Time to Let Loose, Let Loose

Hey Honey,

It's been awhile since I've written to you on this blog. I write to you everyday at least once and talk to you in my head constantly but somehow blogging holds more weight, more of my teacher brain sorting out and opening up personal yet universal truths that I find have been hidden by our go-go, wellness myth believing, death and grief adverse society. Yet, I'm guilty too. I think recently I may have been hiding from my own grief. 

Once grief struck (which was the moment your heart stopped) I began reading everything I could on grief and from widows in particular. You would not find this surprising. Mo recently wrote me the following which made me smile:

"I remember when you guys had the puppies Jim would laugh and say "Ann has read every book imaginable". He would always tell me a story about you and laugh!! Even if you guys were planning a small trip he would laugh and say "now this trip is turning into a big trip"."

It's so true! I actually read everything on puppies at least twice. And when you were diagnosed with cancer, I read everything I could find on colon cancer, you read Tom Clancy. Oncology had given us this huge binder with every drug and every treatment described, its upsides and downsides. I quickly learned that I needed to memorize each page for when the side effects kicked in...the fevers, the peripheral neuropathy, the hyperactivity, the sleep, chemo tubing that could break, pumps that go awry, the bone deep cold, the rigors, the pain, the bedsores, the coma... I needed to know what to do. Of course, that binder and those books filled me with fear and made me aware of where we were eventually headed. I worked hard at preventing myself from being lost in anticipatory grief, to instead "be in the moment", and in doing so I gave you the confidence that you needed knowing that you would be cared for, that I knew what to do when the side effects arose and later in knowing how to give you your dying wishes. You could focus on living with joy and meaning. My meaning became you and I am grateful for that.

The need to know

Experts in grief compare grieving to being on the sea or at the shore during a storm where wave after wave comes in and hits you. Some waves are gentler and some are rougher but hopefully with time, the griever learns to ride the waves once they understand the patterns. Grief never goes away. I compare it to skiing the mountain or kayaking. In both cases, It takes awhile to learn to read the snow patterns or the currents. When or how to go to your flats or on your edges, when to put the paddle in and how. It's knowing, as you use to sing, when it's "time to let loose, let loose!". 

Since Halloween, the waves have been coming in hard and fast. Every moment filled with memories good and bad. January I've discovered is full of storm waves or icy moguls, you can pick your metaphor here. 

Learning to ride the waves and moguls

January is the month we held so many holiday gatherings for my EMC crew and their families.

It's the month of your birthday—and more parties.

Your 65th birthday, after we found out you had stage 4 colon cancer

It's the month you told me you had cancer and we went for the first oncology visit and figured out how to tell our family and friends.

It's the month 2 years later, that we stopped treatments and somehow I mistakenly hoped we might have more time without chemo's side effects.

It's also the month last year that I had my successful and love-filled Tiny Paintings exhibit dedicated to you at Champlain.

It's normally been a fantastic skiing month where we would spend hours on the mountain, enjoying the companionship of friends, eating in the Bolton bar and restaurant, and calculating out the costs of our pass (usually down to a few dollars a day by season's end).

Announcing our engagement to Cathy and Jerry—at a ski mountain of course

It's the month we first dated, fell in love, and became engaged. After our first date on January 1st, you wrote to me,

"My sweet, sweet lady, 
Fifty years and millions of miles traveled and I awoke recently to find a beauty that I never could have imagined existed and it was right there all the time."

and a few days later,

"My lovely lady of the north, 
If you hadn't kissed me, my life would never have begun..."

and on your birthday, January 18th,

"This is the best birthday of my life. This even includes the one where I got the little red bike. Wow, do you make me happy!" 

And I wrote to you,

"Sitting here in awe...
pondering the infinite worlds that I now know for certain I can't predict...
this thought keeps humming through my brain opening up a raw heart...
Perhaps certain gifts from God can not be appreciated until one has gone a distance and then looked back and lost one's breathe rediscovering what was always right there.
So glad to finally have discovered you. "

Those feelings never changed, they only became stronger. We became "bone of our bone".

So now I'm left with a grieving heart, the expression of the deep love we shared. I'm becoming deeply intimate with the storm. Your birthday last week was spent with Kelly and Gina toasting you with hot chocolate while skiing Bolton, later an appropriate Italian dinner complete with candles with Tegan. Tegan brought us flowers. Later we played a Zoom Farkle game with Kelly and Fiona. I thought to myself "Wow, look at me, I'm happy, I'm celebrating your life." 

But then wired and tired around midnight, the tears began and didn't let up for another 24 hours. I think I got 2,000 steps in that next day. I believe those were from the couch to the bathroom to feeding and letting the dogs out and in. It was a really gigantic wave that rose up and took me down—like the one that almost drown me, pulling me into the undertow when I was a child vacationing in Rhode Island one summer. Since then, this last week, I'll admit that I've been trying to hide from those waves instead of learning to swim or even float. I really don't like drowning. I've been skiing my little heart out, going to bed super early, reading other widows' accounts of their journeys, even painting, just trying not to remember that you aren't coming home—ever again—this even as I talk to your constantly. Grief experts might call this denial. I'd call it a reprieve. It's not the same as embracing what we had, softening the waves by giving those emotions and those memories the needed space to arrange themselves into a way that I can carry you forward with joy and gratitude. I'm working on that. I simply needed a respite after the storm surges of Halloween through your birthday. Please don't worry about me though, I'm getting there. Your strength in facing your death and your belief in me is giving me the heart and the strength to do so. I'm working on turning the tears back into gratitude and meaning.

Your birthday sunset this year

Celebrating your birthday at Bolton with Kelly and Gina, hot chocolate graciously provided by Kelly

I love you Honey.