Feral

According to the experts, I am doing everything right, I have the right perspective, and I have found outlets for this grief.

However, it is like a feral creature, apparently domesticated, but still skulking around the house. Instead of it learning to live in the presence of humans, we have learned to live with it.

I know it can't kill me, but it has left scars. Right now, though, I fear for my children.

One sleeps a lot, staying where it is safe and denying the creature is out there; one talks incessantly to keep the creature at bay; and one becomes aggressive out of defense.

Everyone is still vigilant about the next attack.

Um, now that you mention it...

Now I am getting the thoughtless comments.

A friend called me and complained about her husband for twenty minutes. After she had wound down, I said, "To put things in perspective, I am sitting in the parking lot of the funeral home; I have just finished making a payment on EG's cremation."

Oh.

The woman who talks incessantly about her husband found out that I sleep in the same room and in the same bed EG and I shared. "Oh," she said, "I don't think I could do that after all that has happened. I'd have to find somewhere different to sleep."

Like where? The dog's bed? The neighbors' house? Some other man? Seriously?

The door

Rocky's grief counselor gave him an assignment last week to take a picture of a doorway.

I kind of like the message of a door, opening to another place or dimension, one where we can find those we have lost.

Tonight, I was washing my face, when one of the bunnies started banging around in his cage. From where I was, the noise was exactly like EG unlocking the door at the end of the day, coming home. It was about the time he would normally be coming home, too. Harry must have agreed, as his ears pricked up, and he trotted toward the sound. For just the slightest portion of a nanosecond, I believed it really was EG coming through that door, and all this had just never happened. I was not alone to take care of the house and the kids, Rocky's situation with the neighbors and court never happened, and it would all be as it was.

But of course the feeling passed. Harry started sniffing the floor, the rabbits started moving around again, and I started brushing my teeth. Maybe, just maybe though, the door had opened to another dimension.

Grief plunge

For me, grieving is like I am one of those cartoon characters who went off a cliff.

First, I padded the air with my feet, thinking I was going to be fine and this was all a bad dream. When I realized that I really was going to have to plunge to the ground below, I began grabbing at branches, rocks, large blades of grass, whatever I could get.

I periodically can find a branch which will hold me for a while, and while it gives me respite from the terrifying plunge I am taking, it also delays the inevitable. Sometimes people will reach out to me, too, and I grasp their hands, relieved to feel safe or protected but also loathe to wear them out or, worse yet, pull them down with me. Of course, they don't want to take that plunge either, so they pull away. While it is understandable, I feel deserted and less safe.

So I bounce from rock to rock, becoming more battered as I continue down to the inevitable. I am getting used to the wounds, but they still happen.

The New Normal

I love words, love crafting them into sentences and thoughts, making people think or laugh.

However, some words or expressions simply annoy me. For example, this weekend, Kiki was babbling, which she does when she has something on her mind which she is processing or trying to suppress. We were in the store, and she was looking at snowpants. She kept talking about the snowpants, and I tuned her out, but the word snowpants kept drilling itself into my subconscious. It went like this, "Blah blah blah blah snowpants. Blah snowpants blah blah blah blah, and snowpants blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah, snowpants blah. Blah, snowpants, blah, blah, and blah." I said, "If you say snowpants one more time, I think I will cry." Of course, she didn't hear me.

Nita turned to her and said, "Say snowpants."

"Snowpants," Kiki said. "Blah blah blah blah blah."

I pretended to sob, much to Nita's amusement.

When it comes to annoying expressions, "we are praying for you" can have a double intent. Some people, graciously, have told me that in an effort to make me stronger by having God really paying attention to my situation. Please let me add that I have been demanding so much from God lately that perhaps praying for those whom I have shoved to the intervention sidelines might be better for those who are praying. What annoys me about the "we are praying for you" statement is when it is used in an effort to make a person see the errors of their ways. My neighbor, one evening, told me, "My entire family prays for you every night." Visions of cult-like behavior notwithstanding, I think I dumbfounded her by saying, "Thank you. We can use all the prayers we can get."

I then added, "We pray for you every night, too." She was offended. I think that she would have been more offended to know that we didn't pray FOR her, but instead prayed ABOUT her--more specifically, that she would move away. I figured while I will likely have double penance for double lying about prayer, it was totally worth it.

And, before I leave this subject, let me add that, in my opinion, the most gracious way to handle this is to simply pray for people and not advertise it.

Anyway, my latest detested expression is "the new normal." Around here, with adopted kids and their issues, my parent's sequential battles with Alzheimer's, and my brother-in-law's grace-filled fight with a terminal illness and subsequent death, there was never any "old normal." We have had an ever-evolving normal. And I am tired of adjusting, adjusting, adjusting. It would be really sad but also a relief if this "new normal" stayed consistent, but somehow I have the feeling that we're not done here.

Hard to be around me

I imagine it is hard to be around me.

Some people feel like they need to tiptoe, probably, for saying the wrong thing and causing me pain.

Some people feel like they need to be kind, to make sure I'm okay, to say the right thing to make me feel better. (News flash--there is no right thing to make me feel better. It's okay. It's not your job to take care of that pain for me.)

Some people don't want to be around me because this makes them aware of the potential for their own pain.

Some people don't want to be around pain because they just want nothing to do with it. (That would be my choice right now, too.)

Sometimes this loss seems so unreal. I think that I'm going to wake up and it will be a bad dream, and I'll tell EG all about it, and he'll commiserate and maybe comment that he feels like I'm trying to kill him off and get up and let the dogs out and make me coffee like he used to do.

Yesterday was a hard day. First, it was so incredibly dreary. Then, it rained, just a steady, dumping, ground saturating rain so insistent that I never let the chickens out into their run. Nita had spent the night with a friend, Rocky was hiding out in his room, Kiki did homework, and I made 20 pounds of apples (which had been unsprayed and therefored needed to be trimmed) into a big pot of applesauce. We ran over to music lessons, I stopped for dog food and groceries, and then I came home to thoroughly clean the refrigerator and prepare a big spaghetti dinner, complete with meatballs.

Just as I was preparing to serve, Rocky, who was pretty droopy, showed up and parked himself at the table, waiting to be served. I said, OH, NO, and sent him to feed the dogs. This became a ten-minute production of the Frantic Barking Dog Chorus while Rocky blundered around with the container while looking for food bowls. He then spilled five pounds of dog food all over the kitchen, including into the refrigerator and freezer. I had him clean counters, wipe the stove, and sweep up the food on the floor and pick through it to remove the floor debris. Meanwhile, Kiki "accidentally" glanced into Nita's purse to discover a lip gloss which the two girls proceeded to argue belonged to each of them. Kiki started screaming, slamming kitchen chairs, and flinging her textbooks. I sent her to bed without supper. That left Nita and Rocky and I with the spaghetti dinner. I told Nita that she needed to return the lip gloss and apologize, and she backtalked me, so off she went, too. Rocky started to gobble his food, noodles flapping on his chin; I guess he figured the odds were against him. In five minutes, he left the table, putting a food covered plate into the fresh dishwater and not asking to be excused. Kiki reappeared, saying that she needed a Pamprin (I wisely refrained from suggesting she take the rest of the bottle) and muttered about her sister until I told her to stop and go upstairs. She voiced her opinion of my parenting (sotto voce, but, from what I could/was supposed to glean from her comments, apparently she has the meanest, least understanding mom of anyone she knows and she hates me) and stormed back to her room, where she did a forte reprise of the past few minutes. I changed the dishwater, cleaned the kitchen while drinking a glass of wine, and mopped the floor. It was then 7:30, and everyone was in bed, asleep.

Or so I thought. I fed the rabbits, got them and the dogs water, cleaned the bathroom, and then went into my room, and finally started to relax. About nine, Kiki, who doesn't know how to turn a doorknob, began prowling around upstairs, opening and closing the closet, her bedroom, and bathroom doors. Repeatedly. I hollered at her to settle, and she came down and reported to me that she was missing six of the candy bars which she was selling for orchestra and had hidden in her drawer. After a loud dissertation about how there was a thief in this house, and my cross examination of her sister, Kiki explained her bookkeeping system, which was so convoluted that I finally just told her that she had to suck it up and pay the missing funds, as who could tell how much she should have had. Of course, that went over well and she graciously acquiesced and apologized. Not.

When Rocky came home from the hospital, his psychiatrist gave him a prognosis of "fair." My sister pointed out that "fair" would be a pretty accurate diagnosis for most teens, as many parents consider killing them. I would say after last night, that the prognosis for all of us would be fair.

A Primal Wound

Having raised other mothers' kids, I understand the primal wound of being ripped from the one who carried you, to know that this person didn't/couldn't love you enough to care for herself and/or you well enough that you could stay, and to realize that you weren't really, truly loved or protected because of the mother's issues--in fact, sometimes mothers chose themselves or their boyfriends over a child.

To know that your "real" mother wasn't your real mother after all is an awful way to start a life.

This wound is more subtle than what we experienced here this summer. It seems funny to look at EG's sudden death in the past, but that is where it is slowly sliding. What the kids and I (and EG) had happen was so sudden, so intense, that it left us raw.

And we reacted to that trauma. There's the word I wanted--trauma. I never realized how that shock, that trauma, could affect people. However, time and space are giving me a little perspective, so I can see where I was.

Nash is a funny dog. He has a thing for chairs and prefers to sit in them over the sofa or floor or even a bed. He sits in lawn chairs, folding chairs, even kitchen chairs. When he was a pup, he loved to sit in one of the Adirondack chairs in the back yard. One afternoon, he got his paw stuck between the slats of the chair and screamed. I went to rescue him, and he bit me, operating from that place of pain and sheer terror at what had suddenly happened to him. I took a bath towel, put it over his head, and pulled his foot loose. He shook for the rest of the day and cried in his sleep that night. The next week, he avoided the chair.

This morning, I woke up to the realization that I have been in that place of terror and pain. I was worried about our finances, and I was terrified about raising these kids alone: would I have enough time, resources, and wisdom to get them to adulthood. I also didn't want to go on without my partner--after having the richness of his companionship, support, love, and protection, I had a huge, gaping wound in me. Like Nash, I was coming from a place of fear and agony.

People mean well, but those who have not experienced this primal wound cannot understand the mental state of someone who has. Even though I have had this experience, I cannot speak for others who have lost their spouse, as each situation is different. What I can do is realize that I can't relate and not try. Even our priest doesn't get it--I went to him for guidance about an insipid letter which was sent to my children, and he said, "That's the one thing about mail. You can throw it away." He didn't understand that I wanted these people to know that they were behaving thoughtlessly and that they shouldn't do it again to anyone and to tell them that they did not have all the answers where they were in their safe lives, intact marriage, safe kids.

In fact, they had no clue that there were questions. I have come to the conclusion that these people have so removed themselves from the possibility that this might happen to them that they can't even begin to entertain how they might feel or react.

What impresses me are the people who do understand. I have a co-worker who is a very, very nice woman. I am training her for her new job, and this woman talks incessantly about her husband. Initially, it hurt, but I have become numb to it. Thursday, a male co-worker, who is single and not even thirty yet, mentioned to me that he noticed that this woman does this. He said, "I want to say to her, 'Hey! She's just lost her own husband. Don't you think talking about your husband all the time might hurt her?'" I told him that I wanted to say something, too, but I didn't want this woman to apologize for two hours. It was easier to shut down emotionally and get through it. I did add that I was so touched and impressed: this man accepts he doesn't have any answers, knows he doesn't know all the questions, and is willing to see the pain someone else is feeling.

That can't be easy. I can see that now.