Healing

At some unknown point in the recent past, I started to heal. It was a subtle thing at first. A day when I didn't cry too much or when I managed to not think about grief for whole hours at a time.

In January though, life started to come together for me. I took the first week of the year off, sort of my way to use the new year as a new start. One thing I did was go to a chiropractor for the first time ever. She had been at a company health fair the previous month and talked about how chiropractic could help migraines. At that point I was having three or four migraines a month and I thought, what the heck, maybe it will work. For the first time in along time, I was willing to try to feel better. As it turns out, she helped the migraines; she also helped the ankle swelling, the hip pain, and the insomnia and the digestive problems. And my energy level was up and my depression was milder. As I started to physically feel better, suddenly rebuilding my life started to seem possible.

Next step was starting this blog. There were things I needed to express that were hard to just say to someone in person. Holding things inside wasn't helping and when things did come out, they came out in an out-of control cranky, whiny way that I hated. So I decided to write. It helped. I shared the blog address with people I knew and we had some good talks about things I wrote. That helped even more.

I started making more changes to the house. I put in a new door and a new kitchen counter. Well I paid someone to do that. I painted the dining room and filled it with antiques I inherited from my aunt. I hung more pictures of my art on the walls. I worked hard to clean out some parts of the house. It's not done by any means, but it's better. With each change I felt a little lighter and a little closer to building a new life. I decided I needed to be more social and started to go to a photography club and invited friends to dinner. I invited my sister and mom to come visit – I cleaned the house frantically in anticipation.

Then in sorting through some books I came across something I had read earlier but which didn't resonate with me at the time. I started the Artist's Way program (Thank you, Julia Cameron) and started writing morning pages and going on artists dates. I started making fractals again. I worked some on creative writing.

July was my best month in at least five years. I adopted a rescue chihuahua, my family came to visit, I took another vacation, I wrote to my Alma Mater and showed them my fractal art and ended up with getting to have a permanent display of my fractal art in the Math department. I got a promotion and a pay raise. I started painting again. My life is starting to move in positive directions.

About the same time Karl died ,a friend split-up with his wife. We shared our grief and frustrations for two years. He too had a good July, his life is finally moving on as well. I'm happy for him.

In the darkest days, it doesn't seem possible that life will ever be good again. There is that voice telling you there is no point - there can be no future. When you are in that place, hang onto this thought – that voice is lying. There is a future out there, you just have to hang in there to get to it.

To all who are reading this, take care.

Feeling Guilty

You have no choice but to remake your life when your partner dies. You can't keep the same old life; it just isn't possible no matter how much you loved that person or that life.

So you spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you want now and how to go about getting it. For months, maybe even years, you may not have a clue as to what you really want your new life to be. Part of what holds you back is guilt. You feel guilty for wanting something you didn't have when you and your partner were together. It feels like maybe you didn't love him enough because you want something new. And so you feel guilty for wanting to build that new life that you have no choice but to build.

When you live with another person, you make compromises. Decisions are what we want, not just what I want. Some of those decisions will be revisited in creating a new life. Many of those compromises no longer serve a purpose, yet it's hard to do the things you wanted, but he didn't. It's hard to admit there are things you want that you didn't have before. It's hard to realize that there are new possibilities that were out of the question before. Not because you didn't want them, but because we didn't want them. Of course your partner made similar compromises for you, but logic doesn't come into emotional blackmail - especially when the person doing the blackmailing is yourself. (Hey who knows your weak spots better than you do?)

It's taken two years, but now I know that Karl wouldn't want me to keep making compromises that are no longer relevant. He would want me to be happy and reach for a new life because he loved me. It's OK to want something new or to bring up dreams that were left behind when we got together. It doesn't lessen the love we had or mean we didn't have a great life together. It just means it's time to go on something else.

Still not sure what form my life will take, but I'm starting to take the steps now. And if, in three or four years, I look back and realize I'm wondrously happy, it won't mean I was unhappy when we were together. You can love more than one person or more than one life. There are times when the right thing right now wasn't the right thing 10 or 20 years ago. And that's OK. No need to feel guilty.

A Sense of Safety

Karl was my Rock - -the person who was always there for me. When he died the world got a lot scarier. I had money issues, I was hurting, I was lonely. And my Rock wasn't there to help. In short, I was terrified.

I found that many of the issues that I had thought I dealt with earlier in my life came up. I had been attacked in the office when I was in my 20s. I hadn't really thought about it in years, suddenly, I couldn't work in an office if people could approach me from behind where I couldn't see them. Thank God I had a workplace that was willing to let me have a cubicle that backed up to the outside wall. And they didn't make me move when the new team I got assigned to was in another space with no walls. I can't even begin to express how much it has helped that I have an understanding workplace.

I am slowly feeling more confident. I'm not totally there yet, but I'm not as afraid as I was two years ago when Karl died. I can see that someday my sense of safety will return.

Writing this blog is helping with that - being able to express the way I feel has helped reduce the fear. Another thing that has helped is starting a 12 week Artist's Way group. Week one is about safety and part of that is talking about the fears and negative things that have caused us to be creatively blocked. People need a feeling of safety to be able to take the risk of being creative. Writing about what has caused a lack of confidence helps you see that other people's opinions aren't always the truth about you. Thinking about the source of some issues and seeing the positives as well as the negatives makes it easier to feel a sense of safety.

My safety has to reside inside me; I know that now. There will be backtracking and bad days, I'm sure but I can do this. The worst has happened and I'm still here, still coping.

As my sense of safety is starting to increase, I want to reach out to help others. There is a dog that I am considering adopting who has been abused and needs a good solid home and a person who will be patient and help him get confidence in people. I have to take my current dog to meet him, but I'm pretty sure he is the one I will try to help. But even if he and Rusty don't click, there will be another little dog who needs my help soon. It's important to me to help an abused animal. My mom said on the phone, you can't help all of them and that's true, but I can help one of them. I suspect it will help me as much as it helps him.

A Reason to Keep on Living

Before Karl died I thought that “broken heart” was just a phrase. I had no idea that it would one day describe exactly how I felt. It really did physically feel as if my heart had cracked into two and wouldn't keep beating. But it did and I didn't really know what to do about that. You read about how couples who have been together a long time often don't survive each other by very long and now I understand that as well. Karl was central to my life and at first I didn't feel as if there was a reason to go on living with him no longer in the world. I mean, what was the point anyway? The ones who die soon after those they love are often those who never find an answer to “What's the point?” At least it seems that way to me.

Two things kept me going, my dog Rusty and my job. Rusty bless his greedy little heart kept wanting to be fed and wanting to go out and wanting to be with me as I cried. I wanted to stay in bed and never get up again, but he insisted. At length, some days. He was a rescue dog and I couldn't just die and leave him homeless again. I had given him a forever home, damn it, and I was going to keep my part of the bargain as he had kept his. He had more than kept his part of the bargain (which was to keep us company and make us laugh). Rusty was (and still is) a genuine hero dog in my eyes. One night when I was asleep, Karl fell and couldn't get back up. With emphysema, he didn't have the breathe to yell loud enough that I could hear him, so Rusty came upstairs and banged on the bedroom door until I woke up and then he led me to Karl. I couldn't send a dog like that back to the SPCA if his owners were gone, so I had to keep going.

And work needed me. We were shorthanded in the group I worked in and my bereavement leave had put us further behind. So I had to get up everyday and go in and try to work (I worked much more slowly than usual and I cried every day at work, but I went in). I'm not sure what would have happened if I had lost my job those first two years, might have been the last straw that pushed me over the edge. But I didn't and so I avoided the edge until I had healed enough to start thinking about building a new life.

And now I'm rebuilding. Still not sure what direction to go in, still not sure what my new life will contain but now I'm sure I will rebuild. That's progress of sort.

Death At A Funeral

You go through the full gamut of emotions when someone close to you dies. I knew Karl was dying, so I expected the sadness and the pain and the anger. What I didn't expect was the funny side of it all. Sometimes when things are so bad they can't get any worse, all that's left to do is to laugh.

Funerals bring out the dysfunctional in families. Whatever things annoy you the most about your family or his family will be quadruply annoying during the lead up to the funeral.

I still laugh about how I had to get my sister (who had sensibly gotten a hotel room with my mom) to spend the night with me as the guard sister to keep Karl's daughter (who grieved by getting wasted drunk and crying all over people as well as slobbering on them) out of my bedroom at 2 am. It worked too!

Then there was Karl's ex-wife (the one he divorced in 1969) who was appalled, simply appalled, that he didn't leave the house to her. Hello, divorced for almost 40 years, living with me for 26 (far longer than they were married) and living in another state. In what reality would he have left her the house? He didn't even like her.

Then there was Karl's older brother. Wink was in the hospital when Karl died. In fact Karl had gone out to Arizona to see him and died in his house. Wink's wife didn't tell him Karl died. OK she was afraid he wasn't going to live through the news while he was in the hospital. But she didn't tell him even after he got home. In fact no one in the family thinks he has been told yet (they are all kind of afraid to ask). Certainly I've not heard a word of condolence from him. On the other hand he has to wonder why he hasn't heard from Karl in two years.

I told the younger brother about Karl's death. He was playing golf when I called on his cell. He finished the round before going home.

Then there was Karl's friend from FL who came up for the funeral and told this horribly inappropriate story about him and Karl being drunk and hitting on the girls at Hooters. And Karl's son talking about how Karl made him into the man he was today and how much he loved him. Yeah right, Karl couldn't even get him to return his phone calls most of the time.

Then there was the former co-worker who emailed me after hearing the news to proposition me. Really, trust me, when the love of your life has died less than a week ago, you do not want someone to ask you out. Just another dating tip for the socially inept.

About a month after the funeral, my friend Lory invited me to dinner and to watch a movie after. She said, “It sounds weird, but you have to see Death at Funeral.” She knows me well. It was indeed the perfect funny movie for my mood. Ah yes, funerals can sure put the fun in dysfunctional.

Writing as therapy

One thing I have found most helpful about writing this blog is that I can say all those things I've kept inside because people don't want to really discuss grief in detail.

As a result, I now feel better than I've felt in years. Some of the weight of all this stress is gone because I've been able to express it. Oh it's not perfect and I still feel the grief, but I can see progress and can start to visualize rebuilding my life.

If you are reading this and seem stuck in your grief (not immediately after the grief, we need to take the time to actually feel the feelings), I recommend you take the time to write down what you are going through and have gone through as a way to clarify your feelings and release them. You don't have to share publicly as I am with the blog; you don't have to show anyone at all. But try writing it out and see if it helps. And let me know if it did.

Therapy

I've been dealing with depression and bi-polar disease for 40 years. When Karl died I knew I needed help to get through this, so I immediately made an appointment to get back on Depression drugs. I thought that with my history and the grief complications that the doctor would surely send me to therapy, but he didn't and I was in too upset a state to insist. It was the first of several tries at therapy where I felt discounted and not listened to because I was in grief and we know all about that.

I tried with him for 3 months, the drugs weren't helping the way they had in previous bouts of depression and the doctor gave me something new rather than listening to me when I told him what had worked before. Then he wanted blood to check my liver function and that was the last straw. I don't do needles and I would never have consented to take a drug that required blood tests. I refused the blood test, left and never came back. But of course I still needed help. After six or seven more months of grief and depression I got up the courage to try again. No drugs this time, right to therapy. Three sessions later when we were still taking history and hadn't talked a bit about what was currently my problem, I quit that therapy too. I was starting to feel invisible. I went for four or five more months just barely getting by. I tried again, different doctor, different drugs, different therapist. She told me that I was a loser who would never be happy unless I had a complete personality change. She hadn't even talked to me and heard any of what I had to say and she thought I was a loser. It's no surprise that I never went back.

I had never had this kind of luck with therapy before. But as a person dealing with grief, I never once, through 4 different caregivers, felt that any one of them actually heard what I wanted to say or let me show them what aspect of grief I was having difficulty dealing with. I had become invisible an interchangeable part with all other people suffering grief.

Well, grief is not like that. People cope differently, people have different problems that most concern them. And most especially people who seek therapy to deal with grief need to feel they are being listened to. When I went to the therapists for depression treatment in the past, I was listened to and they paid attention to what issues I was having and how to deal with it. I was a person. Going to therapy with grief, I was no longer an individual, I was suffering from grief and steps a, b, c would fix that. One size fits all therapy isn't just wrong; it's harmful to the grieving person.

He was my extrovert

Talking to someone at work today, I noted that Karl had been my extrovert. And as an introvert it was hard for me to got out and mingle - especially with strangers. It's funny, I hadn't ever really noticed how much Karl helped me to be sociable and how he pushed me to move out of my comfort zone. It's hard to take over that function on my own.

I recently attended a meeting of a digital photography club and it was all I could do to force myself to get in my car and go even though I had been planning to go for a couple of months. Of course, I had to think about it for two months before getting in the car was even a possibility. It will be good for me to start getting out and do social activities; I can't sit home and cry forever. But taking that first step was harder than I thought it would be.

But it got me to thinking about the nature of relationships. We need to have people in our lives who are brave when we are fearful or who are responsible when we are carefree or who are funny when we are too serious. The most successful relationships I have ever seen are those where each partner brings different strengths to the partnership. Of course when that relationship is broken through death, we suddenly realize how much that person was doing that we found difficult.

So even though it's hard and even though I didn't want to do it, gradually I've come to realize that the grief process is also a growth process. You have to tackle those weak parts of yourself that you were able to pass off to the other person before. I'm a stronger, more compassionate person for having been in this place.

Sorting Through the Pictures

The one thing that helped the most the first week was going through the pictures for the memorial. Marty and I laughed and cried and told silly stories as we sorted through photos neither of us had looked at in years. It was a way to remember the good of my life with Karl in the face of the overwhelming pain I felt at his death. It was the only part of that first week that I can remember with any fondness.

There was the picture of Karl holding our dog Kiki the day his daughter gave her to him for Christmas. We loved that dog and she shared our lives for almost 17 years. He took her everywhere but especially to the park where he would let her run and run and run.

And there were pictures of Karl in uniform and with his grandkids reading to them when they were small and pictures at the lake and picture of me at horse shows that he took and him in his recliner and in his hammock in the backyard – which reminded me of the day one spring when he lay in the hammock watching the leaves come out on the trees.

And pictures of him building his experimental airplane. I remember well how much he enjoyed that and how when they first put it together, they found the wings somehow had ended up two different lengths. Pictures with his Cessna and his scuba gear (Oh my, remember the time my nephew almost drowned in the Marty's pool with that scuba gear?) Not many picture of him as a young boy, but then again, he was born in 1936, people didn't take as many pictures then.

Oh and look here's that newspaper clipping of him and our old neighbor, Teresa, at the opening of the trail at the Great Dismal Swamp. He and Teresa became such good friends after her husband died; he even cut a gate in the side fence between our two yards, so she could come over more easily. I remember, too, how hurt he was when she died unexpectedly. And I remember sitting with him at his sister's funeral.

Oh and here is his 60th birthday party, the one with the dancing girl. And remember this cake our friend June made. It had a little airplane on a runway and tiny candles as the runway lights, but when we lit the candles, they melted the wings on little plastic airplane.

And picture of his ex-mother-in-law who used to come visit us when she was still alive. Even though her daughter lived just four doors down, she would stay with us because she liked Karl better.

It's really a modern ritual this sorting through the photos. It's an emotionally healthy activity. It takes you back through the deceased's life. It helps you remember why you were in relationship to this person all along. And why that relationship was worth it even though it ended in grief.

Other things about the modern grieving process are not so healthy. In our busy, push-push world, we don't think people should take time out to grieve. Take a week off, be sad for another week and then never mention it again. Or of course there are those who seem to think it is a commercial opportunity – sell the grieving family on a memorial website, a fancy coffin, a bigger and better marble stone, a decal for your car window, etc. The costs of funerals rivals the (also way overblown) cost of a wedding - only you don't even get happy memories out of it.

The older rituals do provide some comfort or at least closure. Karl wanted a viewing, so we had one. And yes it was comforting to have the huge number of people who loved him or me to show up to remember him and comfort his family.

The funeral itself gave me a chance to publicly speak about my feelings for Karl and describe what a wonderful person he was. It was difficult to speak at the funeral but I'm glad I did.

The most moving part of the process was Karl's interment at Arlington National Cemetery. The formal ceremony was beautiful, the day was beautiful and Arlington is such a peaceful place. Karl had wanted very much to be buried there, I'm glad we were able to make it happen.

I miss him still; I will always miss him. But at least going through the pictures helped bring back the vital, interesting person he was after several years of serious illness. He hated being diminished; I'm glad the ritual of the photos helped restore the old Karl as foremost in my memories.

The Look

If you've suffered a serious grief, chances are you seen the Look. You know the “Oh please, hasn't she gotten over this” look or maybe the “Don't annoy me with your pathetic emotions” look or even the “How inappropriate of you to be talking about such an uncomfortable subject” look.

We all know the Look. It's the one that trivializes your grief and makes you feel less than nothing for having sad feelings. It's the one that says don't bother me; I can't be bothered with your pathetic emotions; I'm too important for you to bother with this.

The trouble with the look is that it makes the person who is grieving feel worse for not being Little Miss Happy Sunshine. It tells you clearly that the other person doesn't care about you and thinks he or she is much more important than you are.

Oddly, I never get the Look from strangers when I happen to mention my beloved who died or my grief or anything to do with mourning. No, the Look comes from relatives and friends and co-workers. It wounds so deeply precisely because it comes from the very people you expected to support you in your grief.

Sometimes, it's not even a look but a sudden silence when you say something or a drastic change of topic. At any rate the common theme is that it says, “Your grief is unimportant, I don't want you to talk about it.”

There is nothing guaranteed to make me angrier than the Look. All those people who don't want me to talk about the event that most affected my life or the 26 years of life that preceded it are going to be disappointed in me, because I will talk about this and the Look will make me more determined to tell you about it. I don't give into the Look and shut up like a nice girl. So try to have a little compassion for those of us suffering grief and don't make it worse by making us feel we can't talk about the most significant event in our lives because it's too sad for someone who only has to spend five minutes with it. I have to spend a lifetime with it, so forgive me for not feeling very willing to accommodate your lack of sensitivity.

Not all of us who are grieving want to talk about it, I can respect either choice. But when someone does want to talk, don't cut them off with the Look. Honor their grief and treat them like a person worth listening to.

Cranky, Whiny, Bitch Girl

One of the the things about the grief process is that you lose yourself for awhile. Sometimes you turn into this person you don't even like very much or who seems like a stranger.

Me, I turned into cranky, whiny, bitch girl. I was very easily upset, I felt a little like I was was coming across as poor little me (well to be honest, I felt a lot like poor little me), and I got angry so much more easily than at any other time in my life. I did things I wouldn't normally do; I complained and cried and sighed and screamed and cried some more. I'm an introvert and usually I'm pretty adept at keeping my emotions to myself, but cranky, whiny, bitch girl sure didn't keep any of her emotions to herself and none of her emotions were pretty. Sometimes I was amazed that anyone I knew was still talking to me.

For a year and half at least, I was not fun to be around. Even at work I had trouble staying professional. It didn't help that the workplace made some policy changes that I strongly disagreed with and in cranky, whiny, bitch girl mode, I had no trouble at all letting them know. Well, maybe I should have kept my mouth shut a couple of times, but they hit every one of my psychological triggers. And I was in no mood to play nice. I have to thank my coworkers for understanding that I wasn't myself and giving me the benefit of the doubt. I didn't want to be that awful person, I just couldn't stop myself.

Two years later, I still have cranky, whiny, bitch girl moments although they are getting farther apart and now mostly hit when I'm really, really tired. I'm glad to see her leaving. I didn't like being unable to control my emotions and I don't care for the feelings that I felt. I knew it was all part of the grief process, but still...cranky, whiny, bitch girl? Really, did I have to go there?

I grew up being the good girl, the nice girl, the one who followed the rules. I had no idea that side of me even existed. Well, if there was any positive to this at all, at least I realized how easily I could be pushed into being angry and out of control and that it was best to express emotions before they got to that point. I've suppressed my emotions (except around the very few people I trust) for so long, that I'm not sure I can do that long term, but at least I'm going to try. 'Cause I sure don't ever want to descend into cranky, whiny, bitch girl again.

Grief and Work

I have to start by saying, that I was lucky enough to have a supportive workplace. Sadly this is not true for everyone.

When I first learned that Karl's illness would be fatal, I talked to the VP of HR about whether I would be eligible for bereavement leave. As I read the policy, it seemed that I would not be eligible since we weren't married. I wanted confirmation of this, so I could always make sure to have a week's leave available. She confirmed that was the policy and then called back about six hours later to tell me that company had changed the policy to include anyone you lived with. This was more than year before Karl died and it was much appreciated (as well as making me feel good that others in my situation both gay and straight would have the same benefit).

On the day I left for bereavement leave, the HR rep told me to go and not to worry about anything. When I returned she had gathered together all the paperwork I would need to change. Karl was my emergency contact as well as the beneficiary of my life insurance policy. She had the forms I needed to change filled out as much as she could and ready for me to fill in the new names and contact information. I might not have thought of doing that for weeks even months; I appreciated that she made sure it got done right away.

The office sent flowers and several of my co-workers attended either the funeral or came to the viewing. I work at a satellite site away from our HQ, so I received flowers from some of the people I directly worked with in our HQ as well as local co-workers.

My boss at the time was not the type of person to let others know his emotions especially when they are not happy. I'm fairly sure he didn't understand why I was not the same way, but he respected that I was not able to hide my emotions when I returned to work.

I came in a couple of times that week before the funeral for half days. Not because work insisted I come in or to meet a deadline, but simply to escape the dysfunctional family funeral for a few hours. I told my boss when I came in to pretend I wasn't there, that I was hiding out from Karl's relatives. He was good about doing so and giving me something completely non-stressful to do. I wasn't thinking clearly at that point, so this was critical. I could not have handled a high stress task at that point. My co-worker was still doing my normal tasks as that point. Something I was very grateful for as it couldn't have been easy to do my job and hers.

The first time I came back after Karl's death was the hardest. I was still crying at the drop of a hat and many of my co-workers wanted to express their condolences. I was grateful for the condolences, but it was hard to get through them. There's no way to avoid this, waiting to express condolences would have made me feel as if nobody cared. So pretty much the first hour I was back at work all I did was cry and get hugged by distressed co-workers.

Dealing with work and grief together is just one paradox after another. It hurts terribly to return to the normal routine of life and yet, it feels good to do so as well. It seems strange and unprofessional to insert strong emotions into the workplace, but it was also the only way I could return to work as the emotions were most definitely not under control for months. Work was a place of security where everything hadn't changed, but it also terrified me that I would make a serious mistake and lose my job now that I was my sole support for the first time in 26 years.

I cried at work every day for months. I never cried at work before; it was very strange. Luckily my cubicle was in an out of the way corner. People would say something innocuous on a phone call and I would start to cry. I had to apologize repeatedly to co-workers so they would understand I knew they weren't deliberately trying to hurt me and I ended up explaining to many of my co-workers at other sites what had happened as they didn't get a general announcement like they put out here at the local office.

I have no doubt my performance suffered. I tried to do good work, but for at least a couple of months I wasn't thinking very straight. At least I'd been a decent performer to start with, it makes it easier for others to cut you a little slack I think. My boss at least tried to keep things lighter the first month afterward anyway. My co-worker did her best to help me out as I wasn't working as fast as normal either and things were getting a little backed up. She was a champ, I couldn't have made it through without her. Sadly nine months later, she left work for cancer treatment and died a few months later. I miss her still.

I found that for at least a year and half, maybe close to two, I was far more easily stressed at work than I had been. Part of that was we were going through a lot of organizational changes at work and I ended up on a new team, one I never would have gone to by choice. Part of it was the grief and the loss of the feeling of safety in being alone now brought up some psychological issues, I thought I had moved past 20 years earlier. But now a little more than two years after the death, I'm starting to feel comfortable at work again. My brain doesn't feel like it's in such a fog. It's not so hard to concentrate.

Co-workers are uncomfortable with strong emotions in the workplace. I know I made them uncomfortable, but I needed to express those emotions. It still bothers them when I mention that I'm still grieving (my new boss gets this “oh spare me” look on his face when I mention anything to do with Karl or grieving, but then he wasn't someone who actually ever expressed personal condolences either)– somehow society has decided that we shouldn't do that for more than a week or so after the funeral. But what society wants and what I was able to do weren't in synch. I think it cruel that we don't expect grieving people to grieve and that we make them feel even worse if they should happen to show how bad they feel to relatives, friends and co-workers. I reached out some to others I worked with who suffered griefs after me. I like to think it helped that they had some one who knew what it was like to talk to.

One thing that amazed me was how few of my co-workers attended the funeral or the viewing, less than ten percent of the local employees came even though we were a small enough office that I knew everyone. No one from the local senior management came (even though I'd worked closely with all but one of them) and none of them even expressed their condolences in person until weeks later. It's colored my view of management here, I don't know that I will ever feel loyalty or trust in them, since they were absent when I most needed support. Another person here lost her father recently, I was the only person from work who actually attended the funeral (several more did make it to the viewing). Why wasn't her boss there? Where were her teammates? Are we really all so busy and important that we can't take a couple of hours out of a day to attend a funeral when one of our co-workers needs our support? It seems wrong to me; 20 years ago when someone had a funeral that was local, people were expected to attend. Now it seems to be too much trouble.

Cleaning out

When someone in your household dies, there's huge hole in your life. But what is still there - is all the stuff. The clothes, the car, the broken toaster that he saved for God knows what reason. And in the end, the house we shared together is now my house and needs to start to reflect me and not we.

Well in all the years we lived together, the house was still Karl's house – far more his domain than mine. I never liked the house or the furniture or even the way the kitchen was arranged. And well, to be honest, neither one of use was a great housekeeper. The house needed repairs, painting and a general getting rid of junk and cleaning.

Since he had been retired for more than 20 years (and I was not), it was especially Karl's house; he spent far more time there than I did. The master bedroom closet was his closet, the master bath was his bath. He thought walls should be white (well dingy white) and his furniture could be described as early yard sale. He had been a Navy brat and then a Naval officer. When he retired, he never intended to move again and, by damn, none of the furniture was ever going to be moved again either.

Now with him gone, it was time to clean out and reclaim the space as mine. But Karl was such a pack rat, he still had clothes in his closet from high school (and he was 72 when he died) and where to start was the question.

Plus in a quirk of fate, while I inherited a life estate in the house, I didn't inherit his household goods, so they weren't mine to do with as I pleased. Well everyone at least agreed that no one wanted his clothes. Of course his son and daughter and executor of the estate didn't want to do the work of getting rid of them either. But it seemed like the easiest place to start. So I took a huge dose of allergy pills and Marty and I waded into the closet, filling bag after bag after bag with clothes that we eventually donated to charity. Karl's cousin was his best friend and it wasn't any easier for her than for me, so it took weeks to get the dressers and the closet cleaned out.

Then I had a messy bedroom full of bags of old clothes, but an empty closet and two empty dressers. It was a start. We painted the closet before I started to put my stuff in it. There's something renewing about painting. It's a fresh start and I needed a fresh start. Well the closet was painted and my stuff moved into it. One thing down, 5 million to go.

Next the clothes had to go to make room to clean up the bedroom. It took some weeks to get up the energy, but eventually the clothes were gone.

Each tiny step was a lightening for me; I felt weighed down with all this stuff I didn't want, didn't need and didn't yet have the right to get rid of.

The cleaning, painting and rearranging continued. With each room cleaned out, I felt lighter. I painted the bedroom and, gasp, moved the furniture. I got rid of the carpet and my allergies got immensely better. I painted the living room, put the furniture in the garage (still didn't have permission to get rid of it even though no one wanted that furniture) and when my part of the estate was settled, I bought new living room furniture. The walls were now pink instead of white, the furniture was comfortable and pretty and I had a great place to display art glass pieces. The living room was now mine. It felt good.

I rearranged the kitchen cupboards and threw out all the old canned goods that Karl would never get rid of (there was stuff expired in 1986 in the back!). Oh yes, Karl was a child of the Depression all right. I got rid of the brown dishes and bought individual dishes I liked in all kinds of bright colors. Karl would have never understood a mismatched set of dishes, they were supposed to come in a set. But I love my cheery dishes and the few times I've had company over for dinner, everyone else seems to get a kick out of them too.

There's still a lot of work to go and I still have a lot of junk I don't want. But I'm making progress in cleaning out the old and creating a new home. It's all part of going on.

Kindnesses

One of the paradoxes about grieving is that you encounter so much kindness. People seem to instinctively know that that they need to be extra kind to you. You think of grieving as just a dark experience, but truly I've blessed with many kindnesses that made me smile or eased the pain for a little time.

One of the kindnesses I remember best was from a co-worker. The week I was off on bereavement leave, I had a deliverable for a client. Obviously it was going to be late. When my co-worker who was the client liaison told them it would be late and they started to get annoyed, he told them to chill out, the person assigned to the task was on bereavement leave. I treasure that moment when, for once, the workplace acknowleged that my right to a personal life was more important than the work.

Other memorable things include:
Someone leaving a bag of her favorite chocolates at my desk
A gift card to a local restaurant that was left anonymously on my desk (very nice when you are low on funds after losing half your family income!)
Friends inviting me their home for dinner and a movie on their wide-screen TV (Death at a Funeral which is hysterically funny and was just the right thing for my mood)
Another friend who grabbed her kids and took me out to lunch and then to the beach for my birthday.
Hugs from the clerk at the local Wawa when I broke down crying.
My neighbor taking over the care of my lawn
My coworkers who are helping fix my fence
The sympathy card from the lady I used to share an office with 20 years ago that I last saw in 1992.
The Internet friends who called me to check on how I was doing
My former boss making the trip back for the funeral from out-of town
My sister doing duty as the “guard sister” to protect me when Karl's daughter wanted to come cry all over me at 3 am
My sister's college roommate coming to the burial at Arlington
The many sympathy cards
The people who came to the funeral who didn't know Karl at all but wanted to support me.
The people (especially Karl's cousin who lived with me) who listened when I needed to talk and left me alone when I needed to be alone.

A lot of these things aren't big things; they aren't expensive things. But the grieving experience taught me a lot about how important small gestures can be when you are in need. I try to do more of them myself now because I understand how much they mean.

The world didn't end

One thing that I found most difficult to deal with in trying to get over the death of the person I loved most in the world was that the world didn't end. Now intellectually I knew that it wouldn't, but I wasn't emotionally prepared for it. The worst thing that could have happened in my life happened and the sun still came up, people still gossiped about American Idol, and the electric bill still came. Part of me wanted the world to end (I now understand why couples married a long time often don't survive each other for long). But it didn't. There was a huge hole in my life, but I still had a life. I had no idea what to do with that life or where I was supposed to go from here, but life did go on.

One of the biggest problems for me was that from the perspective of the people around me, life hadn't even come close to ending. There was a little hiccup; it was too bad for Judy, but "What's for dinner tonight?" People who have never been through the death of someone who is their whole world have no idea that it was an event that didn't end with the funeral. They thought it was strange that I was upset more than a year later and that casual references to some things could make me start crying. I could often see the annoyed, patronizing, or irritated expressions on their faces as they wordlessly let me know that they thought I should be over this by now. After all, Karl and I hadn't even been married, so what was the big deal?

Getting the news

Your whole life can change in the blink of an eye or the span of a phone call. Karl's cousin called me at work to tell me that Karl had died while visiting his brother in Arizona. Life as I knew it had changed and no matter how much I wanted it to be back to the way it was, it never could be again.

I still remember sitting there for a minute in shock. It was a Friday afternoon and I was 90% finished with a task I had promised to the client by the end of the day. I debated with myself as to what to do. Then I got up and walked over to my boss and told him that Karl had died and I needed to leave, but that I would finish the import first. Then I went to HR and told Steph I needed to take bereavement leave. I asked her and my boss both to let everyone else know (so I wouldn't have to) and to give my phone number to anyone who asked for it. Then I went back to my desk, stopping at my co-worker's desk to ask her to do some things for me while I was gone. Even though Janee was a very private person, she gave me her cell phone number and told me to call. As it turned out she was the only co-worker who talked to me that weekend, because the people I told to tell everyone didn't do so until Tuesday. I'll never forget the hurt of that, spending the weekend expecting that at least some of my co-workers would care and not hearing from them.

I cried all the way home. Luckily I managed to not get into an accident which in some ways amazes me as I certainly wasn't paying attention. When I got home Karl's cousin (who was living with us when Karl died) and I cried together and then set about calling all the people who needed to know. As bad as it is to get one of those calls, making a whole string of them is worse. One of the people I called was a friend who was expecting that the call was to wish her Happy Birthday. How I wish it had been.

When someone close to you dies, especially when you share living quarters with them and see them everyday, the world becomes sort of surreal. First so many things that seemed so very important just an hour earlier were irrelevant. Did that work deadline really matter? Did eating dinner? Even sleep was hard in that king-sized bed that we had shared for 26 years. Somehow it seemed bigger and more lonely that it ever had when I was home and he was out of town. Karl had been out of town since Monday, the house wasn't any different really, but somehow it seemed quieter and less secure. Almost frightening. My Rusty dog knew something was wrong but not what. Still he clung to me knowing I need his comfort.

Karl and I were not married, so there was a measure of fear, too, that first weekend. I didn't know if I would have a place to live once the will was opened. I didn't know how I was going to make it financially even if he did leave me the house as he had paid many of the bills from his income. The income was gone, but not the bills. I didn't even know how I was going to make it through the weekend.

Before that day, I had always thought that a broken heart was just a phrase, Now I knew it was a very real, physical feeling. I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack, it hurt so much. Of course, at that point, I would have gone gratefully if I had a heart attack and not even bothered to call 911.

We had been together for almost half my life; I couldn't really remember what it was like to not have Karl there. He had been there for every other awful thing that had happened for almost all of my adult life. He was my rock, the secure underpinning of my life. He was exactly the person I needed to go to in my grief, but he wasn't there. Would never be there again. I couldn't even wrap my mind around the concept.

What lessons did the first days of grief teach me? Well, first it reaffirmed how important love is and how very glad I was to have shared Karl's life even though I had to go through grief at the end. It also showed me how unimportant some much of the minutia of our lives can be. Finally it taught me that you can go on even while your heart is breaking.

How do you go on after you lose the one you love?

I'm not sure exactly how to go on even now, two years after Karl died, but I am sure that other people are going though the same thing and need suppport and words from someone who has walked in their shoes. So I'm starting this blog to talk about grief and the process of rebuilding your life when it all falls apart. Maybe what I've gone through and how I deal with it can help someone else. Maybe someone else can help me. Maybe just putting it down in writing will help clarify my way. And maybe I'd better publish this first post now since the dog wants out. Be back later.