Letters to Family and Friends

I’ve climbed back into my bed again.  I’m hoping it will be warmer here and it seems safer than the rest of the house.  I’m usually here or in the kitchen when I’m home because the second floor has too many ghosts; Dave in the office, looking at his computer; Dave in the bedroom, lying down and looking at his little computer.  There are ghosts of him watching TV in the living room too.  I’ve always thought it was plausible that the boundaries between times are temporal, but not physical and in any given place everything that ever happened there is still happening in its own time slice.  That would mean Dave is still here, still alive, just over those temporal walls.

I want to bolt from this house.  I want to pack up a few things, get in one of the cars and drive away, never to return.  It’s too awful, too painful, to be reminded every day that Dave is gone.  Every time I go up or downstairs, I pass by our bedroom and for a moment it feels as if everything is ok and it is a familiar place of refuge.  Then I remember that nothing will ever be ok in this house again.  When Dave died, it lost all of its power to protect, to nurture, to be a home.  It’s a haunted house now, memories slicing and nipping at me everywhere I go.

This house was a lot of things.  It was the place in which we had our routine, it was the location of my garden, it was the House of Bad Cats.  Now it is a house of ghosts.  As long as I live here, I am living in the past, and someday I am going to look back and wonder how I survived this phase.  The only viable option is to sell it as soon as I can.  Conventional wisdom says to wait 6 months or a year before making any decisions, but I need to start a new life.  I didn’t choose this, but if this is how it’s going to be, grim as it is, I need to move forward, if for no other reason then to keep on moving.

This is a response to Sue’s comment on poem #4.

I had to switch to poetry. For me, poetry is a way to describe the indescribable. Prose is good for facts and stories, but I think only with poetry can I describe the netherworld of the emotions. I can write about how Kitty’s purring reminds me of the rumbling of Dave’s lungs in the days before he died, but telling the story of how her purring kept me awake doesn’t get across the confusion and horror of being there in the hospital. At the time, it was like being in a fog. I don’t even know how I got through it. And now, my task is to sort through all those experiences and find out what the emotions were, since we all know they are in there somewhere and are bound to come out one way or another. Better to try to get at them through poetry than wait for them to squeeze out the sides and attack me when I’m not looking.

If anyone is still reading this, I hope they will write about how they see what happened.  I’d really like to know what other people are experiencing.  Dave’s illness and death was like a boulder being dropped into a pond; it made big waves that are still making their way outward.  It’s not just about me, at this point.  It’s about everyone who knew him or who knew someone who had a similar experience.

So please use the comments as a place to write about that.  Maybe it will be therapeutic for others to write as well as read.

Bonnie

Symbols left and symbols right,
haunting, crying through the night,
Air conditioner, old night-light,
keeping you within my sight.

There is no way to turn back time,
or even capture in this rhyme
that you and I, we were just fine,
relationship was in its prime.

Go to the hospital, they said.
We parked the car with rising dread.
For six long weeks your blood was shed;
ritual numbers colored red.

I called you once, I’d lost the rings,
and you were always finding things
for me when you were still awake,
Two symbols of what was stake.

Hallucinations took you far
away from me. One more defeat to mar
our old reality.
Pneumonia was the third.
Your voice no longer heard.

Sedated stillness for a week,
like you were already gone.
My hope remained, but it was weak.
Plans for widowhood were drawn.

You slowly woke, but could not move.
No matter how I did implore
Your body’s health could not improve.
I had to let you go once more.

Bereft again, now that you’ve gone.
We never knew what was in store.
The worst conclusion now foregone.
I’m overwhelmed by metaphor.

Carry me down from the graveyard hill.
I climb on your back, we laugh as we will;
gamboling, playing like puppies
that fill the living with life while
the sleeping are still.

Stand and look down at the name on the sign.
The flowers are dead,
here’s the stone still in line.
Stand here with me,
on the place that is mine,
And treasure the moment, still ripe on the vine.

Look through my eyes and see what I’ve seen. Your
heart is still beating,
warm , steady and clean;
Strong arms circle round,
and I’m in between,
Yesterday climbs on today in this scene.
Your heart and his heart and mine too, it seems.

It’s true that this blog is officially ended and most people are no longer looking at it.  However, I need a place to put this poem and this seems as good a place as any.  I was working on a longer, more coherent poem using the goats from the last post, but I haven’t processed enough of this experience to write anything like that.  Everything is still loosely linked images in my head.  I haven’t made any sense of them yet.  Since writing is therapeutic for me, I thought I’d try capturing the images into short, rhyming poems.  The sing-song sound of them helps describe how they feel.

I’ll put others here as I write poems that can be offered for public consumption.  This is poem #4.

Wake up
Whirring, rumble, purring;
Cat sleeps peaceful,
leaning during
another night when I am stirring.

Wake up
Whistle, birdlike beeping,
Rumble from your lungs increasing,
Numbers on the screen are creeping,
Find the nurse, she isn’t
keeping watch right now.
And I was sleeping.

Suction buys a hard decision.
Hours later, plan revision.
Tubes gone, breath gone;
Mouth the words.
I’ll never know what I’d have heard.

It’s Yom Kippur and I went to services this morning.  The Torah reading gives the details of the sacrifices made to atone for the sins of the people.  Among other things, two goats are sacrificed.  One goat goes to God as a burnt offering, the other is sent into the wilderness with the sins of the people on his head.  I can’t help but see Dave and myself in that story.  And we all know which goat is which.

I haven’t been writing much because it turns out that much of grieving is intensely personal, ranging from the sad to the scandalous.  There are no good stories in my refusal to sleep in Dave’s and my bed or to even change the sheets he slept on.  It’s simply how things are.  I can hardly explain why I can contemplate selling his motorcycle, but can’t erase his voice off the answering machine.  And I certainly won’t write about the bitter thoughts that go through my head when I see people doing unhealthy things to themselves.  The events of August and September were the most profound of my life.  Someday, I may understand enough of what it means to write coherently about them, but not now.

In the meantime, I am going to try to live each moment and I fully intend to take advantage of the time I have left.  For reasons I don’t understand, I am still alive; the goat in the wilderness rather than the goat who was sacrificed.

For those who have been writing to me, please continue to do so.  I am enjoying being alive with all of you.  For everyone else, I’ll leave you with the poem below, which I wrote a couple years ago for a friend who was coping with several major life changes at once.  It was inspired by a Jorn Vanhofen photograph “Lissabon 2003″, which is on display across from the campus 2 Prog shop at work.  The subject is an old graffiti covered apartment building.  Doors and windows have been walled up so long that the bricks have started to fall out and cats sit in the new openings.  

I’m glad I wrote it.  I didn’t realize I would need the poem for myself so soon.

Shana Tova.

Bonnie

Lissabon 2003
Someone tried to wall up this door, but the wall has broken and 
it is a door again. I sit here now because there is room
and I can see further than if I keep my paws on the ground. 
Another cat sits nearby, where the window has been opened by eternity. 

We watch the birds go by. 
They stop and peck at the years on the ground. 

Once, this building was new and perfume-scented people
stood at the balconies and closed the doors against the rain.
I was not here then. There was no room for me.

The bones of the building show now and you could argue that it is ugly.
See how the trees mourn their losses.
And someone, perhaps the wall builder, painted a dog like a scarecrow
to keep us away.

You can see it as you like,
but I chase mice under the formerly silent eaves
and climb the new trees winding inside and out.
Rain has washed away the smell of anger on the tiles and
a lushness grander than all the wrought iron railings makes its way across the balconies.

A winter wind has blown out all the dust.

Right now, this is the door.
Tomorrow, this door will be gone and I will find another
and sit until that one is gone too.
And the rain will fall, on and off, 
on and off, 
the whole time.

Hi Everyone,

I went back to work on Monday and it was fine.  It was the same as ever, with meetings and the usual paperwork.  I don’t mind being there and even stayed late because it felt so normal.  Nothing is normal at home and it was nice that one part of my life has been stable.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain this next part without sounding ungrateful.  Many people visited me during the day or stopped me in the halls to offer condolences.  I am very happy that so many people knew and liked Dave, and that my coworkers cared that we had suffered such a blow.  The cards and letters people sent really made me feel better and I felt very well supported by the many people who came to the funeral and to the house during the visiting hours.  I am very grateful to all of you.

I was delighted when people said they were happy to see me or told me stories about Dave.  I could respond by laughing or smiling, which is exactly what I want to do now.   It doesn’t help anyone if I just cry all the time and I deliberately seek out people who can make me laugh.  I want to laugh at my coworkers jokes, ask how other people are doing, talk about work and do whatever else we normally do.  We’ve had enough unhappiness in the last two months and I need a break.  

It is harder, though, when people offer condolences, especially people I don’t know well.  This happens almost everywhere I go now.  I know everyone means well and I’m grateful that Dave’s death means something to them, but it is hard to figure out how to respond.  This was the most devastating loss I could imagine.  How do I form a polite, succinct response to repeated reminders of such devastation?

I am finding that being a young widow is an isolating experience.  Without Dave, all of my close relationships have changed and people I am not close to don’t know what to say to me.  ”The sea turtle’s revenge is to dwell at equal measures from the grave”, says Diane Ackerman in “I Praise My Destroyer”.  I am the sea turtle now, somewhere between letting myself sink alone into despair and struggling against the isolating expectation that a new widow is sad when she is in public.  Other young widows tell me they survived by devoting themselves to their children, but I do not have children.  If I want to live then I have to let myself live in the moment, respond freely to the normal banter of the people I meet and be content with that moment.  

So, if you see me laughing, don’t think I don’t care that Dave is gone.  Remember, I promised him I would be OK.  That leaves me with only one choice.

Bonnie

“I praise life’s bright catastrophes,
and all the ceremonies of grief.
I praise our real estate - a shadow and a grave.
I praise my destroyer,
and will continue praising
until hours run like mercury
through my fingers, hope flares a final time
in the last throes of innocence,
and all the coins of sense are spent”
- from Diane Ackerman’s “I Praise My Destroyer”

We walked in the Light the Night walk tonight.  Everyone carries a balloon, white for survivors, gold for mourners, red for supporters; and at the end everyone let go of their balloons.  Or at least the red and white ones.  The sky was filled with balloons bumping into each other, tangling up or drifting apart; but always getting further and further from the walkers below.  I was struck by the unintended symbolism.  The balloons drift away and they don’t come back.

I’ve been amazed all week at my immune system.  I have eaten uncooked fruits and vegetables, let dozens of people hug me and breathed in dusty outdoor air, and yet I do not get sick.  Dave couldn’t do any of these things at the end.  I can also move at will, get out of bed and even walk for miles.  He was so sick.  None of that was possible.  I’m staring at my hands again, wondering how it is that my blood works so well when Dave’s failed him.

We went so far together and I did my best to emulate Dave whenever I could.  He was calm where I was anxious.  He was cheerful where I was crabby.  I went as far as I could with him down the road of illness and dying.  I visited every day, brought him things, took pictures so he could see the outside world.  I talked to doctors, learned how blood works, asked people to visit him.  When he was in the ICU, I read to him every day and watched him to make sure he wasn’t in pain.  I was there every step of the way. When the doctors told us it was hopeless, I told him and told him dying would be alright.  I called the rabbi.  I told him we would be fine and offered him my permission to go.  And I held his hand when they removed the tubes.

I went home that day and started looking for Dave in the house.  It’s been said that for seven days the soul moves from the body to the house and to the grave, mourning the separation.  If he was here, he heard me ask him what to do next.  What do I do next?

The answer is I figure out how to take my own path from here.  I went as far as I could with Dave, but I’m still alive, remarkable as that seems to me.  My time will come too, rest assured, and Dave would not want me to waste the time I have left to live.  He always encouraged me to enjoy my life more.  

Today started with a nightmare that woke me up, but turned out to be a nice day.  I got a delightful email from a friend.  I explored a little and found a new way to walk to the Saturday farmer’s market.  I visited the Shaker Lakes Nature Center, saw dragonflies and signed up to be a member.  I caught up with people I hadn’t talked to in a while.  I even ate a brownie for no reason other than it tasted good.  It felt odd to be enjoying something.  I had fun at the walk tonight, with our friends.  I think everyone else enjoyed it too.  Dave would be pleased we enjoyed each other’s company in his honor.

Shiva is over and I still have some coins.  I think I should try to spend them, even if I’m still bewildered.  Dave would want me to try.

Bonnie

“I’m afraid you’ll die”, I said, clinging to Dave after waking from a nightmare some time ago.  ”I won’t die”, he replied.  We had that conversation so many times …

My Dave has been gone for six days and I can’t really believe it, even though I was there when he left.  Our families have been here for the funeral and every day kind friends and members of the synagogue come over in the evening and we say Kaddish for him.  I feel as if I am at a family event that Dave couldn’t make it to.  Surely, he must be in India or visiting someone without a phone.  My heart believes he will be back and won’t listen when my head says otherwise.

Brooke said everyone grieves differently, but I did not realize that she meant from hour to hour.  Mornings are the worst when I wake up feeling hollow.  But for the rest of the day, I only feel bewildered.  Where is Dave?  Why doesn’t he call me if he is so far away?  I’ve talked to him every day for more than 12 years.  Why not today?

I joined the congregation of the rabbi who officiated at the funeral.  I will never be able to thank them enough for helping us at this awful time and I only wish we had joined earlier so that they could have met Dave.  When people are at the house and we say Kaddish, I feel as if he is here, just in the next room.  What do I say when people express sorrow that he is gone?  I’m sure he will be in at any moment.  I am embarrassed, feeling as if we are playing some sort of awful joke.

I won’t be bewildered forever and I know I will need help when the reality finally sinks in.  Today, I contacted the Hospice of the Western Reserve to see about joining their support group for young widows and widowers.  Apparently, most of the participants are older than I, and have been widowed longer.  

“Only six days?”, said the facilitator on the phone.  ”Are you ready for a support group?”.  

“I don’t know.  What else should I do?”.

And I attended an orientation at The Gathering Place, which provides services for sufferers of cancer.  This includes patients, family and friends.  They have groups for people suffering from all different types of cancers, but I guess I don’t need those now.  And we never needed the group for people with advanced cancer either.  We went straight from orientation to bereavement in six weeks.

Today, I visited the grave for the first time since the funeral.  The cemetery has filled it in and now we wait for the dirt to settle.  They posted a sign with Dave’s name, date of birth and date of death on it.  I stared at it, wondering what it meant.

What does it mean?  Dave always came home.  I could count on him.  He would never leave me willingly.  I have no idea what to do without him.

We’ve said the Kaddish every night since the funeral.  We say it several times during the service, twice to mark the transition between parts of the service itself and finally to mark the transition from life to death.  Can I say it for myself too?  Is there a prayer for the transition from wife to widow?

Bonnie