Tag: grief

Resolutionary Road

January 1, 2022

It’s been a long time since I picked up my digital pen to write a post for this grief blog.  It certainly isn’t because life is now all kittens and yarn (for any of us!) but mostly because I had lost my thread. Of yarn? More like some prickly, slightly abrasive twine!  Now retired, I feel compelled to pick it up again to share thoughts on this complicated and sometimes puzzling journey.

As we kick 2021 out the door and try desperately to bar the windows, many of us look at this freshly minted New Year as another opportunity, another chance to do (or feel) better.  I am also cautiously hopeful.

And although the rough barbs of grief have blessedly dulled over the past five years, the nubs still catch occasionally on my pantlegs.  

Moving to Virginia more than two years ago was my way of trying to jumpstart a fresh life.  It has helped in many ways.  I am not surrounded by the tangible memories that my husband and I had built together, and now live closer to my siblings.  But I’m self-aware enough to know you can’t shut out feelings like some sort of religious zealot knocking on the door with handfuls of gospel tracts.

A very wise and helpful friend of mine once shared a mantra she espouses to help get through her days, and I have tried my best to adopt it.

“Before you go to bed, think of three things that happened during the day that you are grateful for.  They do not have to be big things.  Then, when you wake up, say to God or to the universe, “Help me, help me, help me.”

So, I attempt to do this when I am mindful.  Last night as I headed to bed well before the finale of New Year’s Eve, I lay in bed and thought, “I have a nice home.  I took a walk today with family and friends in the sunshine.  My thumbs (in the early stages of arthritis) are not bothering me.”

I woke quite early today to rain pelting the window nearest my bed.  I had left it cracked open since it’s been so unseasonably warm in Virginia this December.  I listened to the water hitting the panes for a long time and soon joined along with my own slow-moving waterworks, keenly missing my husband’s warm presence still.  But then I wiped the tears away and mentally hoisted up my big girl pants to complete the other half of the mantra. Given the day, they could also be construed as resolutions, but what is there to lose?

 “Help me to be a better person.  Help me to embrace life, instead of approaching it as something to be endured.  Help me get through this new year feeling more grateful for what I have instead of dwelling on what I have lost.”

James’ Coat

It’s a funny thing about loss.

Sometimes our loved ones enter our dreams unannounced in various ways, but other times when we want to see them in our dreams – nothing.

I have had my fair share of dreams early on after James died, that he had not actually died and it was all a big mistake. The temporary relief that would wash over me like a cool breeze, was far outweighed by the dark cloud of sadness that confronted me upon awakening.

Since it’s been 4 years now, I’m not surprised that he does not visit me in my dreams – as much as I wished he would. However, earlier this week I had a dream about his coats.

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe

In my dream, I had not yet gotten rid of all of his belongings. His coats were hanging in front of me, all in a row. It was a sharp and lucid dream. His favorite coat, an old brown, Carhartt canvas jacket, was front and center. It was the one he wore the most. I grabbed it in my dream and buried my face into it and could still smell him on the coat. I awoke with such sadness, but tried my best to push it aside. I tramped downstairs, made my coffee and got on with my day.

But the dream won’t leave me this week. It haunts me at every turn like a fresh wound. What the hell? I can’t shake it. My rational mind knows that with Covid, and increased, prolonged isolation, we are all battling a mild depression. Add the merry-go-round of grief and it’s a perfectly blended cocktail of self-pity and hopelessness.

A queen’s bed

Some years back when James and I had purchased our lakeside dream home, we decided to splurge on a new bedroom set.

When he met me, I was still using the dresser my parents had bought for me when I was in high school, and then we used his late parent’s set. It was one of those blonde wood sets, and not really my taste. Our new set was very ornate: think Italian Renaissance/bordello. I liked to think even the very picky Borgias would have approved! And since it took a few years to pay off, I was not going to part with it easily once I moved.

Fast forward to my new life here in Virginia where I have a much smaller house. When the movers delivered my bedroom set from the storage unit, it quickly became apparent my king-sized bed, with the lush leather padded headboard, would not fit up the narrow stairs of my foursquare, never mind in my tiny new bedroom.

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So I found myself shopping for a queen mattress set. I settled on a simple bed frame – not ornate but that was OK in my new world order where “bordello” or anything even remotely sexy in connotation would never be the order of the day. I managed to get the other bedroom pieces crammed into my room and into the guest room. Sometimes, the fecund lushness of the pieces seem to mock my solitary existence, but screw it.

As I was laying in bed this morning, I was thinking about how I went from a king to a queen – thanks to my husband’s untimely death (is there a timely one?). No longer do I roll over to see my husband, already awake and smiling at me (not sure if that was due to fondness…my snoring or both).

So this morning as I am want to do, I shed a few tears thinking about where my life has brought me since he died. My rational mind nibbles at me like a rat: “You are a lucky girl!” Lucky to have a nice home in a wonderful new town. Lucky to have family nearby. Lucky to be starting a new job next week, after almost a year of unemployment.

But my emotions (I see these as a soft, fuzzy hamster) keep me pining for that king bed and the life it once represented as a married woman. A person who used to wake up with the self-satisfied assurance that she would not be alone. Never alone.

 

Do’s and dont’s when addressing grief

Now that we’ve managed to muddle through Valentine’s Day for all of you happy Hallmark people, I’d like to get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I don’t normally “cheap out” on my posts but this recent article by David Pogue featured in The New York Times echoes many of the things I’ve been saying or felt these past few years.

What to Say (and What Not to Say) to Someone Whose Grieving.

Motorcycle musings

I took to the open, albeit local roads last night for a little bike time sandwiched in between the latest bout of rain showers we’ve been experiencing here in New England.

Since a much earlier post about purchasing a motorcycle – my personal “fuck you” to my late husband (she said, with great fondness) I’ve gotten more comfortable riding and so am enjoying it more. You have to remain ever diligent, since you are incredibly exposed when on two wheels. However, I’m glad to say I’m no longer wearing my shoulders as earrings.

I keenly felt the bumps of the road as I unsuccessfully tried to avoid rolling over man-hole covers and sped across defunct railroad tracks. I took in the sweet smell of tobacco as I motored past open barns hung with the drying leaves of future cigar wrappers.

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As a 14-year-old I had worked tobacco one summer sporadically with my best friend Anne. I say “sporadically” because it was grueling hard work, and so sometimes as we walked the mile or so to the farm to catch the bus to the fields, we talked ourselves out of going to work that day. Instead we’d thumb a ride to the neighboring, bucolic town of Somers, CT and spend the day meandering through the woods there.

I don’t know what it was about that town, except that it had a certain magical quality for me and my friends. It was “woodsier” than our town, and had a small but significant mountain for hiking with the reward of a fireman’s tower at the top.

I never guessed those many years ago that I would find myself once again traveling the same roads past the same silent barns. A whole lifetime it seemed, had passed between that time and this one. Anne and I had dreamt of renting a van after high school and traveling ‘cross country. It was not meant to be. I went away to college, and she went to work. In either case, she had found a boyfriend by that time and was ingrained in his life. I was awkwardly stumbling through the corridors of higher education, spending a fair amount of energy on beer and boys.

Anne and I continued to take different roads and have lost touch. Somers is still there. I decide to ride through some of the familiar back roads on my bike. Definitely more “neighborhoody” than woodsy, but it still has some magic left.