Those of you who have lost several loved ones — I have a question for you. Do you find yourselves thinking even more frequently about all of those loved ones? I feel a little bit like Harry Potter holding the resurrection stone and looking at all the people he cared about who had died and just feeling so overwhelmed by grief.
Yesterday was A BAD DAY. I don’t have a lot of hope for today either to be perfectly honest. Ian and I will be back at The Caring Place tonight. I think he’s looking forward to it which is a great relief but I am dreading sitting in the room with all those other widowed spouses, looking at all the faces of grief reflecting back at me like a mirror.
I have an open writing position at work that I am struggling to fill. Reviewing resumes and writing samples is just another way for me to miss Ken. We used to talk through candidates and their writing. One of the candidates I reviewed yesterday has a website with writing samples and they are littered with spelling and grammatical errors. Mistakes happen (as I can attest to every time I look at this blog!) but if, as a writer, you aren’t taking care on your resume/writing samples, I think it unlikely that you’ll be more quality focused on the job! Ken hated poor writing and when he was teaching writing skills to non-writers, he collected and shared examples to explain why writing skills are important. I thought about that yesterday when Ian mentioned to me (while I was loudly venting about the poor quality of my candidate pool) that his friends don’t care about spelling and grammar because the computer does all that for them. Right.
School is almost over for the year. Ian is looking forward to day camp again. This is the last year he’ll be able to walk across the street to get there and we’re both feeling pretty sad about that. Yesterday was A BAD DAY for Ian too. The physical labor of leaving our house is exhausting and the process of cleaning out all the mysterious stuff that belonged to Ken is a combination of frustrating and sad and not at all cathartic, despite what all the grief counselors say. I can honestly say that I’m not finding anything cathartic about yesterday’s ugly crying (yes, literal sobbing while I moved furniture and boxes and stuff) and neither is Ian. Yesterday is the first time in months that I saw Ian crying, while we sat outside in the early dusk, watching for bats and eating our dinner. Usually he is very private in his grief but everything is just too much for us right now.
He said that he doesn’t understand why life has to be so painful. I tried to explain that the gift of Ken in our lives is worth all of the pain we’re experiencing but I am wondering the same thing too.
I still have BAD DAYS, but they have mostly compressed into BAD MOMENTS, Deb. I find that as the years go by, I get better at distancing myself from the most painful memories and losses, but they are always there at some level. Today I was wondering why I don’t watch movies or listen to music with the enjoyment that I once did. I realized it’s because half the enjoyment was having my Dad to share with. Sometimes a clear memory of my family’s anguish will sucker punch me out of nowhere. But my relationship with the pain seems to have changed. For a long time feeling that pain was the only way to keep the ones I loved living and breathing in my memory…and close to me. Somehow I learned to give them a little distance. And I focus now on gratitude. Roger is 90 this year. After watching a 60 Minutes on Alzeimers, I felt I should have an honest discussion with Roger, even though his understanding is failing. I told him I would do everything I could possibly do to keep him home with me. I said I would only make the decision to move him if his safety was at stake. He looked at me, and I wondered if he understood. Then he smiled and said, ” Yeah, but you’ll lose all the laughs.” Oh God. It was a BAD MOMENT. How I love that man. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll survive his passing. Yet I know I will.
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Yes, you will and it’s the blessing and (maybe) expectation that you’ll help his grieving friends and relatives too. And then pass on your learning to other friends, acquaintances, relatives who experience the anguish of loss. It’s a cycle that’s also – I think – a gift really because there’s some comfort in helping. You and Roger are often on my mind; I love the humor he displayed when you talked to him about something as painful as having to admit that there could be a time when you might not be able to care for him.
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