When Things Get Back to Normal (5 page)

At the office I made a list of things I was going to make myself do before the day ended. I didn't get the list completed, but I did get enough done to give me some satisfaction. What surprised me was that I could absorb what I read. Since November I have had to read things over and over in order to get comprehension. The words would only hit the surface of my brain and then ricochet back at me, a mixture of unintelligible syllables.

Someone called last night about buying the house. My heart dropped to my toes. Sell my home! Our home! This morning when I left for work, I walked backwards along the sidewalk, glutting myself on the sight of the house half-hidden behind the maple and birch trees that are still bare. Those trees must be seventy feet tall now. I so clearly remember when we planted them. How can I sell this house when so much of us is entangled within every board and sod? I lost so much of my identity when you left that I'm afraid the last of me will disappear if I sell this house. If I do disappear with the house, I know I
won't have the strength to raise myself from my own ashes.

Someone who is a stranger to sorrow told me today that losing a child is worse than losing a spouse. It's a fact. She said she read it somewhere. I said I supposed it depended on the quality of relationships, and speaking from my own experience, I could not imagine the death of a child altering to any great extent a woman's financial, physical or social environment. I added that, because I haven't lost a child, I couldn't offer comparisons on emotional pain.

However, I really do think that losing a spouse leaves you more bereft, but who is to say for sure. You lose not only your companion, your lover, the father of your children, the person who connects you to a clutch of in-laws, but yourself as well. On top of your grief, you have to cope with finding a new identity.

Almost spring. A lovely soft day.

The snow on the roads has melted into rivulets of muddy water. My navy blue reefer coat was polka-dotted with mud after the walk to work. The cars hissed the water in all directions as they passed me.

Those who have been there tell me that the changing seasons are positively the worst of times – worse even
than the firsts: first anniversary, first birthday, etc. I recall words from Shelley:
Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.

When I opened the porch door this morning, I felt the softness in the air, and then sadness engulfed me. I was sad for you because you will not be around to see the sun hit our lawn and shrink that mound of dirt-encrusted snow, and I was sad for me because I will have to watch it disappear alone.

I decided on the spur of the moment today to take Ben and Susan to Arizona. You had promised to have them visit us at this time, so I will keep the promise for you. I'm going full speed ahead with the trip plans, even though I'm not totally convinced I can face the Southwest without you.

With the trip in mind, I tried to balance my cheque book. What an unsightly mess! I am spending money like it's going out of style. One part of me worries about soup kitchens and mission shelters and the other part spends money as if King Tut were my father.

The raw fact is that your death reduced my financial potential by about two-thirds. Still I shop and shop and shop. Sadly enough, the shopping brings no pleasure. I'm told that endless shopping is a phase in early widowhood.
It's a way to try and fill the emotional hunger. I pray, and my bank account prays, that it's a short phase.

I've decided that one reason I'm always so tired is because I'm always on the go. If I have nothing else to do, I'll walk until I'm exhausted. I recall a widow from my childhood. She was on the go so much that the villagers called her Gravel Annie. Will I be called Pavement Jean?

I realized today that your death has not only robbed me of my present and my future, but of my past as well. Who else remembers my parents, remembers my children as babies?

Although my housemate and I are very congenial, I still hate sharing my home. People think it is easy for me to share this house. But I feel I've lost not only a husband, I've lost a home as well. I feel so destitute. Of course, I keep these thoughts deep inside me and allow them to surface only in the still of the night, when my pillow can muffle their sound.

Went to a small gathering tonight at the university. I talked. I smiled. Once or twice I even laughed. I felt like a Halloween pumpkin – hollowed out on the inside but looking quite bright and cheery from the outside.

I met a colleague whose wife – a beautiful young woman – died several years ago. He confessed he began dating three weeks after her death.

“That was obscene,” I accused, not understanding.

He answered in a soft voice. “I know,” he said, and there were traces of guilt in his voice. “But I wanted to deaden the pain.” He added, “It didn't help at all.”

We leave for Arizona in the morning. I am filled with a thousand insecurities. I have travelled so little without you. Will I be able to navigate the several airport terminals between here and there? Will I be able to smile when I'm greeted by the same friends who were always on hand to greet the two of us?

Arizona was a mistake. Too soon. You walked beside me every inch of the way. At times I hurt so much I was certain my frame would be rent apart.

To top everything, I got the flu soon after my arrival, and I had to let the children come home alone. This year, I seem to be getting every flu and germ that passes within a thousand feet of me.

I am so sad tonight. I'm sadder tonight that I've been for the last four and a half months. Friends called to ask me
to the St. Patrick's dance. Last year the warm-up party was at our house. What a difference a year makes!

I have such confusing thoughts right now. In the midst of this intolerable grief, I want to be caught up again in good times. On the one hand I want to hold on to my sorrow because holding on to it means holding on to you. On the other hand, I'm wishing it were five years down the road so this pain would be behind me. At least I'm hoping it will be. But such hoping makes me feel guilty. Does this confusion mean I'm healing? At least I'm now aware there is life out there, even if I still don't have the wherewithal to go in search of it.

I read somewhere that people who are emotionally strong have a difficult time with grief. The article stated that the emotionally strong have always been able to take control over things. But emotional pain doesn't easily lend itself to being controlled, so such people can't use the same rational thinking they would use to solve a physical problem. Also, it said, strong people won't permit themselves to give in to grief, and therefore it takes them longer to come to accept its presence. I think I had better be prepared for a long siege.

In the beginning, the pain was so fierce it obliterated
every other sensation. Now that fierceness is waning, and I am filled with a more low-grade pain. It is, however, an all-permeating pain, and right now I am certain this will keep me company for the rest of my life. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I went apartment hunting with A. tonight. I returned a basket case. How can I live in this big house all alone? But how can I settle for life in a filing cabinet? I am so angry with you right now. You took with you the past – the days when the children were young and finances were scarce, but life stretched before us long and glorious. You took with you the present, days full and lush and satisfying.

As for the future, I dread to think it exists.

I am alone.

The children had things to do this weekend and lives of their own to live. I am filled with remorse over the many times we should have gone to your mother's but didn't because we had other things to do, better things than listening to an old woman reminisce about her past because it was more substantial than her future. I beg her forgiveness, wherever she may be.

Had lunch with an acquaintance this afternoon. She asked whether my writing is now freer because your presence is gone. It told me more about her marriage than she intended. Marriage to you never stifled my creative, academic or intellectual growth. She and I talked about houses – to sell or not to sell. She said if she were in my situation she would buy a condo and redecorate it to make it an expression of herself. Good advice, I think. Perhaps a new physical world will give me the centre I've been seeking ever since you skated the breath out of yourself.

I went to church by myself. Afterwards, I visited your grave and placed a rose on it. When I returned home, a friend phoned and asked me to her house for lunch. I also found an Easter egg hanging on my gate. It seems that just at the very time I am certain I cannot bear another moment of life, another moment of being alone, someone rescues me from myself.

I dreamed about you last night. A strange dream. You went to Halifax, and I received word that you had died there. I felt again all the horror and upheaval of those November days. In the midst of my pain, you returned. You had only been in hospital. Instead of feeling joyous at
your return, I felt anger because now I understood how terrible it would be to lose you. Nothing would ever be the same in my world again. I could never again know the peace of taking you for granted. When I woke up, my ulcer was in the full throes of an acid overdose, the way it always acts when I experience a rush of anger.

A colleague – a man in the midst of marital separation – asked me to go to the symphony with him tonight. Just for company. I refused because I didn't want anyone to think I was dating so soon after your death. I said if I lived in a larger city I would accept. Afterwards I thought about that statement. A month ago I wouldn't have left this house to attend a symphony even if I were living in Paris. Sometimes I wish I were a grass widow rather than a sod one. I wouldn't feel any responsibility to your memory. And knowing you left me willingly would in some twisted way be a comfort.

Actually, it's not so much about what people think of me as what will people think of you if your widow lacks proper decorum in matters pertaining to your memory. I don't want them to say, “He couldn't have been a very good husband if . . .” This thinking is even filtering down to the way I dress. I ask myself before going out, “Is this suitable for a recent widow? Is it too fashionable? Too colourful? Too solemn?”

Too fashionable? Too colourful? Too solemn? I wish I could move forward to a time when I'll once again wear whatever suits my mood at the moment.

It's almost midnight. I just finished vacuuming a house that didn't need vacuuming. I am so very lonely. My housemate has gone for the holidays. When I was cleaning Steven's room, I opened his closet to vacuum inside and I saw your clothes still hanging on the rack. I took out your navy blue jacket and draped it around my shoulders as I pushed the vacuum over the rug. If anyone had seen this nightgowned woman draped in a man's jacket, pushing a vacuum with one hand and wiping tears away with the other, they would have carted her off to the funny farm. Did I ever think, even in my wildest imaginings, that clutching an empty jacket would get me through a holiday weekend?

My friend B. in Ottawa telephoned. She has a good deal on two tickets to Barbados and wants me to go with her. I let her talk me into it, although I feel not the slightest tingle of joy at the prospect. Lord Almighty, how I hate this feeling of nothingness.

B. thought the trip would clear my mind about selling or not selling the house. What anguish! The children don't want me to sell, but then they aren't here when the snow piles on the garage roof and I'm worrying whether
the rafters will cave in, and they aren't here when the dark settles in. And they aren't here when the empty rooms echo with memories.

Returned from Barbados. You can't outrun grief. You can't shoo it aside like a pesky fly. I have to try and face it down.

I now understand what Keats meant when he wrote,
To sorrow I bade good-morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind. But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly; She is so constant to me, and so kind.

Loneliness is two women at a beautiful resort. We went to the opening party put on by the tour people. The first number the band played was “Yellow Bird.”

Memories. Memories. Memories.

I talked to a woman in circumstances similar to mine. She's a painter, and she solved the vacation problem by going to areas where artists gather – workshops and the like. I'm thinking of doing likewise for writing.

While I was in Barbados, I lay in bed each night and, at a cost of $250 per day, wished the time away. It was too soon for me to vacation. And it was terribly unfair to B. Sometimes I caught myself being angry at her because she wasn't you, and I would castigate myself for being so unreasonable.

A new day is dawning, and you heard it here first. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. No more sad songs. No more laments. This house deserves better than an echo of happiness past. Let the dead bury the dead. But how am I going to bring this about? How indeed?

Well, I made a start already. Today I sent in my application to attend the Learned Societies Conference in Winnipeg, and I've volunteered to chair a session. Certainly I'm terrified of going alone, and I wish I could continue to crouch within the shelter of your wing. But I have to accept the fact that life will never again go back to normal, or at least to my perception of normal. For today at least, normal is pain, and I have to learn to accept that.