Reflections on Loss

 

Does Loss count as a big emotion?  By definition it is not. The emotional response to loss is grief.  You grieve over a lost mate, a lost pet, a lost job, a major change in life, losing anything that you valued or held dear.  Grief is the big emotion.  But purportedly loss is what has happened to you, not what you feel.  So.

I cannot determine if I am numb, or if this past year, all the conversations John and I had, all the things we did to secure our future, well my future, so prepared me for what lay ahead of that I've accepted that easily that I am now alone.  I have discovered what it is to experience loss of someone who was so much a part of my life that I truly felt he breathed out and I breathed in.  

I've tried to contemplate what it means to remove John's things from this house, the home that we shared.  I find that I cannot bear the thought of moving John's things at the moment.  Oh certainly, I can tidy and put away what normally would be put away.  But picking up a book he kept beside his chair...I put it back down.  Clearing the top of his chest of drawers?  Nothing moved except clothing which I put into his dresser drawer.  Remove something of his from the music room?  I can't bear it.  I can't.  It's as though I am erasing him.

And that's when I know I am not numb.  Because the thought of my home without anything of him in it is too painful to even contemplate much less do.  It is the home we put time and effort into, a home which was very much his because he had a vision too and tastes of his own and he insisted that he be part of the process.  He also had a motley collection of things in the music room that consists of obituaries and pictures, posters, signed Cd's from artist he'd met or followed, and tools and music stuff.  I can imagine that room as a guest room, but a decidedly John sort of room, not a Terri sort of room.  But not yet.  Not now.  So, his things stay.  Even though some have asked for something of his, something to remember him by, I can't part with anything. I will.  I know I will come to the time of letting go of the remnants of his physical life, but right now...  No.

The house is quiet, too quiet.  No tv running all day long, no music pouring forth from the music room, no constant conversation.  I've put on a few of the videos we watched together, those that we both enjoyed.  I think I might add some of my favorite vloggers to the line-up on YouTube...but I hesitate.  I feel my breath catch at the back of my throat.  If I do those things, then this means he's gone.

I know he is gone.  But I find myself skirting about the spaces that remind me too hard.    

I didn't feel lonely at first.  I felt...bored, I'd say.  I do the few chores required, I've made meals for myself but beyond the necessary living chores, everything seems pointless, silly.  How can I possibly enjoy the junk journal when John will never again be here to listen to me chatter about it?  How can I possibly sink my teeth into a book and escape when there's no noise to escape from?  How can I possibly sit and color or play a game or arrange furniture when there's no one to talk to, no one whose opinion matters on the subject of whatever it is I've done?

And then one night this past week, loneliness hit me.  An ache I can't describe.  Because no one else can fill that space that he's left behind.  

And honestly?  It feels as though he's been gone for weeks, months, years.  The distance between him and me unfathomable.  In my heart, I know he's just beyond the physical realm of this life/universe.  I know he's there in heaven, but at times, as the days drift by, I feel the separation more and more.

So, I talk to him.  I tell him I miss him and that I'm lonely.  I tell him how silly everything seems without him here to share it.  I tell him I love him.  Because I do and I always will.  And I tell him I know he loves me, because I've felt it at times.  I can't really describe it but it's there in the atmosphere around me.  

I talk to him about the day, about the children when I'm worried over one or the other, about how proud I was to do something that I'd dreaded doing, or how upset I am when fear has grabbed me by the throat, and I face uncertainty.  

There's a point in almost every day when I sink into this loss and just sit with it. Not depressed, not blue.  Just absorbing the reality of it.  Saddened by it.  Accepting of it.  

And then, rising to live. Not reluctantly, but willingly.  Pushing to move forward, to continue because John would want that.  I want that for myself.  

I go on.

This New Season

 

In March, as I worked through big emotions and sorrow, I wrote out the posts and pre-scheduled them to publish.  I finished them a week before John died.   Since then, I've been doing a lot of writing.  The two posts published on this blog and on Blue House Journal about John's passing, posts for April, in my journal.

Writing being the cathartic exercise that it always has been for me; I'm finding my way as I go into this new season of life alone mostly by writing, not by word or book.  I don't know what it is I feel.  I'm having to stop and exam it as I go.  

Promises for April

 

1.  I promise to start reaching OUT to people when they are reaching out to me.  John and I tended to be selfish with our time together.  There's no one there for me now.  I'm not slighting my children.  They are being so supportive and would happily fit me into their lives even more than they did in the past.  But they have their lives.   I owe it to John, I owe it to them, and most of all I owe it to me, to not give in to the easy thing.  I need a new support system; one I'll build for myself.  I need to be open to people and stop thinking everyone is highly suspect and likely to hurt me.

2.   I promise to choose carefully who I allow to enter into my life.  That may sound contrary to the first promise but it's really an extension to it.  I attract needy people.  People are attracted to my co-dependent nature.  I want HEALTHY personal relationships in my life, not someone who will reduce me, use me, trap me in their dependency.  

Big Emotions, Pt. 3: Sorrow

Sorrow sits at the bottom of the deep river of all unplumbed emotions.  Grief, despair, hopelessness, anger, shame, hurt...They are all mixed up in sorrow and get dredged up to cloud the water and alter the current's flow.  This river has a power of its own, moving at will along the path it carves.

Many times, when I lie down to sleep, when I just start to drift, I see a very real flood behind my eyelids, sweeping me along with it, sometimes confined within riverbanks, sometimes spreading rapidly across the landscape of life. I have no control whatsoever over my vessel, swept along without any way to stop it or slow it, completely vulnerable to the whims of the water beneath me. 

Sorrow, I know.  

Big Emotions Pt. 2: Shame

 

When I first began this journey, it began with a dream in which I appeared unclothed before a crowd.  I walked without any embarrassment or sense of shame, quite at home in my own skin.

But the most often experienced emotion I've felt over the past few years has been shame.  I've written about it both in my journal and here.  I've examined it until I have felt I was going to go mad.  I've ignored it only to have it rear up and strike at me hard.   

In Week Three of The Artist's Way, two of the emotions we examine more closely are anger and shame.  Today I want to delve into the emotion of shame as I have experienced it.

The Unexpected New Season: Joy

 

This weekend, the unexpected happened.  My husband, who has never been seriously ill in all of our thirty-four years together, who never needed to see a doctor for anything but routine labs, died.  

In the midst of the month when I've had big emotions, when I've written and have upcoming posts already written about big emotions, this comes into my life.  Nothing you've read prior to this and nothing you read after this for the month of March is about the most mysterious thing of all, and that is Joy.

Yesterday I was a married woman.  Today I am a widow.

Big Emotions Pt. 1: Anger

As a child growing up in what at best could be described as an angry household, anger was the most punishable offense we children could commit. Looking back now, I find that ironic to say the least.  Why should it be so?

It was how anger was handled in our home that seemed rather messed up.  No slamming of a bedroom door, no raging at the adult who was calling us out on our actions.  That part was reasonable.  What was less reasonable was the expectation that we'd show no emotion at all, never admit or own to any anger at any time.  Injustices were to be suffered in silence, without speaking up.  If we did, then we were punished physically as well as with verbal and emotional abuse.  We were meant to simply accept the situation and immediately correct our actions to suit the controlling adult.  All anger you see, was seen as disrespect.  And disrespect was always followed by punishment.

Going In Circles

 

The other day I was listening to a sermon, a very good sermon I might add, but also a difficult one.  It was difficult because it opened up within me a world of painful memories.  The pastor spoke about his childhood, a disappointing childhood, a hard childhood and how even at school he found himself compared too often to another boy, one whose family life was stable, who hadn't the things against him that the pastor was experiencing in his childhood life.  The pastor spoke of his hurt, his loss of hope, the sense of never being enough.  Indeed, not just feeling he would never be enough but being told by grown-ups in his life that he wasn't enough.  Not smart enough.  Not responsible enough. Not good enough.  Not stable enough.  

Promises to Myself, Part 2

As I write, it is the first week of March.  I restarted The Artist's Way about two weeks ago.  It is my second time through the book.   To date, I have yet to go on a single artist date. I'll wager by the time this post is published I'll still not have gone on one. The dates are meant to be a mere two or three hours carved out of a week, and it's supposed to benefit the Inner Child, the one who is the true Artist Within.  What's more, I made a promise to myself for March that I'd go on one Artist Date each week, as the author requested.  I don't want to break a promise to myself but by the same token, I don't want to go on an Artist Date either.

What is the issue?

Spring Fever

 

The birds started it.  I went outdoors yesterday morning, and they were fairly screeching in their excitement to start their housekeeping.  

I have been a dynamo this morning and though I've only been up about 3 hours at this point in the day, I have accomplished a great deal.  I've only just sat down to have a late breakfast and to sit here and brainstorm my way into this new season ahead...I am ready for a fresh wind to fill my sails for Spring.

We are on the cusp of a new season.  I am ready for the changes ahead.

Unreasonable, Impractical Me

 

As a daydreamy sort of child, I often made the mistake of sharing the fantasies in my head.  "Oh, Terri," someone would say, "be reasonable!"   I didn't stop daydreaming.  I did stop sharing my dreams.

As a young adult, living an all too ordinary life and still daydreaming of many things, I once voiced my thoughts out loud to a friend.  "Oh, Terri," she said, "You're always such a romantic.  You're not at all practical."