newly widowed

The Space Between Memories (Where grief lives)

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Author’s Note

The thing they don’t tell you about death and grieving is, you don’t just say goodbye once. You say goodbye at the hospital or hospice or wherever you are, you say goodbye when you leave the first viewing of the body at the funeral home, the night of the wake, the afternoon of the burial, the day you get up the courage and emotional wherewithal to donate his clothes, and a million other moments that you never understood were goodbyes until you’ve lost the one you love.

The Space Between Memories

What kind of life goes on in the space between memories? It’s the life where you do the work of living. It’s where you do the heavy lifting and the keepin’ on with the keepin’ on.

    Yesterday, I heard you say, “Made me laugh so hard” in that laughing tone your voice went to when you told me about something that amused you. It was so real it took my breath away. I turned to look for you, but you weren’t there.

I can’t get the memories of that last day out of my head and yet I make new memories, choose joy, question the will of God, and I live on, in the space between memories.

Today, I had all the papers you left behind shredded. I couldn’t complete the mission on my own so I called a mobile shredding truck to come finish the job. Twenty years of old bills, cancelled checks, pay stubs, and tax returns reduced to thousands of pieces of ephemera in a pile of trash bags that were gone in an instant. The house somehow feels emptier today. I didn’t expect that.

Through all these months of trying to shred it all myself, I cursed you, and yelled at you, I told you, “If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you my damn self for leaving me with all this work.” I never expected to find myself standing on the driveway crying as the truck carrying the space between our memories drove away.

Write, he Said… The Widow Diaries (Chapter 3)

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It’s been 3 months since Chuck passed away. I still can’t bring myself to finish writing out the thank you cards. I wrote out the first 75 in January, but I haven’t been able to touch the mass cards or thank you cards since. I did, however, write him a letter in my journal on Monday night. I cried as I wrote, it was a cleansing cry. I woke up this morning feeling calm and better than I have in a long time so I thought I’d tell you a little about our beginning.

I met Chuck in March 1991, I was still 18 and he was a few months shy of his 20th birthday. I met him at a mutual friend’s house after her 18th birthday party. He came to pick him up his mother, she’d kept my friend’s mother company while we were all out celebrating Jenn’s birthday. I opened the door to him standing on the front step in his black Member’s Only jacket. I loved him on first sight, my heart immediately knew his. I was so smitten I actively pursued him, flirting any time I saw him, stopping by the pizza place where he worked, and eventually I gave him my number and then going to see him when he didn’t use it. I asked him, “Hey, you don’t use a pretty girl’s number?” (brazen hussy, party of 1) If you know me, you know this is so totally like me and so totally not at all like me. He called the next week and we had our first date on June 6th. We saw Soap Dish and had dinner at Friendly’s. We drove there in his 1979 baby blue Buick Regal; I loved that car.  My mother joked, it must be love at first sight if we enjoyed Soap Dish. It was and we did.

Write, He Said… The Widow Diaries (Chapter 2)

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I’ve been seeing a therapist since June after I had a meltdown in the hospital after my surgery in May. I saw my primary care doc after I was released from the hospital and he recommended Lexapro. I started taking it, but found it actually caused me worse anxiety than it had been prescribed for so I spoke with my primary doc and decided to seek counselling while leaving the door open to move to another anti-anxiety if the need arose. It’s been eight months and the weekly therapist appointments are helping immensely. Having an impartial party to tell my troubles too and let my guard down with has been a godsend. Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to a stranger than the ones who love you.

 

Also, a godsend? The folks at Lacuna Loft. Lacuna Loft is a group for young adult cancer survivors, which my thankful-to-be-considered-young-adult-at-45 will age out of next year. They offer periodic online creative workshops. I missed the first one I signed up for in October because I was in the ER with a migraine that caused me to temporarily lose my vision. The two I’ve managed to take part in have been so much fun and reinforced the idea that art for art’s sake is healing, and nurturing, and great for anxiety.

 

I have yet to find a local bereavement support group and the widows’ Facebook group I joined often left me feeling more upset and sad so I made the decision to leave the group. Truthfully, I’m not entirely sure I’m yet ready to be in a group and talk about Chuck’s death. I don’t like crying in public. I’m just learning how to feel and fully acknowledge my feelings so I definitely don’t think I’m ready for public displays of sorrow.

 

What has also has been helping are the audiobooks I’ve been listening to. The first blog was brought to you courtesy of Jenn Lancaster’s, The Tao of Martha. Her writing about her dog Maisie’s battle with cancer and her eventual death and the grief that followed finally brought my words pouring out of me like a spigot on full force. The Bloggess, Jenny Lawson’s Furiously Happy gives me strength and reminds me to be militantly furiously happy in the face of sorrow and grief. This week it’s Stephen King’s, On Writing. His blue-collar approach to daily writing was a gentle reminder to just sit down and write, and Martha Beck’s continuing piece in Oprah Magazine about hunting for happiness follows her advising a woman feeling unmotivated and unhappy. Her advice to do what makes you happy reminded me to get back to what I love to do.

 

Honestly, right now I don’t love writing, but I think that’s more a case of being out of practice and being unsure if I can maintain my original pledge from the 365 Days of Carol Anne Cancer Diaries that I’d always tell you my truth no matter how bleak, gross, or sad. I’ve been writing more personal missives in my journal and working through my grief talking to family, friends, and my therapist, some of which I think could very well not be fit for public consumption and surviving and fighting your way through cancer offers you a treacherous villain, cancer. Learning to go on and face this new life as a widow offers a no less treacherous or formidable villain but it’s an abstract; transcendental if you will, villain. You can hate and despise death all you want but no matter what you do it’s not changing or going away. And, while I’ve never believed in ghosts or visits from lost loved ones I’m unbelievably hurt that I haven’t dreamt of or seen (believe me, I’m rolling my eyes with you) Chuck since he passed on. Why hasn’t he come to me? Yes, I’m as confused as you why I’m looking for something I honestly don’t believe in is as mystifying to me as it is you.

 

Next week will be three months since he left me and some days I’m a functioning adult and others I’m a couch dweller binge watching ER on Hulu so I don’t have to think or feel or consider what next, where do I go from here. I don’t have answers right now and my boxing gloves and moxie are powerless against death.

 

I promise, or at least I hope, these blogs will be less depressing as time goes on and I’m feeling less uncertain and broken. For now, I take comfort in the company of family, friends, and authors like Jen Lancaster and Stephen King and the advice of my therapist, and of life coach Martha Beck in Oprah Magazine.