6 Years, 9 Months - Stepchildren

I am feeling very lonely tonight. My stepdaughter came to pick up her dad’s yearbooks. Her husband stayed in the car. She moved to this area with her mom so she could be by her dad. Her mom still lives her too. I only see my daughter a few times a year. She comes over, never sits down, and picks up things of her dads and then leaves. I have not seen her sister in years. The last time I saw her was at a family funeral and we never even made eye contact. She stayed in the living room and front yard and I stayed in the kitchen and backyard. It is not that I do not want to see her. She does not want to look at my face. She cancelled going to the family get-together the following day because I would be there. All the losses weigh on me tonight. Losing a spouse enviably means losing most of his family too. You just do not know this at the time. The morning after his service, half of the large tree in our front yard severed and fell and his family drove away.
I think of my mom. She told me when she was dieing that I only saw her a few times a year for an afternoon, a few phone calls a year, and a random holiday. My life mirrors hers now just like my face.

REVERSE METAMORPHISIS

REVERSE METAMORPHISIS


I was a beautiful butterfly.
You found me when I was a flower dancer basking in the sunshine.
We gracefully soared together towards the open blue sky.

Then the world changed color and the leaves began to fall.
We watched each one float away to finally settle dry.
So soon, the storms of winter came to crash their destruction.

I wandered.
Slowly I stilled becoming a chrysalis that could no longer move.
My wings crumbled.
Wrapped in darkness and quiet, I slept, I cried.
I mourned the days when we were butterflies.


A few butterflies flitted among the spring flowers praising the nectar I no longer tasted.
A ray of summer sunshine would flash its ultraviolet light but I never felt its warmth.
The fall winds tossed me cruelly until winter’s silence again filled me.
I slept, I cried, I mourned the days when I was a butterfly.

No longer cocooned I crept alone outside.
New layers forming as I walked away from the shells discarded.
I searched endlessly to fill the hungry void inside.
I closed my eyes and cried.
I remember the days when we were butterflies.

I turn my head to look up at the sky. I yearn to fly.
I remember the bright clouds and the endless sky.
Yet even now when I cry, I know I am no longer a butterfly.


By Me

6 Years, 9 Months - Wishing

I hear our wedding song and smile. I wish you were here to dance with me in the living room.

6 Years, 9 Months - Time Passing

His love feels fresh and I think of him everyday.

Yet, there are little reminders of how much time has passed:
The shirt I am discarding that I purchased while driving down the Oregon Coast to my girlfriend's wedding. She decided not to have me in her wedding party because my husband had just died.
Helping plan my niece’s wedding. She moved in with me a few months afterwards and fresh out of high school.
Getting together with the family and the new members that have never met him
The lack of hesitation in checking the ‘single’ box when filling out forms
A brief love affair started and ended
The need to repaint the house again although I was on a home decorating frenzy those first two years
Thoughts of replacing my car that he never drove
Going to restaurants and viewing them as places I frequent with someone else, although it used to be one of our favorites.
Being able to drive within walking distance of where he died without having my throat tighten until I throw up.
Having the ability to sell his book collection and vintage car when I held onto his socks forever
Knowing where everything is located at Home Depot
Going to the movie theatre we used to go to every week and barely thinking of him
Hearing the refrigerator make funny noises and thinking it is old and needs replacement. Then recalling that day we bought it at Sears was only a year or so before he got sick.

Lao Tzu

Being deeply loved by someone
gives you strength;
while loving someone deeply
give you courage
-Lao Tzu

EMILY DICKINSON

After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round
Of Ground, or Air,
or Ought A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone

This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow
First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go
EMILY DICKINSON

5 Years, 9 Months - Other Widows' Blogs

I find myself reading other grief blogs today. I am not sad, more curious on the similarities of our paths. After posting a lengthy comment on one blog, I decided to paraphrase it here.

These are a few questions asked by another widow blogger with my answers. I am not sure if I should cite her blog so I am leaning towards anonymous. I will change this if this is improper etiquette.

1.) When do I take my wedding band off?
When you are ready, repeat this mantra repeatedly for all questions relating to 'how long' and 'grief'. However, I did succumb to peer-pressure, as I was the last of my young widow friends to take my ring off. Although I did not feel ready, I thought it might be a step required to move forward. That was years ago and I think it did mark a step forward. Nevertheless, every few months I find myself absent-mindedly rubbing the underside of my ring finger.

2.) If I am remarried, whom do I get buried next to when I die?
The parallel question, depending on your beliefs, is what happens when the three of you are in heaven.

3.) Are my in-laws still my in-laws?
I found In-Laws becomes an option that can be retained or negated by either party and may include some but not all members.

4.) Everyone says the first year is the toughest. Will something magically happen on ’year one’ to make the second year so much better?
The one-year grieving deadline is an outdated belief that needs to be rectified. What happens at one year is you fall backwards temporarily and then continue on your grief journey.

5.) Why do people commemorate the anniversary of someone's death?
The death anniversary almost forces recognition. Your body marks its approach before you even realize the date is nearing. It is better to have a plan than possibly find yourself alone and spinning backwards. The first year my stepdaughter and I went to Disneyland. That was sensory overload and the day ended in her screaming, ‘Why don’t we talk about dad today? It’s his day.‘ For the next few years, my we went hiking in National Parks. Being in nature together was very peaceful and positive. I believe if we had been alone in those early years, it would have been a day of uncontrollable grief. Now I purposely leave an empty calendar. I go somewhere where my husband and I used to go, maybe a restaurant or a walk on the beach. I may read or see a movie. I spend the day quietly, remembering our love and the memories, with maybe one short cry. The next day I am refreshed and back to my quasi-normal life.

6.) How long will my friends and family put up with me?
My widow friends agree that your friends and family hit the times-up buzzer long before you are ready. It is romantic to think they will always be there but do not count on it. Other than these friends, I have only met one other person who understood. More than a decade had past since she lost her child. She told me in about my third year that it never ends. This was just when I was convincing myself I must be wrapping up my last year before I graduated from grieving and returned to the old me. Now I understand. Grief just calms and tucks itself away in a corner of your heart, becoming a part of the new you.

5 Years, 9 Months - Why I Blog My Grief

It is nearing the six-year death anniversary. Recently I started a blog as a means to organize my earlier journal entries. For a period, my only question was how to stop the pain. There were times I thought I was crazy and the only proof I had otherwise was a handful of other young widows that felt the same way. I finally reached a point where I worried how long past the traditional mourning deadline the grief would last.

Blogging my journal reminds me of how much I have healed. My continued friendship with widows refreshes my soul, as they are my true confidantes. Grief has been a non-linear journey that no longer overwhelms me yet has become a part of who I am. I hope others find in my blog the reassurances I have received from that diversified group of young widows that met when our grief was visceral.

5 Years, 5 Months - Healing

Healing has been a non-linear journey.

5 years, 9 Months - Holidays

My mother's birthday, the anniversary of our engagement, Thanksgiving, the anniversary of my mother's death, Christmas, my birthday, New Year's Eve... if only my husband's birthday, the anniversary of his death, our wedding anniversary and Valentine's day could be squeezed into the same two months. Then all the bad days would be done with for the year. There are too many, too close together, as I fall with Autumn to the darkness of winter.

5 years, 9 Months - Holidays

Thankfully the holidays are over. Wherever I go I still feel alone. I do not feel as if I am grieving any longer, just lonely and empty. It is amazing how one person can make you feel. I can spend time with the same people yet feel so alone now.

5 Years, 8 Months - A Glimpse of Grief

I was starting to do okay. The fall was a bit rough. I stopped cleaning my house and gained a lot of weight but I was not too blue. I started feeling rather cheerful this last week. Today, on the way to the post office, I had the radio on in the car. A man jumped from the bridge. Automatically I prayed for his soul, for his family, for the rescue workers as the sisters instilled in me. Then my next automatic thought was, “I understand”. On the way back home a sense of panic started to constrict my throat. I had a flash of my honey sick. I was panicked, saddened, and grieved. My heart was gaining weight and crushing in on my lungs. I had just a glimpse of that old feeling of grief. I experienced ten minutes of the old grief. I tasted the grief that is a full body experience and not just sadness or depression. How did I carry that feeling unending?
I went to a drive-thru for a hot fudge sundae. I did not even think of how he would take me if I had a bad day at work. Nor did I think of how we would go get sundaes on evenings of laughter. I have stopped associating this tradition with him. It is just I, getting a calorie-laden snack to pacify my mood. I think it will help bring me back down. Not up, as in uplifted, but back down from the edge of the precipice. Quickly I walk to the house. If I can write then I can breathe. I will not jump. However, a part of me envies that man today and feels sadness for the people that love him.

2 Years, 1 Month - The Widow's Vacation

I am sitting on Wailaa beach with my old roommate from Maui who has just arrived. One of my oldest friends has been here for a week and is leaving tomorrow. I have been here thirteen days. I have barely been to the beach three times. We hiked the bamboo forest in Hana to two waterfalls with a mutual friend who moved to Maui. We brought one of my husband’s rubber ducks and let it go. Wish I remembered their names. He had three travel ducks, one female and two males, all named. Though they appeared identical at first, they all had a little marking that allowed him to identify them, a color misprint on the bill or a stain from traveling. When we packed for vacation, he would stand in the hallway at his disorganized bathroom shelf, and line up the ducks. He would hold each one and ask himself who would go on the trip. He asked himself aloud and with me nearby. Then he would choose one to pack in his backpack. We were so immature. Nevertheless, those childlike ways made us laugh, and maybe not feel so old among the approaching death, commutes, overtime, mortgage, and ex-wife.
I took one of the ducks and put it in the river by the waterfall. My long time friend took pictures. The duck took off, floating sideways, and we turned to hike back. We passed a break in the bamboo and the friend that lived on Maui said, ‘There he is!” I missed the rubber duck as he floated downstream. We searched for him when we had to cross the river but he was either upstream or had passed us.
I fell into depression for three days after his birthday and the anniversary of his memorial service. My girlfriend headed to the beach alone. I stayed home on the computer. We did go to the beach with our Hawaii friend. She chose some music to play in the car. The one song, one that was on the radio a lot when he died, one about love and loss and wanting to go back. The tears streamed. I was silent. My head turned towards the rolled down window, watching Hawaii roll by. The Hawaii I loved and where I had lived twice. The place we had tickets to go finally with my brother and his family. The tickets we cancelled but did not request a refund in hopes we would go when all the cancer was over, the chemo, the radiation, doctor appointments, the pain, sleeping, the social security forms.
How could I be so foolish? Why was I so hopeful? How could I have been so naïve? In retrospect, I see my husband knew and accepted his death. He protected me by leaving my hope. I thought I was protecting him by not giving up, not losing hope, staying strong, crying alone in the car. All we did is hurt ourselves by grieving and suffering alone. We tried to protect each other and only left each other alone in the worst part of our lives, our marriage.
I am jealous of the widow who cried with her husband, of the ones who could crawl in bed with them and hold them. I am jealous of the wives whose dieing husbands wrote letters to their children or made recordings. Oh, I wish I had his voice, his movements, to view again. I do not even remember his laugh. I know the details of his face will fade from memory as time disintegrates our time together and I slowly replace the framed photos with newer ones. Will I remember his flat jean pockets, his hairless chest, the sight of his bull legs, and the memory of the first time I saw him standing at the foot of the bed? Will I forget his kisses with the mixed smell of Right Guard deodorant, T-gel, sweat, cologne, and Lubriderm?
I know this will happen. I can only remember another love’s face if I think about it and the face shifts and is blurry, finally settling on a face from a photo, a one-dimensional memory.
Why do I have to let him go? Why do I have to move on? Would he have moved forward? I think he would only work and fall asleep in front of the TV. He would work so he was exhausted, could sleep, and had no free time to be alone, time to fill-up with things he would have rather done with his wife. Would he have moved? Would he have dated by now? Would he have purposely died too?
He used to apologize for leaving me, for leaving me alone in grief and not being able to be there when I was old and sick. I told him not to be sorry. He was the one dieing, the one that lost the stick draw. He knew. He knew because he faced the truth I was ignoring.
Couples surround me here in Maui, newlyweds, old couples. All of those happy and in love couples walking by me. The old couples make me the saddest and jealous. Maybe they hate each other back home. Perhaps they cheat, stay late at work to avoid coming home, fight, bicker, sigh of the boredom and routine. The life path that finds them standing in a kitchen, maybe one they can not afford, one that needs remodeling, one in a neighborhood they hate, one that constantly needs cleaning or plumbing repairs. Nevertheless, here for that week or two of their lives they escape, are relatively happy, and have glimpses of the one they used to love. I sit alone with just grief and some old friends.

2 Years, 1 Month - Hope

I am deep in depression on days and yet other times I feel on the verge, the brink. I am leaning forward, knees straight, body stiff, leaning and peering over the edge of an abyss and I am a bit excited.
Am I healing? Am I feeling hope? Is this what hope feels like raw? When you have not felt hope in so long, it is new again, unknown. Have I become a virgin to hope too?

3 Years, 2 Months - Black Arm Bands, Reclusive

Society should also implement the use of black arm bands again. I stood in the locker room stepping into a Speedo, pulling it over my old body. I looked at the young girls bodies, laughing. I did not look in lust or even admiration of youth and health. I looked in yearning. I wanted to scream. I was screaming inside. Can you not see me? Can you not see how much pain I am suffering? My husband died! My husband died! Can you not hear me screaming? I looked a little to long and had to turn away. They might wonder why I was staring. All the answers in their heads would never be the right one. I was not jealous of their bodies, or their youth, or friendships. It was not bisexuality that I did not recognize. I was not a dirty old lady or even rude. I was staring blankly screaming in my head. If I could only have slide the black arm band on after my swimsuit. Then they would know. They would quietly turn away and possibly stop laughing, leaving me in my grief alone. Nevertheless, they would know. It would not hurt so bad maybe if people knew. If the lady at the cash register gave me just a little extra patience because of the arm band. If people were a little quieter around me, a little more gracious, then it would not be so hard to go outside.

3 Years, 2 Months - Covering Mirrors

I now know why people used to cover the mirrors after someone died. I used to think it was to put aside vanity and focus on mourning. I think that is what the nuns told me when I asked. No, that is not the reason. It is because you cannot look in the mirror. You can lift your head. However, you are unable look forward with your eyes. If you accidentally catch yourself in the mirror the pain is overwhelming. That is you and you quickly look away. It does not trouble you that your roots are grey, your hair disheveled, your face without make-up your clothes slept in. That is not why you turn away from you. It is not the pain or sadness in your eyes. You just can not see yourself. You can not look. It is not that the look of sadness or the tear swollen eyes remind you of the pain. The pain actually bounces off your eyes' reflection and hits with force in the chest. You carry the pain everyday. Yet if you inadvertently see yourself in the mirror, unfortunately see your eyes, the pain not only resides in you but comes from without and rushes from the mirror to physically push you. I do not know how long it lasted. I avoided looking in the mirror for a long time. Then I would look but never at my eyes. I learned to put on make-up with minimal use of a mirror and never looking directly at it. Society should cover mirrors again.

5 Years, 8 Months - Smiling

It is just the money. I had a great day in sales yesterday and today I am in such a good mood. Even listening to the grief ‘blog’ music makes me want to dance not cry. I can barely stay in my chair and work. I just want to get up and dance. There is a smile on my face.
I listen to our wedding song. He was such a better dancer than me and I am the one that used to make a living dancing. Nevertheless, he was a graceful ballroom dancer. When we took lessons for our wedding the instructor suggested he take the intermediate course. He pointed at me. I was dancing with another partner at the time. He said, 'that is my fiance'. An ‘oh’ was the only response. I can see us dancing the Waltz on our wedding day. He tried to make wider, faster circles and I had to ask him to keep it simple. Otherwise I had to focus on the steps too much. We would dance at random times. Once we started waltzing in a McDonalds, much to his daughters’ horror. Of course we danced in the kitchen, just a few steps, and a few moments of bliss, in an ordinary day together. Hearing other songs reminds me of driving in the black Camaro with the t-tops off, the stereo loud, you driving fast.

Today I am smiling.

2 Years, 2 Weeks - Conditioned Responses

I was watching a movie and I heard the keys jingling together. The force of hitting the key in the lock, turning it to open the door without pause, without slowing down from work, and I thought ‘He's home’. Inside I was happy, hopeful, and ready to stand up and go hug him. Years of training, knowing right when to stand, turn, and walk to the door to meet him. Just as he pulled the key from the lock and stepped inside and before he closed the door. To hug him, kiss him lightly, but not carelessly, or fleetingly, or abruptly, as he reached behind him with his right hand and swung the door closed. I was conditioned. My mind forgot the movie, the day, the year and turned to the ‘greet him home from work status‘. Just as my body set in motion, a slight turn to the right, the momentum to lift and stand, then my mind broke in. It shut down the Pavlov response and shouted, washing through every cell. My mind replaced the weight, the suit of grieving I wore invisibly like a tight wetsuit over my clothes day and night. I remembered.

Then my niece walked in the door.

I could not reply to her hello. I could not even look. The tears just fell in a stream from the outer corners of my eyes. I finally lifted myself, pushing as if a leg press was blocking me, and headed to my room. I needed to run, to hide. I wanted to scream, yet to curl up tightly holding myself hidden in a dark corner. I quickened my step. I reached behind me and closed the bedroom door. I skipped the last two steps and flew forward onto the bed, curling up arms full of pillows, putting my face deep within them. I let myself cry. Yet, it was only for about a minute because I have already grieved losing him. It was just the shock. It has been so long since I expected him to come home, since I have expected him at all. So long, since he snuck up and surprised me in the laundry room. So long, since he was there to tell me it is time to go to bed, to hold me before I go to sleep, to kiss me on the forehead as I sleep and he leaves for work. So long, since I expected him to cook me dinner, drive me, to provide the mortgage, or to comfort me when my family hurts me or saddens me. It has been so long since I expected that rush of hope to be satisfied.

2 years, 16 days, 12 hours

2 Years, 6 Months - Grief Writing

I thought I could write but I only feel the grief of my words.

2 Years, 1 Month - Wishing You Were Here

Summer is coming. I am still on the beach in Maui. You would love to snorkel here. I dream of you and me riding your bee yellow motorcycle to the beach. Holding my arms around your belly, smiling.