To Be The Giver

Every once in a while, something slams into us without warning. On a hot summer night two years ago, it was the phone call, with my father-in-law on the other end of the line telling me that the love of my life was in a crash while flying, and he didn't make it. His death slammed into me like two planets colliding.

And then this week, on another hot summer night, I think Robin Williams' death slammed into all of us. I have been surprised by just how deeply this has affected me. I've found myself having the same reaction of disbelief as when my fiancé died. The same outcry from deep inside myself that "No. No. This cannot be real." I've cried multiple times, deep sobs, for the loss of this man who - despite having never even met me - had a huge impact on my life. I grew up with him, watching Mork & Mindy and later Mrs. Doubtfire just about every week. I watched The Birdcage religiously through college - one of my go-to movies whenever I needed a break from all the stress in life. I watched Hook countless times whenever I needed a good dose of wonder and a reminder that life is full of magic. In fact, just a few weeks ago I watched it for just that reason… I watched Robin's childlike eyes light up and it made me believe in wonder and beauty and magic again.

All of this has got me thinking… how many people's lives do we touch that we have no idea about?
How many people's lives do I touch by writing here each week? Or by sharing my artwork about grief and loss? Or by just being kind and a good listener? There are countless people who may never tell us that we touched their lives… but nonetheless we have. And I don't think we ever have a clue just how much impact we have on others by the choices we make and the ways we choose to live our lives and treat others. But this week, this one very special man reminded me of just that. His death reminded me not only of the impact he has had, but of the capacity we ALL have to impact each other, inspire each other, love each other, and make each other laugh. It reminded me that - when I feel most alone - I can think about the little ways I've touched people's lives and know that I probably touched twice as many as I could ever know. We all have. Somehow, it makes things feel less lonely. It makes my heart feel more open and warm.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post. I hadn't planned to write about this today… so I'm letting it take me along for the ride. There has been much to think about this week, but what I am thinking on right now is that one idea: We touch so many more lives than we know. Every single interaction we have is a chance to leave the other person better than we found them. Every. Single. One. To give them laughter they didn't have, comfort they need, most of all - to allow them to feel seen and noticed. We all want to be noticed.

The beautiful thing about being the giver is that it goes both ways. Every time you give to someone else - that love flows right back to you. A selfless act of love for another is one of the most healing and beautiful gifts you can ever give - to them and to yourself.  Most especially in the midst of great loss.

It was death that woke me up to this two years ago, and keeps it in the forefront of my heart now. It is death that continues to remind me each day that every single interaction with another person matters… whether I've known them a decade or a day. It is death that reminds me that the way I live my life matters… and that I matter, probably far more than I will ever realize. 

Take time out

Self-care can be taking the time to enjoy the light and scent of a beautiful candle

This week I started out wanting to write about how difficult it's been facing the onslaught of traditional and social media commentary on Robin Williams' death, from the point of view of a suicide widow.

I wanted to talk about how it felt to read the ignorant, misinformed and hurtful remarks about suicide being 'selfish' and 'a choice' or 'the cowards way out'.

I wanted to talk about how my battered and bruised heart broke, again, for his family. And the personal triggers that have been set off, taking me right back to that day I lost my love to the demon disease depression.

But I'm exhausted from the relentless onslaught of information.  It's like every day there's another new angle the media has found to explore. The thousands of words that I've read about him began to swirl around and around me to the point where it's just become white noise. It started getting hard to breathe.

So instead, I'm choosing to remove myself from that space and talk about 'self-care'. Because when my energy levels start to drop and my anxiety begins to rise, I know it's time for me to wind things back a couple of notches and give myself room to breath again.

Self-care doesn't come easy to me. I'm not great at being assertive and am a 'pleaser' in the sense where I'll put myself out rather risk making someone else uncomfortable. Not with family of course, growing up I had no qualms in hogging the biggest piece of cake or disappearing after dinner when it came time to do the dishes. However when it comes to work or social situations, I seem to be forever worried about disappointing people or being seen as self-seeking or high-maintenance.

Luckily, I’ve had a wonderful counselor who helped me understand the difference between being ‘selfish’ and ‘self-care’ and with her help, I’ve learnt to identify when I need to say no or pull back; and how to let go of the guilt I’d usually associate with this.

I’m now actually really good at it.  I’ve developed an internal monologue that goes something like ‘Right, how are we holding up?  Have we got this?  Can I push on a bit longer or is it time to take a break? Yeah, feeling a bit fragile to be honest.  Ok, time to pull back.” 

Sometimes it feels like I’m a little character in a video game, running around collecting coins and fighting monsters and bouncing from level to level, and then suddenly I remember I’ve forgotten to collect those nourishing ‘food’ energy tokens.  Something red starts flashing in the corner of the screen and ominous tones start beeping at me, letting my know my vitality levels are dramatically low – if I don’t stop fighting the dragons and make ‘self-care’ my priority, it will soon be Game Over and I'll be back at the start.

So for me, self-care can be taking a half-hour break from work to walk through the nearby botanical garden or shouting myself to a 20-minute shoulder massage or pedicure.  It might be turning my phone and lap top off for the night to curl up on the lounge with a cup of tea, a packet of chocolate biscuits and some trashy reality tv (hello Real Housewives!).  Or it might be running a hot bath, lighting a candle and soaking in the silence. 

It's also about knowing when I'm reaching my limits in regards to my triggers.  There are days where I can talk openly about what happened to Dan.  I can speak up about his experience with depression and help others understand some of the challenges that he faced, doing my bit to raise awareness and fight the persistent stigmas.  However some days it can be too much.  Too heavy.  Too personal and too heartbreaking.  So it's also about knowing when I have to put my own wellbeing first, identifying the times when I'm nearing exhaustion and working out how to protect that part of me that is still grieving his loss. 

Yoga and meditation has been a wonderful source of self-care for me.  This week, when I started feeling dangerously low, I spent 75 minutes laying on a mat, listening to the calming voice of my yoga instructor reminding me not to let the past pull me back or the future pull me forward, but to live in the moment and quieten my mind.

For some of my widow friends, self-care can be cooking, reading, doing craft, going for a run or gardening. Basically anything that helps shut the noise of the world out, even for 15 minutes. 

Whatever it may be for you, I hope you too can find your place of peace and learn to check in there regularly.  After all, we are unable to grow and blossom without nourishment.

Robin Williams and The Door

As heartbroken as I am about the death of Robin Williams, I am not entirely shocked. Not entirely.  I recall about 4 or 5 months ago maybe, seeing him as a guest on some late night talk show. (cannot remember which one) I remember distinctly thinking to myself that he looked exhausted, withdrawn, and old. Not old in the way that he got gray hair or wrinkles, but old in the way that life had beaten him up one too many times. He was coming up with insane one-liners and jokes like always, but his eyes looked vacant to me. He looked lost and in slower-motion than normal. I remember just silently thinking to myself: “He seems sad.” Then, about a month or two ago, I remember reading that he had checked himself into a rehab facility, “for precautionary reasons.” Everyone was saying good for him and all that, and it was – but I just felt like something was off. Like it was the beginning of the end somehow.

I recognized the darkness in his eyes that night, and the light that had left them – because I had been there too. Not in the exact same "there" as he was, because how could I ever know the darkness that he felt, but I was in my own darkness, and seeing his looked familiar to me. Before losing my husband to sudden death, I didn’t understand depression, or suicide. Not really. Not truly. I was never judgmental about it, but I didn’t get it. Then my husband died, and I died too. My soul was in pieces – my light went out. All I could see was darkness. There were many nights, 3 months after the death, 7 months after, 13 months after, 19 months after, where I sat inside my own darkness and thought about not being on earth anymore. The pain was so awful and so unbearable, that I didn’t understand what to do with it. Most nights when I felt that way, I would log on and reach out to the Facebook world, or call up another widowed friend late into the night.

Sometimes that got me through. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes I still didn’t want to live. One night, when I felt that way, I called my grief counselor in an “emergency session”, and we talked for a long time. I said: “I just don’t want to be here anymore. It hurts too much, and I really think the pain is going to kill me anyway, because how can anyone live, being in this much pain all the time? I can’t do it.” She got very serious and then she said to me: “Do I need to call the hospital? Do you feel like you might harm yourself?” I stopped and thought about it for a minute, and then I said very calmly: “No. I don’t want to be here, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it. Not wanting to live isn’t the same as wanting to die. I just needed to say it out loud.”

I was grieving, and all I could see was darkness and more pain. I didn’t understand or see that there might be a way through that pain, and I didn’t have the energy or desire to think forward. I just saw blackness. But even in my days and hours of blackness, and even when I didn’t feel any hope – I still was not willing to actively take my own life. I would sit around THINKING about suicide all the time. I actually sort of obsessed about it sometimes, and thought about all the different ways I might do it. But in the end, something somewhere inside of me knew that I would never actually do it. I just knew that I would have to sit inside of this awful, horrific, mind-blowing pain – until it wasn’t as horrific anymore.

Depression is different than that. It is an illness, and it takes you over and screws with your head and hurts you. It makes you think that you are a burden to everyone else, and that maybe the world is better off without you. You just want the pain to stop, and so ending your life FEELS like the only logical way to make it stop. Depression is all over my family – almost everyone on my dad’s side has dealt with it in some form. It is on my mom’s side too, as are other forms of mental illness. I have dealt with anxiety and PTSD as a result of my husband’s sudden death, along with other trauma I have experienced in my life that I won’t get into in this post. Mental illness is just that – an illness. Why we continue to blame the person going through it is beyond me. The person going through it does not have the capability to think what I thought that night talking with my counselor. They don’t think: “This is really going to hurt my family”, or “I don’t much feel like living right now, but I don’t want to die either.” No. Their brain has turned on them. They have a chemical imbalance that they fight against everyday. Now, I am not saying that every person who takes their own life is suffering from mental illness. But I’m willing to bet a good portion of them are. And with depression, which Robin Williams had struggled with his whole life and talked about openly; most times; you are done reaching out or you HAVE reached out but you no longer want to – you just want the hurt to end.

So you end it. And it’s not selfish. And it’s not cowardly. It is a person in a lot of very real pain. It is a person, most likely, with a disease. It is a person whose light turned off long ago, and they couldn’t find their way out of the room.

RIP Robin Williams.

I’m so sorry that your light went out before you could reach the door.

Gathering Rosebuds

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

                -Robert Herrick

Robin Williams died this week. Too early. He was in pain. Hard for us all out here who didn't know him personally to imagine this, seeing only what he gave us in his performances - so much laughter, so much character, so much life. But he was. Hard not to think about his widow, and his family, suffering this loss in their private, personal lives. And it brings depression to the forefront, this week. So as we mourn the loss of this spectacular talent, maybe there will be some work done, some awareness brought forth, to help someone else in need out there. I think Mr. Williams might be glad of that, if anything else. 

My heart goes out to all who are suffering this debilitating condition. I know there are many causes for depression. I can only speak now as a widow, but I am aware that depression affects many of us. Because loss of a spouse is a terrible, life-changing, tragic event that can send even the strongest of us into a deep and dark abyss. 

Mr. Williams is known for many performances, one of which was a teacher in the Dead Poets Society. In that film, which incidentally also deals with suicide, he teaches his students the meaning of the Latin term carpe diem, or "seize the day", by having them read the poem I quoted above from Robert Herrick. Time, and life, are fleeting. Boy that is sure true.

Lauren Bacall also died this week, of a stroke at age 89. Also immensely beautiful and talented, her death got lost a little in the media, coming so close on the heels to Mr. Williams' unexpected demise. But Ms. Bacall has a story too. She lost her love, Humphrey Bogart, after only 12 years of marriage. She was only 20 when they married; he was 45. I do wonder about her pain after she lost Bogie. I suspect  she never stopped missing him, but looking back on her life, she gathered many more rosebuds, I think.

These are celebrity stories. But they are also personal stories. It doesn't matter how famous someone is, or isn't. It's just true that death affects us. There are a lot of people out there in deep pain and grief that we never hear about. We in the widowed community live with death. We know it. We are scarred by it. We think about it. And we are perhaps not as surprised when other people die. It doesn't make it any easier, if another friend, family member, or even celebrity passes away. But we know: it happens.

Mike gathered a lot of rosebuds in his life. The way he lived, in full love and joy especially in his last years, will never stop resonating for me as I struggle to move forward after his loss. So I am out here myself, attempting to seize as many days as I can. It's not easy. Roses have thorns, for one thing. Because no matter what future happiness I find, I will never stop grieving for Mike. 

I am dating someone I didn't expect, or look for. He is a rose that literally fell into my lap. But there it is. I'm thankful for it, even though it doesn't end the pain of losing my dear Michael. He will always be in my heart. And my new guy knows this. I think some people who knew Mike and me as a couple don't get that...yet. Hopefully some day they will. I can't say I know what will happen in any long term kind of way yet, but I'm just seizing days as they come.

In fact, I'm about to leave on a trip with my new guy. We talked at length about life, how fleeting it is, how important it is for us to try and visit with our parents, to take this trip while we can, while they are still here, and even, while we are still here. Because all our futures are uncertain. We none of us know how long we have. So we are going. We are still new, together, and it's not cheap coming from way out here in Hawaii, but we are going. 

Our primary purpose is to visit with family. Secondary is a chance to rest. To take a break. To get off our rock of an island, to get away from the day-to-day that we've both been dealing with, to see the world a little, maybe to share each other's lives with each other a little more. To gain some perspective on it all.

All I am doing is living, day to day. It's all I can do. There are people out there, people dear to me, who are going through deeply painful losses as well - and I know, that's all they are doing too. Just scraping along. But I hope, little by little, we can all find a new rose now and then, amidst all the pain.

It's all we any of us can do.

Shhhhh....

Shhhh...

You can't see me.

I am an amorphous spirit living within the physical body of the woman I used to be.

I'm not really here.

The mute button has been activated and what you (the world) sees is a woman who wears a lot of pink, who drives a pink car, towing a pink-trimmed trailer around the country.  Perhaps, I think to myself, this pink, my mourning color, is also to ensure that people see me when I feel I've disappeared.

Simultaneously I am outside my body, observing myself, and I am behind the screen of my body, looking out, detached and disconnected.  I am in the TV and the mute button is on so you see a person moving, smiling, laughing....all these things and yet, nothing.

I have no interest in being here in this life.  Quite honestly, life without my husband is exhausting.  Emotionally, I mean.  Anyone can learn the practical stuff and I'm a competent woman and I do all kinds of shit I did when Chuck was alive and I do even more now that he's dead.  (like all of us).

Emotionally though?  Totally different story.  I don't like life without him.  I feel the lack of his energy, the masculine energy and presence, the feeling of fullness that we had together that is glaringly gone.

I'm supposed to care about life, to be grateful that I wake each morning.  I think its supposed to be enough for me that I have our kids and grandkids as my reason for getting up every day.

With the greatest love for our kids and grands...it isn't enough.  My life never revolved around our kids, nor did Chuck's.  Our lives revolved around each other, especially once our 4 grew up and went out on their own, especially once he and I went out adventuring on the road.  We reveled in our time together, he and I.  Our marriage was a passionate marriage.  That was my life.  Chuck and Alison.  We two.

There is no self-pity.  Life happens.  People love, cancer happens, people die.  I am one among many over the centuries.  No violins necessary.

Just a simple statement of fact.  Loving Chuck, being in love with him, was my life.  I was very independent but being in love with him boosted me up among the clouds.  When he died, I did too.  Since then I am only going through the motions of life.

I'm creating a life for myself without him.  I'm being and doing and talking and all that jazz.  I'm on my third trek cross-country.  I'm doing every fucking thing I can to engage in life.  But who you see, who the world sees, is not who is.

Because, you see, I'm not really here.

Wow, What a Widow Brain

source

 

I had intended to write about the crappiness of turning 40 over the weekend as a widow.  How much I wish Ian was here to mark this milestone, and because he's not, I had no real desire to celebrate or really mark the occasion.  But have friends insisting that I do so (so compromised with a very expensive dinner for a small group of friends).

But then I could have burnt the house down on Thursday.

Thanks to widow brain.

................

Thinking ahead to my evening class and my stomach since class crosses my usual dinner time, I put a pot of soup to heat on the stove; something to tide me over.

And promptly forgot about it and headed off to my 3 hour class.



5 hours later, mid-lecture, I remember.  The image of putting the pot on the stove, lighting the flame flashed through my mind, over-riding all attempts of my lecturer to impart knowledge on financial ratios on me.     

And had that horrific, sinking feeling hit.  The adrenalin.  The sick to the stomach feeling.  Very similar to the reality of Ian's illness hitting, in all honesty.

I had the regret of saying to my step-mother some 18 months ago, that at times I wished the house would burn down so I didn't have to make decisions about what to keep and what to toss. 

Ian always said be careful what you wish for.
 
I'm so glad my Dad lives relatively close to my place, so he got a panicked phone call.  He headed over to my place to check it out.  I also called my security company as I have a monitored heat sensor in the kitchen, and  was told that no alarms had gone off.  Whew - that news lessened the stress levels a very little.

Sitting in the taxi back to my dads, where my car was parked, I quickly progress through "this is a disaster, how will I cope", to "both John and I are ok. Even if I've lost all Ian's things, we're both ok" to "well, if it's burnt down, what design will I re-build, or at the very least, insurance will pay for the interior re-paint I've been wanting to get done if there's just smoke damage".

When my dad finally called  (because of course not only did he get every red light, but a freight train at the rail crossing between his and my place), I got the news that the house was very smoky, the soup had converted to carbon, and the saucepan was only good for the bin.  But thankfully no flames or smoke damage; the house just needs a bit of an airing.

And I still need to paint the place myself.

Compounding

(Two posts in a row about song lyrics!)

In the car the other day an Iron and Wine song came on.

I've never paid attention to the lyrics before but suddenly, they penetrated and I heard them for the first time.

It's not a new topic for a song: a soldier at war, missing his wife and kid and finally coming home.

However, I wasn't expecting the twist at the end...

And I want to see my family
My wife and child are waiting for me
I've got to go home
I've been so alone, you see

When I walked through the door my wife she laid upon the floor
And with tears her eyes did soar, I did not know why
Then I looked into her hand and I saw the telegram
Said that I was a brave, brave man but that I was dead

I want to see my family
My wife and child are waiting for me
Got to go home
I've been so alone, you see

I was in tears, like a switch had been turned on. No stopping it. Waves and waves of pain. 

I realized I'd been, again and again in days and months and years after Dave died, all this time, imagining him beyond mourning as a dead person. Either death meant no more experiences anyway because there is no afterlife, or it meant your soul went on somehow, somewhere, but you were elevated to a place where you were at peace with everything. Either way, at least he wasn't hurting like I was. 

Honestly, the thought of Dave somewhere else, some different plane, also grieving his loss, was too much to consider. My sadness took up my whole being. Imagining him somewhere, suffering just as much or more than I was too much to bear and I never allowed the thought. 

But now that I'm no longer acutely grieving, this perversely painful thought took hold thanks to these lyrics. 

What if he was or is in pain, too? And he's beyond my help and I'm beyond his help? In a world unfair enough to take him from me like this, who was I to believe the universe was somehow fair enough to allow at least him to have some peace as a soul? Come on. How ridiculous. I've been fooling myself. Who's to say a spirit, if it exists, can't mourn too?

It doesn't really matter though. It's beyond my ability to know, either way. It's not my job to know. It's my job to heal. I will not torture myself unnecessarily. 

Grief still arises in me like a fever. I don't see it coming and I can't do anything but let it rise in me and then pass through me. I will let it but I won't allow myself to compound it with imaginary pain. 

Whether it's true or not, I'll go on imagining him free from pain, whatever state he is or isn't in now.

I've suffered enough.