"She's not keeping you from living; you are keeping her from dying."
This piece is from 2016 in my Podcast era. It still rings so very valid. Also, for a nanosecond reading it again I believed my own PR. Nah, just seems so on point. When you read the old stuff you wrote you see a then and a now, which is critical to measuring change. If it’s not measured it can’t be healed. Right?
The quote was from a French TV series, Witnesses. Very French, very dark, and it felt like HBO's True Detective. I find that hearing or reading something opens my mind’s eye, specifically on this journey from caregiving, loss, mourning, grief, and searching. When I heard that line I heard this: “Donna is not keeping me from living; I am keeping Donna from dying."
The tension between those two thoughts and behaviors is palpable. Am I living? Am I keeping her from dying? To what end? Why?
It seems when I come to a point in my grief journey that I feel I have a fixed end point or place of repose, I find a fork in the road, a new path to examine and come to another understanding no matter how brief or tenuous.
This process of grief is a hamster on a wheel endlessly trying to reach a goal. Or clouds have parted and there's the brightness of understanding in the light breaking through. This grief journey is ongoing and changing. It's slow, it's fast, and above all else it gives me a chance to find a balance in today while adjusting the past. The distance in my rearview mirror is infinite. My view through the windshield is finite.
Am I living? Donna is not keeping me from living. What deficits I have in my life are largely self-imposed. But why? The question becomes, am I living half a life in response to the full life we had before 2009, when she was diagnosed and told she had six months to live? At that point I knew, we knew, there would be no happy ending.
Truth be told, there is a gap in my life. The loss is not just a wife. The loss is called Donna and a life that had dimensions, texture, context. A life that was vibrant. A life that at times was flat and shapeless. That is what life is, a mosaic of pastels. Some tiles are dull, some bright, some broken, some misshapen but, together, they make up a picture that inspires the senses. (We loved seeing Gaudi's work in Barcelona.) The daily immersion in that world is lost, replaced by seeing a pair of glasses on a vanity, covers on a throw pillow, pictures on a dresser, perfectly centered art. These are static memories, yet dynamic and evocative. To ignore those activations of memory is a failure to abide by the voice within myself, within us all. As I tug on this string of memory through the lens of grief and memories, what are the pearls or knots that appear?
Stubborn: Not sure stubborn is the right word. I spoke of this in Podcast #33 This Too Shall Pass: When I Say So. (I will share that soon.) I spoke about how grief is part of one’s narrative and how we have to live that narrative in our own words and music. This stubbornness is not falling prey to people saying it is time to move on or you need to find someone, just to demonstrate you are okay. The stubbornness is a way to keep focus on the process. What is it telling me? What does it mean? It's my loss, my grief, my story. Though I will add that I do take what I hear, the criticisms, the support, and apply it to the journey. Can I use it to change and improve? My stubbornness is less an impediment and more a protective shell.
Solitude: This is not isolation as much as it is what I spoke of in Podcast #36 My Idiosyncratic Fingerprint of Grief: Grief to Knowledge. (I will share this as well.) I’ve discovered that I am okay alone. I am okay with the quiet and my thoughts. I do not anguish in loneliness, yet I wonder if some of my behaviors are just that, a low anguish. I will add that a portion of this solitude was already in place. Donna and I were happy with each other without events and activities. We were not bored. There are days I am bored out of my mind. I try and fill the day with productivity and plans. Have I been successful? Meh. I am finding that as time moves forward I am comfortable with new and trying to do new. Part of this exercise is trying to build a new business, which never happened.
Forgiving Myself: This is a late revelation said to me: “You have to forgive yourself.” I never thought I did or was not a forgiving person. The more I thought about that the more I realized I am not forgiving myself for being the one who is living. The one who has this. The one who is doing nothing with the gifts and bounty I have. It came into focus when traveling and heading to the airport. There is the panic: what am I doing? Why? I should just turn around and go home. I don’t deserve this. This is not new to my grief; it's part of my worldview. I am harsh on myself and that seems to fly in the face of stubborn. I can say I am trying to find peace, forgive myself for being alive and being me. I see the edges of forgiving myself folding back on itself, becoming some origami swan. The hurdle today is inertia. I am stuck in this memory of those days where I charged ahead and completed lists and lists. Today the lists are comprised of scraping the waxy buildup off the kitchen floor. I kid, but it feels like that. I know I need to up my game and lists, but the gravitational pull of the planet called grief may be holding me back.
Organic Grief: Another pearl on this string is the sense that all of this, all of these podcasts and posts and pictures and memories and reflections, all this grief is organic—a natural progression. Grief and memories are my life now and it's moving, building, and changing. It's changing and morphing like an avatar. Not in and of itself but within me. I am a host for this grief and the invader is transferring its venom or serum to me. I am becoming something new and I will refer back to my post on Post Traumatic Growth. The ashes from the crap experiences we have move forward like a slurry in a river. Changes occur and we may become better. Or worse. But it's happening around us whether we choose to participate or ignore it. I choose to examine this process and make something of it. Perhaps not fast enough nor successfully enough. But it is mine and I will do as I please, because it is my grief.
Observer Effect: Observer Effect is the phenomenon where the simple act of observing changes what is observed. So, are all my rantings, ramblings, gnashing of teeth, and watching—are they affecting this avatar called grief? Is the act of observing this grief making it different, harming me, or helping? Are my observations affecting the morphing of this grief? Or does grief have its own shelf life, expiration date, sell-by date, life span?
Richard A. Friedman, MD, writing in the May 17, 2012 issue of the New England Jrl of Medicine, addresses grief, depression, and the DSM-5, which is The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is how they diagnose mental illness and disorders. You can read the full piece since it speaks about depression and grief and what is complicated grief. Friedman notes in his opening paragraph that 2.5 million Americans die each year and they leave behind an even larger group of grief-stricken people. For the vast majority of people, grief typically runs its course from 2 to 6 months. So it does have a shelf life. Friedman goes on to address complicated grief and depression. Did my grief run its course in 6 months? In a word, no. Was it complicated? A no maybe. Is it still going on? Yes, but I think Observer Effect may be driving this.
Wanting to know more, understand more, and figure a way through this to find meaning in its place in my life. Is there meaning in the death of a loved one that comes from mourning and grief? Which begs the next question: are all these observations and explorations perpetuating it? Is this part of the overall status of my life of being a one-trick pony? I say this because of the response I get, all the comments, and page views—no one notices. So I may need to put this pony down and make dog food. But I will note the trending nature of grief, especially in relationship to the tragic death of Sheryl Sandberg’s husband David Goldberg and the outpouring of response, her essay on grief and grieving. There is also the aging of America and the changes in healthcare where end-of-life and palliative care are trending topics. I am not alone. If one person reads or listens and gets it, I guess the pony had a good life.
Lots of questions, so little time.
One final thought taken from Sally Mann’s book Hold Still. Memories [photos] emanate from complex moments in time; therefore, memories are economies of scale, winnowed down from the reality of those larger moments. Do the economies of these memories guarantee they will slowly fade away? Or are they, these memories, compact enough to travel and have life within me without crowding out today or me?