Grieving is the loneliest thing I’ve ever done. There is no end. I’m not going in any particular direction. There is no happily ever after. There is no timeline, no hope that I will reach the end, dust myself off and call it finished. I tie myself in knots and I write myself in circles. Ann Patchett says, “Grief isn’t something to ‘be gotten through.’ It has no life of its own like that, it’s just plain and simply there. It’s one of the things which tell us we’re human.” Grief sits on my shoulders. I carry it with me, it is my constant companion.
How do you live with the grief when you don’t want to anymore? When you’d rather not, please. When you look around at the pieces of your past and say, “no thank you very much” and decide instead you’d like a new life, a different one, one where everything isn’t like….this. Because while you can’t even name what *this* is, you know you don’t like the way it feels. It’s icky on your skin, the feelings burn when you touch them.
Weeks and weeks pass and nobody hugs me, I find myself missing men I’ve never spoken to, internet boyfriends fill the void while swiping on tinder and going on mediocre first dates with uninteresting men and wishing there was a shoulder that felt safe to lie on, someone to pet my hair and tell me it’s ok. Shhh, it’s ok, everything is ok. It feels like an impossible dream, to feel safe. To be held.
How do I love myself through the horrible aloneness, how am I supposed to give myself everything I need and want from someone else? How to be alone without being lonely, or learn how to embrace the loneliness and welcome it in when all I’ve ever been is part of something, a half of a whole. For decades, it felt like I was a person who existed to be next to someone else. Taking care of him, I had a purpose. Now I have empty space.
It’s hard and it’s scary and it hurts all the time, except when it doesn’t. There’s times when I feel sad that I’m not sadder, when I go days without thinking about him, about it: The THING That Happened To Me. But did it happen to me? Who was I before? During? After?
I slowly and methodically question every decision I’ve ever made in my life and examine how it led to The Thing, question what alternate realities I could have entered if I had made different choices. If I had chosen differently, where do the paths diverge and how do they always seem to inevitably lead to the same place?
When I’m honest about it, I see now that he always wanted to die. That if I had left him sooner, he would have done it sooner, that it was never about me, that I never had a choice. I stayed too long in my marriage, yes, because I was terrified of what would happen when I left. And then, look – all my worrying and fear was valid and true and the worst possible thing happened. Was it the worst possible thing? Or was it the thing was always going to happen? Around and around and around I go. Was the past free will and the future destiny? Or was the past my destiny and my future free will?
My attention span is an inch and a half long. I can’t get myself to do any of my favorite things. My basement project sits untouched, I can’t start in the garden, I don’t want to dig in the dirt. My knitting sits, tangled and left to the cat to bat the balls around the carpet. Novels languish unread next to my bed. I think about my coloring books, buried under the paperwork I’m avoiding. The missives from the insurance company I’m supposed to sort out and the threatening ones from the IRS because I did something wrong on our return the year we sold the record store. It’s so overwhelming to be in charge of it all. I buy plane tickets on my credit card and spend hours daydreaming about faraway places I wish I could live.
I put my phone down and take walks by myself. I remind myself that walking outside and looking at my neighbors’ flowers is a privilege. Seeing the sky is a privilege. Being on this earth is a privilege. I question my sanity, which makes me wonder whether I’m sane enough to do so. Would a sane person question whether they are sane? Or only an insane person? If I can just keep moving, maybe what’s chasing me will never reach my heels.
Even when it feels like I’m crawling, I’m still moving forward. I see roses and I bite back the tears. I scroll through the old pictures of my garden and cry when I find a video I took of it in full bloom. On my tinder profile I decide to put “widow” so as to avoid the uncomfortable questions, but they come just the same. Surprise! Dark back story! I tell them in person so they can’t run, so I can gauge their reactions, so I can see if they flinch when I get to the suicide part, *if* I get to the suicide part. I don’t include that in the bio, I only mention it when they ask.
On a recent date to the zoo:
“I’m a widow, my husband died two years ago.”
“Ohhhh, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“He took his life.”
“Oh god. That must be so hard.” Back pats. Shoulder squeezes.
“Thanks. It is.”
Sometimes I relish it when they pity me. Sometimes I take offense. I am choosy about who’s sympathy I want, who’s condolences I let in.
On a different date:
“I’m a widow, my husband died two years ago.”
“Ohhh, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“He killed himself. I was divorcing, the kids and I had moved out 6 weeks before and he took his life after receiving the divorce papers.”
“Oh.”
No shoulder squeezes when I tell it that way, no back pats from this man who I will not go on a second date with.
There’s such loneliness to being the person left behind. Years of inside jokes that no one will ever get again, questioning my reality when the only witness to my past is gone, the moments I want to tell him about, the moments I wish he was here for. Every milestone with the kids is wrenching because it’s just me. How do my memories change without a witness to them? It’s hard and it’s scary to write about the parts of my life that feel invisible now, moments when I feel so human and so desperately alone.
How many things am I grieving at once? My husband, yes, that we know. But also: the life I had, the one I had planned, the person I was in the past, and the person I had hoped to be. I grieve the parent my kids don’t get to have, both the one that is in his grave and the one that I had hoped that I would get to be. I grieve my house, my garden, my dreams, my memories. Sitting by myself, I write it all down, trying to give myself the validation that I need, proving to myself that I exist, that these things happened, that this is my life.
I promise myself that it doesn’t define me. I remind myself that his actions are not mine. I shoulder the weight, I pick it up and I carry it. I stop worrying about where I’m supposed to go and I embrace the fear and the pain and welcome them in. I learn to dance by myself. I hold my grief close and tell myself it’s ok. Everything is ok. I hold it close to me, I carve a permanent place for it in my heart and know that it will forever be a part of me. I accept that it is mine to carry.
Grief and Loss(two different relations) are like a housepet you get with the property you inherit...you must maintain them within and with out...take them out when necessary, you always feel the presence even when out of sit....they never go away but hopefully after a suitable passage of time...perhaps a grudging cohabitation...but the burden is always yours, the inheritor
You are doing the work. The only direction is forward, through it. You are worth loving. You are worthy of a fulfilling life. You have much to offer the world, even if your brain says otherwise. You are raising beautiful humans who will see your journey and learn from it. You get to decide what you will teach them. The grief is only part of your journey. Your love for them, for yourself, for your new home are also parts of your journey. Don't look past these other parts.