Recently I was sitting in Vince’s old easy chair covered with a fluffy blanket as well as the fluffy dog (she’s way overdue for her grooming). I was drinking my morning coffee and watching the snow fall outside.
I was comfy and
warm and I picked up a book on grief sent to me by a friend who lost her
husband only a few short months ago. She said that it helped her and she
thought maybe it would help me, too.
It does. But
sometimes it feels like it doesn’t.
Every single time
I read one of the passages, something resonates with me and I’ll start crying.
Sometimes the
tears last only a moment or two – but sometimes I’ll find myself weepy on and
off for the rest of the day.
I’d rather not
cry if I can help it, but I mostly can’t help it.
Grief is a weird thing.
I remember reading a long time ago about the “stages” of grief – denial, anger,
bargaining, depression and acceptance. That a person goes through each stage
until they finally accept that their loved one is gone, is not coming back and
they need to move on with their life.
Yeah, I say
that’s a bunch of hooey.
Plus, I think at
some point they added a couple extra stages. And now the “experts” agree that
we go through different stages at different times – and sometimes we flip and
flop and go through them randomly.
I know that Vince
is not coming back. I know I need to keep on keeping on – since I’m still here
and my life is not yet over.
But I know for
sure I haven’t come anywhere near reaching the “acceptance” phase.
There are moments
I get gob-smacked in the face with the realization he’s gone – almost as if I’m
realizing it the same way I did the day he died.
And there are
other moments I find myself laughing over something silly a friend says – and
I’ll feel momentarily guilty that I’m not shrouded in depression.
But then there
are those moments of depression. I feel them – and I know I’m in the midst of
something that could drag me down into its depths, but I make the choice to let
myself feel what I’m feeling without allowing myself to get dragged under.
Maybe that is a
skill set that comes with age. Or maybe it’s just that I know there isn’t
anyone to take care of me – but me.
So I agree that
we just bounce around from stage to stage and back again. It sometimes feels
like we take one step forward and then ninety-nine steps back.
After Vince died,
I wasn’t sure I ever would get to an “anger” phase. It’s not like Vince
intentionally died to get out of cleaning the garage. But I have to admit that
when I have had to deal with something that was his forte and not mine, I’ll
get angry.
I never wanted to
handle the plumbing issues or negotiate a handy-man’s rate for drywall repair.
Nor do I want to deal with getting the tires rotated or the oil changed in the
car.
After I get angry
and frustrated over his leaving me to handle those tasks, I feel a twinge of
guilt. But I kind of give myself a break for feeling that way. Because I know
for sure that Vince would have been angry at me if I’d been the one to die
first.
Oh, he wouldn’t
have been mad that I wasn’t there to do the handy-man negotiating or the tire
rotating – but he darn sure would’ve been mad that he had to deal with the
mountain of shoes and purses I would’ve left behind. Or the task of bill paying
and figuring out what password went with what sign-on.
Personally, I
wouldn’t have blamed him if he got angry because he suddenly had been tasked
with every single one of Maggie’s walks – or making the decision about what to
do with my 9,000 photo albums and scrapbooks that were stored in every nook and
cranny in our house (some of which were actually my parents…).
He always said I wasn’t allowed to die first. I didn’t…but I thought that if he did die first, it would have been many years in the future.
In re-reading this blog, I realize that it’s just too long. People don’t want to read a book unless they’re actually reading a book. So I’m going to split this one up into two parts.
Stay tuned for Part II…
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