And Now for Something Completely Different

Some things remain unchanged for centuries, such as Stonehenge (my photo, two summers ago). Others change much more rapidly, such as myself (no photo, you've seen me before ;).

I guess 4 and a half years isn't a tiny bit of time, but in the framework of a lifetime, 4 years is pretty quick. I find it hard to believe how far I've come since November 2005. At the time, I thought my life was over, I was preparing myself to just suffer through the rest of it.

Flash forward to today, and I'm able to see the possibilities. I'm able, once again, to move forward with my life, feeling that things are pretty darn good. Unlike what I thought, my life didn't end in 2005, it morphed into something different. I'm different too, harder in some ways, and softer in others, but still me at the core. It took a little while to find me again, but I'm here. Underneath the pain of loss and the reality of grief - the mischievous girl with the twisted sense of humor still lurked. I'm glad she's back full-time, I missed her!

It's a musical Tuesday -

Some things in life are bad

They can make you really mad

Other things just make you swear and curse.

When you're chewing on life's gristle

Don't grumble, give a whistle

And this'll help things turn out for the best....

And....always look on the bright side of life....

Always look on the light side of life....

For life is quite absurd

And death's the final word

You must always face the curtain with a bow.

Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin

Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.

So, always look on the bright side of death

Just before you draw your terminal breath....

Life's a piece of shit

When you look at it

Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.....

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=1loyjm4SOa0&feature=related

Happy Tuesday! - Michelle D.

Guess Who is Coming to Dinner?

I don't know why, but when I sat down to write this post, I thought of this title. Recently I was asked to be a guest blogger here on Widow's Voice, so here I am. This new world that I have become a part of is very strange. Sometimes I feel like my new peer group should be called something darker, like Knights of the Darkness, or The Left Behind. Let me introduce myself. My name is Dan, and I am a widower. Some of you may already be familiar with me, or my blog, Dan, in real time. My husband, Michael, died 9 months ago due to a brain tumor.

Michael and I had only been a couple for 1 1/2 years when he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Our lives changed immediately, and for the next two years we were on an amazing journey of love, illness, and death. When I think about the film, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," I think about the element of surprise, and about the misconceptions we have about each other. As we go about our daily lives, we often don't realize how insular we can become. I think we tend to find ourselves surrounded by those with whom we most identify. If we look around ourselves, we sometimes see that we have chosen people who are like minded, or have similar life experiences. When something like the death of a spouse happens, we are completely thrown off. Who is our peer group now? Suddenly those that understood us or those that we previously identified with are clueless. Of course this is not a slight against our friends, or family, it is just that we find ourselves dealing with issues that they haven't had to experience.

I have come to accept the limitations that come from being at this place. In my daily life, I am often in an environment where I am interacting with what most would consider my peer group, other gay men. Yet when I am approached for conversation, my peer group can be thrown off when I reply that I am neither single or in a relationship, but in fact widowed. I am not what they expected. Sometimes in my widowed interactions, which tend to be online, people can be thrown off when I state that I am widowed by the death of my husband, not my wife. Again, not necessarily what the other person expected.

So what's a new dinner guest to do? Frankly, just be myself. With time, I am finding that all I can do, and all I have the energy to do, is be myself. People will adjust, or they won't. They may do what I do when I meet someone new, listen, and try to find a bridge that connects us. Sometimes we find that we are a good fit, and other times we don't. Yet what I have found during this difficult time is that finding another widow(er) to sit with is rare. When I do find them, I focus on that which connects us. This experience of grief seems to supersede all other factors. So while I may initially be aware of that which makes us different, I have come to understand that what matters most is that which binds us.

http://daninrealtime.blogspot.com/

Blind

2002 summer family photo

This post if from May 8, 2009, just 22 days after Art died.

Recently I needed to go back, to see how far I'd come. I've been blind to the changes -- the small little changes like that I can remember to order shoes, and that today is hot lunch day at camp each thought within 10 seconds of each other. This daily action of putting one foot in front of the other, sometimes with confidence and other times only by force, leaves me unable to see where it is I started.

----

Day 22
May 8, 2009

Emotional residue from receiving the death certificates was all over me today.

I watched movies, read and suffered with heartburn. I felt like I was swimming through stern fog – muffled, holding me up, my movements like those of a beginner marionette puppeteer.

I am tired of talking to people about how I feel. I am tired of talking. I want to be left alone only not alone. I need people around me, just quietly there. Come to my house and read a book, roll your eyes with me when I get snippy at the kids. But don’t ask me how I’m feeling. Telling you leaves me with little left.

---

Now, at day 420 after his death, I find that I have spiraled back around but in a different place. I am tired, again, of talking about how I feel about his death. I find comfort in being with the few close friends Art and I had before this journey began, where I can bring up his name and not a single person gives me those stupid puppy eyes or reaches for my arm. Only here today, I see that a new woman has emerged. So it's not that talking about it is so draining, it just feels more like talking about it is a waste of my very valuable time.

I also noticed I don't have widow mouth. I can have full conversation with stranger for over an hour and mention that I am a widow. I do, however, derive secret sadistic pleasure in comments like "My husband was 6'6"" or "My husband was the Upper School Director of ___________."

While I am not surprised to find myself here, I am a bit taken aback because this is not how I pictured it. But death never is how we picture it, is it.

Dark Nights of the Soul

Warning: This post may be unsettling to many. It was written 8 days ago.

I thought about it today.
And yesterday
And actually been thinking about it for 5 days straight.
Considering different ways to do it. Quick, painless ways to do it.

I’ve been thinking about killing myself.

The fact that I am writing about this means, I think….I am working past this feeling.

I hope.

This running of me, the running of my children’s lives, the running of my business, the worry of money, the worry of asking for help…..again. It’s stretched me beyond ….
I am so thin, wispy….. I can’t see myself.
Father’s Day, a school wide celebration called Moving Up Day, the death of the husband of a friend, the running out of money, the knowledge again, that there is no protecting my children, just shielding them from a few things and offering them tools to cope. Ha!

Tools to cope, where are mine?

I know suicide would be selfish.
I know that it is possible that my children would never understand.
And I know that I am in extraordinary pain.
And I know that dying would be quieter, easier and would end the pain. I know this is what my husband felt when during his battle with cancer he said to me “I’m just so tired. I just want to rest.”

I know that you, the reader may call me cowardly, a horrible selfish mother.

And you would be right and you would be wrong. The pain is so intense that I feel my kids would be better off without this monster mother I have become, roaming freely in the world, angry, mean, blowing up for no good reason at random.

I find myself looking at another shopping list, listening to another bickering session between my kids, packing another lunch, making another play date phone call, trying to stretch $1 into $2 and then going to bed and doing it all over again the next day. I find it all too much. And I ask,

“Is this all there is?”

After the intense loss, after learning how to be OK without him, after the grief has turned deep and mellow, is this all there is? Is this what I was fighting to get too?

I remember when Art and I would share the weekends. One morning one of us got to sleep in. For a few hours in a week, one of us got time to ourselves to do whatever we wanted to do. I remember we provided for each other with back-up, guidance, help, humor (I have forgotten what it feels like to have a really big belly laugh!) I remember feeling like I could fall down cause not only was there someone there to pick me up but to clean up the mess as well.

The wave of grief has me so far down that swimming to air, if I knew which way was up, feels like it would take too much energy. Energy I simply don’t have.

My friend said, “Imagine BP (the oil company) losing ½ their staff during this crisis. That’s what happened to you. You lost half your staff when Art died and you were in crisis and still are.”

That makes me smile. It puts an image to the burden I feel.

He follows with “You need a break.” And I want to smack him. How do you take a break from kids who can’t stand to have you go away?

Everyone says you need a break and yet no one helps you get one! I wrote this once before, it’s like the airplane thing when they say put the mask on yourself first. What if you mask is all tangled up, barely within reach, in knots.

What then? A break feels like that tangle knot. I simple don’t know where the energy to plan for break will come from. One “So sorry, Kim, I can’t.” from a friend who I ask for help would rip a whole in my already thin existence.

----

Later

I did go to the beach today for one hour while the kids were in camp. And I slept. I slept for two hours before I was awakened by my alarm that said “Get up, get up. Time to be a mom.” And I got up and I picked up the kids and I fed them (a meal full of carbohydrates with a trace of vegetable called sauce.) and they are now in bed. It is all I can ask of myself right now and it has to be good enough. It just simply has to be.
---

Saturday, June 26, 2010
As I reread this to prepare it for posting, I realize the suicidal thoughts have diminished greatly. I have only been this depressed one other time in my life. The whole experience makes me shudder. The dark nights of my soul were so dark that it will take many nights of light till I feel normal again.

I credit one good friend, my therapist and a re-commitment to my spiritual practice for saving my life. “Walking into the fear, instead of running away from i,t is when it losses it’s power.” Kinda the "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." For me it was about walking into it, instead of trying to dodge it.

And, mostly I credit my kids, their hugs, their “Mom can I help you?” and their gentleness towards me during those really tough days. While they didn't know what I was thinking, they were hipped to the intense emotions. If Art hadn't died, if my kids hadn't seen me grieve and hadn't grieved themselves, I don't think they would ever have been able to offer up their support as beautifully and honestly as they did. They can drive me to the edge and it is with incredible gratitude I see they can also bring me back from it.

Embrace

"I don't understand what's happened to me?"

"It's huge. You've finely embraced the life you hadn't planned on."

This quote from a movie just keeps echoing in my brain.

I've noticed that, with quotes and words...they have a way of sticking to the sides of your mind during different parts of our life.

Some temporarily to help you get through the day or empower you to march on, others to bring you comfort in knowing that your pain has been felt by another, and in this case, to remind me that as much as i may have never fathomed it....I'm embracing this life I have.

The funny thing is...I don't understand it either.

I guess it's like most things in my life since Michael was killed...out of nowhere, it just happened.

I guess the only way to describe it is like being in line for a REALLY scary rollercoaster. One that you didn't want to ride but got pulled into line for. Plus on top of that...it's a really looonnnggg line, so any hesitation and fear you have in actually getting on is enhanced by the fact that you must now wait, watch, and either walk through the other coaster-goers (head down of course) back to the entrance you came in through, or stay in line, hope for the best, and take the exit you were made to take. If you decide the latter route, I (at least) am one of those folks that has to ask everyone around me if they have been on this ride before; "Is it scary?", "How many times have you been on it?", "It's not that bad? Are you sure?" and of course, as the questions take place you hear screaming from those who have already met their fate with the metal mammoth. Then I get jumpy like, 'I'm going to do this, woo...yeah!", while secretly hoping that I can play the "I really have to go to the restroom" card.

But then it happens! You look up and the wait is over and you are asked to take your seats (hopefully you'll be sat next to one of the new friends you've made in line). The bars go down and before you can even anticipate anything, your zooming off.

That's how life's been after Michael's death. Lots of fear, having to ask others who have been on this ride before, or on for the first time, how they feel about it, and before you know it you're going full speed ahead, with plenty of loops and turns thrown in.

I guess the important thing to do when the ride finally takes off is to put your arms up, keep your eyes open, scream as loud as you can, and when it concludes, if given the chance, get back in line and ride it all over again.

Embrace the life you hadn't planned on.

....by the way

Photo from Auburn University

I am seeing all sorts of old and familiar faces since we moved back to my hometown. It's been great getting reacquainted with now-grown children of my youth. We discuss how the town has changed. That the one stop light in town is no longer the one stop light in town. Gossip about the nastiest boy in our class has changed and where he is now.
I find it so very interesting to know who or what the townsfolk have become, who they've married and how many children they've had. Looking at the faces of their little ones makes me grin seeing the familiar face of their parents as children staring right back at me.
Somehow during the conversation I seem to blurt out, almost Tourette's like, "My husband died."
I feel like a dork when I say it. But I can feel it building inside me like a burp and suddenly spew it out at my long-lost aquaintance. The moment after resembles the pause that I could imagine occurring if I had indeed loudly belched in their face. My burped words seem to echo between us.
If I somehow manage to come away from our brief visit in the parking lot without this almost involuntary admission, I feel as if I have mislead the other person somehow. That they are missing some huge part of the puzzle. But if I include it, it's an echo invoker.
I still, after two years, do not know what is the appropriate way to include this humungous tidbit into a brief summary of my life.....and socially, I don't know if any one really wants to know?
I wonder, is this normal? Do other widow/ers have this compulsion? Should I try to stop?

written words

today, someone asked

me what i do.

when i told her

she asked,

“how do you come up with them?”

“i don’t know,” i said.

“i can’t make them stop.”

and it reminded me that

i used to wonder,

are there enough of them?

they seemed so hard to

come by before that

moment, but now,

they’re as plentiful as

the rays of light

blanketing los angeles

in july.

these things,

they’re that rope

i found hanging from

the sky that day,

the one i held,

floating away

as the rest of

the world disappeared.

and as tightly as

i’ve clung to them,

they’re the reason i

can let go

of some things.