Is It My Turn?

I don't know what I would do without my widda friends. Most of them I've never even met - just correspond with online. But they know my struggles so intimately because they are their own struggles as well.

For months I have watched many ahead of me in this journey hit their one year mark. There seems to be this deep, lasting grief that takes hold close to this important date. Sometimes it last weeks, sometimes months, sometimes more. Most of the widows/widowers I talk to cannot explain it or how to fight it.

For the last couple months I have been feeling pretty good. Still sad, but moving forward. I have someone amazing in my life who loves me, I moved to a great new home, I've begun to feel like I am re-entering the human race, dipping in one tiny toe at a time. I even took a sunny vacation in the tropics.

Then tragedy hit on the way home and it has felt like I've taken 10 steps backwards.

Scratch that. 100 steps backwards.

I feel this overwhelming grief creeping into every pore of my being. I have all sorts of wonderful things coming up in my life that I can no longer muster the excitement for. I find myself crying at all hours of the day and night with no idea what is triggering it. I am tired. I am miserable.

I know I'm ok, I know things are looking up, my life is steadily moving in a better direction. But this sadness just seems to be taking a foothold and no matter how hard I self-coach or try to cheer myself up, I can't seem to shake it.

Am I approaching the one-year funk? Is my widow card making its reappearance? And most importantly, how long is this damn grief going to be dragging me around?

Help me out, wids.

Tell me this gets better.

Damaged Goods

This week I realized just how damaged I am.

Not just from Craig's death, but from everything that came before it and everything that followed.

Craig and I never had a perfect marriage. Who does? We fought, we yelled, we got on each other's nerves. When you get together as teenagers, you are bound to one another before you have even begun to grow up, before you have any idea what in the heck you are doing.

We went through all the usual teenage drama. There were ups and downs, ex-girlfriends I had to beat back with a stick (not always effectively), struggles to be our own people, and financial strain... and all while trying to figure out what we wanted to do and who we wanted to be. There were a few years there where I could love Craig or hate him all within a five minute period.

But things changed.

We got married, we calmed the hell down, we learned how to respect and appreciate each other. The last couple years we were married were pretty great. The last few days were amazing.

Craig and I got into an enormous fight the weekend before he died. It was a Saturday. We were talking about moving to Vancouver (my home town). I argued that I was living in this hideous city I hated for 10 years for him (sorry Calgary), and without kids it was the perfect time to be adventurous and maybe try my home town for a couple years. He wouldn't even consider it. The fight was not only rare but extremely unusual when I finished it by yelling something and dramatically exiting the room. I'm not even sure where it came from, but I hollered half-hysterically at him, 'I've always loved you more than you loved me!'

Craig just sort of stood there with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights stunned look on his face. It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad.

But we made up. He never followed me when we got into a fight (if I left a room, he would wait me out until I came back to find him). This time he did come to find me. And reassured me he loved me. And we talked and talked just like we used to. I went to work on Monday happy, reassured, and full of hope that we were, in fact, utterly perfect for each other and would be together forever.

I was so happy.

It only took one more day for him to wind up dead on the side of the road and my entire world to come crashing down around me.

As far as I think I've come and as tough as I think I am, I've realized I am still just as broken as that first day.

I live in fear that my new relationship will be filled with the same hurts and struggles, that I may spend years being miserable with someone before I can find happiness.

I am terrified of being happy. That if I let myself embrace joy, fully and completely, I will be sidelined once again. That death and tragedy will come find me, over and over and over.

I am scared that I will once again be left alone, that those closest to me will turn on me or look the other way, and that I will, again, end up helpless and hurting.

You think you can control these fears, keep them at bay, but they find ways to creep in. Lighting can strike twice, nothing is sacred. I experienced another loss this week and all these fears came flooding back in to overwhelm me - it's my own fault, I let myself forget, I let myself be happy. And this is what happens.

How does one seperate oneself from your past? How do you find that magic lightswitch that turns your old self 'off' and your new self 'on' so you can try again without lugging around all that excess baggage?

I'm tired of feeling like I'm wearing my old life around my neck like some oversized noose. The effort required to drag that weight around everywhere I go is exhausting.

And more than anything these days, I just feel tired.

So very, very tired.

The Behaviour of the Bereaved

A little quote today on one of the stages of grief:

"Just when your friends may think you should be getting on with your life, a long period of sad reflection will likely overtake you. This is a normal stage of grief, so do not be 'talked out of it' by well-meaning outsiders. Encouragement from others is not helpful to you during this stage of grieving.

During this time, you finally realize the true magnitude of your loss, and it depresses you. You may isolate yourself on purpose, reflect on things you did with your lost one, and focus on memories of the past. You may sense feelings of emptiness or despair".

I include this quote today as a gentle reminder to others that when a griever seems to want to be alone, that is perfectly normal and acceptable. It is nothing to do with you or what they think of you as a person. They are not trying to subtly tell you they dislike you or prefer the company of someone else. They are simply grieving and behaving normally for someone in that much pain. Sometimes being alone is the most helpful thing for them.

When the magnitude of the loss becomes too great, it can bring us to our knees. We need time to think, to ponder, to go over the details of our loved one's life and death over and over again in our minds until we can find some measure of resolution on some aspect of it.

Please understand that asking the griever to do the work - to call you or to stop by your place or to make all the effort to connect - is asking too much. They are the ones hurting and will need you to make the effort.

Even in times of isolation and sadness it is important to let the griever know you care. While they may not want to see anyone, a simple email, note, or phone call saying you are thinking about them and still care can make a huge difference. I myself kept every phone message and email I received from people, including the ones I never had the chance to reply to. I still read/listen to these from time to time when I am feeling low.

Rather than looking at the griever's behaviour and trying to decide if it is normal or not compared to your own, understand that they are in a position you cannot even imagine. Your ideas about what is 'normal' behaviour for them are misguided, at best. You may think you can imagine what 'you would do in their position' but that is actually impossible. Instead accept them for where they are at knowing that their pain is too deep and overwhelming for you to understand without having walked in their shoes. Be the listener they need rather than the giver of advice. Remember, they know far more about grieving than you do at this point.

And above all, do not hold this behaviour against them later on down the road. While you may never understand why they chose to be alone at certain times or why they seemed so sad for so long, their behaviour was still completely normal.

As difficult as it may be, you must remind yourself that it is not about you. It is about the loss of their spouse.

A Widow's Work Is Never Done

I know I've whined about this before, but I'm going to do do it again... death is so much work!

There are lawyers and insurance companies and criminal charges and courts and banks and paperwork and funeral homes and credit card companies and the list goes on and on and on...

Just when you think you have conquered the Mt. Everest of Crappy Paperwork, you see you are just in the middle of a mountain range, and that you have many more piles to go.

The day before yesterday I tackled some of these 'piles'. I keep going through Craig's stuff in phases - to try to do it all at once would leave me buried and I'm pretty sure it would take days for anyone to dig me out.

So far I have gone through his clothes five or six different times and given away as much as I could each time. This is key. Never try to give it all away at once. Just make two piles - the 'shirts I hated every time he wore them' pile and the 'clothes you will have to pry out of my cold, dead hands' pile. Obviously the latter being the ones you want to keep. Then it doesn't feel like you are throwing away everything - just the stuff you didn't like or don't have a particularly strong memory attached to.

Eventually, though, you get to the last few boxes and it's time to make some tough decisions.

This go around was that time.

I had to say goodbye to many things I actually really did care about. You see, the closet full of clothes is just one burden. There is also Craig's books, his paperwork, his toys, his shoes, his sports equipment, his workout set, his music, his movies, his jackets, his jewellery, his ashes, his notebooks and letters, etc. So to maintain sanity, I have to work on all these things. I have to give away what I can, because there is just. So. Much. Stuff.

Anyway, this time around I made myself give away all but 10 things. That sounds like alot but if you knew Craig, you'd know he had a wardrobe bigger than mine.

This time around I gave away all his business shirts, include the four he still had in the drycleaning bag from the day before he died.

This time around I gave away his flannel shirts, so soft and comfy, that he wore when we went camping and when he went on his friend's bachelor party campout the summer before.

This time around I gave away his brand new tailored pinstriped suit he had just bought the week before for a job interview. He looked so good in it dammit.

And this time around I finally parted with my wedding dress. I never cared about my wedding dress, not really. It was nice, it was pretty. But I never had that sobbing-in-the-store reaction other people seemed to have. Every time I tried to sell it on ebay or give it away Craig would get super pissed. I used to tease him that it was more sentimental to him than it was to me. Ever since he died I couldn't stand to let it go.

I also gave his parents a box of all his report cards and little projects from when he was in elementary/junior high. Damn, he was one cute kid.

It took me the better part of a day to sort through this stuff.

And then it took me an entire day to recover.

I literally did not get out of bed yesterday until late in the evening (outside of a few pee and food breaks of course). And I probably wouldn't have gotten out of bed except that I was forced by an irritatingly well-meaning and persistent friend.

But this is the toll grief takes on you.

It saps your strength, your energy, and every last spark of happiness. It took an entire day for the sadness, the guilt, and the general misery to wear off from just getting rid of those few things.

It has been 10 months and it still catches me off guard. One little task like this can set you back months in the grieving process.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a widow's work is never quite done. I will be dealing with Craig's things for years to come.

And unlike the rest of the world, the burden feels like it is all mine.

I am the one who needs to let him go. I am the one who has to fight the guilt for every little piece of him I let go of. I am the one who swallows that anxiety that each little piece is a memory I will no longer have.

I look forward to the day when I can open one or two boxes and see the things that mean the most and remember him with a smile instead of all these tears.

Please let that day be soon.

The New Year

Only two more days until the new year and, heck, I'm actually excited.

If people had said to me months ago that 2011 would be a good year for me, I'd have answered in anger, 'How can it be a good year when it's my first one without my husband?'

2010 was supposed to be a good year too. Craig sent me flowers to my work in the middle of January - the first time he ever did that. I remember my coworkers teasing me about what he could possibly have done wrong since it wasn't my birthday or an anniversary or anything.

I still carry the card he sent with those flowers in my purse everywhere I go. This is what it says:

"Hey babe, just a little thanks for all your hard work over the past few years with school and work, helping me through them both. More recently I wanted to thank you for Christmas and taking care of me when I wasn't feeling good. I know 2010 will be a great year and I look forward to sharing it with you as we work toward acheiving our new goals (when I achieve the spelling). Love, Craig"

I remember how those words stung so much after he died. So much for a great year. So much for spending it together. So much for 'acheiving' our goals.

But time has marched on and life has changed.

This year was nothing like I could have predicted, not in a million years. It had so many low moments, the lowest of my life. So much heartache, so much suffering, so much pain.

It also had some of the greatest moments of my life. Moments that caught me entirely off-guard, bringing laughter and joy I never thought I could feel again.

And it's because of those moments I look forward to this next year. This will be another year of changes for me, both big and small. My life will be unrecognizeable yet again, at this time next year, compared to where I am sitting today.

This time I look forward to change. I embrace it. Because I know that with change comes life.

And there is nothing I want more than to live my life.

Is God at Fault?

I cannot think of a single person who, when faced with horribly tragic circumstances, would not think to themselves or shout out loud, 'How can God do this to me?' or 'How could God let this happen?'

In the face of unimaginable pain and suffering, we often take one of two paths: We blame God or we blame ourselves.

It is easy to look at the man dying of lung cancer and think if only he had not smoked, this would never have happened. Or to look at the young woman who dies of heart disease and say, well, she was just so overweight. Or perhaps the youth killed in a car accident and think, you know how reckless these young drivers are. He was probably talking on his cell phone or speeding.

To explain away pain and suffering in this world as the fault of the sufferer is to justify our own actions. It could never happen to us because we would never do that. I am safe because I will never ... overeat, smoke, drive recklessly. But this justification is hollow and empty and only possible if you are untouched by tragedy. We are raised in a culture that says bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. If you pray hard enough or are kind enough or go to church on Sundays, God will take care of you. If you are bad, you will be punished.

Then one day tragedy strikes. And regardless of the circumstances, we think, what have I done to deserve this? Those of you who have read my blog regularly know I have struggled with this one myself. If there is some lesson I must learn, why couldn't I have learned it sooner to spare Craig's life? If only I had woken him up better that morning, or stalled him with a phone call, or convinced him we should live somewhere else... where you find survivors, you will find an overwhelming feeling of guilt.

Often that guilt and anger becomes deflected outwards and upwards. Where was God in this? How could he sit by and do nothing? Many well meaning but misguided christians will say, this is part of God's plan as a way of explaining away the unexplainable. They will follow up with, 'God needed him now more than you do' which only says, if you had needed him more, he wouldn't be dead (and back to the guilt). Still others will say this is part of some great tapestry that you cannot simply understand and your suffering is somehow an act of martyrdom - you should feel honored to suffer so. After all, God never gives us more than we can handle, right?

But I reject all these notions, as I suspect most others do who suffer.

Because to believe these things mean that I could no longer believe in God. If He is trying to teach me a lesson, what lesson could possible justify someone's death? And what could God possibly need Craig so desperately for that I didn't? And just look at any marriage that falls apart after the death of a child or the widow who cannot bear the pain and hides from the world and you will see that God either does give us more than we can handle or is just terrible at predicting the amount we can handle. And if this suffering is just a part of some master plan of His, that means He brought Craig into this world and into my life only to intentionally kill him in such a violent and painful way, causing so much suffering and pain to his family and to me. What kind of a God is that? Surely not one I would want to know.

But I have pondered and questioned and agonized over these things and slowly come to a few rather important conclusions.

God is not all powerful.

At least not in the way we traditionally think He is. Up there on His throne with a magic wand, able to cure any disease, arbitrarily deciding who will die and who will not, who will suffer and who will not, who He will punish and who gets a reward.

He was able to create the Heavens and the Earth and bring so much order out of so much chaos. He created Man - a beautifully balanced mixture of animal and Himself. But He endowed Man with a gift no other living creature had - freedom. Unlike animals, we are not preprogrammed. We have the right to choose. And in giving us this choice, God has limited Himself. He cannot interfere - it would break His own rules and violate the very foundation of our life on this planet. God must work within the confines of nature and the rules He Himself created.

This means that he no more 'gives' us diseases or car accidents or suffering than he forces us to love him or be perfect and good and holy. To allow us the freedom to choose goodness, he must also allow us the freedom to choose evil.

Pain and suffering exist because they are a part of this world. Craig did not die because God wanted him dead that day at that moment. God's desire for Craig's life is much the same as His desire for all our lives - for them to be happy, fulfilled, and enjoyed with a close relationship to Him. When we suffer and hurt, it hurts Him. What parent would not be moved to tears by the suffering of their own child?

But to step in and intervene, to force Craig's car magically out of harm's way, would have broken His own rules. Craig did not die as a part of God's plan. He died simply because we humans have the right to choose between what is right and what is wrong and another human simply chose wrong - to drive when he was too tired to do so. The part that lead to Craig dying as a result of that was a frightening mix of chance and bad luck.

And after all, isn't that what scares us the most? That we are all vulnerable, all susceptable? Craig could have just as easily be anyone. If it is all random, and all chance, than any one of you could have been the one who died or the one who lost their spouse or the one who lost their child. There is nothing you can do to earn a life of protection and invincibility. This quote sums up perfectly what I am trying to say:

"God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for misbehaviour, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God's part. Because the tragedy is not God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes. We can turn to Him for help in overcoming it, precisely because we can tell ourselves that God is as outraged by it as we are." - Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

Strangely, this brings me comfort rather than fear. God does not promise to protect us from pain, rather He promises to be there for us when pain happens in our lives. He will walk with us, hold us, wipe the tears from our eyes. When He physically cannot, He sends other people to do it on his behalf.

That is a God I can love and know.

S-M-R-T

One of the things most grief counsellors or experts will tell you is that two things in your life will take an enormous hit when your spouse dies:

1. Your focus

2. Your self esteem

Well I am living, breathing proof of both.

I am trying desperately to finish up the accounting courses I am taking right now so I can have my Accounting Certificate by Christmas (Craig would be so proud I FINALLY finished after almost 4 years).

Classes end with finals on Saturday.

Now I used to be a good student. 4.0 GPA. Obsessive compulsive about homework. Best in class (side note: I had an instructor in college who stamped the papers of the top 3 students in her class on each assignment... I don't think I need to tell you how fanatical I was about this).

Now?

Not so much.

It takes me twice as long to learn half as much. My focus has gone out the window (I am taking my umpteenth study break of the day to write this... oh look shiny keys!) and I simply cannot seem to retain what I read anymore. It's hopeless.

And of course this leads to the second problem: self-esteem takes a nose dive.

School was the one thing I was good at. Sports - I'm too clumsy. Singing - couldn't carry a tune to save my life. Home repairs - I'm more likely to hit myself with a hammer than any nail.

School was kind of my one thing.

And now I don't even have that.

I feel smart... s-m-r-t.

Can I put this on the list of things from my Before Life that I would like to have back? I feel it's only fair.

And then I'll never ask for anything again.

...

...

...

Until tomorrow.