Entering Widowhood: The In-Betweens

This post originally written and posted at Persephonemagazine

It’s been a couple months since my last post here on my new status as a “widow.” The horrid “W” word that no one in love or marriage actually wants to think about.

In that time I’ve made a few personal steps forward, a few back, one even sideways I would say. I have had friends and mentors die in the last few weeks, friends get married, friends getting pregnant, friends having their children, and friends getting ready to graduate from college and “move on” to the next phase of their own lives.

Through it all, my constant is still defined by my husband’s death. I can see how easy it is when one is steps away from the actual death, is not closely bereaved. Life continues for most. They still have school, or a job. They have children who need them, and a living reason to get up in the morning, to eat, to take care of their own selves. That becomes harder for me.

I am a person of habit. I have lost them all. The schedule I had before my husband became sick is something I will never get back to. The schedule I had with him, is also something I am trying to accept that I will never have back.

I’ve had a good bereavement counselor from Hospice see me, and that, to a degree, has been helping my mental state. It is always nice to hear that the feeling I have, the thoughts, most of the emotions are all in the “normal” range for grief. What we’ve spoken about more of is the really arbitrary number system that American society has on “moving on.” It seems to be around six months if you are a younger widow(er) and/ r have no children and around 12 months for those who were married, say, more than five years and/or had children. While some mourners certainly can fit those numbers, I feel rather constrained to have a faceless nobody tell me to “get over it, already.” (“It” being the death of my husband.)

As a note, for me personally, and I have heard from other widow(ers) that hearing the phrase “moving on” can be disgusting and heart-wrenching for the bereaved. “Moving On” has a lot of implications, and though, for the most part, the people who say that come from a place of good or kind intentions, what is most often heard is “Well, we’ve been able to not think about/speak about [dead person] we have decided it is time for you to stop as well.”

Being a young widow, I often hear that phrase. I have tried nicely to have my family and friends stop using it, but after a few weeks of being nice, I just tell them that I can’t talk to them if they must use that phrase. Being a young widow what I’m hearing more of as time passes on is something akin to, “Well, you’re young. Well, you still have time. Well, there are still options. Well, being young, you still have your whole life ahead of you!”

These phrases are also terribly not helpful.

Being “young” is not a hard and fast rule. By pure age or cycles around the sun, yes, I am in my mid-twenties.

By life experience, I am willing to wager I am far more mature than most people in their early- to mid-twenties.

I have “time.” Time for what, exactly? My husband thought he had time, too. His brain cancer began to grow when he was 24. He was dead one month after his 28th birthday.

Time is not something I take as a given anymore. Time is not my friend, nor my enemy. Time is not to be taken for granted by myself though. Or, perhaps by “time” it is meant that I have “time” to find (another?) love? That is quite a presumptuous thought on my own feelings of love, intimacy, and personal wishes.

I have “options.” Please, dear friend, expound on that. What options specifically? As it is my life, I believe the choices are mine to make. Options for living? Options for moving? Options for a job, a career, another lover? Generic statements that do not really support anything.

“…still have your whole life ahead of you.”

That phrase, however, might be the worst of them all. That is the exact problem. I do have the rest of my life, every second I breathe or have my blood beating, to go. I am all too aware of this. I am aware with every bit of my body that can feel, and every bit of my soul that can feel, time is taking me away from the person I had wanted, expected, and pledged my life to.

I am all too aware of the days, months, years, decades even that lie ahead of me, without the person who swore the deepest oath to be there with me through it.

I have my whole life to live, missing the part of life I wanted to live for. Missing the half of me that wanted to share in living.
That kind of grief and mourning cannot be rushed.

I am thankful for the Hospice services. My local Hospice that served Wash during his illness is a non-profit and I can feel the people who work there really do care, and have a lot of experience in addressing the mourning issues. I can only imagine how much more depressed I would be without them.

For me right now I am trying to work on stopping the comparisons of my life to the friends and social circles around me, and I have to stop comparing how my life is now to what I had in mind it would be.

I had prepared as best as I could, as my husband’s death was inevitable. His was not a cancer that can be “cured.” What is almost harder is knowing I could not prepare for the actual feelings I have had since he has died. Grieving who he was, our love, who he and we were going to be. Grieving the two pregnancies that almost were, and were lost. Grieving the anniversaries that now come, but are not cause for celebration.

Towards February and March I had played around a little with taking my wedding band and engagement ring off. Sometimes just for an hour at home. Sometimes for a whole night while I slept. Once or twice I even went outside on a walk without them. Then came the first wedding I went to since my Wash had passed. It was lovely, and my happiness for the couple is genuine. However, this was a wedding that Wash knew was coming. These were his friends, his brothers. This was a uniting of love that he should have been alive for. He should have been there to make a toast, to wish them well.

I stopped taking off my rings after that. I’m not ready to stop wearing the reminder of his promise to me. I’m not ready to take off my engagement ring that was the other half to his matching engagement ring. I have decided to forego any wedding invitations for the next while. Perhaps through this year, perhaps through next spring. I don’t want to limit myself to a specific number.

It’s not just the odd isolation that comes with being a young widow. I am stuck in many “in-betweens.” I am not in school finishing any degree. I love school, and I do have a desire to return someday. The timing is not right now. I do not yet have a job that provides me income, let alone a career. I’m not yet homeless, but I have no real way of moving anywhere new, despite my desire to leave this home I once shared with my love at some point likely this year. I have days now where I rarely cry, where I am starting to have longer hours together functioning. I am thrust as well into the space behind that where I still have moments breaking down and sobbing for hours until my eyes swell shut.
I am trying to stay friendly and in contact with the many many many more female friends I have who are pregnant or had/have kids.

It is hard for me to see something I wanted, something I had (if only for a few weeks), something I lost, something I will never have again. It is hard to have and own my own emotions and history and still be happy for those I love and care about. To visit and meet the child of a close friend who was born right before my Wash passed; I’m still working on how to cope with my own pain and express joy for the happiness in the lives of the people around me I love and care for. To hold hope for the friends and family I love that they will never have to face the pain I am living.

I will direct you up a few paragraphs and please ask you don’t placate me by saying I’m still young enough to have children, or to get married again, or to adopt (as a single??) or that “things will happen in their own time.”

So, how is this 26 year old widow doing?

There is no simple answer.

There is no set time on grief, or progress, or regression.

I simply am, now in place of “we simply are.”

For now, I am in-between. I still wear my rings, but I said my “goodbye” and listed my status on Facebook as “Widowed” instead of married. I have begun to really sort through his belongings, but have not yet fully parted with everything. Though I physically feel split in twain without him, I’m able to now stand on my one leg, even if I cannot move in any direction yet.

My journey continues.

Chaz & Roger

Today my heart is with another cancer widow.

It is a horrid beast, to take the ones we love indiscriminately.



Roger, I will miss you for so many reasons.



It is my most sincere hope, if he believed in some afterlife, that he is there now, happy with Gene and access to every movie ever made.



You can read Jo's wonderful post on Roger from 2011 at the link.


Roger? Gene? Grab some popcorn, relax, and now enjoy the show.

Shabbat Shalom!

I have some melancholia in my bones today.

Are anniversaries still something to bring up, to celebrate, if there is no one to celebrate for/with?

My wedding anniversary is next week.
Pi day, of course.


I'm a widow. Am I allowed an anniversary, still? What, if anything is there to celebrate? My husband's death? I'm not that morbid.
The 6 or so weeks of marriage we had before the tumor grew so big it began to change him?
The few months we took to secretly plan an elopement?

Celebrating dreams and ideas that will never happen? The home never built. The children never to be born.



The cats and I have decided staying in bed and crying is the best move.

It doesn't seem real today. That he is gone.


Tomorrow is Sunday. That was his Gaming Day.
Too many memories today of loss.
Too many.

Widowhood

Everything hurts and I just want to wake up to this whole thing being a dream.
How can he be gone? It doesn't feel real.

I've been crying all day. Nothing feels real. It can't be that my husband is now in a box.
It all hurts. Breathing even.
I want to not be sad. I want my husband to hold me. I want a kiss. I want him to embrace me and just be there. Be here.

Nothing makes sense.

Streaking

I feel like I am turning into a character from a Stephen King novel.

It is cold and wet outside; the sky covered in clouds.
I am burying myself in blankets and socks. Also, a warm cat or two to snuggle with.

So much writing. I need a new ribbon for my typewriter. [Smith-Corona Corsair Deluxe portable]
Actually, my online writing is done on the computer, the typewriter is just my old, old friend; I think I got mine back in 1990? Thereabouts.

However, the overall mood, the same themes as are in the books I've read until they became cannon, it feels a bit odd to suddenly be living it.

I don't really want to see anyone right now, no company. No distractions.
My downstairs is finally closer to being cleaned and organized in a way my Asperger brain enjoys and can function in. Part of my brain is already doing the same to my upstairs level, but the actual work there is harder; the bedroom is still the last room where there are things left that he moved and touched and put into place.
It is harder to be 'ready' to change that. Ready, ha. As if such a thing could happen in a human life. Rationality can only go so far, even I could only prepare for some of what was to come.

Cleaning the bedroom changes it. Changes it TO a bedroom. It started that way, when we first moved here in 2008. Once he got sick though, it changed. We slept there, yes, but being bed-bound changes so much. The mood of the room was not the same. The items in it. The sounds. The colours. The photos and objects on the walls, even.
It was a place of sickness, even by accident. By proxy.
Now to me, it still holds the strongest memories, and the majority of my reluctance to change it.

Words and thoughts, even lucid dreams rob me of any real 'rest'. My thoughts have become a perpetual motion machine, spinning ever forward and back. Flipping between some social order of "normal" to be outside of my house and in social situations, to hysterical uncontrolled laughter at something that I find funny or he did. I hear his voice less in my head, but a stronger compulsion to 'talk' to his TARDIS urn.
I miss his body, but in strange ways. I just miss how he felt pressed against me. I miss having my head and my ear line up with his heart when we were physically close. I miss kissing the part of his neck where it met his hairline. I miss how his ears were always cold, even in the Arizona summer.

Mostly it comes at night, when I am alone in the bedroom-that-is-not-a-bedroom, sleeping in a bed that feels half empty.
It is different because there was no choice involved. He did not choose cancer. He did not choose to die young. He did not choose to have a tumor remove his memories and change his being.
He only chose how to live.

Busy days help me. Busy days though, cannot keep out the thoughts. The questions.


The world is so open to me, but the person I want to share everything of myself with is gone.

Is it still a desire if there is complete certainty it will never happen?

Crossposting

Feel free to go and read my latest article over at P-Mag if you would like.

For those who are coming to my blog for the first time; a nice history and summation is to the side in the links, or you can start from my starting place back in 2009.

For those who are here who have been widowed themselves, or lost someone they loved to brain cancer; I truly am sorry for your loss.
I strive to live up to (it was ours first, Wash and I) the title of this blog;
Every day I have to learn how to Hope.

A Fable

A Fable of Love and Time


A long, long time ago; well, perhaps not so very long ago there was a young girl.
She was around 7 or so, in to her schooling years.
This young girl did not have many friends though. The other girls who would play near her would always whisper when she was by, or laugh and point. The boys ran away most times she tried to approach them.
So, the young girl spent a lot of time alone. Well, perhaps not so very alone.

This young girl learned to read very early on. She devoured the words in books, learned the names of all the characters, began to explore authors and scholars. She used larger and larger dictionaries as her choice in books grew and the complexity of the words and phrases she read. She would read at the dinner table if she could get away with it. In the car, and in the bathroom. She would read while walking, which sometimes became a problem with trees, or telephone poles, or light-posts.
Soon, it became hard for her to go anywhere without bringing along at least one book.

Books became the constant she did not have. Characters became friends. Familiar stories became comforts when real life was filled with taunting or occasional bouts of physical pain children who are not always well liked feel.

As she grew books were still her constant, though more scholarly than recreational as she aged.
Often she would spend as much time as she could in her room with a book, under a shade tree with a novel, or at the local library- her own personal castle filled with treasures. Priceless and worth all of the knowledge and history of Humanity.

One day, when she was feeling particularly sad and in need of the companionship of her favourite books, she left to go spend some time at the library. After reading a bit, she went and did her last walk through of the stacks, checking to see what was new, or what would call out to her, "Read me next!"
But it was not a book that called her name; but a woman.
An older woman, not as aged as her mother, but much older than her brother who was high school aged.
She looked so familiar to the young girl, but she was certain they had never met before.
The woman came closer slowly and then said a few sentences the young girl never forgot, and never told another living person.
It was a most amazing secret, and yet so profoundly sad there were days from then on the young girl was unable to smile and unable to say why.
The young girl after a while decided it had all been a dream. Fantastical dreams that had to be fiction. A distant memory of not her past/dream that slowly faded, but never truly left her.
The most realistic dream she ever had. But it had to have been a dream, the girl thought. Nothing like that could ever happen in Real Life.

The young girl grew even more. Older and older. Books were still her constant, though no longer her only companions or friends. She always had more books than friends, and did her entire life.
She fell in love, and out.

One day, only perhaps a long time ago, the girl had grown to become a woman.
She had fallen in love again, but this time, with the person who held a soul to match her own.
The person who shared the same beat in his heart as the one in hers.
Things seemed so happy, so close to perfect, and so full of hope.

Alas, Real Life stories have sad moments too.
Her Love became ill. He was to die, and that fact could not be changed; not by doctors, nor even the endless wishing The Woman did.
They had almost 3 years together. Living as best they could, always knowing each day could be the last they see each other. Knowing each night might be the last time they said, "I love you."

But, as this story is not over; there is more.

When her Love first became ill, he was very, very sick.
His brain had been changed; a tumor, pressure, surgeries, and many medical drugs.
His brain changed, but not his personality, heart, or soul.
The Woman spent many nights holding him in the hospital bed, arms wrapped around her Love, telling him it would all turn out ok, it had to. Wishing with all her heart that it would be, knowing it would not. The hardest lie; Death is coming, but do not fear.

One dark night in the hospital, during a quiet interlude without nurses coming in, her Love suddenly woke.
He said he had had a dream most realistic. In it there was a young girl in a large library like none he had seen before; to him the Stacks went on forever. The little girl was approached by a woman. The woman spoke to this girl. As the woman was walking away, she looked right at him.
When her Love woke to tell her this, he said it was an odd dream, but realistic as the woman in his dream was his Love; the very woman who was holding him in that hospital bed.

In that moment, neither the Woman nor her Love knew what was real and what was a dream. They only knew they were together, touching, holding each other. Sharing a heart-beat of worry for the unknown future.

The woman had never told her Love about that moment of her history. To her, it had faded into a dream.
The first she had thought of it in years was when he recounted his same vision to her.

Is it possible to send a message back in time? Is it possible to send a person to another time?
Could one meet their future selves?

If you had one chance, one minute to go back and tell your younger self something, what would it be? Would you even try?

Do you believe it possible for people who love each other, who perhaps share what some would deem a "soul" can share more; memories, visions, dreams, pain?



Or, perhaps this was not a long, long time ago; but rather, a long, long time in the future.
Do you believe Love is bound to a specific time, or can it stretch indefinitely; a Möbius band connecting all humans who Love?

Posts at 1am

Wash has had Xanax and Ativan up the yazoo. He was ok for the two or so hours our friend J. was by tonight.
Then he got super angry and depressed again. He cannot remember so much of the short term stuff, and he was angry at himself- and yelled at me.
He asked for the Chaplain to come, it'll be close to 1am when she gets here. He says he's getting "Ready" and doesn't want to "pain me or talk about it with you".

I'm trying so hard to not cry right now.

I brought him some wood blocks and Legos to play with, because he was asking what was "safe" that he woudn't harm himself with.
The Hospice Nurse on call said she hoped it was a bad night, but that these intense changes, and his night-issues might be his way of trying to say he is ready to die.

Fuck.
NOW I'm crying.