Tag: grieving

Seder

A day after an FUS Seder and a day before Easter Sunday and waist deep in spring break.

Julia and I went to the FUS seder yesterday.  There is a Haggadah written for Unitarians and there are a lot of cultural Jews who are Unitarians (lapsed Catholics also make up a decent part of congregations).  Previous to this time, we went twice in 2011 and 2012.  Both times, I was uncomfortable.  There were not many kids and Julia stuck out — her behavior was not out of control but she was not interested in  the readings, hated waiting to eat the food that was laid in plain sight, and was not really talking to people she did not know. None of this was out of the realm of normal behavior for her age group.  It was just that her behavior was in comparison to the adults who were there.  Perhaps it was as simple as my own comfort level.  I was not at home at FUS.  I was not sure I belonged at the Seder and did not want to explain that I was there because David was Jewish, I loved doing Seders with him, and I wasn’t ready to do it at home.  I think I left the first one red eyed and mute, it had been a very long night.

This year, finally, finally, it was different.  There is something about assuming home.  I signed us up for set up and we were there two hours before the festivities.  We set tables and put ceremonial foods out for each table.  I did whatever a very sweet older woman told me to do.  In our chatting, I found out that her husband had died 4.5 years ago and although she still did Seders at home, doing at at FUS for the big group – almost 50 — was very comforting to her.  I shared my experience and I did what I have always been good at.  I helped her serve — getting up before the end of the service to help her with the soup and getting the soup bowls on the tables before the soup got cold.

We sat with some people we know.  Not everyone at the table, but some old neighbors with whom it was wonderful to catch up with and a couple who usually go to Saturday service like we do.  Conversation was not always flowing but I could feel myself extending myself and adding to keeping our socializing going.  This is in sharp contrast to the last few years when I’ve felt myself a drain on social gatherings and a conversation stopper.  I am not totally comfortable in large gatherings or gatherings of near strangers but it is a relief to have whatever I’ve needed to engage in company once again.

Julia is also at home at FUS.  She helped at setup some but she also sat and read her latest adventure book — a birds with swords story — and talked to who ever passed or sat close to her.  Some people know her, and some are surprised by her, but I’ve stopped feeling the need to explain her all the time or to protect her or her listener from what is difficult to understand.  She is practicing.  People at FUS will help her or will move away.  And most will help.  Last night, a number of them told me how charming she is.  And I smile a very grateful thanks.

Once again, there were few children — a baby just one, and two little boys, 4 and 6 — and none to read the four questions or open the door for the prophet, Elijah.  Julia jumped up and ran to the door for the later, and was more than willing to read the four questions.  (In 2012, she could not do the reading) She didn’t love the whole ceremony but she was present for most of it.  She took in all of it.  She read along and out loud at the appropriate times and took a stab at singing the songs.

The Haggadah that we used omitted the story of the four kinds of children.  That is my favorite part because the message is about including all children in the reading of the Exodus story, the teaching of the next generation.  In the past I had thought of Julia as the child who did not even know how to ask any question, last night, she was almost the wise child, willing and eager to ask questions and to learning about her ancestors.

In a little while, we will pick up her new bike.  We ordered it last week, and I’ve already been to the store and asked for some adjustment to be made before we pick it up.  I am hoping.  Yes, I am hoping that she will love it and we will be biking all summer.

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will and grit and persistence

I wrote this next thinking about a grieving friend at the beginning of the month.  These thoughts did not seem appropriate to send but I like them.  It is me writing to the me of three years ago.  It is the affirmation of that part of the struggle.  That part of the path.  And so —

Again, thinking of you.  Our season is finally changing — snow mounds shrinking and turning a uniform gray, people walking without huddled, squashed faces and birds singing with unbridled enthusiasm.  During the first years after David’s death, changes of season were are hard as holidays and family celebration days. I wrestled with the twin pulls of a past that I could not re-create and a future that looked awfully bleak.  The first fall I wanted to paste the leaves back onto the trees and paint them green.  I did not want David to miss the autumn.  The solace I found was in the center — putting rice into the cooker at the end of the day, running around the block holding on to the back of Julia’s bike as she learned to ride a two wheeler, reading about atypical development in children, walking the dog and shopping for food.  Searching for and then finding the quiet center.  This process of grieving is not passive.  True, some of it seems to require vast amounts of sleep that can be impossible to get.  So much requires will and grit and persistence.  It is work.

Even in the depths of despair there needs to be an ember of wanting some future that will not hurt so much.  To have any less is to lose the future to the past and not touch the present.

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fun

Julia got out of school at 10:45 and I was in a LEND workshop helping to facilitate for the day. One of our respite providers was able to stay with Julia until 2 and then dropped her off at Waisman. Julia hung out and on her iPad while I finished up my day.

It has been my habit to go home after a day like this and have a work night. Math, reading, cello, social studies and anything else that Julia needs to be working on. And a decent supper from scratch or the freezer. We do not take many days off.

And so, we took the rest of today off. We went to a 4:40 show of the Lego Movie and for the first time ever, I wished I was a 9 year old boy who was obsessed with Lego. The plot was nothing to speak of but it was fun and silly and had some really cool Lego effects — my favorite was the undulating Lego ocean. We had popcorn and stayed through the credits. When we got home, Julia dragged out her Legos and went to building — of course, what else? And I made some rice and scrambled eggs with rice. We watched another episode of Star Trek and Julia went to bed. I am looking for fun. Some undemanding, indulgent, un-useful fun.

It has been a long time since fun has been on the agenda. I don’t know if that is mainly because of the therapeutic life that we’ve led or grieving. Or some combination of the two. There is so much work to do but recently I remember weekend afternoon naps while Miazaki was on the tv, walks, just walks, toys all over the house and long conversations with a beer. I remember Julia laughing much more than she does now as a rule. And I can remember this without tears or depression or regret. I can hold the sadness and still wish I was a 9 year old boy. I realize that I’ve never had the discussion with anyone about balancing a therapeutic life with fun but perhaps I need to find someone to have that discussion with.

It is time for fun.

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miracles

I am in the midst of spring cleaning. It is a diversion. I would much rather be working on the garden but there is still some snow and where no snow, there is mud. And even if the mud dried enough to be tillable soil it is too cold to be kneeling in it.

So, I’ve decided to clean. I started on the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs because I usually start downstairs. Yesterday, I worked on the third bedroom, nominally designated Cheshire’s room, but she has never lived there. Her bedroom furniture lives there and some clothes. David took over that room when we moved in because there was not enough closet space in our room. Later he moved a desk for writing. Then a bookcase. When his medical paraphernalia out grew the bathroom medicine cabinet — by that time, I had long abandoned the medicine cabinet leaving only my tooth brush and paste behind — and the top of his dresser, the desk became mission control for pills and charts and monitoring equipment.

I had forgotten how much this was David’s room with Cheshire’s bed in it. All of David’s stuff has been long gone and the room stripped of everything but what belongs to Cheshire. I change the bedding when Cheshire or a guest comes and I lay out my clothes before travel on the bed, but the room could all but disappear and we would not miss it. There are lined and insulated shades on the windows to keep temperature stable when it is very cold or very hot. Yesterday, I spent more time in that room than I have ever spent.

As I moved furniture around to clean, I rearranged. It is a small room, so bed, dresser and vanity have a finite arrangement. When I put everything back against walls, it was probably the arrangement that I used when we first moved into the house. Something — dare I say Chi or spirit or something not of this world, perhaps something inside of me — was stirred up. It was as if there was something stored in this room, something that I could not let go of or something that was not ready to be released. I don’t usually have any emotional attachment to the act of cleaning. I only do it because something is dirty. I like a clean space but if someone else was to do it, I would feel no loss of process. As I cleaned yesterday, I gathered emotion. I was overcome with sadness. I felt an emptiness, a heaviness. I felt an anxiousness. If I could have, I would have opened windows although I don’t think that an open window would have dispelled the gloom. I did not remove myself from the sadness but it was dammed hard to be present to it.

Then, last night, I decided that the room needed to look like a guest room. It needed to be inviting, something that would not be so bad to do for Cheshire’s visits either. I wanted new bedding, the rearrangement of pictures and some retrieved from storage. It needed a rug, new shades and the vanity stool recovered. The room seemed to beg for a happy, bright green, something with stripes, flowers. Something of Mexico and the Caribbean. I began looking at rugs online and found a red rug for my living room. (My living room rug is old and worn, but I had not gotten to thinking about replacing it.) And I found some happy green rugs that would look good in the bedroom.

And then I had to stop myself and take a few very deep breaths. What was I doing? I was looking to bring color and movement and the visual joy into the house again. I don’t mean that I’ve lived with blinds drawn and grey drapes over furniture but everything, almost everything, had had a muted, soft, comforting feel. I have made it that way, left it that way until there was reason for change. There has been very little passionate Chi zipping around this house.

And now I am feeling that it should not be so. Let the shopping begin! Integration, change, healing. It happens when I least expect it. It happened cleaning. It recognized it by wanting to decorate, to shop — activities that I don’t associate with myself. It crept up on me when I I was not looking for it, when I was humming along with some tunes and windexing the mirror. All these happy, busy feelings which nicely coincide with the coming of spring — if and when that comes — may disappear tomorrow. May at the very least fade tomorrow. Still, I am grateful for yesterday and today. For the miracle effectuated by a spring cleaning.

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chemistry

Possibly a great sign of the new normal.  Possibly just loneliness.  Possibly the emerging spring.  When an email announced that Chemistry.com was having a free communication weekend, I checked it out.

Some background: Months after David died I sign up for that dating site.  I was in no way ready to date, let alone speak intelligently to someone I did not know, but I was curious what was out there.  Who was out there and who was using a dating website at my age.  I checked out men who were looking for women and also women who were looking for men.  What I discovered was pretty disheartening — The women all were looking way better than I was.  Nine months into grieving had done nothing for my face or body so there were no surprises there, but I was struck by the easy flirty profiles and great pictures.  The men . . . no one was incredibly appealing although to be fair that was more about my state of mind than anything else.  I expressed interest in a few of my “matches,” never heard from most.  I got a lot messages, etc., from men who were excluded from the site before I checked out their profiles.  Scam artist?  Sleazy guys?  I had no idea.  I did not re-up after my initial time and I’ve ignored any notice from the site until this weekend.

On Friday, I edited my profile a bit — it was a bit intense and I remembered those flirty profiles.  I will never be flirty and I still sound very serious.  I put in a few current pictures and “winked” at a few of the matches and set sail.  And so far, not so good.  Very few men are interested and most of them live in Chicago.  Most of them sound, well, frankly, weird.  I know the saying, you have to kiss a lot of frogs . . . but really.  There is the same proliferation of scam artists and/or sleazy guys.  And, I know that to some extent this is going to sound elitist but really, why would a conservative, christian, gas station attendant with a high school education and without any picture think I would find him interesting without some really intelligent or witty come on?

So, this was not a fruitful experiment and I will not be plunking down my credit card number in order to write a next chapter in my online dating saga.  I will probably never meet a guy online — I never did well at dances in high school or cocktail parties and bars later on.  But there was a time, granted it was a long, long time ago — when I had a healthy male infused social life.  I am feeling ready for that again.  I actually feel like I have the energy and desire to get to know someone, to ask a few questions and be interested.

I know, I am not 17, diet-starved, and stary-eyed.  I am  . . . well, old, a widow, and I have a 13 year old who may always live with me.  And I know the odds are NOT in my favor.  But ya’ know, I don’t really care.  I would like a partner. I know that I thrive on partnership and I’m not a bad partner myself.  I’ve never wanted to live alone and always wanted to share my life.

Listen up Universe.  Give me a little help here.  I’ll do my part but I am going to need some help.

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strings

I ran jogged around most of the block yesterday morning — .75 of the block to be exact.  I need to get my body moving and nothing that I have done before is appealing right now.  Perhaps yoga or more tai chi but spring is coming and I yearn — yearn is a bit too strong to put the impulse — to be moving outside.  Gardening is out of the question right now.  Mud, mud, mud.  And there is still little bits of snow all over the yard.  And I’ve never tried a run.  The fact that Cheshire and Lisa have done it and are trying to make a Thanksgiving run part of our holiday celebration make me curious.

Julia is performing in the Spring Strings Festival today.  She passed — could play the song by memory — three tunes.  That puts her at level 2.  There are a lot of fifth grade kids at level 2.  She probably worked harder than most of those kids to learn and memorize those tunes.  And she is the only kid out of hundreds who has an aide sitting next to her, but she is there and playing.  Watching the rehearsal yesterday afternoon, I almost burst into tears.  I am so proud of her.  So happy for her.  Of course, when I told her, she was polite and happy to be doing the concert, but it was no big deal to her.  And isn’t that wonderful too?

There is a new sadness in the collage.  I am so proud of Julia and her playing.  Especially proud because music was such an important part of our family when Cheshire was growing up.  The sadness comes from not having anyone to share this pride and happiness with.  No one who knows the day-to-day struggles and can bask in the sunshine of rewards.  I guess I’ve felt this before, since David died, but when I did it was mixed with so much grieving that the feeling did not stand out.  And there were so many more days of struggle than of triumph so the achievements were not quite there to stand out.  Living away from family during Cheshire’s growing up, there were never grandparents or aunt and uncles to enjoy successes, but just us and our friends were enough.  Today, I text Cheshire and post of Facebook and send an email to Julia’s teacher.  Right now,  I want to scream that that is not enough!

I sit drinking tea, my head aching from being so close to tears.  I am grateful for every “like” and comment on Facebook.  Cheshire will write and be happy for us, and Julia’s teacher will be thrilled.  Would I have felt this alone had I chosen to be a single mother?  Certainly, life would have been full of circumstances like today.  Of course, I might have dealt with this sorrow when baby first walked.

The other truly incredible things about yesterday’s rehearsal was that Julia saw lots of kids she knew from both school and church school.  She said hello to all of them and called them by name.  Her therapy and school teams have been working on greetings and having her recognize individual kids for this entire school year.  At the beginning of the year, she did not know the names of many of the kids in her class, and I don’t think that it mattered to her.  They were “the kids” or “guys” to her.  I think they were a blur of noise and movement in her consciousness.  In the Fall, she and I sat with the composite class pictures for her class and the class that is paired with hers.  We reviewed names almost every night for a few months.  She learned the names but I did not see much generalization for what seemed like a long time.  Recently, when she tells me the three things she did during the day, names of different kids have surfaced.  Her observations are not deep but she calls one or the other her friend or her best friend.  There are still many times when she does not “hear” greetings said to her, but last night she had something to offer to everyone that she knew.

And math word problems, of which we do three every night, are getting ever so slightly easier.

Julia is on a roll!

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grieving

Grieving: the state of the journey.  I am writing short emails of support to someone whose partner has died.  I find I care deeply, wanting to ease pain, wanting to stand beside.  Not expecting anything back but enormously grateful that I have something to give.  I read his sparse words and I remember how much everything hurt for me.  I remember how deeply I was cared for Lisa and Marcia and Mary and Amy.  I remember their care as some soft, warm, weightless fabric wrapping around me and holding me tight.  I knew that it was there and I could lean into it.  They carried my weighty pain and listened and listened and listened.  Their insistence on care . . . I wonder if they were ever in contact with each other . . . was almost orchestral.  I had nothing to give back to them for such a long time.  Now I am full of gratitude that I am filled enough to give to someone, even if it is not one of them.

My friend wrote that he missed his partner, “as you do your beloved David.” I paused on an in breath for a moment when I read that.  Miss David?  No, I do not miss David.  I do not miss him in the way of those first days and weeks and months.  I remember missing when he was alive and due home after work although the visceral memory of that takes on the character of a photograph.  I remember what it may have felt like but I can’t quite feel it any more.  I remember those first awful weeks and months of such active missing that I could almost believe, irrationally but somehow not impossibly, that he would satisfy my intensity by appearing.  I remember when missing was the dominant emotion–sometimes the only emotion–I had.  I remember being broken anew each day because he did not return and I was moving further away from him.

And that is exactly what time has done.  He did not appear and the time that has passed has driven me further from the intensity of actively missing someone who will never return.  At some point, missing implies return, at least for me.  Perhaps others can hold onto it longer than I.  For me, the time and the work that I have done reclaiming my life has driven the searing pain of missing to the deepest part of me, so deep that it has become the fossil rock which serves as foundation to the present.  The missing has sunk into my soul and is the warp and woof of the fabric of my being and the weave is tight.  Perhaps this is integration and it comes with some peace.  It does not replace the joy of long-time love nor the possibility of anticipated return but it sits close by.

Being a support, I can I hope for a better friend — strange how I was his partner’s friend more than his.  We were couples friends and there were times we divided along gender lines.  Even when that was not the case, I kept in touch with his partner.  She was my friend. Now, if I am to have a friend, it must be him.  How odd. I feel like I am walking through a door into some new dawn of relationships.  I think of some of the women that I have gotten to know since David died.  Some were already widows or single after separation, two have had husbands die since I met them.  We meet in coffee shops to talk and death is never far from the conversation, sometimes not mentioned but there.

These are relationships not based on death but where death is one of the things we have in common.  Like bad mothers or children in the same grade or gardening.  We have what we have in common to talk about as common as talk about nasturtiums and hollyhocks and signing up for summer camp.  When I reflect, it seems like this is a natural progression but I didn’t know I was getting to it so quickly.  I bumped into someone at the Honda Dealership where I was getting an oil change.  We did the MBSR class together last spring.  She had just returned from a bicycling vacation in the Philippines with her husband.  We talked of meditation and group sits and vacationing.  We don’t have death in common.  The topic did not sit between us.  I do look on her with a touch of envy.  I will never be where she is again.  I know too much.

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Tears

I am sitting in a bar on the way to Racine for the Quest winter retreat.  I actually managed to leave so early as to give myself time to stop on the way for lunch.  I’ve never done it this way before.  My usual way is to pack up very late and/or very early before retreat, cram something into the beginning of the day, start out just a bit late and become utterly frustrated when traffic slows my frantic pace, and finally, arrive at best just as the first meeting begins and at worst, after supper.  This behavior makes it impossible for me to settle in and prepare for the experience.  Some fear, some apprehension, some betrayal of self.

And today — well, I’ve been cutting expectations all week.  Didn’t “finish” Julia’s room, didn’t go to the seminar that I didn’t want to attend, didn’t even hang the four little pictures that I finally framed this week.

And it is all ok.

Perhaps I am taking something of mindfulness in.  Unmindfully, judgementally, I might add, Finally!

So, sitting in this bar and at first feeling guilty and uncomfortable being here.  As if lunch (with a diet coke) is some kind of ultra indulgence that I have no right to.  The physical feelings — part of the week’s assignment in the online meditation course I’m doing — are a queasiness starting in my diaphragm and moving out to the edges of my sides as if not really inhabiting my whole body.

But I settle in, order lunch (and my diet coke) and open email.  We are asked to be computer-less for retreat and I comply to the best of my ability although I am planning on doing some course reading at night and last retreat I wrote on the keyboard instead of a notebook.  Checking email is far away from the spirit of the law, let alone the letter.

In my box, is an email with attachments from my friend whose mother died last week.  She sent the order of service, written tributes and obits for her mum.  This is a woman who I liked so very much.  We met when her daughter was our exchange student and she came to visit.  During our first evening together in Indy, David, she and I went to an Indian restaurant and had planned to go to the symphony.  We ate and talked and missed the music all together.  She was one of those very precious people with whom conversation was effortless.  I have not known many.  So many people knew her so much better than I did, but I was not wrong at all for wanting to know her so much better than I did.  Her husband used the words “generosity of spirit” in describing her.  I have used those words to describe what I want to grow into.  I am not surprised.

I sit in a bar, with a few tears falling into my diet coke and a headache from not having a good, long cry.  I hurt for them, I hurt for myself.  How many times do I need to be reminded to seize life and suck it all dry!?  If I am going to have to hurt this much, I have to suck out all the joy when it is there for the taking.  I am reminded of day lilies — blooming furiously for one day.  Blink, walk quickly, wait and they are gone.

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Grief

Cheshire called a little while ago to let me know that the mother of a dear friend died.  Yesterday, I think but am not sure.  This was someone who lived very far away but we liked each other the first time we met and have been in some kind of touch, mostly sporadic emails, over the years.  I went to her daughter’s wedding two weeks after David died because we had planned to go.  It was a wonderful decision because the family folded us into them and gave to us without asking for any return.  I always expected that one day . . . one day we might spend more time together, might do a road trip together, do a theater week in New York or London.  It is not regret that I feel — perhaps some for not seizing time that we might have spent together — but loss of possibility.

And I feel such sadness for the family.  I remember those days and I so wish I could spare everyone that I care about the pain of such loss.  That sounds so trite, so pat and easy.  Life can hurt so much and there is no getting away from it.

I wanted to send a quick condolence email to her daughter and dipped back into the file of emails that were sent to me three years ago.  My eyes sting, I remember both the pain and the love that was extended to me.  How very lucky I was to be wrapped in love and support as I stumbled from day to day.  I was held up by angels in the guise of friends.

I am too far away to offer any real help and support but I send up wishes and prayers that these friends will have friends who will do as was done for me.

My sadness is deep.  Not near what they are feeling right now.  Not near at all.

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