“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
I keep meaning to write my thoughts, if for nothing than to get them out of me, and then by the time I sit down to do it, the thoughts I had been trying to organize are already long gone and have been replaced by a totally different theme of thoughts. Or a different mood on a different day. I can’t catch up. I could do that better when Vernon was in ‘recovery,’ but now there is too much shifting of the mind. It’s a very uncomfortable way to exist right now.
When I’m out, I want to be home. When I am home, I look for reasons to leave. I feel like my body doesn’t fit me properly at times. Hormones seem off…or is it my imagination? Things look the same as before, but it’s still slightly off most of the time, a slightly mis-layered alternate reality. It’s been hard to to pick up the camera (and use it), for some reason. My attention span seems shorter. I sure hope this doesn’t last too long, because it’s a pretty weird way to live.
Sometimes, I think: “Wait…whatever I’m going through right now, is this a kind of awakening to the New Me? Will some of this stuff stick? Is any of it good?” I’m insensitive to some things I used to get fired up or upset about, and I’m sensitive to unexpected little things: an actor’s performance can make me start crying— a child’s painting, a song out of the blue. I prefer to imagine myself in some sort of metamorphosis, a shedding of an outer sheath…that this is temporary and we will get through it. Or will it remain for a long time, I sure hope not!
This is why I like the change of season, as we move into the fall. It hasn’t really cooled down much here in Southern California, but the light has changed and the air feels different. Soon we’ll be dressing up accordingly. Summer was a very long season for us (not to mention the one that Vernon died in) so it is good to say goodbye and herald fall, winter, and all the little changes of routine that come along with them. At some point, we will find ourselves on the other side of all this, probably trying to figure out the next change that has invaded our routine, that is if we ever get a routine. My friend Julia likens a change of routine to a new cloak from an old worn-out one. It can take a while to feel like the new one fits right.
One thing I have in favor of creating a positive mindset toward the next season, Widowhood and Beyond, is that when I look back at my life I see lot of different seasons in my wake. The future still looks blank and fuzzy, but since the past is full of changes and challenges, I can assume the future will be filled with different seasons, and maybe a lot more versions of myself. I just don’t know what they are yet.
I also am thankful to have a few widow friends in my life that not only do I look up to, but I have watched turn into women of joy, peace, and strong individuality in the years after their husband’s deaths. They are shining beacons. (And they never felt the desire to remarry.) 🙂 I can look to them as living examples of how to get through the strangeness and into other seasons.
Here is a giant bee, for lack of a better metamorphosing insect with which to illustrate this post.
This painting was made in 2001, around the time of my first psychotherapy session ever. I was turning 30, and had just been diagnosed (finally) with clinical depression. I don’t know if I even saw the first counsellor a second time. He made me uncomfortable with his manner of questioning, but I got a painting out of it at least. It had felt like a wild nest of hornets had been exposed and taunted, covering the floor or my heart with buzzing, irritated insects. But I also felt that I knew if I pursued this path, I would find the honey in my heart. It’s good to remember that tough seasons happen and you can emerge from them…different.
Funny thing is…I used to identify as the one who was getting stung, now I’m feeling more like the bee.
I attended my first Grief Group meeting last night. I’m not allowed to talk about the other members so I’ll just share my experience. I will say I felt like crying as soon as I entered the room. That’s not a bad sign, I don’t think. It’s just that I knew I’d be asked any minute what happened to bring me there. I felt young. I felt that I was in a different place than many of the others…but I also felt like I was allowed into a special club of people who had experienced something similar.
I never felt like that when I was dealing with Vernon’s injury and ‘recovery.’ Then, whenever I happened upon someone dealing with TBI, I felt like I couldn’t relate to the other’s story: I might get jealous that they were improving or feel like they had better resources or feel like their injury wasn’t nearly as bad as Vernon’s. It was easier for me to talk to people who had loved ones with cancer or other terrible illnesses than it was to talk to those involved with Brain Injury. For that reason, TBI support forums were not a safe place for me. Even reading ‘inspiring’ true stories of recovery that well-meaning people passed my way became dangerous territory for my mind. But whenever I hear another story of someone losing a spouse, a parent, a child, etc, I feel no jealousy at all, just sadness for their loss. I have a better idea than I used to of how hard that must be for them.
The particular Grief Group I joined is going through a workbook together. I came into it mid-workbook, but they say its ok to come in whenever, that even if you do the program a few times, you’ll get something different out of it each meeting, just because we are all in constantly changing, moving forward in our journey, and we’ll be in a different state of mind each time. At this point, I don’t know if I’m grieving the loss of a mate from this earth or if its just that reality of the last two-plus years are beginning to dawn on me. Right now, those are the memories that trigger anxiety and sadness when they come. But that’s right now—tomorrow, next week, next month may be different.
One thing they offered me (and everyone else there) last night was a lot of grace. Grace to be wherever you are at any given point in the journey. No judgement, no assumptions that you should feel a certain way about things, no rushing the stages. I was told the one thing that seemed common when you lose someone is that in the early days especially, you can feel very much in a fog (and for some people, that takes a long time to move out from). I liked the permission to call what I’ve been feeling a fog, though I hadn’t called it that yet. Now that I heard someone else’s word for it, I was able to give it a name. (Strange, because that seems like it would be an easy one to call.)
Today, I’ve been looking around the web for more grief forums. I found a few: Modern Loss and Planet Grief, to name some. I found the comment section of this particular article very interesting, with 200 readers sharing their unique accounts of loss in one convenient place. But actually, the way my own readers and friends have opened up their stories to me over the past couple of months since Vernon started hospice has been more meaningful than any article I could be reading. I feel like I have learned so much from them, from you. I feel more prepared because people have shared. It’s a lonely time of life in some ways, but it’s not a lonely club.
I keep remembering vivid moments from the past and think: “oh this is part of this grieving process everyone tells me I’m going through.” But Vernon isn’t always in the moments. Sometimes the memories are set in London, so I think: yes, this is about Vernon, time we spent there together. But when I try to embrace the snapshot in my mind, I realize it was a different memory, maybe one where I was a student there instead or maybe it wasn’t London at all, but New York, where he never went with me at all. Memories of Jr. High in another country altogether. Memories of High School. Memories of the new baby. Memories of Maki riding along on a piece of luggage to visit Los Angeles for the first time. Concerts. Christmases.
I feel a bit like a snow globe, all shaken up, memories and things I used to identify with swirling around in my head, but when I catch one, I realize it wasn’t the one I expected…or had hoped for. To reach for another analogy, I remember once writing (here, I believe) that Vernon’s brain injury was like an office that had been hit by a tornado (or something), papers and files in total disarray: his reality and his memories all mixed up and strewn about. Perhaps this has a touch of that…my own (very mild) brain injury. But there is nothing wrong with my brain. I actually love this time of memory and memorial. It’s like my life is flashing before my eyes in gently falling postcards that appear once every couple of hours. It’s just weirdly surprising that Vernon isn’t in all of them.
I think what may be happening here is a return to parts of myself, my underrated past. Perhaps they are returning to remind me of who I used to be alone, who I was with Vernon, with and without children, with varying dreams and disappointments, different outlooks. How many people can one be in a lifetime? They are all there, resettling ghosts, vague reminders that life is long and full of seasons.
I’m 45 years old. The oldest I’ve ever been.If I live to be 90, this is smack dab mid-life. I see the future splayed out before me in a way I never have. I’ve got a few ideas, but compared to my memory-littered past, its an empty plain.
No pictures tonight. Just thoughts. Might as well post…
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
― C.G. Jung
I took Maki to a concert last night, the first proper one I’ve taken him to. We bought tickets 6 months before just to make sure it would happen. We are both very sentimental about this band Echo and the Bunnymen, a big post-punk band from the 80s. I loved them in High School myself, but Vernon was really into them when he was a lad in England, where they were much more known.
This is a picture of a back of album cover that came out in 1981. Vernon would have been Maki’s age now. For a school art project, he made a watercolor painting from this picture. His parents put it in a frame, and its been hanging on the wall of the lounge ever since. Maki remembers it too. It’s one of the few artworks we’ve seen from that time in his life.
Vanessa sent over this picture of a 14-15 year old Vernon when she heard we were going to the show. Think he looks a bit like Maki?
I do want to take a moment to praise the therapeutic and uplifting power of music. I’m not just talking about listening to music at home or in the car. I think the vibrations of live music must do something special to us. I know I always feel better for a few days after seeing a show, and Vernon is the one who made me realize how healing music is. He would always respond better to musicians playing for him than when he listened from a cd player. He would relax in ways that medicine couldn’t help with. It made me start realizing that listening to real instruments and voices is GOOD for people, not just nice for them. Maki and I can both feel the difference today!
I met a lady today. She was maybe ten years older than me. Her husband is suddenly on hospice after recognizing his lung cancer too late to do much more about it. I was just leaving coffee with buddy Chris Adams and a friend. He flagged me back as I was driving away, letting me know she had just run into him on her morning walk and could I talk to her? “Does she even want to?” I asked. I guess she did because I went back and talked with her for about an hour. I didn’t know how I could speak into her life because its only been a month since Vernon graduated from his own hospice. (And since we graduated from hospice ourselves.)
I didn’t know what I could give her, coming from this raw and irregular state I’ve been in. But there were two things I remember stressing for her. One was that she should come up with a sign for him, something to remind her that he would be watching her. I told her about the pigeons, the butterflies, the hawks. I told her that her husband’s body was a chrysalis and his spirit was in transition…that is why he seems to come and go from the state he is in. I told her that they don’t actually leave us when they go, but that they stay with us…she can honor the symbols she is seeing flying around her now. I don’t even know if everything I told her was true…but its been my experience thus far. I also sent a friend who plays music over her way. She has played music for another friend of mine whose mother was on hospice recently…and she has played for Vernon.
I realized I had this Death Team around me. Somehow, out of our experience, we had come up with (while not exactly, an expertise) a specialization of our own. A club. We don’t have the only corner on this, but we can speak with some authority. Everyone in my Vernon-tribe can. It’s the experience of dying and death and the after that we can draw on together. It sounds morbid, but I assure you, it is not. It’s just continuing the exploration of LIFE.
Apparently there are these things called Death Cafe’s. I knew it was an English thing immediately as the first detail on the website offers a place to eat cake and drink tea and talk about death. The point is: we aren’t used to talking about it. I’m still not sure if it is always in good taste. But its a space for people to talk about these things. I’m still not sure how we are supposed to do it.
Our chaplain, before I even had confirmation that Vernon was going to go (though I had an inkling), suggested to me that the purpose of our journey at that point was to show people how to go into death. I don’t know if that was true, but I ran with that purpose. I started blogging our experience and also putting up-to-dates on FaceBook. It probably wasn’t the English Way that Vernon’s family would have expected, but it was my way, at least what I had learned to do over this time.
Anyway, here we are. He has died, and we are figuring out how to talk about it. Who ever expected he would have pulled together a unit to try to express our feelings about this stuff while we are still in the land of the living? But here we are, alive, talking about it.
A special cover of Vernon's fav song 'Waterloo Sunset' by friend and singer/song-writer Ian McGlynn. All proceeds support Vernon's recovery! Donate what you can and download a beautiful song in return.
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