Shift Happens

Two days ago, things shifted rather intensely and radically for me. For the first at least year after she died, it was serious work to try to pull up recollections and memories of the good times. The best I could get were like the equivalent of faded black and white photographs. You know the events they captured and commemorate, but they really don't let you see or feel much of it. That's what it was like. Slowly, a bit more of the detail started to come back, but the color still stayed horribly faded and achromatic. I'd said for quite awhile that my hope is to eventually get to where, when I do think about her, it mostly brings up the good memories about what we had and got to share. I know the other stuff will always be there, and there's good reason for it. If nothing else, I've gotten to learn some things I NEVER want to do again. But that's been the hope.

In the last six months or so, a change started coming up. With some of the more intensely positive memories, I started having some of that neurological crap hitting along with them. See, one of the lovely things I've gotten to deal with in the last couple of years is what seems like some neurological dysfunction. It's not constant, so thankfully it doesn't look like it's Parkinson's or anything like that. However, when emotionally overloaded, I'll start shaking like I've got a moderately-bad case of Parkinson's chewing on me like a hyena on a downed monkey. I've also gotten to deal with these brief, intense jerks and twitches. They're almost like mini-seizures except they only last for a fraction of a second and only hit one area or muscle group at a time. It really sucks when they hit my back and shoulders, as that jerks and tosses everything around. Believe me, neither of those are fun while driving! It also sucked in that I haven't been able to find anything I can take that'll do anything about them. Once they hit, I get to just wait it out. I'd mentioned this to my doc, and his take has only been to say that he'd like to see me get to sleeping regularly and then see what happens. Asshole. Added to that, nothing he's offered has helped with sleep, but that's another rant for another time...

Anyway, the stronger the positive emotions associated with those events, the faster and more intense neurological crap I'd get hit with. The ones that would instantly kick off those mini-seizures, ECT-wannabe reactions were the memories of us making love. To make matters even worse, in the last three months or so, while more of those memories have been coming up, they've also been feeling almost alien, like they're not even mine. Like I'm remembering things that someone else lived. How's that something to mess with one's head? You can remember the bad stuff plenty clearly, and your biology won't react much at all, but the memories of the good times feel alien and get your nervous system shorting out like the Xbox some jackass just accidentally inundated in Diet Coke.

And then Friday night....it was different. I got home from work feeling like something was trying to change, to move, but I couldn't for the life of me pin down what. When I just sat with the feeling for a bit, the idea came to mind to go outside by the garage and sit. My outdoor chair's been coming apart for awhile, but hers is still solid. I went out there to see what'd happen, and pretty quickly started having memories of good times we'd shared coming up. One of the first things that struck me was that I could recall them a lot more clearly, and with more of the emotion from the time present. Color had come back to them, even if it's still kind of faded. And, as worried as I was about the neurological crap getting kicked off, there was none of that. Not with ANY of the memories that came up. I'd originally gone out there with the idea of sitting for maybe 15-20 minutes.

When I got back inside, I realized I'd been out there for about an hour and a half.

I was exhausted. It was a helluvan intense experience. Not all of the emotion was fun/positive/up. Some of it was still uncomfortable, like some of the sadness over realizing there won't be those times with her again. But at the same time, it feels like a significant part of me has come back on-line. It's going to take a bit before that feels normal again. I reckon that's a lot of what it's like when a bone's popped out of joint and needs to be re-seated. There's a sense of relief and things being right when it finally gets put back in place, but depending on how long it's been out, it might take awhile for that to feel totally normal and comfortable again.

I can't say for sure what made that happen. I'm pretty sure part of it is just time. There's a lot that the brain and nervous system need to readjust when a spouse is lost suddenly, regardless of why. There's also a lot of emotion there to have to deal with: anger, fear, sadness, guilt, shame, resentment, etc. Those answers don't come quick. At least for me, I've also learned that I can either deal with them now or I can stuff them back. If I do avoid them, though, then the price they demand still comes due...and it's given the chance to build interest. I think some of it's also come from some of the things I've been able to do, like contacting her family, getting ahold of the folks who adopted her daughter, scattering her ashes, and even taking some time on days like our anniversaries or her birthday to honor her. I'd be quite surprised if there's not a lot more to it. Those are just the pieces I see.

Then again, Dante didn't get to see all of Hell. He just got to see what he needed to. And, like him, this seems like one of those rare moments when I can look up at where I started and see how far I've come. I've had my own versions of the desert of raining fire and the river of boiling blood to deal with. Those are done; they hold no terrors for me now. I may have to deal with them again, unlike Dante on his journey, but I know what they are and that I can make it across/through them again if I need to. They don't hold me back anymore.

And each step farther down brings me that much closer to finally getting to the way out.

A Stupid Hose Cart

The weather's finally gotten good enough, and I've gotten tired enough of looking at the wild growth in the lawn, that I got off my ass and did something about it. Thankfully the lawnmower's hanging in there. It was a gift from one of my best friends when we bought this house. He had his wife had flown out for my graduation, and we were able to get the keys to show them where we were going to live. His response was to think for a bit and then buy what's turned out to be a kickass lawn mower for us. I know it was said before, but thank you, boyo.

Anyway, I also figured it'd be a good time to get around to spraying the lawn for dandelions and other weeds. They haven't come up too much yet, and I think I can thank the colder-longer-than-usual winter for that. At the same time, I don't want to push my luck. This isn't a great lawn, and if it's not sprayed soon, there'll be an ongoing, uphill battle to keep the weeds out. So, I clomped out into the yard with my old boots and the stained jeans I keep for working around the house or on the car and got to work. Mowing grass is always more of a pain when it's wet, so that was where I started. Somehow, I wasn't too surprised when I got kind of distractable toward the end. The upside to that, though, was getting to see that the one little rosebush in the back that I'd thought was dead is still hanging in there. She'd been the one to find it years ago, half buried under the tall grass and ivy that seems to replicate about as quickly as cockroaches or pennies. I felt a fierce surge of pride at the little thing for hanging in there and spent about 15 or 20 minutes rather violently clearing out a good space around it. Dammit, I can at least help keep a ROSEBUSH alive!!

Then it was time to spray. Any more, I'm a fan of the ones that you just screw onto the end of your hose, turn on the water, and hose down the lawn. Yeah, it's maybe not the cheapest option. And it's maybe not the most effective. It works, though, and it's something I can handle doing. Good enough. So I went to set the hose up for it, unscrewing the nozzle that's been on there for years 'n' years and pulling it out to its full length off the little cart around which it can wind.

And then I got knocked on my ass.

See, in the last month or two, I've noticed something. There's an online group of widows and widowers (mainly widows) that I've been involved with. One thing I'd noticed is that it seems I pretty frequently see things posted by them that are about the husbands or ex's that are now deceased...and make it very, almost painfully clear that they still love those men. Even with the frustration and pain that also comes through, there's consistently that sense of love there, too. And I haven't felt that as much for her. I've had more good memories come up lately (which has been a whole different struggle), but when I've thought of her aside from that I've felt pretty flat, almost numb. I'm not angry or resentful at her anymore, thank God. But it's bothered me some that it doesn't seem like I love her the way the other widows I know and have read seem to. And, before you ask, yes a fair number of them became widows because of suicide.

I know, I know; everyone grieves in their own way. I'm also not stupid enough to think that what's posted for this group is everything that they're thinking or feeling. I don't put everything up there myself; why in the world should I think they do? Sometimes, though, it's hard to not compare myself to how others seem to be doing, and it's easy to look at the things I think they're doing well and where I fall short.

This does tie into the hose cart. The cart's a pretty simple deal. The base has four wheels lined up. Two supports come up the sides, and they hold a cylinder between them. On the inside of that is a nozzle that one end of the hose can screw into. It's also got another short piece of hose that'll screw into the spigot coming out of the wall. That way, you can use it to store the hose easily. It was something she'd wanted to get when we bought the house. Having to re-coil a hose by hand was more than she was able to do without some real strain, especially when it was full of water. She didn't mind doing yard work; back in those days she loved having a yard and garden area and doing stuff to take care of it all. But the hose needed the little cart for her to be able to work with it and not have it turn into something that felt like drudgery.

At the time, I wasn't real hot on the idea. The cart didn't seem all that solid, as it's made out of plastic. I pretty quickly found out that the nozzle on the inside of the cylinder that the hose screws into leaks. Also, if I pull too hard on the hose to get it to unwind, it can drag the cart across the cement, meaning I need to take it easier and more careful/thoughtful in working with it than I'd really care to. And, to be perfectly honest, it didn't really occur to me at the time what a pain it could be to deal with a hose filled with water for her. I can yank and fling it around with ease, so what's the big deal, right? Yeah, I still had some growing up to do. At the same time, I could tell it was something that was somehow important to her, and I gave in. I'm not sure that I ever thought it was a good idea. It was just one of those compromises I'd made at the time because it wasn't important enough to get into an argument, or even an extended discussion, over.  Even after we'd brought it home and realized that the connection between cart and hose tended to leak, it stayed in the yard.  It wasn't worth arguing over, and it seemed important to her so....OK, it stays.

Looking at it today, though, hit me like a kick from a horse to the sternum. For the first time, I saw it more like she had back then, as something that'd make it easier for her to get to do some of the yard work. It meant she wouldn't have to ask me to come take care of something for her. It was something that gave her some freedom, it helped empower her in her own home. Even if she didn't use it a whole lot, or even at all in the last few years, it was something that made it possible that she could do some things. And, at least at first, that had made her happy.

And it hit me that, if I had to do it all over again, I'd still buy her a stupid hose cart. Just because it made her happy. And that thought & feeling makes me want to cry. Maybe I don't always feel the same sense of love for her that I see in the things a fair number of others write about their lost loved ones. But it doesn't mean that they're entirely gone, either. Maybe just needing to rest for a while more.

It's moments like that, the brief flashes of hope or comfort, that make it possible to keep trekking down through all the layers of this Hell, to eventually confront and walk past my own Devil...and find the way out.

Motion Sickness

One thing came up recently in talking with a friend of mine and trying to explain what some of this grief process is like. I found myself comparing it to the phenomenon of motion sickness, especially when people get it in things like movie theaters. As I understand it, what happens is the brain ends up getting conflicting messages. The eyes say that there's motion going on, that we're moving (especially if you sit close to the big screen and it takes up most of your field of view). However, the inner ear (among other things) says to the brain that we're actually sitting still; no motion is taking place. The brain gets those conflicting sources of data, doesn't know how to reconcile them, starts freaking out and expresses its displeasure through the stomach. Thus, for some people, sitting too far toward the front of a movie theater means that, along with the show on the screen, they get to deal with gastrointestinal pyrotechnics as well.

I've recently been finding something similar going on for myself. In the last few weeks, I've had a lot more of the positive memories from our marriage coming up. They're not big things. They're not major events, like anniversaries or birthdays or her graduation. They're the little, day-to-day things that added up and meant so much. Things like going out for breakfast almost every Saturday morning for the better part of a decade. It was time we set aside to just hang out with each other, no talk of bills or chores or errands allowed. Things like walking in the park together, and sometimes feeding the ducks. Yesterday it was remembering doing yardwork together, especially pruning back the rosebushes, and how well we worked as a team and made it enjoyable for each other. A huge one was how it felt to fall asleep next to her, just enjoying knowing that she was there.

One of the biggest shifts with that is being able to feel some of what those times were like again. I'd had a few memories like that come up in the last couple years, but most of the time I couldn't feel what'd made them good. I could recall it intellectually, but the emotion was just grayed out, at best. Now I can remember how just sitting at a table and holding hands and talking made me smile. I can remember how walking in the park and talking, usually about nothing big or heavy or serious, brought a sense of contentment with it. How I would drift off to sleep with a smile in my heart because I was there next to this woman I'd fallen in love, that I'd tied my life to. It's not the full intensity of those feelings, but there's at least some of it there now.

What's making that so hard is that it's not just the good feelings that come up. There is almost always a sense of sadness and loss that comes with them, too. I'm pretty sure it comes from the recognition that those good times are over, that they're GONE. There is no chance left of getting to have those again. Oh, sure, there can be other good times. I'm not just shut off to the possibility I may fall in love again, or maybe even get married again. But as good as those might be, they will never be the same as they were with her.

And so I get hit with both, maybe not quite at the same time but in close proximity. And it's hard to know how to sort those out, to shake the pieces so they fall together into a coherent whole. Instead, I end up feeling pulled between both, recalling the good that had been and deeply saddened by the good that can never be again. Torn between the future and the past.

About all I can figure to do is believe that it means I am still moving, and that an escape from this Hell lies at the end of the journey.