If you’ve read my posts for the past two weeks, you’ll know I’ve been going through another phase of mourning.  It’s not the first, and it’s unlikely to be the last, I’m afraid, but this one has been particularly hard…it feels deeper than the others. We’ve been reading and re-reading “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” during dialysis. There is a part where a badly behaved boy turns into a dragon.  He scratches off a layer of skin, feeling highly satisfied with himself, but it turns out to be a thin molted layer, and so he tries again and again, never fully able to get rid of his uncomfortable, thick dragon skin. Eventually, Aslan, the God-like lion, comes to his rescue and scratches much deeper with his powerful, sharp claw. It’s terribly painful, but at last the boy is able to emerge from that alien skin, a human once again, but forever changed and humbled by the experience. This is closer to what this stage of grief felt like than any other picture I can think of.  Nothing as ghastly as dragon skin, but I have been aware this time, that I will emerge changed forever. That is the hardest part of all.

I’ve been grieving who he used to be…knowing that person is never coming back. Ive spent so much energy on trying to return him to the man we knew, remind his brain of itself, hoping some connection would be made and we’d see neurological progress. Or maybe personality progress is what I really wanted. I’ve looked back over videos of the past year and a half and see that in many ways, he has digressed. We got him back from the Ativan slide, but he hasn’t made enough improvements since the end of summer for me to believe that he will actually continue to improve. He’ll improve here and there, of course, but since there are no new options to help his rehabilitation or quality of life, I have finally been able to recognize this could be the best he ever is again. And this feels like a slowly downward spiral. I have no idea if this is true, but I’m having to accept that it might be.

I’ve cried a lot. I’ve thought too much. I’ve slept more. I haven’t enjoyed my time with him. It’s very surreal to grieve a person when they are sitting right in front of you. But he’s not the man I married. Today, for the first time, he told me that his brain was damaged. Maybe we are both starting to accept that the old Vernon isn’t really there.

His short term memory has been bad since he emerged from coma, but his long term memory seemed somewhat intact as he began to communicate again. Lately, it seems that even that is fading. His words are as confused as ever, but now he has less patience, and he becomes quickly and loudly frustrated when he’s not understood or attended to. It’s closer to the throes of dementia….with some alzheimer’s thrown in. He does have sweet and loving moments, but they only come out when he first sees his loved ones, after that, he loses patience very soon.

By Friday, I was at my wit’s end. I didn’t know what to do with all the sadness that wouldn’t leave. So I pulled out my oil paints and a canvas I’d been intending to start on for too long. I’d meant to do an updated version of this painting (adding a wheelchair), which was made into an album cover for the amazing Ian McGlynn (who has recorded a song for us, hoping to raise support.  You can buy a copy here, if you haven’t already.)

Anyway, I started the painting, this time thinking about the Northern Lights as I added the sky. Earlier this week, I’d asked Vernon if he remembered seeing the Norwegian Northern Lights and if they’d been colorful. He told me he’d seen them but that they were blue and white. So I made them blue and white…thinking perhaps it could symbolize his version of heaven, something to look forward to. But when I tried to paint the tent, a shape closer to a spaceship evolved. Hmmm…that kind of made sense so I went with it. I kept the wheelchair, which I’d intended all along. In a rare urgency, I finished the 20×24 painting in three or four hours.

So there you have it. I’m calling it “Northern Lights.” I wonder where Vernon has gone. Perhaps he left the night of the accident and what I’m recognizing in him is a shadow of his old self, stuck in his body somehow. Maybe that’s what it has been all along. Now it feels like even that is fading. Perhaps he was abducted by aliens? I know HE has gone somewhere else. Just not sure where…or if we will ever see ‘the old him’ again. Its not a death, but it does feel like a small one. It’s a bit like falling of out love, just as intense as falling in. I don’t mean that in the way someone who has been deeply hurt might mean it. I am not moving into negative feelings toward him. It’s a different love I have for him, not as one to her equal. I’m committed to him, and I’ll continue to take care of him, but the Vernon we knew is not coming back.

I’ve posted this song before…a very special one to me: it was sung at our wedding. Open my new mind’s eye.