New (grief) math

I've written about grief math before. More than once, in fact. But the NEW grief math is considerably less unpleasant:

• 11 days ago, I received my first dose of the Moderna vaccine.
• 17 days from now, I'll receive my second dose.
• 31 days from now, I'll reach immunity.
• 32 days from now, I'll see two of my favorite people and hug them both. There will undoubtedly be crying.

Having this light at the end of the tunnel has made an enormous difference in my mood. I'm grateful that I'm finally reaching the end of one part of the horrible experience of the past 397 days. The other part... well, I don't think that will ever end.

I got through the 13 month milestone much better than I did the one year mark. But over the past few days, there have been the odd moments that hit me like a ton of bricks: walking Kellogg yesterday afternoon, I got a whiff of the cherry trees (maybe it was one of the others, but that's not the point), and was taken right back to that "I can't breathe" feeling from the early days. Doug was an avid gardener, and smelling flowers took me right back to that first summer after we started dating, when I "helped" in the garden; he always planted orange marigolds, because his mother liked them. Yes, that's a sweet memory; that doesn't mean it isn't also painful.

And then, just a few minutes ago, Kellogg insisted on another trip outside (I think he spotted a critter he wanted to play with), and there was this glorious sunset. And I burst into tears: See, sunrise was my time. But the sunset? That was ours. Every vacation, every long weekend, every nice evening we could, we'd watch the sunset together. We'd talk about our plans, we'd reminisce about our early days when we were struggling to figure out how to love each other best, we'd laugh about the silliest stuff... And sometimes, we'd just sit together, silently, holding hands and taking in the moment.

It's bittersweet, y'know? I mean, I've heard some widowed horror tales of marriages that I would've ended LONG before someone died. Yeah, go ahead and judge me for that, but there's no marriage if only one person is doing the work to keep it alive. So, Doug and I were lucky: we really had the fairy tale, except that it was real. And I know that's because we worked for it (and not actually a fairy tale), but it doesn't really matter: we made each other ridiculously happy.

Trips down memory lane are nice, but still triggering to some degree. But more and more, I'm getting the sweet with the bitter. And I'll take that.

I still haven't dreamed about Doug, but that's not surprising considering that my sleep has been totally jacked up since Daylight Saving Time kicked back into gear. I'm still getting 6-7 hours a night, but it's broken up; I don't think I'm getting the deep, restful sleep I need. So if I AM dreaming, I'm sure not remembering them. And I'm sure not feeling rested beyond the first couple of hours in the morning. I really hope that resolves itself soon, because I am one TIRED widow.

Despite not dreaming about him, though, I do feel Doug's presence more often. Not all the time, but there are moments. Is he really here in those moments, or is it just my imagination conjuring him up? I don't know, and I also don't really care: it's comforting, and that's enough.

Nights are forever

I ended up running over to the local hospital on Friday, and received my first dose of the Moderna vaccine. Yes, I had an appointment for this coming Tuesday at a health department one county over (which I've now cancelled), but the hospital was doing vaccinations first-come, first-served, and it was rainy on Friday, which I (correctly) thought would mean a short line. Finally, Friday was a significant day: it was one year to the day from when I went into lockdown. Between setting foot inside a hospital for the first time since Doug died, and realizing that I'm now six weeks away from being able to hug people again, and realizing that I can start to think about moving forward with the plans I've been making... it was very emotional.

Yesterday was a good day. Put on my most badass Spotify playlist at max volume, and got to work early. Made a lot of progress around the house (there's still lots more to do, but progress is progress). Received the new perfume I'd ordered: I can't wear my old Vera Wang perfume now, because I wore that for Doug, and wearing it is just too painful (it's amazing, isn't it, how scents can trigger emotions?). Made revisions to my 10-minute play (and I've even had thoughts on how I could expand it to a full, two-act play). Bought a ticket to go to the Picasso exhibit at the Frist two weeks after my second dose of the vaccine. Cooked a yummy dinner. Went to sleep at a reasonable hour.

...And woke up at 4:00 AM (which is, of course, 3:00 AM thanks to the lunacy of Daylight Saving Time): something (or some things) was creeping through my back yard. I'm guessing wildlife rather than human, because A) Kellogg wasn't at all concerned by it and B) I heard the coyotes yelling just a few minutes later.

In The Before, waking up in the middle of the night wasn't a big deal, because I usually woke up with Doug pressed up against my back and his arm around me - between his arm holding me close and his gentle snoring (or, on a funny night, his mumbling incoherently in his sleep), I would contentedly drift back off almost immediately.

It's these moments that are the hardest; they're when I feel most alone. The happily single don't know this particular feeling; the coupled don't know it. But those of us in this shitty club know it all too well. There's nothing like that feeling when the person you love most pulls you a little closer in their sleep. And there's nothing like the realization that it's entirely likely you'll never get to have that feeling again.

I can keep busy all day. I can talk to people, and dance around my living room, and sing power anthems while I do housework, and watch TV, and cook, and write. I can get through the days, and even convince myself that I'm okay.

But the nights? They're a different story. There's no distracting myself from the fact that I'm still sleeping on my sofa. There's no distracting myself from the fact that, in the middle of the night, I have no one to hold me and love me back to sleep. And there's no denying the fact that I'm but a tangential presence to everyone who loves me. I'm not saying they don't love me - I know I'm fortunate enough to be loved by a whole lot of people. But none of them holds me while I sleep. None of them relies on me every day to eat with them, do chores around the house with them, or simply be with them.

The big, splashy, romantic events were nice, but they're not what I miss about being happily coupled. No, it's the small things that I miss the most: bringing him a cup of coffee in the morning; cooking dinner and seeing his reaction when he really liked what I'd made; going grocery shopping together; watching a ball game together; waking up in the middle of the night and feeling his arms around me.

I can find ways to deal with absolutely everything but the loneliness, and the loneliness is the hardest part. And it's the one part I can't control, because I can't just magically whip up a partner out of the Void.

I'm not a Janet, after all

I tried to go back to sleep, but after an hour it became really clear that it wasn't happening. So I got the coffee going, and now here I am, alone with my pets and my thoughts, trying to figure out how to fix a problem that I have no power to fix.

So I'll finish my coffee and hop on the elliptical to burn off some of the anger that's creeping in. And then I'll cook breakfast and spend the day happily and busily distracting myself from the reality that will make itself apparent again tonight.

The loneliness is the hardest part. And I don't think there's any healing that.

All the news that's fit to share

I ended my last post by saying, "So I'm going to continue to do what I have to do to kill time until time finally takes mercy on me and returns the favor, or until a fucking miracle happens and I can actually live again."

Well, a fucking miracle happened.

I'm good. I'm really good. I'm still sad a good chunk of the time, yes. And I still wake up every day with a sigh and an, "Oh well; still here." But I don't think about killing myself every day. Honestly, I haven't thought about it much at all in nearly three weeks.

So, lemme 'splain:

The evening before I published my last post, I participated in a playwriting workshop; a friend of mine had put out a call for people interested in acting who'd never acted before, people interested in directing who'd never directed before, and people interesting in playwriting who'd never written a play before. Well, I like to write, but I've never written a play, so I signed up. I figured a little creative fiction would be a good distraction from, y'know, everything.

We had a zoom meeting on February 19, and he started us off with a writing prompt: Look many years into the future; someone is honoring you for something. Who is it, and what are they honoring you for?

Now, my initial response was, "Fuck you, Shawn! You know I don't want to think about many years from now - I don't even wanna think about tomorrow!" And I briefly toyed with the idea of nope-ing outta there. But I decided to give it a try. So I imagined my son making a speech at my 80th birthday, and talking about how proud he is of me for sticking it out even when I didn't want to, and building a new, happy life after my life with Doug was destroyed.

Several of us read what we'd written for the rest of the group, and it was brutal: I cried reading the whole damn thing, and several of the other writers were crying along with me.

The second prompt was: Write a letter to someone with whom you have an unresolved issue. Determined to take my tragedy and mine it for humor, my letter started with, "Dear Doug: FUCK YOU," and proceeded to unload my anger at him for making me fall in love with him and then leaving me.

The third prompt was to write a letter in response, from the point of view of the recipient of my letter.

At the end of the evening, we were instructed to use those two letters as the basis of a 10-minute play with those two "characters."

I wrote the first draft in one sitting on the evening of Monday, February 22. I'm not going to go into details, because the workshop is ongoing - but I'll post it here once we're done polishing and it's been performed via zoom. 

People, writing that little play was more therapeutic than all those therapy and grief counseling sessions combined. As soon as I wrote the last line of dialogue and then read the whole thing (crying the entire time, of course), it was as though an enormous weight lifted off of me; the darkness gave way to sunlight. For real, it was like flipping a switch from "broken, suicidal widow" to "still broken, but healing widow." I could breathe again; I felt wholly human again; I didn't (and still don't, and probably never will) feel like the old me; but I felt like a real, live person again, and not just a sentient meatbag of sadness and rage.

"But, Kathleen," I hear you cry, "WHY did you wait almost three weeks to tell us this? This is HUGE!" Well, you may remember that I previously wrote about doing better(ish), and that lasted all of about a week before all the sadness and rage came back (this time, with EXTRA rage!). Frankly, I didn't want to write about this latest emotional shift until I could say with some degree of certainty that it would stick.

It's been three weeks. It's definitely sticking. 

In the immediate aftermath of Doug's death, I somehow knew instinctively that (if I was going to heal at all) writing would be the way I would heal. I just got the details wrong. It wasn't the constant, cathartic writing of every emotion and thought that did it; it was creating a fictionalized version of my experience (in which I was able to get from Doug what I haven't been able to get in real life). But (apologies to Andy Dufresne), I had to crawl through a year-long river of shit to get to the point where I could create it.

I still have bad moments, and even bad days. And I won't lie: the bad moments are still horrendously bad. But the bad days aren't as bad as they were, and they're not every day. They aren't even the majority of days. I still miss Doug. I still miss him SO much more than I could ever explain in words. I will always miss him; I will always wish we'd had more than four short years together. And I'm still sad, a lot. But I'm also - FINALLY - able to remember some of our best times and feel some joyful nostalgia mixed with the sadness. What's more, I can now feel him with me almost all the time, and I really didn't think that would ever happen. It's progress, and I'll take it.

I've even started cleaning up the disaster that my house has become. No doubt, this is going to be a many-week affair (it took months to get it in this condition; there's no going from that to immaculate overnight). I'm still not sleeping in our bed, and it's clear to me at this point that I never will again, and that's okay. So, among the many plans I'm pondering once I'm fully vaccinated? Getting a new bed. And that's going to be really hard, and really painful. But it has to happen. Doug isn't in that bed, or in any of the rooms I plan to renovate to make this house be what I need it to be; he's in me, and in all the other people he loved who love him back.

Fresh on the heels of this newly-found healing, my vaccine phase came up, and so I'm scheduled for my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine next week; by the end of April, I'll be able to start socializing again. And I'll be able to have Missy and her kids come by to see which of Doug's things they want for themselves, so I can start clearing out the things I don't need to keep. And, I'll be able to bring in a contractor to make this house into the house I want it to be. I'm genuinely looking forward to all of these things, and that's huge.

As bad as these first, long months have been due to the isolation caused by the pandemic, I think that - in a perverse way - that isolation helped me. I couldn't distract the grief away; I couldn't use socializing or hooking up with randos or frantically going out to do karaoke or... well, anything else to avoid dealing with it. The grief was there, all the time, and there was no choice but to face it. It was grief, concentrated and super powerful. If I'd been able to socialize as much as my friends and family (and I) would have wanted me to do, I don't know if I would have gotten here this soon. And it's pretty clear to me now that, if this didn't kill me (either via Broken Heart Syndrome or suicide), then I am absolutely unstoppable. I'm NOT unbreakable; I'm still broken, and to some degree I'm pretty sure I always will be. But there's beauty in those broken parts, and I am indeed far stronger than I ever realized.

I still don't know how to rebuild my life, exactly. I still don't know what the future holds. I hope that it holds the third (and please, gods, the LAST, and LONG-LIVED) great love of my life. I hope that it holds a home that represents who I am now. I hope it holds lots of travel, tattoos, great acting roles, time with my friends and my family, maybe a deeper dive into playwriting, and contentment. 

For the first time in a very, very long time, I hope.

And that is, indeed, a fucking miracle.