Reading a comment from someone on Widow's Voice, who signed it "widow. Day 156."
It is a bit of a siege, isn't it.
Sometimes I feel like Desmond, in that first season of Lost (sorry - geekness slipping out here): down there in the hatch, with his highly structured routine of some kind of health shake / healthy diet, followed by a workout, keeping his creative intellect alive with music and reading, being "fit" even though there was nowhere to go and no way of knowing how long he would have to stay there, or if any world even existed outside of that hatch - all with the one goal of being relieved of duty so he could rejoin his love. He just had to not let the world blow up before he could get there. Just that one thought - must get home.
...Keep vision of my love alive in me. Must get home. Must do job while here. Must keep self from going crazy and letting world blow up. Keep heart connected. Home is somewhere. Do job while here that may or may not mean anything at all. Must get home.
It felt like that more last year - everything I did just felt like I was on a mission. In a way, the months before Don died felt like that too - I always described trips to the chemo lab and the ER as being like the invasion of Normandy. I remember feeling exactly the same way when I used to take my dad to chemo and ER through his terminal cancer too. It is only just the past 6 months or so that I feel more like the things that I do are for me and not for some abstract and pretty much purposeless reason. Some old friends were just here for a couple of days and told me that the colleague they are traveling with asked them how long I'd been married and how I would go on. They said they didn't know because I'd been married most of my life (since 18) and that I probably didn't even know -- maybe I will go on to do something I didn't do because I was married to Don. In truth, I have no idea, but some part of me seems to be gradually pulling itself back together. I still feel tired and weary of it all, but somehow manage to scrape up the energy to work on the old house, and to travel when it comes time to do so. Where it's all going - where I will end up calling "home", what I will be doing, and who I will be, are all a mystery.
ReplyDeletebut what is the job we're supposed to do while here? that is my struggle these days. just walking through seems like too much sometimes. and we're supposed to derive meaning from it too? i am not totally hopeless; i have anna; she needs me & i need her; there are things that bring me glimmers of, not quite happiness, but peace, i suppose, or something, but just. so. damn. sad.
ReplyDeleteyeah - what job. What exactly am I still doing here, and why? I do some mundane, or even a little bit helpful thing and feel like - is this all? You (the universe) left me here to...? Take beautiful man Off suddenly, and I am supposed to...what, exactly? Or even partly exactly?
ReplyDeleteThat is where the desmond reference comes in handy, because he didn't mean to be there, has no idea where "where" is, and is just trying to keep himself reasonably well, while staying focused on getting out of there when the time comes. Though, he does know he has to push the button. He got a clue when he was shut up in there, at least.
I must confess I do count the days (obvious if you read my blog). I think it's because I am a bit of a math-head and would torture myself in the first few days of widowhood by trying to approximate the number of days I'd have to live through until I could die and be with G. Nice one huh?
ReplyDeleteNow I count them more as a way of NOT approximating how many more days but how many I have survived.
megan - here is a quote i came across. it's not exactly my way of thinking, but pretty close.
ReplyDelete"I realized that it was not that I didn't want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn't know WHY I wanted to go on without him. It would have to be an act of faith."
- Kay Redfield Jamison, Nothing Was The Same.
Still just filled, overflowing with sadness. Taking Anna to school today. Last year was so much easier than this. I must have been too numb to be sad about that too, so this year I get a double dose. Maybe we can do something soon? Walk on a cold beach or something.
deardarl - I absolutely expected to die within the year of matt. I was disappointed to still be here. It has been a long time since I have greeted the evening with "one day closer to my own death," at least out loud. I'm not sure what "survival" means, for me. It's not being bitter (at least not always!), just given the randomness and shock of this, what IS survival? What could that possibly look like or feel like and still be true to me, and to matt. So overwhelming.
ReplyDelete