Endings And Beginnings

Endings and beginnings are themes that permeate dealing with the death of a spouse. It starts, pretty obviously, with the endings. It doesn't matter if you knew it was coming or not, if there was the chance to say goodbye or not. Death is the big ending, at least in this life. (Oh, Lord, help me avoid anything else so cheesy this post!!). Sure, there's the idea that the spirit or soul goes on, that we'll be reunited with our loved ones after it's our turn to go. But, at least in this life, we will not get to see them face-to-face, to hear them, to hold them close again. Add to that, our lives as married people have come to an end, too. If we had kids or grandchildren, then there's the shift of no longer being part of that unit, either. And the person we had been sharing a bed with is gone and so we're no longer a companion for falling asleep or a lover for sharing intimacy. A lot of things are no longer going to be what they were, if they're even going to ever be again.

And then, on the flip side of things, there are a whole lot of things that are beginning. We're getting to do things we either have never done before or haven't done in a long time. For me, it's meant having to remember how to keep track of the bills and make sure they're all paid. Ariel was much better at that than I was, and she did it flawlessly. Given how much else I did, I was good with her taking care of that part of our lives. Not any more. We get to learn what it is to be single, and maybe a single parent or grandparent. Maybe we get to learn how to cry or how to be angry or how to be afraid...perhaps in ways we never knew or even dreamed of before. Maybe we get to go back to work. We get to get used to saying we're single or widowed, depending on which we can deal with right off. We get to deal with noticing people who are attractive and having to learn to not automatically squelch or dismiss such thoughts because we're married. Maybe we're not ready to get into anything yet, but there's no longer that commitment holding us back from anything with someone else.

Endings and beginnings, both are scary. With endings, we have to face letting go of things we've loved and treasured. With a spouse, a lot of our lives and likely at least a decent chunk of our identities have been tied up with them. It hurts to think that any chance for the good times is now gone. For me, it was hard admitting that, even though the good times had been getting fewer and farther between as her depression escalated and her mental health deteriorated. The new beginnings bring....God only knows what. It could be good stuff. After the pain of the loss, though, the idea of dealing with more hurt or confusion is very often overwhelming. It gets very tempting at times to just curl up under the covers and wait for the bad things to pass us by. Even if it means missing out on good stuff, there are times when that option seems awfully tempting. Sometimes we need awhile hiding from those scary new experiences before we're ready to face them, and it has to be with little ones at a time. Sometimes we surprise ourselves with what we're ready to deal with. Regardless, it's always a challenge.

In our calendar year, the one day that most symbolizes endings and beginnings is New Year's Eve / New Year's Day. It's the end of a year. All of the opportunities and events and possibilities of the year are coming to a close. At the same time, we're also facing the opening of a whole new year that could be bringing almost anything with it: New fears. New hurts. New losses  Resurgence of forgotten/repressed anguish.. Chances to do better. Blessings of love and friendship. Unexpected gifts of grace of all kinds. Unknown possibilities and potentials. See, it's easy to write those out in nicely separated categories, good and bad. In dealing with it from the perspective of this kind of loss, though, they almost always show up more like this:

New fears. Chances to do better. New hurts. Blessings of love and friendship. New losses. Unexpected gifts of grace of all kinds. Resurgence of forgotten/repressed anguish. Unknown possibilities and potentials.

What's really hard is that, from an evolutionary standpoint, we're wired up to be more aware of threats and dangers than good things. As a survival trait, that's a good one. If we're not aware of threats, or at least not aware in time, then we're either hurting or dead. For those who're parents, I'd betcha just about anything that you'll wake up more quickly if you hear your kid crying than you will if you hear your kid laughing. When we're already hurting and reeling, even fairly minor things can seem like threats. As for more major issues...forget it. The prospect of driving to a new grocery store can take on the proportions of seeing the Death Star cresting over the horizon. That's where we are for awhile. It makes it more than a little difficult to really celebrate New Year's. It's not that we intentionally go looking for the threats or more depressing ends of things. That's our neurology doing what millennia of evolution's designed it to do, keep us aware of potential threats so we can stay alive.

The funny thing I'm noticing, though, is that the longer I survive, the less it seems like my neurology freaks out and makes things into massive threats. It's a slow change. I think it took me six months before doing the same drive in to work on the freeway every morning didn't make my guts clench and my hands shake. And it's not like it's a particularly bad drive, especially driving away from downtown in the morning and not really having nasty rush hour traffic. This year, the holidays hurt more than they did last year. However, even with that, they don't feel quite like the threat they did last year.

It seems like there's only so long we can sit with endings, not trying to suppress or stuff them, before their urgency and perceived possibility for more harm start to fade. Maybe as that happens, it gets less scary to look at what else there might be to come. 

 I hope so.

Dual Core Processor

One thing that dealing with grief has been teaching me is that we have two processes that go on with us all the time. I get to see it show up fairly often, and it's not all that comfortable. I'm doing OK and then the next moment I'm overwhelmed in a swamp of sadness. Or instead I'm sometimes suddenly shaking and jittery and wanting to run or hide. Or sometimes it's finding myself having to fight off being blinded by a consuming rage. It catches me by surprise, and often I'm not sure at first what it was that set it off. Even if I can point to something that might make sense of it, it seems way out of proportion to what it should be.

Yup, there's two things going on. On one level, I'm thinking. On the other level, I'm dealing with feelings. And, to be honest, they both have about equal power to hit me as strongly as each other.

Lots of people I know seem to be of the opinion that thinking is the primary internal function for us. It fits. That's what we're taught. We hear things like “Keep your head” or “Think it over.” We get told that getting an education is the key to success, and education means going to school and learning new ideas and information. Sometimes that learning is assessed by how well we can regurgitate those new bits of information. Give the right definition, connect the date with the event, put the concepts in order. Sometimes it's about applying them, like with math problems. When there's a problem we're supposed to think it over and figure out the right answer. Oh, and be ready to explain it to someone else, which often relies on being able to demonstrate clear, logical thought processes.

Feelings don't get that kind of value or respect. At the same time, they're still used just as strongly in some ways. Just about all advertising is about evoking the feeling that the product or service they're displaying will bring happiness. There's the implication with it that, if we don't have it, we will end up unhappy. Heck, if you think about how much sex is used in advertising, that fits, too. Sex certainly isn't about a rational process. Some feelings are seen to be OK, and others are indications of something being wrong, the person being “less than.” Real men aren't supposed to be afraid. When something bad happens, it's OK, though, for men to get mad and attack the problem. However, a lady isn't supposed to get angry. If someone else is openly sad, people often stand around and don't quite know what to do or how to deal with it. Tongues are either tied or end up tripping as people don't really know what to say, but don't feel comfortable saying nothing. Movies and TV shows repeatedly go back to the idea that falling in love is important and good. For all the good stuff in some of the New Age thinking, there's a lot of it that says that the “bad” feelings (read: “uncomfortable”) are things that should be avoided or shut away...or are signs of a lack of spiritual development.

Guess what, folks. Feelings are just as much a part of who we are as thinking. Just because we're brought up to put more emphasis on thinking doesn't change that. Sometimes strong feelings will end up dragging thinking behind them in their wake. To me, it makes sense to think of them like waves. A small one doesn't really do much to the ability to think, and to choose what to think about. However, a big one—like a sonic boom or a tsunami—will yank whatever's there into its wake. If it's too strong, thinking doesn't really happen until the energy of the wave starts to dissipate. Even if it's only medium strong, sometimes it just pulls the thinking along behind it. And often the assumption is that that's a bad thing.

Don't get me wrong, those experiences are certainly uncomfortable. The times I found myself having to lean against the side of the shower or crumpled up at the bottom of the stairs crying because the sadness roared through me were not fun. The times at work when my frustration erupted like a fireball from an explosion and led to me snapping at people who really didn't deserve it weren't fun. Heh, neither was having to go and apologize afterward. The times where I would be getting ready for a trip and suddenly find myself almost paralyzed with anxiety about the most miniscule or ridiculous things was definitely not fun.

However, there have also been times where going with those emotions have led me to and through things that I don't know I would've looked at or gone to otherwise. She had never told me what she'd want done with her body if she died. I had to go off a best guess based off conversations that only lightly touched on the topic. The place that just felt right to go is hard to get to, with some decent risks of getting hurt if one isn't careful. It wasn't easy, but it's been a decision—based mainly off how it felt—that I haven't experienced any regret about. Plenty of people thought I was horribly mistaken for wanting to read through some of her journal files, that it was just pointless self-torture. It kept feeling like something I needed to do. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have found out how long she'd been depressed and suicidal, or that it had been going on long before we ever met. If I hadn't been willing to go with the nagging feelings of guilt that had come up about whether I'd had anything to do with her suicide, I wouldn't have looked at everything as deeply as I had and come to know that it wasn't about me. Hell, if I hadn't gone with the feeling that I needed to see her body before it was cremated, I probably would've had a lot longer time of having the thoughts come up that maybe it was a mistake, maybe she was still alive....maybe she would come back. Seeing her body, and the shape it was in, was hard, but since then I haven't had those kinds of thoughts come up.

We have both, thinking and feeling. We end up having to learn to deal with both. That doesn't mean trying to figure out how to make one run roughshod over the other at will. It means learning what each one does, how each one works. What each has to offer and where its limits are.

There's just not another way to really get all the way down and out, to find the path that will lead us through the abyss and ready to go on to better times.

Surprise, Surprise

One of the hardest things about working through the suicide of a spouse is how many things don't seem to play out the way that we'd usually expect them to do. Sure, there's plenty of things in life that seem like they don't go the way they should. A movie doesn't turn out to be as good as the previews would've suggested. A recommended restaurant turns out to be not such a great place to eat after all. The date that the friend who set us up raved so much about is someone that...well...we're happy to wish a good life. Somewhere else. Heh....the prize in the box of cereal was nothing but a disappointment.

In general, though, life goes about the way we figure it's going to. We can tell when the car's running low on gas. We know that getting taxes ready is going to be a headache. The grocery store usually has everything we're going to buy. Going to a favorite place usually turns out to be something that we can and do enjoy. Looking at a box of pictures brings up the memories we figure they're going to bring up. Life usually goes the way we figure. The times when it doesn't are times that are much more the exception than the rule. It's one of the reasons why they stand out so much. When things go strange, we're not real sure how to handle them, which is why it's such a shock.

And then there's dealing with this kind of grief. All of a sudden, there are a LOT of things that aren't going the way we're used to or would expect. Driving down a street that we'd been on literally hundreds of times before brings up an unexpected pain so sharp it's suddenly almost impossible to breathe. Opening a drawer in the kitchen looking for a slotted spoon to serve up the food we cooked brings into sight the stainless steel measuring cups we didn't figure that we needed....and it turned out we're glad they anted to buy. All of a sudden, we're crying and missing the things they knew and did well. Looking at a box of pictures of a favorite vacation brings up all kinds of things. Maybe it brings up the good memories along with enough pain to drop us to our knees. Or maybe it's fear of not having anything good like that again. Perhaps it's fear that we might have some good times again...and lose them just as badly. It could be an aching emptiness and sadness over what had been in our lives before and no longer is. Maybe it's rage at the spouse who abandoned us in such a catastrophic, disastrous way.

No wonder exhaustion and lack of energy tend to follow us around. Think about how draining it is when the usual, unexpected stuff happens in life. Even if it's good stuff, it still takes more energy to deal with than the usual, run-of-the-mill events. When the excitement and the high wear off, we crash. When it's things that have gone badly, the effect tends to be even stronger. When it happens more often, then it's a consistent draining effect. They keep coming for quite a while, too. Sometimes they only hit once. Sometimes, the same thing can hit couple of times when we don't expect it or when we'd thought we'd already worked things through. Sadly, the impulse to avoid them just prolongs the misery.

The only thing there really is to do is to ride the ride until it's done. As Winston Churchill once said, “When you're going through Hell...

“...keep going.”