I’ve had writer’s block. But then, I think I’ve had appropriate-feelings block so i know there is a lot in the way, I’m trying to do the Grief Group workbook, but it feels tedious and boring, even thought I’ve only been in there two of the 14 weeks. I know its healthy, but it is hard for me to feel connected there. It feels surreal to be there…more of a dream than any other parts of my life. I want it to be more of a therapy session probably than actual tips on how to get through times of grief. I don’t want more tips. I want more catharsis. Doesn’t work like that, does it?
The other day I came across an e-course called Write Your Grief. It’s a 30 day program with other writers, trying to do just that: write their grief. I thought about it for a couple of days, not sure if I should join, not sure if I could make such a big commitment to write every day, to be on schedule like this with others—when I still feel so foggy and off. But since it starts in two days, I signed up…and now I’m committed. Every day we are supposed to get a writing prompt from the instructor, a psychologist/widow who calls her work “emotionally intelligent grief support.” There will also be a private Facebook group for all the people taking the course, where we can share our writing with each other (or not.) I hope it helps me through some of the emotional blocks I feel like I’m living with at the moment. At least it should help with the writer’s block.
PS I discovered the course and the instructor via this podcast, which I thought was excellent. I liked her approach very much.
Also some good news: my friend Nikki from England is visiting for a week. She was one of the very first friends we made when we moved to Reading ten years ago. She’s seen the kids change and grow up from early days, and was there for a lot of the big things that happened when we lived there. We even moved into her house when she moved out. Hers was the last place we stayed before our morning trip to the airport to move out here. I even once bought a car from her dad. So she knew Vernon pretty well too. She’s been great for helping my memories click in, helping round out the past which I haven’t spent much time thinking about for years. I was so focused on the moment…leaning in toward the future. And she brought CANDY! (English candy for the win!)
We went whale watching yesterday. It was an overcast morning, we didn’t see any whales, not even dolphins. But we figure the negative ions worked wonders on her jet lag.
But we did see some sea lions and a seagull, so all was not lost. 🙂
“There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.”
― Terry Pratchett
Justine seems to be doing very well at the moment. There is a ‘grief group’ at her school that she attends with a couple of other children who are dealing with loss. She’s asked me not to share the things she talks about there with anyone else, but she doesn’t mind my sharing this video of her telling the story of how our family came to be.
“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” Helen Keller
I haven’t the heart to weigh myself at the moment, but I’m sure I’ve put on a few pounds since Vernon left us. Really? More side effects? This is not making me feel great right now. I wore a pair of old exercise pants, that Vernon bought me eons ago, to my class this morning. Not only did they feel tight, but I could tell in the studio mirrors that I look a little more hippy. I think. I can’t remember what I used to look like. Does one look different in a mirror when they are in mourning? Or is it just my eyes? I know I feel lumpy and uncomfortable. There have recently been a few extra ice cream cravings that I may or may not have succumbed to. Cake or Death? I’ll have the cake, please.
I kept looking in the mirror. No, I’ve definitely gained weight, I decided. But my outfit and my ponytail are kind of cute! Vernon would have liked this look…he even bought me the pants. In fact, I realized as my attitude shifted, Vernon always liked me no matter what my body was doing: shifting, aging. At least that’s what he said. I guess I’ll still believe him.
So I smiled at my reflection, got through my class, and when home, I put on a new lipstick and changed into a loud top and (still-ill-fitting) trousers. I put on big earrings and fancy shoes and went to pick up the kids from school, feeling somewhat glamorous for no real reason…except that I remembered Vernon thought I was beautiful no matter what. It’s nice to know his love is still in my heart, and it is still strong enough to boost my self-esteem even after he is gone.
Thanks for being such a great guy, Vernon. Thanks for adoring me, it still builds me up and changes me for the good. I love you, too.
Now, who’s got any cake?
Glamourous: Me as Adam Ant and Vernon as Andy Warhol at a fancy dress party in Reading, England 2007.
“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
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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