What This Isn’t~

It wasn’t that my grief was any stronger yesterday morning.

Since Handsome Husband died, I’ve been living in a state of high adrenalin.  Except that it isn’t adrenalin that energizes.  Nor is it, well…energy.  I guess it can best be described as pain adrenalin.  Just a constant state of physical, emotional, mental, spiritual…pain.  That’s my baseline.  Keeping busy throughout the day, involving myself in need-to-be-done tasks, phone calls, etc.  Being social.  All done from that place of pain.  Moving around it, going through it-whatever else is being done, that adrenalin pain is there as my base.

Circumstances and events happen in life that deepen our understanding of others.  Isn’t that what life is truly about-gaining perspective of ourselves and others and what gets us through it?  This level of constant emotional pain that is my “new normal” (to give it a way over-used label) has given me an understanding of people who cut as a way of dealing with emotional pain.

I haven’t cut.  I never would cut.  It isn’t in my nature.  Buried somewhere deep inside of me is a flame that has never, and will never, be completely extinguished.  I know that about myself.  In my head, a few days ago, the realization was just suddenly there:  “Oh, this is why people cut themselves!”  I could see where anyone immersed in soul-striking pain would take a sharp object and…yes, cut.  The emotional pain goes deeper than bone deep-it goes into the marrow and the lymph system and the very core of your heart, into the length of your fingernails, the roots of your hair-everywhere.  And you seek relief.

Yesterday morning, I was aware of my grief in every facet of my physical and psychic being.  My daughter was staying overnight with me and my best friend, Donna, and I went out to the living room and asked her what she thought about shaving my head.  Her response was maybe I ought to give it a day or two consideration.  She could be right, I thought.  And retreated to find a scarf to bind tightly around my head to help me envision what I might look like with no hair.

Two minutes later I walked out again and asked her and Donna to come into the bathroom with me, where I had Handsome Husband’s hair-cutting kit out.  The last time that kit was used was when I trimmed his hair in hospice, shortly before his death.  Take a picture, I said to them.  And grabbed scissors and a hunk of hair and cut.  Another hank of hair.  And cut.  I cried and cut.  I sobbed and cut. 

After retiring from the Air Force in the early 90′s, Handsome Husband grew his hair long.  Lots of military retirees do that, especially if they were Vietnam-era.  It was long and curly.  Beautiful hair.  I didn’t like it on him, but it was beautiful hair.  My brother Kysa died in 1996 and Handsome Husband cut that long hair into a high-and-tight, in a show of respect to my brother and in a show of respect to my grief.

I stood there in front of the mirror yesterday morning, my daughter flanking me on one side-her face filled with pain and, I think, shock in a way, at watching her mom do this, and my dear, more-than-sister, friend, Donna, quietly observing and witnessing my pain, as I hacked away at my hair.  There was no method to the cutting, no styling.  I wasn’t after style.

What I was seeking in this cutting, what I needed, was relief from the pain of this grief.  What I was seeking was an outward sign for this grief that is cutting me to the liquid that is inside the marrow of  my bones. (I don’t know that there is liquid inside the marrow of my bones, but you get my drift here, I’m sure).   Each snapping sound of the scissors, each hunk of hair that came off my head and into the trash, was an acknowledgment of the grief.  Once my hair became too short for grabbing, I balanced the scissors against my head and started snipping.  There was no hesitation, no “I really shouldn’t be doing this” moment.  Only relief.   It wasn’t a loving, carefree, cutting my hair into a new style thing.  This was a sharp, quick, hair needs to come off my head, thing, and put me in mind of people in other cultures who rend their clothes and tear at their hair and fall on the ground to beat at the earth and moan and scream and cry-who fully express what is happening to them:  when someone you love dies, your soul is rent from your body and there must be an expression of that, or your body will become toxic.

Our culture doesn’t, generally speaking, allow much time for grief, for mourning, for outward expressions on a personal basis.  Cutting my hair yesterday, as I did it, with violence, might raise some eyebrows in the DSM-5.  It was nothing but pain that prompted me to do it.  The only thought I had, afterwards, was “By the time it grows in, maybe this pain won’t be as intense as it is now”.

I’m glad I did it.  I do feel maybe the outer-rim-of-a-fingernail length size of relief.  It’s a shock to catch my image in the mirror and I consider that a good thing.  I need a shock.  My life has been shocked.  I’m not crazy. I’m not self-pitying.  I’m not wallowing.  I’m not even trying to be melodramatic.  I’m not anything but grieving in every part of my mind, body and soul.  The man I lived with and loved, the man who loved me deeply, the man whose heart and soul was entwined with mine for 24 years, died a horrible death.  I watched him suffocate, I bathed his body after he died and saw the hole that the tumor eroded into the base of his spine, I touched his stone-cold body at the crematorium so that I could cover two of his toes that were exposed and part of his face that had come unwrapped, including his nose, that was sharpened by the ravages of cancer.  I put my two fingers and my thumb on the switch that controlled the door to the crematorium (otherwise known as the oven), and pushed it up to open the door so that his body could be delivered into the inferno.   I’m shocked, I’m traumatized, I miss his strength, I miss his presence in my life, I miss his knowing-ness of me.  I shudder at the knowledge that he is gone.  Forever.

But that’s just grief.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Shearing the hair off my head acknowledges, to me, that I am grieving, that my life is forever changed.  Simple.

I am woman.  Hear me roar my pain. 

Unanswerable Questions~

I know this is normal.  I know that the images that bombard my mind in the early morning hours as I waken won’t always be as prominent.  I know that.  I get it.

In this month or so immediately after Handsome Husband’s death, there  hasn’t been any one particular image that has caused emotional pain.  I’ve been more like a chunk of pain-mind, body, spirit.  It’s still like that-my entire body is nothing but pain-but moments of his death are suddenly standing out with clarity.  Painful remembrances are front and center, in the waking hours, in the daytime hours, and when I try to sleep.

Upon waking, images of him on his deathbed surge into my mind in a rush.  Remember the 2004 tsunami and the man on the beach as the massive wave towered over him, ready to consume him and he turned his back to it?  Yeah, that pretty much describes my waking up, except there is no turning away because my own personal tsunami is just solidly there.

At what point, I wonder, did Handsome Husband ultimately lose his sense of consciousness and, well,  being?  As he lay in that bed, was there a final moment for him, looking at me, when he realized “This is the last moment I’ll see this woman”?  Did he see me?  Somewhere in him, even in the midst of all the drugs that were hopefully keeping the pain and panic at bay, did he quietly say goodbye to me and let me go so that he could divert his energy to dying?

I don’t try to have these thoughts and images.  They just are there, without effort.  The only effort involved is trying not to have these images and thoughts, because they are torturous.  Did I say goodbye to him?  Did I hold his hand and tell him it’s alright, I’m here with you til the end?   I don’t remember.  I know I told him I’d miss him.  And I thanked him for being in my life all our years together and for loving me so well, and making my life joyful and that I’d always love him and I’d always remember him. I know I kissed him endlessly, saying goodbye without words, kissing him because I knew I wouldn’t be able to kiss him at all soon.  He and I said our goodbyes with words spoken and not.  He would miss us, he told me.  He loved me so much he said.  He had loved our life together, I meant everything to him.  He loved our kids, he loved them desperately, but he loved me more than anything else because we’d shared our lives together since the kids left and I was his wife and he was my husband and he loved our life and he loved us.

What did he see, lying there in that bed?  Did he look out the window one last time and see the mountains in the distance?  Or were the drugs so powerful that he saw nothing?  When did the man I love leave and the body that held his spirit continue for those final hours?

Our daughter Rachael-Grace read to him from “The Next Place” and he spoke to me right as she began.  I remember that, telling me that he remembered me reading that to him earlier and that he loved “that book”.   But I don’t remember if he was still there through all of the book.  Maybe  he left then, with the lovely images of what was in front of him and our love encircling him.

Front and center in my mind lately, as I waken, or throughout my day when I’m keeping busy and distracted because that’s what I’m supposed to do, is the image, with sound, of his breathing, as it traveled from his diaphragm to his chest to his throat to his mouth, growing shorter and more gaspy as it rose.  I struggle not to remember the horror of watching this man who was my life, lose his life to suffocation.  He was medicated, thank every god who ever existed in every religion.  The dilaudid pump delivered pain relief to him every 1/2 hour and within that 1/2 hour, I gave an extra pump every 15 minutes.  It was needed, I know.  Pain and panic at not being able to breathe needed to be averted at every cost.  I know, too, that it was that medication, that was making it easier for him throughout, that eventually stopped his strong heart.

Without taking his pulse, without knowing about respirations and timing and all that, without putting my hand to his heart to know, I knew his last breath.  I knew it because I sensed his last breath. I knew because I had listened to his breathing for the last 24 years, as we walked together, as we made love, as we slept together, as we climbed mountains together, as he breathed for me and with me through difficult times.  And, as soon as he took that last breath, not even one second after, he went white in a way that I’d never seen a human go white.  Every part of his face went sheet white, including his lips.  No more left.  Gone.

At what point did this glorious, life-loving, chillaxin’, manwholovedme, leave?  What was he seeing when he left?  What was he feeling?

I hope what he saw, what he felt, even in a drug-induced oblivion, was what I set out to surround him with from the day I took him into the ER, there in Cathedral City, California.  What I  determined to do no matter what else was going on anywhere else, what he gave so much of, to me, to everyone in his life, what he deserved to receive, no holds barred.

Nothin’ but love~

Heavy~

Things that cause sharp shards of glass to pierce through me similar to the way  Janet Leigh gets stabbed in the scene from “Psycho”:

Getting maintenance done on the car.   Yes, he always handled that for me.  Not because I couldn’t but because it made him feel good to do that for me.

Buying a new car:  Like any other couple, large amounts of money to be spent were discussed between us.  It was intimidating signing my first large amount check.  It was painful, signing any of the papers.  It brought home to me yet again that Handsome Husband is gone.  Forever.  It’s all me now.

Researching hotels to stay at along the way, after I leave Arizona.  Handsome Husband was a long-range planner in the Air Force and it translated well into our traveling lifestyle.  He sought out our destinations,  he measured the mileage for how long we wanted to travel each day, he found hotels or other accommodations, he planned it all.  When he was doing that each evening, sitting at his computer, I’d often put my arms around his shoulders from behind, and tell him how much I loved him for all that he did.  He had a method, he knew what he was doing.  I don’t.  He was good at it, and worked hard at it.  All he wanted me to do was enjoy myself.  Every day.  And he did what he did happily, willingly, and lovingly.

Deleting texts, messages and pictures on his phone so that I can cancel it.  I haven’t done that yet.  It makes me want to shriek in panic to do this.  I don’t know when I’ll do that.  Two weeks before he died, I asked him to call my phone and leave a message for me.  Which he did.  His voice was weak, but he left me such a message of love.  Ending with “P.S.  I love you”.

Wake up in the morning.  The space next to me is an ocean of nothingness.  Near the end, before his coughing and pain got so bad he had to sit up on the couch to sleep, we would, if we could manage nothing else at night, lie with our legs touching, my right hand, his left, together, pinky fingers entwined.  The minute my mind snaps into consciousness each morning, recognizing his absence again, the razor’s edge settles into place for the day.

Going through each day.  It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, whether I’m keeping busy or not.  I might even laugh at something funny.  That laughter isn’t mine, and has nothing to do with me.  It’s a reflex.  It doesn’t touch me, even though I’m the one laughing.

Breathing.  I understand sighing now, especially with grief.  We’re not sighing because we’re martyrs.  We’re sighing because we’ve been unconsciously holding our breath and our brain finally kicks in to remind us to breathe.  That sigh is an attempt to catch a breath.

Being in my body.  In a way that has nothing to do with gaining actual physical weight (though I have gained some pounds through all of this, both because I hate eating, but also because all that seems to sit ok on my gut is crap food),  my body is heavily weighted by the emotion of grief.  It’s exhausting in every way, it’s a physical feeling and there is a gaping wound where my heart should be.   Handsome Husband used to talk about an animal being caught in a trap, and it chews its’ leg off in order to find release.   I kind of get that now.  Anything to get away from what’s causing the pain.

Daytime is unbearable.  Night-time is horrible.  I want him back.  And I know that will never happen.  He’s gone.  End of story.  And the cycle begins all over again~

Into the Unknown~

Handsome Husband is gone.  Gone.  Period.  I’d like to believe, I’d like to think, that he is here with me somehow.  Maybe someday I’ll feel that he is, but, at least for now, I don’t.  It doesn’t matter how many times people tell me that he’s with me in spirit-if I don’t feel that he is, what good does it do me?  So I’m practicing saying the words “He’s gone.  Forever.  Just gone.  And now there’s a life you have to build, without him.”  Those words are incredibly painful-they bite chunks out of me and shred my consciousness. But I need to say them, so that I can shift my perspective.

The very thought of getting in the car and traveling on my own has overwhelmed me.  Not that I physically can’t do it on my own; it’s the emotional toll involved that is so frightening.  I saw it when I left him behind in California.  It made my heart raw with pain in a gut-wrenching way.

Today, I had a revelation-one of those shifts in thinking that seems so obvious once thought about, but remains elusive in its’ commonsensicality until it’s suddenly front and center of the brain and you think “Well, of course!”  (that’s the first exclamation point I’ve used since he died…so some progress of a sort, I suppose).

Here’s the thing.  I’ve been struggling to figure out Handsome Husband’s banking system, hotel awards system, computer system, everything system, and its’ caused panic in me because he did things so differently than I would.  He was exacting (in a very positive way).  He was right on top of things.  All of which made our lives easier, especially with traveling.  But I’m not him and I’ve needed to figure out my own system.  Which I’m doing, slowly.  And it will work for me.  (He’d say, well, of course it will, beautiful!)

My panic in contemplating being on the road on my own figured in the same way.  He did the long-range planning;  mileage, reservations, etc.  He sought out on the map and through research on the internet various places we might like to visit along the way.  We did a lot of hiking through National Parks or places we’d see along the road unexpectedly.  I’ve loved every minute of it.  And the thought of driving as we had, stopping to hike, doing all the things we’ve done together, and doing it on my own, did me in emotionally.  Its’ made me not want to do it, to settle down maybe, because it’s just too painfully emotional to consider.

So, here’s my revelation, which takes us back to the beginning of this blog.  I don’t have to travel the same way!   So simple a realization, isn’t it?   I can do it differently.  I can drive how and where I want.  I don’t have to hike at all unless I’m so inclined.  (And, honestly, I did it mainly because he and I were together, not because it’s a natural inclination of my own).   I can find my own focus for this traveling life.  I can make this my own.  I have to make this my own, because he’s gone and he’s not coming back. Ever.  No matter how much grief and pain I carry in my heart, he won’t be returned to me.  No matter how much I beg….whoever.

This is an exruciatingly  painful step for me in every way.  My plea every night when I lie down to sleep is two words to him.  Find me.

Maybe, by letting go of the notion that any traveling I do must be done in the same way he and I did, maybe by doing that, I can get back on the road again, by myself.

And, maybe, by letting go of how Handsome Husband and I did our traveling and living together, none of which can be continued or repeated, I’ll find him again.

I think I’ll try. 

 

Too Much, Too Soon~

I’m not a natural-born hiker or climber.  Given a choice, I’d rather be in a hammock or comfy chair with a good book. But, living the life we have for these past 4 years, I’ve been doing a lot of hiking with Handsome Husband, as we’ve explored the beauty in our travels.

So, yesterday, I suggested to our daughter, son-in-law and son that we climb Camelback Mt, right outside of Phoenix.  It ranks as a difficult hike but I knew it would be beautiful at the top, so we set out with sunblock, water (it was pretty damn hot), and enthusiasm.

Handsome Husband and I hiked Camelback when we were here over the winter, taking the Echo Canyon trailhead, and, yeah, it was incredibly steep.But we (I should say I, because he never seemed as challenged by the climbs as I was), celebrated an accomplishment that day. One more time, prior to our leaving Phoenix, he climbed it again, by himself, taking another trail, the Cholla.  Now, I know, yes, he did it even while his lungs were compromised by growing tumors, and while his legs hurt from the tumors there.  He didn’t know the cancer had returned and he was nothing if not determined, so he climbed through the pain, though I remember him being beyond exhaustion when he got back home that night.  I wanted to climb again, in his memory, this same trail.

I have the same sort of determination he did.  He always cheered me on when I climbed and I’d be in competition both with myself and to show him I could accomplish whatever climb we were on.  Same here, though he wasn’t with me this time.  This was my first hike, my first climb, without him.  But I had other family to keep me company and I just focused on the next step.  

And, yes, you know where I can go with this rocky, hand over hand at times, legs reaching up, long way up, climb.  Piercing sun, no shade anywhere along the way, up, up, up.  This is grief, I thought.  Hard, unexpected, making your body shake with effort, uncertain, dehydrating, endless, fear-inducing, with a limitless horizon right before your eyes.  Cholla Trail was all of that, and more.

About 15 or so minutes from the top, with it in my sight, I stopped for a break.  I could see the top from where I sat on a heated from the unrelenting sun rock.  It was pretty much a straight up, clambering over large rocks, climb.  I’d been struggling for the last few minutes.  Light-headedness, legs shakier than they’d ever been, some nausea.  Things just weren’t right with my body and, if I continued the climb, I could easily envision tripping and falling.  I told myself to breathe through it, suck it up, and climb.  For godsakealmighty, I told myself, Handsome Husband did it, with cancer!  So I could damn well do it too. But every brain cell in me said that I needed to not do that final steep climb.

I knew, too, that if Handsome Husband were with me, he’d say to use my brain.  Something was going on with my body that had never gone on before and I knew it wouldn’t be safe.   So I told the others to go ahead and I started back down the trail, and I’m very glad I did.  I barely made it to the bottom, fighting dizziness and shakiness all the way.  Once at the bottom I found a rock with a 1/4 inch of shade and sat down and concentrated on not throwing up and passing out.

A couple of things here:  In spite of hydrating myself, I think I probably had heat exhaustion.  That was exacerbated by a bombardment of memories of me and Handsome Husband with each step I took, so I was fighting off the grief.  I haven’t pushed myself in any way, physically, since that day I took him to the ER, so I’m out of shape.  Yeah, it was too much, too soon.   I’m an independent, strong woman, I know that.  Everyone who knows me knows that.  But sitting there on that rock, as I fought off the dizziness and nausea, I also fought off falling completely apart emotionally.  This was the first time I’ve not felt well in 24 years that Handsome Husband wasn’t around to respond, to love me through it, to efficiently ensure that I was okay.  I breathed through that thought, thinking “This is my new life and I hate it with every fucking hurting bone in my body”.

Climbing the Cholla trail yesterday was too much, too soon, a lesson for me.  I push myself.  I always have.  I set my sights on the horizon and work towards it.  Which is all good and okay, but maybe, with this grief that has invaded every solid inch of my body, heart and soul, I can do a shorter climb for now.  Maybe I don’t need to push and stretch every part of me yet.  At some point, yes.  I know Handsome Husband would encourage me to do that for the moment, to let myself just be where I am.  He knew, he knows, how strong I am and that I’ll get there.  But he’d also tell me that it’s okay to rest, and listen to my body, and heed my body and what it’s telling me.

Grief is a long, hard climb.  There’s a horizon out there that’s open.  I need to glance at it every so often, when I can, just to know it’s there, but mainly, at this point, I just need to keep my feet moving, and my eyes in front of me.  Just move.

It makes my heart hurt more than it ever has.  And I hate it. 

Is Co-existence Possible Here?

Handsome Husband was magic in my life.  He brought magic into my life.  Not in a oh everything is perfect way, but in very tangible ways.  When the kids were small and he was paying child support and college funds and we had, at the end of payday, after paying bills, maybe $1.00 to split between us, he’d conjure money out of nowhere so that we could have a fun time somewhere.  Or, during the time after he retired from active duty, and was unemployed for many months, a time during which my brother and mom and various extended family members were seemingly dropping like flies, he came up with airline tickets or money for gas for the car so that I could fly out to be with my brother or drive up to New England to be with my mom, as they were each, in their time, dying of cancer.  He made things happen and I oftentimes told him he was a fucking magician.

The thing is, he wasn’t a magician because of the tangible conjuring he did, though that was pretty damn impressive.  He was a magician in my life because everything he did, he did from love.  That was his only motivation, ever.  For me, there was magic too, in the way he gazed at me across a room, or winked at me flirtatiously.  After 24 years together, my stomach still fluttered with butterflies when I felt his energy in a room.  I didn’t even need to see that he was in the room with me physically to know that he was around.  Every one of my senses went on high alert in the most wonderful way when he was around.   He used to tell me I was a witch because I could tell when he was coming home (wherever home happened to be at the time), and I would meet him at the door, opening it before he even got to it.  His arms around me-magic.  In the time since his first cancer, when he hugged me I would lean into his chest, taking a breath deep from within my heart, inhaling his scent, memorizing it.   His kisses were magic-he would put one hand behind my neck, or hold my chin in his hand, one hand on my hip, or one arm wrapped around me.

He brought so much magic into my life, and the lives of our kids.  Perhaps magic is just another word for the love he brought with him, the love that he had for me, as his wife and lover, for his kids, near and far, for his grandkids, his mom, his siblings, so many people whose lives he touched.

As he was ill, as he was dying, my wish for him, my intent for him, was to return some of that magic to him, to surround him with that magic he so freely gave.  Whenever I spoke with family and friends on the phone during those days, I’d always end the call with “It’s nothin’ but love here.  Nothin’ but love”.   I believe that I made that happen.  He felt loved in every way.  It wasn’t always easy, ensuring that it was nothing but love energy around him;  there were moments and circumstances in those 3 weeks that threatened to change that energy and bring agitation into it.  But he wasn’t aware of it and that’s what mattered to me.

So now, what I wonder to myself is:  in the midst of this overpowering, immersive sharp shards of shredded glass cutting into my body and my heart and mind in pretty much every minute of every day because he died and I can’t bear the thought of it- in the midst of this, can the magic that he brought into my life, share space with the grief?

I don’t know and so I’m asking you, my dear readers.   Tell me from your hearts.  Can magic and grief co-exist?  And, if so, then how?

My daughter read me this quote today, and I’m going to write in on my forehead so that I will see it every time I look into a mirror.  ”May I release my resistance and lean so far into grief that I am caught by the arms of its fierce love.” ~Abra Bankendorf Vigna”

The not magic moments of grief~

There’s nothing pretty going on with me these days.  Tonight is 4 weeks since Handsome Husband died.  One month.  All I feel is a great gaping emptiness in my world, right where he’s supposed to be standing.

I’ve felt great grief before, in my life.  My brother and my mom, both dead of cancer within 6 months of one another and my entire world was rocked silly.  And it was Handsome Husband who pulled me through it. Their deaths led me, ultimately, into hospice care and then the founding of Tapestries of Hope, and again, Handsome Husband was my primary support.

I know all the intellectual stuff about processing grief.   From past experience, I know the emotional process that needs to be gone through.  I know that it’s good to be proactive in grief, to make time work for you rather than against you.  But you know what?   I can’t make myself care about any of that.  I know that what I’m going through is normal and that’s about all I can say.  I’m making myself go out and do things, join in things, but it continues to be meaningless.  Food means nothing to me.  Nothing means nothing to me any longer, if that makes sense.

I’ve been here in Arizona, at my daughter’s house, for just about a week, though I’m looking for a place to rent for the month of June.  A room maybe, rather than a furnished studio even-I don’t want much room to move around in or feel lonely in.  It devastated me to leave California, as desperately as I wanted to leave.  That’s the last place Handsome Husband and I were together and I felt like I was leaving him behind.  I actually got the dry heaves right before I left.  Grief never did that to me before.

It feels better being around my daughter and son here and I know I’m in a safe place to fall apart, which I’ve been doing on a steady basis.  These tears are a new kind of tears for me too-coming up from my gut and spewing throughout my body.  Yes, yes, all part of the process.  What I’ve come to realize, in looking at the good old cycles of grief handbook, and common grief reactions, is that not only is there no pattern, which most people fortunately realize in this day and age, but that each of the cycles and reactions can happen rapid-fire, one after the other, and return to the originating point numerous times within an hour period,  never mind a day.

I miss Handsome Husband acutely.  From having been around each other on a massively steady basis for the last almost 4 years to not having him anywhere around now for a month is completely disorienting to me.

I expect him, still, to come walking in the door and say to me “Wow, that was a weird experience”.  And the we’ll talk about how completely weird and upsetting it was, and has been, and then we’ll get on with our lives together.  And I’ll never let him go.  Once he walks back into my life, I mean.  Because I can’t tolerate the idea that he won’t.  That he isn’t.  That he never will again.  That he’s gone.  Forever.