Moving forward with baggage as heavy as dark matter

Remember how I couldn't sleep? Well, I've gone to the opposite extreme now: all I want to do is sleep. I slept on and off all day yesterday, then finally fell asleep last night near 2:00 AM and slept until 9:00 this morning. Took a nap this afternoon, too.

Not a dream to be had. Not one. Shocking, I know.

For all the sleep, I still have zero energy, so that's fun. But at least time sleeping is time that I'm not sitting here missing Doug, so I guess I'll take it.

Had my weekly session with Grace the Grief counselor today. I'm still not seeing any benefit to this at all. We talked about my lack of hope, and she repeated what she says every week: I may not believe I'll ever have hope again, but she does. Well, bully for her!

We also discussed how my grief is complicated by my history of anxiety and overthinking and desire for control in a situation that's largely unknown and uncontrollable - that's going to be Brooke's problem to help me through, though, as Grace is strictly grief counseling. 

The largest part of our session, though, was spent digging into something that I haven't shared publicly before, because I - I guess I don't want to be seen as a traitor to the feminist cause, but...

Look, I know that people who know me see me as a very strong, independent, ambitious, career-driven woman. And while it's true that I am strong, independent, and ambitious, and while it's very true that I LOVE the career in which I've landed (largely by very happy accident - and I wouldn't trade it for anything), the truth is that I never wanted a career. From the time I was a little girl, all I wanted out of life (aside from being on Broadway, but I think we can all agree THAT ship has sailed) was to have a long, happy marriage and to be a mother.

I managed to achieve the motherhood goal, and with great success: I couldn't have had a better child than Andrew if I could have individually picked out every quality, every characteristic, and every personality trait. My son is the best child I could ever have hoped for.

But the long, happy marriage? THAT eluded me, until Doug. And I think part of my sadness and bitterness (because, oh - I'm bitter) is that I FINALLY got that happy marriage, but for only FOUR MONTHS? How is that okay? How am I supposed to be okay with that? We didn't even get to start our marriage before it was over.

And the simple truth is that I don't want to spend the rest of my life sleeping alone. But the only man I want sleeping beside me is the man I can't have, so where does that leave me? Either I have to accept that I'll be lonely in my bed every night for the rest of my life (which, frankly, isn't a life I find worth living), or I'll have to make a choice - at some point in the future - to start dating again. And that's a problem for several reasons, not the least of which is that it would feel like cheating on Doug: I didn't promise to love him until the day HE died; I promised to love him until the day I die. The other problem is that I don't know if I can ever let myself love anyone again and risk hurting like this a second time. Not to mention that the men weren't beating my door down when I was young and beautiful, so the odds aren't good for me there.

And that, folks, is why I feel so trapped: the one big goal I still had for my life before Doug - a long and happy marriage - I haven't achieved. And the thought of starting over again is as terrifying as spending every night in a cold, empty bed. The thought of ever dating again - the rejection, the kissing of far too many frogs, the fear that I'd slip back into my old pattern of choosing men who don't really love me - it's paralyzing.

And yes, I know a lot of people probably think of marriage as a frivolous goal. I mean, what kind of modern woman needs a man to be happy, right? I get that. I used to feel that way too, until I met Doug. I thought solo life could be every bit as fulfilling as marriage. I was wrong - for me, not necessarily for you. I'm better when I'm part of a healthy couple: I'm kinder, and less selfish, and I work better as part of a team. I like my solitude - that's true - but as a palate cleanser and not the entire meal. I loved being married to Doug (and for the record, I'm counting all the time we lived together before marriage as 'married' time, because the only thing missing was the certificate). I loved the inside jokes, and the companionship, and the affection, and the partnership, and the sex, and just being part of something more important than me.

I think that's a big part of the reason why I have no hope for the future: there's only one achievement I haven't unlocked, and now I don't see any way that I can. And without achievable goals to motivate us, what are we doing here?

And a new emotion overwhelms everything else

For two weeks now, there's been a thought nagging at me. It's not been fully formed; rather, it's just a vague sense of a piece of information that's troubling, but just out of reach. It's something important that I needed to remember; something I clearly didn't WANT to remember, because remembering it would be too painful. But I'm not good about leaving things alone, and so I kept puzzling on it and puzzling on it.

Last night, it finally hit me, and it took my breath away.

When we found out that Doug would need to have surgery (and we knew it before Christmas), he wanted to wait until after his birthday to have it done. Doug's birthday is April 4. I pushed HARD for him to have it done as soon as possible: the risk of complications for that surgery is lowest when it's done as elective surgery rather than in an emergency situation, and every day that we delayed risked something happening that could become an emergency. And because I pushed him, Doug agreed to do it as soon as possible. For me.

And I just last night realized that, if I hadn't pushed him to have the surgery right away, he would still be here. I would've had my love until AT LEAST May, because they would have postponed the surgery due to the pandemic. And who knows? Maybe the outcome might have been different and he would have survived to come home to me. I know that's not probable, but even if Doug dying after surgery was a foregone conclusion, I could have had two or three more months with him. Not nearly enough, but far more than we had.

My husband would still be alive, and here with me during this crazy, horrible time, if only I hadn't pushed him to have the surgery sooner than he wanted to. He's dead because of my impatience, my anxiety, and my need for control.

Doug is dead because of me.

Don't try to put some kind of positive spin on this. I realize that we didn't know this would happen. I realize we didn't know he would die. I realize that we didn't know there would be a pandemic that would've put off the surgery. What we did or didn't know is irrelevant. The FACT is that, because I pushed him to have the surgery earlier than he wanted to, he's dead.

Maybe that's why he hasn't come to me in my dreams. Maybe he's angry at me. Maybe he hates me. Maybe he'll never forgive me. I don't blame him; I don't think I can ever forgive me, either. I deserve this sadness, this loneliness, this emptiness. I did it to myself. Doug is dead because of me.

That's why I haven't been able to will myself to die so I can be with him: I don't deserve to be with him. He's gone because of me, so why should I get the joy of going to spend eternity with him? No, I deserve to spend my remaining time on this planet alone and lonely and scared and empty, and then find him in the next life only to be rejected for being responsible for cutting his life short. I deserve that.

I thought the sadness was bad. I thought the loneliness was unbearable. I thought the emptiness was overwhelming.

But the guilt? The guilt is worse than all of them combined.

Doug is dead because of me. I'm still alive, and he's not, because of me. And there's no amount of working through my grief that can ever make that okay, or manageable, or easier.

We weren't finished

My beloved husband,

One month ago today, our family and friends gathered to bear witness to your big, beautiful life - to your big, beautiful heart. I know it happened, and there are flashes of it that I can recall, but honestly, I think I was in a fugue state for most of it: it's all a blur.

It feels like it happened yesterday, and it feels like it happened forever ago.

Since then, the world has gone insane. The love and companionship and hugs that are typically offered to support someone in grief? I can't get those, because we're all essentially on lockdown for the foreseeable future. So I'm forced to make do with zoom calls and phone calls and texting and reading grief blogs and connecting with other widows and widowers on Facebook and Reddit, and it's just not enough.

I've gone insane, too. I cry all the time. I talk to you, but you don't ever answer. I spend my days aimlessly thinking about you, and how much I miss you, and how lonely it is in this house alone, and how scared I am about... everything. You wouldn't recognize me. Your Kathleen - the planner, the independent woman who took years to stop resisting your attempts to help at anything because "it's good; I can do it myself," the career woman who was so good at the job she loved so much, the voracious reader and watcher of obscure documentaries - she's gone. In her place is a woman who is so broken and so lost that you would probably run in the other direction, and I wouldn't blame you: I wish I could run away from me, too.

I feel so completely alone, despite many assertions to the contrary, and that's because I am. And I would be equally alone even if I could see my friends every day, and even if Peggy and Dan were here this weekend like they'd planned: because the places where I'm alone are in my grief, and in my love for you. And no one can be in either of those places with me; our love is something we alone created. Yes, there are people who witnessed some of it, but only you and I lived in our love. That's what made it special: it was ours, and ours alone. We understood it, and explored it, and deepened it, and continued creating it, one day, one hour, one minute at a time; lovingly and carefully crafting all our pieces - the broken ones, the healed ones, and the whole ones - into a quilt of pure, true, undying love to give us warmth, and peace, and comfort, and strength when the world became too much.

But we weren't finished with it. We weren't even close; we'd just started! And no one else can jump in and help me finish it, because it's OURS. We are the only two people who can make our quilt, and now you're gone; I can't finish it without you, either, because it's not mine alone to create. It simply has to go unfinished, and I have to continue living without that warmth, and peace, and comfort, and strength. I have to continue living without you. But I don't know how to do that. It's too hard, and too scary.

I'm so LOST, baby. I'm in this terrifying, pitch-black forest with no trail and no signposts - not even any stars I could use to navigate. I don't see any way out. All I see is the obliterated road behind me, where our love lived. But I can't go back there. Ahead is just a tangle of vines reaching out to entrap me, and trees blocking any path, and rocks tripping me, and I don't know how to get through it. I don't even know where I'm supposed to go. And no one can tell me where I'm supposed to go, so I'm paralyzed. All I can do is sit here in the terrifying darkness and cry out for you: the one person who could help me find my way to myself, and the one person who won't.

If you were here, carrying the burden of this pandemic would be manageable. We'd even manage to have fun with it, because it would be very much like our weddingmoon: we'd have the time and the space to focus on each other. I'd be experimenting in the kitchen; you'd be pretending that everything I cook is fantastic, even though we both know that's not true. We'd use the calendar to remember whose fault any given day is, and I'd be thrilled if a meal-gone-wrong happened on your day so I could blame you.

We'd be sitting here this afternoon, on this beautiful day, with all the windows open, watching the cats enjoy the sunshine and the breeze. We'd be holding hands. We'd talk, using the language we created in our love over four years together. We would just be together.

And tomorrow, I'd get back to work. I'd be fully engaged, stretching my brain, doing my job and loving it - talking to my colleagues, writing code, getting frustrated trying to debug the code I'd just written. And you'd be sitting where I am right now, probably watching the news so you can catch me up every time I come out for more coffee or water and to kiss your handsome face.

But you're not here, and you'll never be here, and I don't know what to do. In my vows, I promised to "love you - the verb - even on the inevitable days when I don't love you - the feeling." But the thing is, I never had a day when I didn't love you - the feeling. I had days when you irritated me, because, y'know, we're human. But there wasn't a single minute of a single day when I didn't feel overwhelming love for you. And I still feel it. But I have no way to love you - the verb - now. Not really. Not in a way that I can feel that you feel it, and loving you was just as much about making sure you FELT my love as it was about acting on my love for you. And now, I have no way to know if you feel it or not. And that's just another in a long list of many, many heartbreaks.

I miss you, Doug. I miss you so much. The days and nights are endless without you. My skin aches to feel your arms around me. I've actually figured out that if I position myself JUST RIGHT on the recliner, turned on my side and pushed all the way against the armrest, I can almost imagine that it's you pressing against me and spooning me. Almost. How pathetic and desperate is that? But the fact is that humans are not designed to go weeks, months, years without being touched. And I'm not designed to live without you.

I wish I could see you again. I wish we could talk. I wish you could hold me. I wish for so much, and I can't have any of it.

I'm so lost without you, baby, and I don't know how to get un-lost. .

Always your loving wife,
Kathleen

The more I learn, the less hope there is

"The primroses were over."

That melancholy sentence is the opening of my favorite novel of all time, Watership Down. The last time I read it was more than a decade ago, but that opening sentence has been indelibly printed on my brain since I first read it in middle school. "The primroses were over."

Doug is over. Life as I know it is over. I am over.

And I'm not being hyperbolic; I really AM over. I'm about two-thirds of the way through It's OK That You're Not OK, and that immutable fact jumps out at me from every page: I can never again be the person I was, in any way. And it's not just that book saying it, either; it's everywhere: online support groups, every book I've read (skimmed through, honestly - actual reading is very, very difficult), and damn near every widow or widower who reaches out (that last group usually starts out with the obligatory "it gets easier," but eventually most of them drop the mask and admit that they still don't want to be here without their dead spouse either).

Here's just a partial list of the ways in which I'm going to suffer, potentially for YEARS, based on my research:

• The pain will never go away.
  Depending on who's talking, it becomes "easier to carry" or "manageable." And yet, I've "met" several dozen people at this point who are years out and still in misery, so that's clearly not true.
• In our society, we're expected to use grief as a tool of transformation: create something beautiful out of it, learn to appreciate what we have, be a shining example of the human spirit overcoming tremendous obstacles.
  OK, there's NOTHING beautiful to be created from my pain and from Doug's death. We LOST everything beautiful; there's no polishing this turd. And I didn't need some fucking cosmic lesson to make me appreciate Doug; I ALREADY appreciated him, WHICH IS WHY LIVING WITHOUT HIM IS SO UNBEARABLE. And I'm REALLY not here to be anyone's inspiration.
• I'll lose friends.
  That's a guarantee. I'm already feeling the distance, because people are afraid they'll say the wrong thing, so they just don't engage at all. I expect I'll lose a lot of the people I currently think of as friends. Maybe family, too. You know what's worse? I don't even really mind. The worst thing that could ever happen to me has already happened. I lost the love of my life; I may as well lose everyone else, too.
• I may never recover my love of reading.
  Reading comprehension in grief is damn near nonexistent. I used to love to read: fiction, non-fiction, it didn't matter. Books were life. But it's common for the grieving to lose not only their comprehension skills, but also their ability to read and their affection for reading. For some people, that comes back after a couple of years. For others, it's permanent.
• My career may very well be over. And that's not solely because I still can't even contemplate being able to work again.
  From It's OK That You're Not OK: "For a lot of people it's a few years before their entire cognitive capacity comes back to any recognizable form (emphasis mine). Some of those losses are temporary and some of them mean your mind is just different as you move forward." So, the career I've worked for my entire adult life? I may have to throw that away and start over. But since I'm an idiot now and presumably will be one for the foreseeable future, what kind of career could I possibly have? On top of everything else, I get to be poor now, too, after years of struggling to get to where I was finally comfortable?
• I'll probably never be able to get on stage again.
  It can take years to recover the cognitive skills we had before. Memorizing lines? Yeah, I can see how that's not going to be possible.
• It will only get worse.
  Again, from It's OK That You're Not OK: "Talking with people in new grief is tricky. During that first year, it's so tempting to say that things get better. I mean, is it really a kindness to say 'Actually, year two is often far harder than year one'? But if we don't say anything, people enter years two and three and four thinking they should be 'better' by now. And that is patently untrue: subsequent years can actually be more difficult."

Oh my GOD, people. Years two and three and four are WORSE?!?

The more I learn about grief, the more horrified and hopeless I become. They say it gets easier, but it's all a lie; it's like the bullshit that it's good luck when it rains on your wedding day. (Fun fact: it rained on our wedding day; we got DRENCHED when we went down to the beach to take pictures. AND WE HAD SUCH GOOD LUCK, DIDN'T WE?!? ) "It gets easier" is just something people say to give hope, because hope is what the grieving most need and don't have. But it's a lie, and people should be ashamed of themselves for saying it.

It's not going to get better. I'm not going to get better. I'm not going to find some beautiful flower growing out of the compost heap that is my life. I'm just going to be THIS for as long as I'm stuck here. 

Standard disclaimer: I'm not going to kill myself. But I'm sure as hell not going to do a damn thing to try and extend my life, and I will continue, every single minute that I can, to will myself to just go already. Because I fear living like this far more than I fear death.

Grief and the overthinking girl

Slept five hours last night - that's WITH the assistance of melatonin. No dreams. OF COURSE.

Didn't eat a single bite yesterday. That's probably because I spent almost all of it crying. And I've started off today crying again, so it's not looking like the weekend is going to bring any relief.

Started reading It's OK That You're Not OK, by Megan Devine. The early chapters - focused on how our society does a piss-poor job of supporting the grieving, and the insanity that we face every day, were... not helpful, but at least reassuring in that I know it's not just me seeing it.

I got about halfway through before I finally crashed last night, and the chapters about how to get through the emotional flooding of acute early grief are absolutely useless to me. Why are they useless? Because they do not and cannot work on someone who has no hope and therefore neither believes she can, nor particularly wants to, move forward or tend to my pain or whatever bullshit phrase you want to use.

See, her recommended technique, when it all becomes too much, is to focus on something (or several somethings) physical that isn't part of your body: count the number of items you can see that are a particular color, for example, or, describe in detail something that you can see.

But here's the problem: that's nothing but a momentary diversion designed to temporarily take one's mind away from the unbearable reality. It's designed to put one in the moment, not thinking about the pain or the past or the future. My brain, like that of overthinkers everywhere, simply doesn't work that way. I can multitask like nobody's business, so even if I try to do that, the background narration in my head is chanting, "Doug's dead; you're alone, and nothing's going to change that." And staying in the moment is quite literally impossible: there is no "moment" anymore; the past (where Doug was still alive and loving me) and the present (where he isn't alive and where I don't want to be) and the future (the unimaginably horrifying future in which I'm trapped without my love for, potentially, DECADES of anguish) all reside together - a tangled ball of emotional yarn woven of love and loss and sorrow and loneliness and the aching need to touch him again.

All these techniques operate under the assumption that the aggrieved person wants to get through this and has hope of getting through it.

I do not, on either count.

All I want is to be with my husband. Nothing else will do.

It's a small world

I'm a ghost.

I haunt the 1620 square feet where I lived with Doug. Where I loved Doug. Where I still love Doug.

Where Doug loved me.

But Doug doesn't love me anymore, because he's dead. Is he a ghost, too? If so, why isn't he showing himself to me? Talking to me? Visiting me in my dreams?

Ghosts are invisible; so am I. I've been invisible, in a sense, for some time: fat people are (ironically enough) invisible - fat women even more so; women over 50 are definitely invisible. But grief has managed to make me even more invisible than I already was. The vast majority of people avert their eyes and ears to the pain of reality: death came for my love, and may very well come for yours too. That's why they try to say things designed to make me less vocal about my pain - it's not only that they desperately want me to stop hurting (although I know that they do want that); it's also that they don't want to hear it and internalize it. Subconsciously, they're trying to put a circle of protection around their own psyches so that they don't have to feel what I'm feeling. They say things like, "I can't imagine what you're going through," but that's not true. Human beings are inherently creative: they can imagine it. They don't want to.

No one wants to face the reality that death can strike their love at any moment.

I don't blame them. God knows I understand not wanting to face it, but I don't have much choice: it's right there every time I make coffee for just me, every time I look at his Vols coffee mug that will never be used again, every time I want a hug and he's not here to hold me, every time I look at his empty spot on the sofa, every time I see a new recording on the DVR for an episode of some series that he watched without me, every time I walk past our bed. The bed where I'll never sleep with him again. The bed where it's looking more and more like I'll never sleep again at all.

This is how it is for ghosts, yes? Trapped on the earthly plane, longing to connect with our loved one(s), but unable to reach them. Unable to DO anything but feel the sorrow of our loss. SO MUCH pain and longing and sadness. Invisibility. No one bears witness to my pain. No one holds me as I cry and scream. I scream into the silence, and no one hears. I curl up on the floor, rocking and wailing and crying, and no one sees. I am unseen, unheard, unnoticed. I am alone. Sure, there are people who love me, but without Doug - without the one person whose life WAS my life - I am completely alone. And that's never going to change.

If not for the animals, I could literally disappear and it would be days before anyone noticed. I AM disappearing. Every day, I become less: smaller, harder, more tightly wound, unable to do anything but feel my pain. Every day, I'm a little less Kathleen and a little more jagged shards of what used to be an entire person who felt warmth, and joy, and amusement, and happiness, and hope. I don't feel those things anymore. Now, I feel anguish, and terror, and inescapable loneliness, and exhaustion. And small. I feel so, SO small. If I keep getting smaller every day, I assume that eventually I'll disappear. I would welcome that.

When a sufficiently massive star dies, it collapses under its own gravity until it becomes a black hole - a cosmic entity so heavy and so dense that not even light can escape it. What happens, do you think, to a human being when she collapses under her own gravity? Certainly, I already feel as though I'll never emit light again, so what happens when I finish collapsing? Will I cease to exist altogether, as I hope I will?

Or will I continue to haunt this house, screaming and crying alone, longing for all of eternity just to be with my husband?

Not liking the new normal

Here's one not-so-fun fact about Kathleen-After-Doug: I can't stand the dark anymore, just like I can't stand silence anymore.

Kathleen-Before-and-During-Doug? She LOVED silence, and she LOVED darkness. There was nothing better than falling asleep in a completely dark room (like, so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face), on a chilly night, with the windows open to hear nothing but the sounds of nature.

Last night, I decided I was going to forego my usual "bedtime routine" of watching boring YouTube videos and instead turn off the television: maybe total darkness and quiet would bring sleep my way a little sooner. Yeah, not so much. The complete darkness was claustrophobic: I felt trapped and I couldn't breathe. The sounds of the tree branches creaking in the wind weren't soothing, but instead ominous.

So now I can't even SLEEP the way I've trained myself for decades to sleep. There's no settling in with a relaxed and contented sigh, anticipating the rest to come in the absence of all sensory stimulation (save Doug's arms around me, which of course I'll never feel again, and which I got to feel FAR TOO FEW TIMES). Not for me, no sirree, Bob! Now, I need light, and background noise, and I never settle in to rest so much as I finally pass out when my body simply can't stay awake anymore. And I can't get over the resentment, the bitterness, the BLIND FURY at being robbed of the time we were supposed to have.

I am so jealous of people who've had long and happy marriages. I'm happy for them, but dammit, why could WE have that? Why didn't Doug and I deserve that? WHY ARE WE BEING PUNISHED?!?!?

THESE are the thoughts that fill my head in the darkness and the silence. There's no relaxation. There's no contentment. There's no comfort. There's only wishing for it to stop. But it won't stop. It hasn't stopped in the past 35 days, and it won't stop in the next 35 days, or the 35 days after that, or the 35 days after that, or the 35 days after that. This anguish, this misery, this NIGHTMARE - it will never go away.

I need to escape, and I can't. WHY can't I escape this? Why can't someone TELL me how to escape it beyond, "just take it one day and a time and one day it'll be easier"? Because I don't believe that. I don't. How can I, when every part of my soul is in shreds and just wants to be with him?

Brooke asked me yesterday what I do every day, and I couldn't even really answer her. I do what I have to: take care of the pets, shower and brush my teeth, drink coffee, eat when I can force myself, write, watch television, scroll through Facebook and Reddit... but really, most of my time is spent crying and wishing that I could just stop being.

And I have yet to speak to anyone who can tell me how to stop wishing that. They just promise that it'll happen and I have to have faith; I think it's been well established how I feel about that sentiment.

I know I'm not saying anything I haven't said at least once every single day for the past five weeks. That's because it's all I have to say: I have no hope. I have no purpose. I have no goals. I want to be done. I AM done.

Being forced to be here when I don't want to be is perhaps the most cruel part of this. And I don't even care if people think I'm weak, or that I'm not trying (whatever that's supposed to mean), or whatever judgement they want to pass on me. They didn't get to love and be loved by Doug, so they don't know what I'm missing or how completely broken I am from losing him.

This season of "The Real World" sucks

Saw my therapist today (virtually, of course).

Folks, I'm in as dark a place as I've ever been. The unbearable pain of losing Doug is only worsened by everything else going on.

People are hoarding all kinds of food, cleaning supplies, and paper products. Do you know how hard that is for me? I can barely force myself to eat foods that I DO find appetizing; when my grocery order is missing more than half of what I ordered, it becomes near impossible. Also, I'm down to my last three rolls of toilet paper and my last can of Lysol. I have no bleach.

There are people who are literally exposing themselves to COVID-19 intentionally, and they're putting healthcare workers at risk. My sister is a critical care nurse; her husband is a respiratory therapist; her oldest daughter's husband is a nurse practitioner. And these people - these irresponsible, foolish people - are putting everyone they come in contact with at risk. For what? A viral TikTok video? What is WRONG with people? Granted, I've said I'd be happy to get COVID-19, but that's because I know I'm not going to waste any healthcare resources or expose anyone to it: I'd get it, and hopefully fade off into oblivion without ever bothering a doctor, nurse, respiratory therapist, or any other healthcare professional.

Meanwhile, approximately half of this country still thinks COVID-19 is a hoax. Or a conspiracy.

As far as I'm concerned, not wanting to be alive anymore is the SANEST response to the enormous pile of shit that is my daily existence.

My sister and brother-in-law were supposed to come back here this weekend. We were going to spend time together and work on some small projects around the house and yard. Now, I don't know when they'll ever be able to get back, and working on stuff around the house by myself is NOT happening.

I have had only one, very brief phone conversation with my sister in the past week, because she's working an insane amount of hours. Last night, she texted me at 8 PM Eastern (she works day shift, by the way), and said in part, "I was planning to call you when I left, but I haven't left yet. This is the worst thing I've ever seen." I told her to be careful, and she replied, "I am. I am so scared right now."

For context: my sister has been a nurse since 1980; she's seen the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; she's seen multiple flu epidemics and one pandemic; she was prepared to deal with Ebola patients during the major outbreak a few years ago. NEVER, until now, has she ever told me that she's scared.

When my sister is scared? It's not good, folks.

Getting my train of thought back on the tracks: Had a session with Brooke today. One thing I'll give her, she doesn't blow smoke up my ass. She didn't try to take a Pollyanna approach to any of this; she said she understands exactly why I feel the way I do.

We talked about my desire to get some kind of communication from Doug, and she suggested that, if I'm back to sleeping only four hours a night, that's not going to happen: I need to get REM sleep. She recommended I try going for a walk - not as a fitness thing, but as a sleep thing. Problem is, walking IS a fitness thing, and I'm not particularly inclined or motivated to do anything right now that would extend my life. If I KNEW that taking a walk would bring Doug to my dreams, I would do it, but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble for a maybe.

My days are a blur of inactivity and mostly failed attempts to distract myself from the reality of my existence. I have neither the energy nor the motivation to do ANYTHING. I can't really tell you what I do all day, because I don't really do anything: some writing, some Netflix, taking care of the animals... I don't know how the time is passing, but every day feels like a century and a second.

It's all just so exhausting, and infuriating, and terrifying, and I can't cope with it at all. A break from reality would be lovely.

But my psyche apparently won't even let that happen, so I remain trapped in a reality and an existence that I want nothing more than to escape.

A new day, a new rock bottom

I think I may have fallen into an abyss from which there's no escape.

My grief counselor, my therapist, folks I've met in online grief support groups, my family, my friends... everything they say grates on me. "Inspirational" memes enrage me. Cliche, pithy sayings designed to give strength only make me want to grab the person sharing them by their shoulders and shake them and scream, "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'VE LOST! I have nothing without Doug. I AM nothing without him." And it's true: I'm dead, but I'm still breathing. Everything in me that felt life was worth living - everything in me that made me ME - died with him. It's torture to live knowing that it's never going to change. And I do know that, no matter what anyone else tells me: maybe you have hope, but I don't.

David Kessler is a well-known expert on grief and loss and healing. He's been hosting a Facebook live session every day to provide some "face-to-face" grief support at a time when we're all so isolated. He's wonderful: warm, compassionate, eloquent. I consider him the Fred Rogers of grief in that, when he's talking, it feels as though he's talking just to me, and it's soothing and comforting.

But nothing that David Kessler says, or that anyone says, sticks with me. As soon as it's back to just me, in the silence of my empty house, I know the truth that no one else seems willing to accept: I'm not going to make it without Doug. I'm reminded of Red's monologue in The Shawshank Redemption (edited):

There's a harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it. Terrible thing, to live in fear. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.

If this were a movie based on a Stephen King novella and directed by Rob Reiner, I would go on an epic road trip - a quest, if you will - and at the end of it, I'd find myself on a beach, with Doug waiting for me. The music would swell, we'd fall into each other's arms, and then it would fade to black: our happy ending.

But it's not a movie. Doug isn't waiting for me on a beach somewhere. Instead, he's either completely gone, or off on the next plane of existence doing whatever it is he wants to do (which clearly doesn't involve contacting me). Not being able to feel any of the love he gave me so freely in life is beyond painful: it's devastating, it's demoralizing, and it's killing me one empty minute at a time.

On top of missing Doug, there's a pandemic racing around the globe. The worst of human nature shows itself daily in the people hoarding food supplies and toilet paper and going about doing whatever they want with zero regard for the people they're putting at risk. Our government's leadership is seriously suggesting that getting everything back to business (to save the economy) is a higher priority than the lives of people at the highest risk of dying. Our government is effectively saying, "we're gonna let more people die so long as it's good for the stock market." And the President's approval rating is higher than ever, even as he's making it clear that money - not people - is what matters.

And I'm supposed to try? I'm supposed to build a new life in a world where apathy and selfishness and greed rule everything AND I don't have Doug to love me? Why, exactly? Because I still have some purpose to fulfill? Fuck that. I've done my part. I've tried to be a good person. I haven't always succeeded, but I've tried. Even when life kept kicking me and kicking me and kicking me, I tried. But this kick was one too many. I can't get back up from this. I don't want to. I spent my whole life without love, and I managed to keep getting up. But to finally get it and then lose it again? No. I'm sorry, but I can't. I won't.

Maybe I won't physically die yet (because I've promised I won't kill myself and I'm going to keep that promise), but I'm irreparably broken. I'm looking at my house, which is cluttered with mail, and boxes, and art supplies, and clean-but-unfolded laundry - my house that needs who the hell even knows how many repairs - I look around, and I don't even care. I don't care about the clutter. I don't care about the dust bunnies. I don't care about the dishes in the sink. I don't care about the repairs that need to be made. I don't care about anything. Let the house fall down around me; I don't care. Let me lose my job and end up forcibly removed from the house and living on the streets; I don't care, because none of that means anything without Doug.

I don't even want to talk to anyone anymore. It's an exercise in futility, because they think that I need to just hang in there when I know there's no point; they think I'm being melodramatic, I'm sure - but again, they don't know what I've lost, and they don't know the emptiness in my soul.

I wish I could describe the total meaninglessness of life since February 20 in a way that would make people really get it, but I can't. I'm not that gifted a writer, and I don't know if the words even exist.

So I'll sit here, and die by increments, every minute of every day, until my heart gets the message that I'm done and finally stops beating.

My griefshake brings all the armchair psychologists to the yard

I realize that, by writing so openly about my grief, I'm opening myself up to people's opinions. And I'm okay with that, to a point. But I've been pretty clear about what is and isn't reasonable and helpful (in particular, re-read the paragraph wherein I straight up tell y'all NOT to tell me what I need to do).

Evidently, not everyone got the message, because I was finally dozing off at somewhere around 2:30 this morning (yeah, it was a rough night), and I was awakened by a text. At 2:45 AM (2:43, actually).

Now, if you've been reading this blog, you've noticed that my window for sleep is generally between midnight and 4:00 AM. My phone has to stay on at all times: my 22-year-old son lives close by, and I'm his only family locally. So I need to be reachable in case of an emergency. A REASONABLE person would look at the clock and think, "hey, maybe I shouldn't text Kathleen in the middle of the night, because she might be sleeping." An even more reasonable person would look at the clock and think, "hey, maybe I shouldn't text Kathleen in the middle of the night, because she might be sleeping, and maybe I shouldn't text her at ALL to tell her what I think is the magic pill to solve her grief."

Sadly, not everyone is reasonable. Not only did this casual acquaintance think that it was perfectly okay to text me and wake me up at 2:45 AM - KNOWING that sleep has been a problem for me - she also thought it was perfectly reasonable to suggest that, hey! have I considered "whether Doug would want to see you in this emotional turmoil? ...what do you believe he would say to you?"

Well, GOLLY, EDNA, WHY DIDN'T I FUCKING THINK OF THAT? Of COURSE you're absolutely right! Doug wouldn't want me to be sad. I'm CURED! 🙄🤦‍♀️

Look, I get it: it's uncomfortable to just let someone sit in her grief. You want to say something to make it better, despite the fact that I've been really clear that you cannot make it better. RESIST the temptation. Unless you are A) my grief counselor, B) my therapist, or C) I ask you for advice, then don't give me advice. It's really that simple.

And texting or calling me in the middle of the night with that shit earns an instant block.

In a way, I envy you, casual acquaintance: you CLEARLY have not felt the pain I'm feeling.

Needless to say, there was no going back to sleep after that, so thanks a bunch!

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Today's counseling session

Earlier this afternoon, I had another lengthy (90 minutes) session with Grace the grief counselor. We're now doing remote counseling, so not even face-to-face contact there. I fear that I'm going to be the patient (client?) who finally breaks her, because I'm so unable to grasp onto any of the lifelines she keeps tossing out at me:

Grace: All you need to do is take care of yourself. You deserve tender loving care so you can do the work of grieving so you can heal.

Me: And how do I get the motivation to do that when I don't even want to be here?

Grace: Because it won't always feel this way; you just keep doing the work and know that eventually, it will get easier.

Me: That doesn't sound all that much different from "keep suffering, human, but as long as you obey some arbitrary rules, you'll get all the paradise you can imagine in the afterlife." And I don't buy that, either.

Me: You know, if I had a terminal illness, I could move to Oregon and end my life, and it would be totally acceptable. Why is this any different? *

Grace: Except that what you're experiencing is more like having a leg amputated; it'll heal, and you'll never be the same, but you'll be able to walk. You're wanting a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Me: Except that you can live without a leg. My heart and soul were ripped out of me, and there are no prostheses for them.

That's just two examples, but you get the gist of it: I have exactly zero hope that I'll ever feel any way other than the way I have for the past 33 days (or 26% of the amount of time I got to be Doug's wife). All this journaling, and feeling my feelings, and attempts to socialize from a distance, and the distractions? Dude, I'm just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: it looks productive, but the ship's going down nevertheless.

Grace suggested that, if Doug's influence on me was so profound, there's no reason that influence has to end. Except that I was better WITH Doug than I ever was before him. And I can't envision any future in which I'm not a far WORSE person than I was before Doug, because you can take all my negativity and overthinking and self-esteem issues that existed long before Doug (and which are rearing their ugly heads again with a vengeance), and add constant bitterness to that mix. Not a recipe for a happy life. Even if I could find some peace (which, again: not buying it), that's not good enough. I don't want to live half a life, and that's all that I can have without him.

It's a trap

Life without Doug simply isn't good enough. It won't ever be. And "happy" isn't in the cards. My entire life before Doug, I was NEVER really happy, because there was always a little voice in my head saying, "just wait - the other shoe's about to drop." And with Doug, I was finally able to let that go: for the first time IN MY ENTIRE LIFE, I relaxed and was happy. SO fucking happy. And so of course the rug was pulled out from under me.

I'll never trust happiness again. It's a lie.

I'm tired of crying almost all the time. I'm tired of going through even the most rudimentary motions of pretending I'm a productive member of society - a member of society AT ALL, if I'm being completely honest. I'm tired of being sad, and scared, and lonely, and bitter, and so incredibly alone.

Fun story from my past (which maybe I've already told, so apologies if I'm repeating myself): when my mother died in 1990, my Aunt Florence (not actually related, but a family friend), pulled me aside and said, "I feel the worst for you. Because your sister has her husband and her children, but you're ALL ALONE NOW."

At the time, it was both hilarious and horrifying. Now? It seems her observation was prescient. I am indeed all alone now (save it: no matter how much you love me, you don't love me like Doug did, and you aren't living with me, intimately sharing the minutiae of my life - I AM alone).

I'm in this impossible position where I don't want to live, but I won't kill myself, so I get the "joy" of suffering ALL THE TIME.

Rejection from the great beyond

Grace asked if I've tried talking to Doug, and I have indeed. I talk to him every evening. Last night, I sat down right before trying to go to sleep, and said, "Baby, I'm really struggling here. I don't want to be here anymore. It's too hard without you. I NEED you to talk to me. I need you to visit me in my dreams. I'm so alone right now, and I NEED you to let me know that you're still with me. I don't know how much more of this I can take, but if you can at least come see me in my dreams, maybe that would be enough to get me through the days."

Wanna guess what I got? I got nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Same as I've gotten every night since February 20.

Remember when I told you all how I interpret your silence as rejection? Imagine how I'm interpreting DOUG'S silence.

Every day is the same: struggle, struggle, struggle, and have nothing to show for it except for another day of suffering. I'm over it. And yet I keep living it.

And really, that says it all.

* Standard disclaimer applies: I still don't want to live, but I'm still not suicidal.

Bereavement Math - and you thought Common Core was bad

Yeah, I said I probably wouldn't write here for a few days. I changed my mind. Grief brain makes decisions... malleable.

Doug has been gone for 32 days. We were married for 126 days. 32/126 = .254

My husband has been gone for just over 25% as long as we were married. On April 23, he'll have been gone 50% as long as we were married. And as of June 26, I'll officially have been widowed longer than I was a wife.

I don't know why that math feels so significant to me.

Actually, that's a lie. I know exactly why it feels significant: we were BARELY married. We'd both been divorced more than once. And it's not as though we put our marriage through the wringer. We were newlyweds; of COURSE we were blissfully happy. But who's to say that we were really as rock solid as I like to think we were? Hell, maybe there really IS a reason he hasn't shown up for a visit in my dreams or otherwise: maybe he doesn't WANT to. Maybe he's glad to be free of me. Maybe he blames me for his death. Who knows?

Maybe in five years we would've hated each other. I certainly don't think so. I think we worked through our demons, both individually and then together, and I think we would've found ourselves just as in love twenty years from now as we did October 17. But we do tend to engage in wishful thinking, the grieving.

And still, that voice nags at me: "you weren't REALLY a wife; it's too short a time - it doesn't count." Kinda like what we parents of only children hear from multiple-child parents: you're not really a mom if you have only one (and can we talk about how rude THAT is?!?).

Is it really a marriage if it was never put to the test? If we didn't get to have years and years of shared history, can I really say he was the love of my life? Can he really say that I was his? Would he even say that now? Again, his lack of visits makes me wonder.

About a week before the surgery, we were talking about... well, lots of things, but specifically about the surgery. Doug said, "I wish I'd gotten checked out before we got married, so you could have had the option to change your mind."

I got SO ANGRY with him. How could he even THINK I would've changed my mind if I'd known he'd need surgery? Because he might've ended up with an amputation (it's been known to happen in people with a blocked aorta)? As if I'd love him less if he had one leg, or no legs?!? If all I could have were a Futurama-style Doug's head-in-a-jar, I'd be the happiest woman in the world. If all I could have of Doug were to be able to have a conversation and see him smile at me, that would be enough. That would be EVERYTHING. But instead, I get nothing. Nothing but too few memories of a too-short love.

It breaks my heart to think that, on top of being scared about the surgery, Doug ever had a second's thought that I might regret marrying him, or want out, because he might end up incapacitated. Because I would never have left him or regretted marrying him for being sick. I loved him, and when I said "in sickness and in health," I meant every word. I do have regrets about the whole "love him, comfort him, honor him, and treasure him faithfully as long as you both shall live" thing, though: He's not living, and while I can't comfort him, I can love him, honor him, and treasure him faithfully. And that will never change.

But, in hindsight, do I regret loving him? If I'm being completely honest... sometimes, yeah, I do. And I know that probably sounds horrible, and I'm not proud of myself for it. The thing is, if grief is the price I have to pay for loving him, well, honestly, that price may be too high. Yes, being loved by Doug, and loving Doug, was the happiest I've ever been. But if I hadn't had that, I would be who I was five years ago: maybe not blissfully happy, but happy enough: I didn't know what I was missing then. I may not have had the incredible joy of loving him, but I wouldn't be completely destroyed now. I'm not sure which fate is the worse of the two options.

Having something so incredibly good, and then losing it, it really is unbearable. Because now there are nothing but empty nights ahead of me. The past 32 nights of sleeping alone, of no good-night kisses, of no hugs, of no "I love you," of no "it's your fault," of no waking up to find he stole the blankets AGAIN... they've been agony. And I have to do those same 32 empty nights over and over and over and over and OVER, until my own time runs out. Every night feels like an eternity and breaks me a little more, so how horrible will years of this feel? How much more broken can I get?

The empty nights are the worst. The loneliness is like a lead suit: weighing me down, grinding me down, breaking me down.

The empty nights are when I miss him the most.

Wondering why I bother

I've been in what amounts to a zombie state since I woke up this morning - no doubt from sleep deprivation. I cry some, I try to watch something to distract myself, it works for a while and then stops working, I talk to Doug and ask him to PLEASE communicate with me SOMEHOW, but he doesn't, I cry some more... lather, rinse, repeat.

I tried watching Season Three of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, but I couldn't follow it. I tried to watch Schitt's Creek, but it didn't even get a chuckle out of me. I did manage to make it partway through the Ken Burns documentary on the Mayo Clinic on Netflix. I highly recommend it, as it's a fascinating history of one our most impressive medical institutions.

Alas, it didn't do much to distract me, for two reasons: first, because Mayo Clinic is a self-contained system that shows just how effective our healthcare system COULD be but isn't - given recent events, that's more than a little troubling; second, because there were too many pieces of it that resonated with me on a very deep level. For example, the Dalai Lama was interviewed, and said, "Without losing hope, there's the possibility to overcome. Our very life, you see, is based on hope. So hope is very, very important for our survival." One of the Mayo Clinic's physicians (sorry; didn't catch his name) said, "If a patient doesn't have hope, we're gonna have a lot of trouble even attempting to make them better."

And that, friends, is the crux of the matter: I have no hope. Zero. And why would I?

I may not write for a few days - at least, not here, for public consumption, because... well, frankly, my primary goal in publicly writing about my grief was to be understood, and I don't think I'm getting through: I'm still hearing that I'll get through this, that I'll find joy again, that too many people love me, BLAH FUCKING BLAH.

A big part of life is in what we have to look forward to, and for me there's nothing. I've achieved my goals. I've done what I needed to do. I have no goals that can be met here. I have no needs that can be met here. I have no reason compelling enough to stick around. And suggesting that I should force myself to pretend I want to be here, because this person or that person would miss me? Yep, they will. But no one will miss me like I miss Doug. Anyone who will miss me will indeed get through it and move forward and have a happy life; I know this because I've lost plenty of people whom I loved greatly, and I did just that.

This is completely different: when I've lost other people who I loved, I wondered how I'd live without them, but NEVER BEFORE did I WANT to stop living. Y'all are asking me to accept a life with no joy and no happiness and no Doug and no hope, when I don't even want to be here. That's just plain cruel. And I need you to stop. If you can't cope with how I feel, then don't cope with it. Don't bother reading if you can't resist writing a comment to tell me to hang in there, or don't bother commenting. Do what you need to do to deal with it. But stop trying to make YOUR discomfort MY problem. Stop trying to convince me that I shouldn't wish I could go (standard disclaimer: I'm not going to kill myself), because I WILL NOT STOP WISHING I CAN GO UNTIL I'M GONE.

That's how I've felt since February 20. It's how I'll feel until I finally shuffle off this fucking godawful mortal coil. Nothing you can say - and no pithy meme you can send me - is going to change that.

Groundhog Day in hell

Finally cried myself out and fell asleep at about midnight.

Woke up a few minutes before 4:00 AM, so the sleep deprivation is still in full force.

Still no dreams or signs from Doug. I'm not even surprised anymore; if he still exists in some form, it's clear that he's either forgotten me or just doesn't care enough to try and communicate with me.

Being alone all the time is making my already fragile emotional state even more fragile, and it doesn't matter what I try to do to mitigate that: social media, phone calls, even video calls - they provide a few minutes of distraction, but then I feel even worse when they're over than I did before.

Every day, I think to myself, "Surely, this is it - this is rock bottom." And every day, I'm wrong.

Everyone's upset about their lives being disrupted, and with good reason. But here's the thing: for most of you, when this virus finally burns itself out, you'll get to return to your normal lives. My disruption is permanent. And, frankly, I'm tired of hearing that I'm strong enough, and I can and will make it through this.

I don't WANT to make it through this. 

I'm not sure why that's so difficult for people to understand. I'm done. I'm tired. I'm over it. This is not a life, and it's not going to get any better when the pandemic crisis has passed - because Doug will still be gone.

And this isn't even about wanting to be with Doug anymore: if the lack of visits from him is any indication, the odds are that I won't see him again. And I both fear and hate that. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. What matters is that, if I had a door I could walk through and just be... finished? I'd walk through it right now, with zero regrets, because there's nothing left for me to do, and because I couldn't care less about being an inspirational story of a pitiful widow who persevered and kept on going even though her life isn't worth living. I want to walk through the damn door. But there is no door.

Imagine having no water. Imagine being so parched that your every waking moment is consumed by the NEED to drink water - but there's no water to be had, and you know there's never going to be water. It's all you can think about: ice cold water, and how you can't possibly go on without it. People keep telling you that, say, eating cucumbers or watermelon or some other thirst-quenching food will get the job done, but you know that it won't: what you need is water, and you can never have any, and you just have to keep suffering and feeling that need that won't go away.

That's kind of how I feel. I'm done, and I need to leave, but I can't leave.

Funny that I was able to will myself to go into labor with my son so that I could bring a new life into the world at the time of my choosing, but I can't seem to will my heart to stop beating.

But I'm going to keep trying.

If only that were enough...

Had a two-hour video chat with my family tonight: most of them are out of state, so I'm really, REALLY alone. Did it help? I dunno. For a couple of hours, I didn't think about how lonely I am, so I guess that's a break. But that ended, and here I am where I always am: without Doug, without joy, and without any will to live.

I'm very lucky, really: I've seen stories from lots of new widows who are struggling not only to deal with their grief, but also struggling to deal with their families (or their late spouses' families). My family is fantastic, even though they aren't close by. And so is Doug's.

But here's the thing: as soon as the video chat ended, I was right back where I was before we talked.

Y'all, I miss him so much. He would've loved that "conference call." He would have had such a good time chatting with the family. But instead, it's just me. And I fucking HATE it. It's not supposed to be this way. I'm not supposed to be me, sitting in my house, alone. I'm supposed to have Doug right here with me, laughing at how insane the world has gone.

But he's not here, and he'll never be here, and I can't do this without him.

I know my family loved Doug, but they'e still moved on: they have children to raise, or - in the case of my sister, critically ill patients to care for - they can't, and won't, and shouldn't spend every waking minute thinking about how very much my life sucks.

And it does. Oh, how it sucks. And I don't have an escape route. It's the focus of my every waking moment, the loss of Doug.

I can fill my days with distraction after distraction, but none of it changes the fundamental truth of my life: the person I love most is gone. I can maybe show my love for him, but he sure AF can't show me his love for me. And a life without that love is too hard to bear. It just is.

I would give ANYTHING to have one more evening with Doug; one more time to tell him how much I love him; one more time to feel his arms around me; one more time to feel his lips on mine. But it doesn't matter how much I would give: there's no getting him back. And it's just too hard without him. I love him, and I miss him, and I need him. How can I do this without him? Why am I still here, when I belong with my husband?

I would love to say that something could change my mind and convince me that life without him is worth living. But it's been a month and a day, and nothing has. Nothing WILL. Life without Doug isn't life at all - it's not even half a life. It's just loneliness and emptiness and pretending that I can be okay without him. But I can't.

I'm not okay. I'll never be okay. And it doesn't matter how many "fun" video chats I have with the family: he's not here, and so I need to not be here, too.

Grief in the time of COVID-19

If there's anything worse than losing the love of your life after only four years together and only four  months of marriage, it's having the fucking apocalypse begin shortly thereafter. Why is that worse? I'm so glad you asked. It's worse because not only do I have to try and process my grief, but I have to do so without any of the activities and rituals with which Doug and I would typically pass the time, and from which I might otherwise be able to take some comfort.

No going out to restaurants. No watching March Madness and coming up with random silly wagers based on how we're doing on our brackets. No watching NBA basketball. No hockey. No golf. No Kentucky Derby complete with hats, mint juleps, and Kentucky Hot Browns. No Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, or Seth Meyers. No hanging out with friends. No cooking elaborate meals. No games. No snuggling up and taking a nap. No sleeping in. NO SEX.

Last night, I had to go find the back scratcher because I had an itch in the very middle of my back, where I couldn't possibly reach it. That's such a small, even insignificant thing, but it made me cry buckets: I don't even fucking have someone to scratch my back for me now.

And on top of having to grieve the unbearable loss of my husband, and on top of having none of those distractions, I have to do this COMPLETELY alone. Because I live alone now (yes, I have pets; no, they aren't people), and since I have had to leave the house to see my grief counselor and my therapist and to go to the bank, I've been exposed. No, I don't care if I get sick. The worst thing that could ever happen to me has already happened: my husband is dead. What do I care if I catch this thing and die? Who BETTER than me? I'm sure not going to be a drain on the healthcare system, because if I DO catch this thing, I'm not even going to the doctor. Let nature take its course; I'm not going to be responsible for infecting anyone, and certainly not a healthcare worker. No using up resources that other people need for me. Nope. If I get it, I'll either get better alone or I'll die alone (the latter being preferable).

And my county's local government is being decidedly foolish about this: no mandated closings of anything because small business, 'MURICA, yadda, yadda, yadda. Not sure how well all these small businesses are going to fare when their customer base is dead, but whatevs. Not my problem. And I'm watching press conference after press conference full of supposed leaders talking about how great we're doing (spoiler alert: that's a HUGE LIE), and even they aren't maintaining the six-foot distance recommended by CDC. 🤦‍♀️

This morning, I woke up and decided to break into the art supplies I purchased the other day. I'd considered taking a walk, but it's too chilly and overcast for that. Matches my mood beautifully, but it doesn't motivate me to go outside beyond the required walking of the dog. My thoughts weren't coherent enough to start writing, and I felt the need to try and create. Now, I'm not an artist. At ALL. I'm a pretty good actress, and a reasonably talented musician, and a decent writer. But visual arts? Not so much. My mom was a terrific artist, and while I inherited her beautiful blue eyes and her twisted sense of humor, I sadly did not inherit her green thumb or her artistic skills.

But if, as Gordon MacKenzie says in Orbiting the Giant Hairball, we're ALL artists, then why shouldn't I give it a shot? I'm working on a four-panel group of small paintings, and this morning was spent painting the backgrounds for each. Those are drying now, and I'll get back to work on them later or tomorrow. I have no doubt they'll be hideous and puerile, but it's not like I'm going to try and sell them, so who cares?

And now... now I'm trying to make sense of the overbearing sense of foreboding I can't shake. I'm trying to make sense of how I'm supposed to find a new normal for myself when the entire world is falling apart. I'm trying to make sense of why people are so foolish as to think that they can ignore the recommendations of the WHO and the CDC and keep going and doing whatever they want with zero regard for virtually everyone else. I'm trying to make sense with my husband being gone when I need him the most.

And making sense isn't happening. All that's happening is despair. It's become my steady state, and I'm getting used to it.

Despair is not a sustainable way to live.

What a long, strange trip it's been

Paperwork of the damned, revisited

I had to get to the bank, because I still had all the checks that had been donated to the scholarship fund at Doug's Final Curtain Call and they needed to be deposited; I also had to set up withdrawals for the GoFundMe, and there's a clock on that. I needed to set up a new account for these funds (because it's not my money, and I don't want to mix it with my money). But my bank has gone to appointment-only lobby visits thanks to SARS-CoV-2, so I had to make an appointment, and the only available day this week was today. I should have known that would turn out to be a bad idea.

I literally rehearsed what I needed to say: "My husband died, and so I need to have his name removed from my checking account, and I need to set up a new account to hold donations for the scholarship fund I want to create in his name." I rehearsed it probably a dozen times, until I could get through it without starting to cry.

I failed to consider that it would be considerably more difficult saying it to someone else.

I got two words in and started crying. Not hysterically, but not the beautiful, single tear you see in the movies, either. Thank goodness I never leave home without Kleenex - at least I've figured that much out. Bless her, the woman who was assisting me was not fazed at all. She was extraordinarily kind and helpful, and made the process as quick and painless as possible.

I also learned that I can't set up the account in the name of the scholarship fund until I have a 501c3 set up for the scholarship fund, and I have no idea how to do that, which got me crying a bit harder: With everything else happening right now, it's not going to be a priority to anyone who isn't me. So for now, the money is in an account that's in my name, but it's a new account that won't be used for anything else. And once we have some breathing room so I can do all the legal paperwork, then I'll change the account from belonging to me to belonging to the scholarship fund.

I also learned that GIS still has its hold on me: I added up the totals of the checks and cash I was depositing THREE TIMES, and got a different answer each time. Clearly, my brain hasn't leveled back up yet.

Distraction sounded like a good idea

My plan was to take a drive after leaving the bank, just to get out of our my house for a few hours. You know what they say about the best-laid plans, right? I was far too upset and emotional to go on a mini-road trip. So back home I came.

I decided that this would be a good day to spend a little time distracting myself from my grief instead of wallowing in processing it. I made myself a tuna salad sandwich and settled in to binge Season Two of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - a show I watched but Doug did not. Not long after I started, it began storming again - a torrential downpour with moderate thunder and lightning. That's perfect nap weather, and Doug and I would have taken advantage of it to do just that.

But that thought didn't make me cry  - not more than a few tears, anyway. Instead... I can't describe it, but for the rest of the afternoon, I had the sure sensation that Doug was on his way home. (From where, I have no idea.) But it wasn't a delusion: I know full well that he's dead and definitely not coming home. And yet, I felt the anticipation that he'd walk through the door any minute, as sure as if he'd texted me to say "On my way ❤," as he always did when he was headed home from an errand or an evening out.

It wasn't upsetting, exactly, but it wasn't comforting, exactly, and it certainly wasn't a happy feeling. It was more surreal than anything else, as I hadn't had that feeling before.

Maybe that feeling meant Doug WAS close by after all. Maybe it meant that my body is churning out dopamine and oxytocin to make me feel close to him in order to keep me sane. Maybe it's simply that this was the kind of day we would've hunkered down and just spent it together doing nothing, and that put me in a frame of mind to feel him.

Or maybe it means that the total isolation has finally gotten to me and I'm legit cracking up. Guess the jury's going to be out on that one until I see Grace on Tuesday.

When you least expect it

Anyway, I was plugging along with Sabrina's antics (and if your only point of reference was the old show with Clarissa Joan Hart, keep in mind this iteration is NOT so light-hearted and cute), when I happened to look at the clock, and it was 5:25 PM.

For a minute, I couldn't breathe (and here I thought I was past that reflexive gasp of horror).

And then, I was transported through space and time back to TriStar Summit SICU Bed 12, where I relived the last 45 minutes of my husband's life as though it were happening all over again. And again, this was new: I've thought about Doug's final moments, of course, and I've written about them,  and I've talked about them; but this is the first time I've relived them. Is that normal? Is it to be expected? Or is this, too, a sign that my tether to reality is about to snap from grief and persistent isolation?

I tried to distract myself from that horrible movie playing in my head, but nothing worked: not reading, not watching Sabrina, not feeding the cats, not watching the news. My mind kept going right back to that room, and I lived every minute of it again. And it was awful. Every sight, every sound, every smell, just as if it were happening now.

I suppose I should have expected that would happen at some point, but I've never been widowed before, so I have absolutely no clue what to expect or when to expect it.

Once 6:10 passed, I let myself continue to cry for a half hour or so, and then went to feed the dog and fix myself some dinner (I'd purchased Panera brand lobster bisque from Publix, and sad to say, I don't recommend it).

And then I poured myself a beer (Blackstone Brewery Chocolate Milk Stout - and it's a delicious dessert beer) and settled back in to watch the rest of Season 2.

It was just a really weird day, full of surreal moments and unexpected emotions. Today, for the first time since Doug died, I was able to just be in the moment instead of worrying nonstop about tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. I guess you can say THAT was a relief, in a way. There was too much happening in the moment to think about anything else.

My stance on the whole "let's keep on living because... 🤷‍♀️" hasn't changed, so don't get all excited that I'm doing "better." I haven't been in constant tears all day,that's true. But I still feel as though I'm quite done with life and ready to move on. And I'm still don't see that changing, ever.

And now, it's getting cold since the storms have moved through. And cold weather is snuggling weather, and there's no Doug to snuggle. So I had a brief respite from "dammit, I miss every single thing about having Doug here," but it's back, just in time to keep me from going to sleep at a reasonable hour again.

Tomorrow, assuming Doug doesn't come and get me to spend eternity with him starting tonight, I plan to break into my art supplies: maybe I'll do some (horrifically bad) painting; maybe I'll work on my cross-stitch Jeremy Bearimy pattern; maybe I'll break out my flute, because I haven't played that in ages.

And I need to start thinking about what I'm going to do to get through the next big milestone: Doug's birthday is coming up April 4, and just thinking about that gets me crying all over again. I always took him for a fancy dinner at a fancy restaurant on his birthday: we rarely did the fancy dinner date thing, and what better time than a birthday, right? But I have no reason to go to a fancy restaurant now; it's not the same going with anyone who isn't him, anyway.

And now, I'm just rambling, and nobody needs to deal with that. I'm going to go put on my pajamas (well, his pajamas), bundle up, and watch a movie.

Thought Experiment: why life without Doug isn't worth living, Part IV

Catch up:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Sorry, but this is a long one: I really don't want to make this a five-part series, and I think wrapping it up exactly one month after Doug's death is perfect.

Putting it all together

I grew up a brainy, nerdy kid with a father who seemed to make it his life's work to convince his children that we were worthless and unlovable. And he was very, very good at it. As a result, I was a very unpopular child - desperate to be liked, but believing I wasn't likeable - an excellent target for bullies, which only added to my belief that I was worthless. Even as I got older and found things I was good at and people who liked me, there was always that nagging voice telling me that nobody really cared all that much.

When it came to dating, and then marriage, I subconsciously picked men who didn't really love me. They'd throw me enough scraps of affection to keep me coming back, but love? That wasn't in play. But, having no roadmap to follow, I was too foolish to realize that this wasn't love.

After two failed marriages, I decided I'd had enough, and I built a full and rich life on my own. I was content. I didn't feel as though I was missing anything, because I'd never had a true love affair.

And then I met Doug, and he changed everything. Our path to love was easy in that being together was easy. Our path to love was hard in that we both had a lot to overcome in order to believe in us: he had a pattern of choosing women who needed to be saved; I had a pattern of picking men who couldn't love me, and I had a pathological need to be independent. But we knew that we were breaking our unhealthy patterns, and we did the work - the labor of love - to make it happen so that we could flourish. And we did.

WE weren't perfect, but our love sure was. With the exception of my son (and that's a completely different kind of love), I've never loved anyone with the ferocity and certainty that I did Doug. It wasn't a choice, it wasn't chance (there was no "falling" in love); it just WAS. Our love was a certainty from the first few minutes we sat in that bar in Antioch, even if it did take us several months to realize it. It was immutable; it was unbreakable; it was everything beautiful wrapped up in the permanently-bonded hearts of two wounded people who made each other whole.

With Doug, I became more myself, and I became my best self. And I actually began to think that maybe I'd been wrong all these years: If DOUG loved me, then I must be lovable. If he loved me, then maybe I really am okay.

I felt as though my life - my time to live for myself and my own happiness - had finally begun. I was making good money, he was retired, we'd be able to travel and build our dream home and live out the autumn and winter of our lives together and blissful. For once, I wasn't worried about the future. I was finally happy in a way I didn't think I could ever be. For once, I knew - KNEW - that good times were ahead.

And then I watched him die.

Doug's surgery and death

Trigger warning: I'm going to get into details here, so if that's going to be too painful, you might want to skip it.

Monday, February 17 2020

I brought Doug his coffee in bed at 5:00 AM, and then he took a shower and we headed out. We held hands, tightly, the entire way to the hospital. We arrived right on time at 7:00, and he checked in. We were placed in a holding room where, he, Missy and I chatted once he got into his hospital gown and settled in. After a while, Missy left us so we could have a little time alone, and we had what would be our last private chat and several kisses. We managed one last kiss in the hall as they were taking him to surgery, and that was the last I saw him until 7:00-ish that evening.

The surgery, originally expected to take five hours, ended up taking seven. There was a lot of scar tissue from his previous surgery, and Dr. Kim felt it was important to deal with all that scar tissue (particularly, the adhesions on Doug's bowel) to assure that he wouldn't end up with an obstructed bowel down the line.

Once the surgeon met with us and we knew Doug was in recovery, I headed home to feed the cats, and then went back. While I was on the way, Doug's nurse called to ask for permission to put in a PICC line, because they were having a little trouble keeping his blood pressure up. When I arrived, Doug was still heavily sedated and not responding, which I expected. I stayed for about an hour, and then headed home, planning to be there early the next morning so I could see Dr. Kim when he came by.

Tuesday, February 18 2020

By the time I arrived at 6:30 that morning, Doug was on four different vasopressors, all of which were maxed out on dosage. Even so, his blood pressure was topped out at about 90/65. Every time one of the bags emptied, his blood pressure would drop in a matter of a few seconds, down to about 65/44. 

Dr. Kim came and in and checked the pulse in Doug's feet via doppler, and all was good. He told me that the goal for the day was to get Doug off the ventilator.

Midmorning, the nephrologist stopped by, because Doug still wasn't producing urine. I wasn't terribly concerned at this point, because it's not uncommon for the kidneys to temporarily shut down after such a major surgery. Dr. Khan ordered a large dose of Lasix to try and get his kidneys to kick back into gear.

The Lasix didn't work.

Next, she ordered Interventional Radiology to put in a Central Line so that they could begin dialysis. That happened somewhere around 3:00 PM. About a half hour later, everything went to hell.

Suddenly, Doug's blood pressure spiked to over somewhere in the neighborhood of 230/197; a couple of seconds later, it dropped to 70/35 or so. His pulse started racing; he started developing PVCs.  For the next three hours, we watched as this kept happening, over and over, while Doug's nurse pushed medication after medication just to keep him alive until they could get him on dialysis, which - for reasons I don't know - I really thought would fix everything that was going wrong. I was certain that he was going to die before the dialysis tech got there, but somehow, he managed to hang on.

When we left that evening, Doug was being dialyzed and was stable. I went home, crashed, and was back up again early Wednesday morning.

Wednesday, February 19 2020

Wednesday was a GREAT day. It was the last day I was happy. It was the last full  day of Doug's life; it was also the last full day of mine.

When I arrived early that morning, his nurse already had him dialyzing, and spent the day working to get Doug off all the vasopressors. And he did just that. And I was able to talk to Doug, and hold his hand - and he held mine too. I was able to tell him that UT had beaten Vandy the night before, and that Jordan Bowden had come out of his slump and had a great game. I was able to tell him that I loved him. And even though he couldn't say it back, he squeezed my hand, so I knew. THIS is the time that haunts me: I SHOULD have asked the nurse to make room so that I could get into the bed with Doug and hold him: he was awake, and he knew I was there. His last conscious memory COULD have been of me lying next to him, holding him close. Instead, it was me blabbering about basketball. I should have done that. But I didn't. And I will never forgive myself for that.

I left that evening, feeling optimistic that we'd turned a corner, and that the next day we'd get him off the ventilator and start working on getting him onto a regular floor so he could finish recovering and come home. I went home, drank a beer, ate a slice of pizza, and crashed without setting the alarm, confident that he'd be fine overnight but knowing they'd call if anything happened.

Thursday, February 20 2020
I woke up at 8:00 - which tells you how tired I was, because I never sleep that late. The first thing I did was call the SICU to see how Doug was. That's when I learned that he'd coded at 5:30 that morning, and no one called me. To this day, I have yet to receive an explanation or apology for that.

When I got to the hospital and asked how he was, the answer was "not good." He was back on all vasopressors, and his blood pressure was still unstable, as was his pulse. He was being dialyzed again, but it didn't seem to be helping.

Throughout the morning, Missy and I were on the phone with anyone and everyone we could think of, trying to get Doug moved to Centennial, where we felt they were better equipped to take care of him. By 3:30 PM or so, Dr Smith (the ICU Intensivist) told me that they were not going to be able to stabilize Doug enough to move him. At that point, they'd already had to shock him to get his heart rate back down, and it was simply too risky. But they'd made arrangements to have someone there to dialyze Doug overnight. The unspoken addendum to that statement was "if he makes it that far."

I asked, point-blank, if we were just torturing Doug. I pointed out that Doug's Advance Care plan specifically said to take all measures unless he was terminal. Were we, I asked, at the point where he cannot recover and we're just torturing him? Because, if so, we needed to stop. Dr Smith said that we were not - yet - but we were getting close.

Given the circumstances, he told me that, in the event that Doug coded, they would go for five minutes. I agreed.

It's important to point out that, on Tuesday, when everything fell apart, so did I, whereas Missy was a pillar of strength (as was Doug's best friend, Mike, who was there every single day). By the time of my conversation with Dr Smith, a preternatural calm came over me. I was still crying - a lot - but I knew that I needed to dig deep so that I could deal with what I feared was coming.

Over the next two hours, Doug's pulse continued to venture into tachycardia and then bradycardia. As the afternoon turned to evening, he became increasingly tachy, and stayed that way.

At a few minutes before 5:30, I pulled up a chair next to his bed, and held Doug's left hand with one hand and stroked his arm with the other, and talked to him. I told him that I loved him. I told him that they were doing everything they could, but that he needed to meet them halfway. I told him that I needed him to fight this so he could come home to me. And his pulse - previously hovering at 135 bpm, dropped to 85. And stayed there for about ten minutes. I started to think that maybe there was hope that he could pull through.

And then it started dropping. Slowly. And I kept talking to him and stroking his arm. And it kept dropping. When it hit 49, the nurse tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Honey, I'm going to need you to step outside." So I did. And I knew what was coming

I texted Missy (she'd stepped outside) and Mike (he was in the waiting room) and told them to come back right away. When they did, I explained that, any minute, they were going to call a code, and that, when they did, they were going to go for only five minutes, and we needed to be prepared for that.

The three of us stayed there - Missy and I each in a chair, facing each other, and Mike standing between us, holding hands, and then time stopped: they called the code. Looking back at my phone log, I texted my sister to tell her he was coding at exactly 5:40.

The three of us held tightly to each other's hands, and I just kept saying, "please, please, please" over and over. And I watched the clock as the minutes went by. Three minutes. Then four. Then five. Then six. Then seven.

And they kept going.

At about the ten-minute mark, Dr Smith came out and told us that they'd been able to get a heartbeat, but hadn't been able to maintain a stable rhythm. He said they were going to go for another ten minutes, and said that we were welcome to go in to be with him if we wanted.

Missy and I immediately said we would. I went to the far side of the bed, and held Doug's right hand and stroked his right leg; she stood on the side closest to the door and held his left hand and stroked his left leg. The nurses were switching out doing compressions every few minutes, and... I don't know if you've ever seen someone get CPR in real life, but it is NOTHING like how it looks on film. It's  brutal. It's devastating. I could hear his ribs cracking. Missy lasted about a minute or so and then had to step outside. I don't blame her; it was the worst thing I've ever seen.

But I couldn't leave.

Four months and three days earlier, I'd promised him forever. Doug's forever was ending, and I wasn't going to leave him to die in a room full of people he'd never even met - people who'd never seen that handsome smile or his twinkling eyes; people who'd never heard his beautiful voice; people who had no idea what a miracle of a human being he was. I HAD to stay. So I kept holding his hand, and stroking his leg, and telling him over and over again that I loved him, to please come back to me, that I needed him.

At 6:10, it was all over. They ran that code for a full 30 minutes, but it was useless. Doug was over. Our marriage was over. My life was over.

Everything I've lost

I lost my closest, truest friend. I lost my biggest cheerleader. I lost the person I loved most in the world; the person whose diapers I would've changed down the road if it came to that. I lost the person whom I'd promised - if he developed dementia as his mother did, and forgot who I was - I'd promised him that I would remind him of who I was every day. I lost the person I loved more than my own life. I lost the one person I could count on always to tell me the truth about myself, even if it wasn't a pleasant truth. I lost the person who made even the most boring days entertaining. I lost the companion I never thought I'd find. I lost my lover. I lost my hopes, my dreams, my plans, my entire future. I lost everything I'd become in the past four years. I lost everything worthwhile. EVERYTHING.

Does it make sense now?

Now that you've read the entire story of my life up to Doug, and my life with Doug, do you understand, at least a little, why I believe there's nothing here for me without him? I've tried to convey just how much Doug changed me, and the impact his life and death have had on me.

Doug gave me hope, and just when I finally believed in happiness, when I finally believed it was time for us to have all the happiness we'd searched for all our lives, it was ripped away from us. There's no hope without him. Everything I was before is gone now; nothing matters. I'm empty. I'm lonely - profoundly lonely, in a way that you cannot grasp unless you've lost your life's companion. It's an emptiness and loneliness that no amount of love from friends or family can fill. 

My entire future is gone. My very identity is gone. And everyone keeps telling me to take it one day at a time, that I will find joy and meaning in life again. But they're wrong. Losing Doug meant losing hope in a happy future; any fleeting happiness I could find down the road will never truly be happy, because it will be always be surrounded and tarnished by the bitter knowledge that it won't last - that the universe, in its cruelty, will steal it away from me as surely as it stole Doug. What's the point of living when you can't ever be happy because you know your happiness is an illusion that will be destroyed the instant you start to believe in it?

Look, I've done everything I set out to do: I raised my son to adulthood, and he's fantastic. I've had a successful career - both the professional one and my theatrical "career." I had a blissfully happy (though far too short) marriage to the one GREAT love of my life. I've met all my goals. I'm satisfied with the life I've had, other than Doug leaving too soon. There's nothing else I need to do. I'm good.

In the month since Doug died, there hasn't been a single moment - not even a SECOND - when I've thought, "Ok, maybe I CAN do this. Maybe I CAN find a way to be happy without him." That's because it's not possible. I CAN'T be happy without him. I CAN'T do this. Without Doug, and without his gentle but fierce, unconditional, unwavering love, without his smile, without his voice, without his touch, and without hope, what's the point?

There isn't one.

I've promised you all that I won't kill myself, and I won't. But that's as good as it's going to get, and it's going to have to be enough for you. I still want to die. I WILL want to die every day until I do. The Kathleen you knew is as dead as Doug is, no matter how long her heart keeps beating. She's dead, and in her place is this hopeless, scared, lonely, bitter woman who simply doesn't want to be here.

It's the great irony of my life that I - who used to be terrified that I'd die at 58 like my mother - now live in terror that I'll live longer than that. Hell, I live in terror that I'll live longer than tonight. To paraphrase Eleanor from The Good Place: Doug left and I'm all alone here. I was alone my whole life, and I told myself I like it that way BUT I DON'T. I like being with Doug.

Maybe I'll be able to laugh sometimes, and maybe I'll be able to have an enjoyable day now and again at some point. But happiness and joy and hope? They're gone forever. 

God willing, I'll be gone forever soon, too.

It's all shit

Today has been awful. My head still hurts. I'm still nauseated, but I forced myself to eat anyway. I'm still freezing. Mind you, it's 71 degrees, and I'm freezing.

I've cried most of the day. Took a short break to drive over to the local JoAnn's and pick up some art supplies, because writing as my sole form of expression is not getting the job done. And then, thinking about what I might be able to do with those supplies, I started crying again and cried all the way home. Took a short break to talk to Andrew, and then cried some more. Have yet to even open any of the art supplies I bought.

And on The Facebook (as Doug used to ironically call it, because, y'know, we're old), everyone is trying to make the best of a bad situation by posting about how grateful they are to be holed up with their spouses, and all the little things they're thankful for. And I'm actually jealous. How fucked up is that? What kind of person is JEALOUS when the people they love are happy?

And I'm not thankful for a damn thing. Not even my son, as one person suggested. I love him, and I wish I could be thankful for him, but I don't have gratitude in me. Not for anything. All I have is a pile of (metaphorical) shit that gets bigger every day.

Let's just recap my past 28 days, shall we?

• My husband died, four months and three days after our wedding - all by itself, this was more than enough to make me long for the sweet release of death, BUT WAIT: THERE'S MORE!
• A tornado came through and destroyed friends' homes and left other friends without power for days, but didn't have the decency to kill me - and I was too paralyzed by grief to even help anyone
• A fucking PANDEMIC started circulating, but IT hasn't had the kindness to come for me either
• I haven't had a hug in over a week, because the only people I've been around are my grief counselor and my therapist - and they're going to telehealth-only visits effective now
• My sister has no idea when she'll be able to get back here
• My son refuses to come over, because he was working in his office as recently as last Friday and doesn't want to take the chance on getting me sick (even though I'd welcome that at this point), so he won't see me in person until it's been 14 days since he started self-isolating: that's a week from tomorrow
• Even getting food that I might conceivably want to eat is a struggle, because the hoarders are clearing out the grocery stores
• Again, I'm too paralyzed by grief to help anyone who might need it

Tomorrow will be one month since Doug died, and every passing day has gotten MORE painful, MORE challenging, and MORE exhausting. I'm at the end of my rope. Something's gotta give, but nothing will. I miss him. I cannot bear being stuck here, all alone, 24 hours a day, without Doug. I need him now more than ever, and he's not here. And he'll never be here again. And I can't take it.

Right about now, the only hope I have is that maybe my body will finally take pity on me and let me die in my sleep. Because life wasn't living after February 20, and NOTHING that's happened since has moved the needle even a little.