to be a better person, to make him proud. Who makes me feel lucky and blessed, beautiful and loved.

In the days leading up to our wedding anniversary I started thinking, ‘what does this day mean now that he’s not here to celebrate it with me?’

Because, on one hand, I felt in my heart that it should be a happy day.  I’m grateful that I married Dan, he was the most beautiful thing to happen to me and this should be celebrated.  It is such a cliché – but our wedding day really was the happiest I had ever been in my life.  I have had many reasons to be happy before this, I’ve had some amazing experiences, created wonderful memories and lived a very full life, even at the tender age of 32.  But nothing had compared to standing up before everyone dear to me and exchanging vows with the man I had waited for my whole life.  His love had validated me and completed me in a way that I hadn’t thought possible.

But on the other hand, of course, it was a tragic, sad and painful day.  My husband was dead, our marriage had technically lasted 45 days - 'til death do us part. Even though, as many of you would agree, I still feel very much married and consider myself to be his wife, more so than his widow.  How do I bask in the glow of on his love and memory of this blessed day when I am grieving his death so deeply? 

I’m learning that while it’s normal to ponder these philosophical-type questions, I need to stop putting so much pressure on my self to find the answers.  I have always been a proactive problem solver but grief is teaching me to sit in the moment, be patient and let the world turn without trying to preempt and resolve everything.  I’m relying on my instincts so much more than I ever have before.  So, rather than decide what this day meant to me and how I should mark it, I decided to just let myself feel my way through. 

I started off with a major meltdown the night before, while reading the beautiful card he wrote me and watching the video footage of our wedding. It wasn’t intentional, but a good few hours of crying and I think I got most of my tears out – meaning the actual anniversary ended up being a much calmer affair.

I spent the day with my sister, who was my maid of honour and has been by my side every step of this difficult journey. We went to the cemetery in the morning before getting massages at a day spa and then met up with my best friend (who was my other bridesmaid) for lunch. The afternoon was spent curled up in bed, where we watched trashy tv, ate chocolate and drank cup of tea, after cup of tea.

There was lots of reminiscing about that beautiful day – so many happy memories that deserved to be aired.  Both my sister and my friend miss Dan too and, having played an important role in our wedding and our lives, they are also going through their own, different grieving process.  

So, overall, it was a very difficult day but I got through it, with a heavy heart.  It was cruel, agonising, complicated and exhausting, just like grief.  I'm glad I managed to go out and do something nice, I know Dan would have been pleased about that too. Like many milestones, the lead up was more painful than the event itself, but that doesn’t take away from the overwhelming task of reaching and passing them.  

I miss my husband with every fiber of my being. I ache for the life we should be living and will never be ‘ok’ with the fact that he was taken from me so soon, in such tragic circumstances. 

But, I will be forever grateful for our wedding day. Despite suffering with his depression on and off over the months leading up, he was truly happy on that day.  I look at the photos of his wide, cheeky grin and listen to his wedding speech about how he realized he had found his ‘home’ when he met me, and that is so, so precious to me. I'm thankful that we had that special day with everyone we loved.  It was a beautiful day - the best day - my favourite day.  

What If

One of the amazing and inspiring things that has happened as a result of losing the person I love most in this world to death, is meeting so many incredible and beautiful people who have also lost the person they love most. One of these people is my friend Sarah Treanor. Some of you may know of her, as she is the Sunday writer here at "Widow's Voice." Sarah and I originally met on Facebook, in one of the many widowed people private/closed groups I am a part of, and then we became close and exchanged numbers and started calling each other regularly to laugh and cry and ... well ... you all understand. This past March, I finally met Sarah in person at Camp Widow. It was beyond awesome. I consider Sarah family. She is a part of my new, strange, second-family in this new life; my family of widowed people. Today was the 2-year anniversary of the death of Sarah's fiance, Andrew (Drew.) I wrote this piece for her - for them - and posted it on her Facebook page, but it's universal enough to post here too. Aside from a few specifics about my husband and her fiance in the poem, it relates to everyone. All of us. These are just some of the thoughts that I was thinking about today, and that I think about often. What if .....


What if every time you took a breath, 
He was breathing too
What if you were stretching on the sun
While he was sitting on the Moon

What if time did not matter
And love had no end 
So all the things you dreamt about
Were happening again

Do you wonder what the stars see
When we look at the stars
Are they reaching down toward all of us
Collecting us in jars

Looking up seems strange to me,
Begging to the sky
What if they are everywhere
What if no-one dies?

If he is made of energy
And energy lives on
Then maybe he still flies with you
Sings your favorite song

Or maybe he’s the pilot
And mine’s the EMT
And we brought them together
Friends, like you and me

He could be a forest
A tree, a branch, a vine
Maybe when you’re hiking there
Your feet and his align

Or what if you created Art
Based on his Ideas
A shift in wind or change in tone
And you sensed he was Here

What if all the love we had
Carried us to shore
What if all the memories
Could actually be more …

What if everyone and everything
That we have ever loved
flew inside the universe
like mother nature’s Dove

And the star
Was You
And the Ocean
Was You
And the fire
Was You
And the sand and sky
And the waterfall
Were mom and dad
And Drew

So nobody died
Nobody left
They are Love
You are Love
Everything
And everyone
Is Love.
What if ...