Why, Who and What

3-29-06, 3:35 AM

I created this blog as a means to publish a number of essays I've written over the past six months. Originally, they were just part of my personal journal. Then I decided to share them with my friends and family. Then I decided I didn't really care who read them, and that it might even be good if other people could read them. I don't really care what you think about them or whether they're any good. I wrote them because it made me feel better. I share them because I hope they might make someone else feel better (misery loves company). They (they of course being the "experts" who advise us on such matters as grief) say that knowing you're not alone, knowing that other people have similar experiences and feelings as you can help people suffering from loss and grief. I know that in my own circle, very little of our emotions and experiences are being shared or discussed. We don't want to burden each other, so we focus on keeping everything to ourselves. We may "talk" to one another, but we never really let out everything we're going through. I'm posting these essays as a way of sharing my feelings and experiences with others without "burdening" them. You want to know how I'm doing? It's all here. Now you don't have to ask, I don't have to tell, and no one has to fail miserably at making anything better. We can all just share it here, like a virtual tissue box. I hope that these discussions may in some way help others who are also suffering in silence and isolation. Find hope all ye who enter here, for you are not alone.
For those who stumble accross this set of inane ramblings that don't know who I am, my name is Tamsen. I am twenty-five years old. Last June I lost my mother unexpectedly to brain cancer. We knew she was ill, but the tumors weren't identified as the cause of illness until three weeks before her death. She had two tumors, the one the doctor tried to operate on was bigger than a chicken egg attatched to the base of her brain. She went into a coma after surgery and never regained consciousness. She died three minutes after we took her off the ventilator. About six months later, just this past New Years day, my husband died in a motorcycle accident. We'd been best friends and lovers since high school. He was the most important person that ever existed in my little universe. He was only twenty-four years old.
These things are most likely uncomfortable for people to read about, think about, talk about. But in order to really appreciate life, one must really appreciate the nature of death. I know that if any of those who know me have gotten this far, they probably won't want to read the rest of these essays. It makes us uncomfortable to have to face other people's pain, especially when there is nothing we can do about it. That's ok; I have no hopes or expectations about anyones reactions to what I write here. I just wanted to share it, and in the sharing hopefully help others who need to know that they're not alone. Well anyway... thanks for listening.

Prologue

I wrote this essay last October, about four months after mom died and two months before CJ died.

You know, it’s never like it is in the movies. In the movies you see the grieving widow, the forlorn and orphaned child, the devastated lover, the clichéd best friend. There’s usually a drizzling rain falling from a gray cloudy sky or, at the very least, there will be autumn leaves falling softly on dry, dead grass. (Think about it – how often have you ever seen a movie funeral on a bright, sunny day in the middle of July?) The actor’s grief is gripping in its’ intensity – it’s so real, so immediate, so alive. Then the funeral is over and the condolences have been given and everyone has moved on; this happens so the plot can move on too. Without the plot being able to move on you wouldn’t have a movie. More importantly, you wouldn’t have the plucky heroine or the down-on-his-luck protagonist to keep rooting for, knowing without having to be told (thanks to the countless other survivors of familial deaths you’ve seen in the movies) that they’re going to make it, they’re going to be all right, they’re going to pull through. In the movies, the story is never about the person who’s died, it’s about the people who live on after someone has died.

In real life, the hardest part is not the month of the actual death. It’s not the month you spent with the non-responsive, comatose loved one in the ICU. The month you spent every night sleeping in the bed-side chair, watching numerous other patients make it, pull through, come out all right. The month you spent everyday waiting for the neurologist to make his busy rounds just so you could ask if anything had changed –for better or for worse. The month you left home telling your husband, don’t worry I’ll probably be back next week, you know they say her chances are really good, she’s just being sedated to be on the safe side, don’t worry. When in all reality they’re not worried… but you are. The month you passed the time by staring at all the monitors, trying to turn every irregular breath or unusual heart beat pattern into something meaningful, something proving that she’s still there. The month when you waited and waited and waited, but the day they took her off the sedation meds she didn’t wake up like they said she would. The month she died, and you stood there and watched her die.

It’s not that hard right after, either. The month right after, when you make all the arrangements, and call all the relatives and close friends and long-lost friends, and the credit card companies. The month when you take care of everything because at least then you’re doing something. The month when you listen to a hundred different people tell you how sorry they are. Let me tell you something I’ve learned about the word sorry: it’s a comfort word. It’s a question word, begging not to be held accountable to your grief. It means, Gosh I really hate that this happened to you, but more than that I really hate standing here talking to you and looking at you, because I can’t fix it and it makes me uncomfortable, it makes me think that one of these days I may be in your shoes, and I really don’t want to think about that. People say “I’m so sorry for your loss,” and after awhile you learn to say “No, it’s ok”, just so you can make them feel better and get on with whatever business you have with them without having to see that scrunched up look on their face, the one that stares and gauges and estimates and measures the amount of loss they’re supposed to be sorry for.

None of that is the hard part of death though. You know why that is? It’s because we know that part of the story. We’ve seen it, we’ve heard it, we’ve thought about it, and in the vicarious sense, we’ve lived it. From Old Yeller, to Ghost, to Roots, to the six o’clock news - we’ve been inoculated with a kind of social training for the proper behavior for “surviving family”. We know we’re supposed to be the plucky heroine, the young widow, the heart-as-pure-as-gold orphan… we know we’re supposed to be strong… we’re the ones who make it, pull through, will be all right.

It’s the month after that that’s the hardest. The months after the funeral and the burial that you have no script for, no navigation chart, no cinematic role model. The month when you walk around and look at all the stuff, the debris of a lifetime, the flotsam and jetsam that is all that remains of what was once a vibrant and living member of your family. I really think that it’s the all the freaking stuff that’s hardest to deal with. The clothes that someone loved to wear, the figurines that she loved to let collect dust on the shelf, the miniatures ship models he would start and never finish. This stuff is the biggest metaphor for the life that’s just left, and the one that we’re left to. Unfinished projects stored in a drawer with proclamations of “I’ll get to it one of these days”, made when you’re young and stupid and don’t know that one of these days is going to come along and slap you right upside the head before you even turn fifty. Clothes with the tags still on that she bought because it was on sale and she couldn’t beat the price. The car that cost a fortune but she was afraid to drive too much because it was so nice; so she made the eight hundred dollar payment every month, but still drove the older one anyway, because it made her feel more comfortable. Goddamnit… why didn’t she just drive the stupid car when she had the chance?

When you think about it, in America you define yourself through what you own. I own books. My husband collects pirated software. My dad buys beat-up, broken-down tractors at auctions, and then rebuilds them to a second life. My sister has a collection of all manner of equine decoration and movies featuring men with large swords. Kids define themselves through clothing styles and rude t-shirt slogans. Each of these forms of ownership says something about who we are, and if you contemplate it long enough and have an imaginative nature, you can probably learn a lot about who people are by what they own, collect, buy and wear. You ever just go somewhere and look at the shoes people wear? You’d be amazed at the conclusions you can draw from a person’s shoes. Are they comfy and broken-in? Painfully stylish? Dressy heels or muddy work-boots? Cheap no-names manufactured in third-world China or thousand-dollar Italian loafers? A buck’ll get you fifty that you can divine deep and meaningful clues about a person’s job, their income, their health and their basic philosophy on life from one snapshot of their shoes. Now just imagine seeing their house, their possessions, the things they’ve had tucked away in drawers and closets and boxes for years. Imagine what you could learn about a person then; imagine what people could learn about you.

You see, it’s all this stuff and clutter, junk and treasure that really crystallizes the person gone, their hopes and dreams, their inner secrets, their hobbies, their nature, their daily lives and their very soul. You wouldn’t believe how many times the surviving spouse and children feel as though they’ve discovered a whole other side to their parent or wife or husband once they start to go through their belongings. Interesting word, isn’t it, belongings? That means that things belong to us, right? Not that through these things we feel that we belong… I’m sorry, I’m rambling. The point that I started out to make is that at the end of it all, after everyone else has gone home and it’s just you and the personal accumulated residue of the person you lost… well, that’s when it gets hard.

A Matter of Relativity

I realized a very important concept today; an epiphany, if you will. I realized that we know who we are by our relationships to others - in other words, we decide who we want to be in relation to those around us. It helps us to define ourselves. To exist in a vacuum with no point of reference prevents us from knowing who we are. Kind of like how you decide what kind of parent you want to be in relation to your own parents. When your life becomes intertwined with another person, you lose (in some sense) your identity as an individual in favor of being half of a couple or a member of a family. You will, in a way, be identified by others and defined by yourself as a relation to others. I'm LaDonna's daughter, CJ's wife, so and so's mother etc.

I think that's why we feel so lost and confused as widow/ers. Our most important frame of reference has been removed. When you've been with someone for years, know them better than you know yourself at times, well, it makes it hard to judge who we are without them. For me anyway... I realized that this was a problem earlier this week. It's been a week of bad events, and I spent all this time wondering what CJ would do, how he would have reacted if he'd been here, what he would have said and done. And then it occurred to me that it didn't matter as much what he would have thought and done, because there's no one here but me. I was forced to ask my self what I thought, what I would do, what I would say. It was an unsettling realization. I don't know why it should seem so bizarre to be making my own decisions and forming my own opinions without considering his... I think that I respected him so much that it just always seemed natural to consider his opinion and actions as superior to my own. For practically the first time in my life I'm forced to consider who I am in these situations instead. I'm only Tamsen now, and - sadly - I'm not quite sure what that means. Who the hell is "Only Tamsen"?

In a sense, I will always consider what my mother would think, what CJ would do when making up my mind. They were too big a part of my life for it to be any other way. When you have known and loved great people, you can't help but be an improved person as a result. In this sense, they will always be with me. I'm not sure why it concerns me so much to have no one else to fall back on, no one else to make the choices with me or deal with the problems I'm afraid to solve on my own. Perhaps, rather than fear, I should look at this with a sense of liberation - see it as an opportunity to come to a better understading of who I am when I stand alone. Human beings are generally a pack animal, and I think it scares us to stand alone in front of everyone else. When there's only you there to take responsiblity for the failures, endure the pains and feel the joys, it's scary and it's sad. Even when we might be better off alone, we 'll often choose to stay in a bad relationship because a known unhappiness is better than the doubt and lonlines of having only ourselves for comfort and strength. But if there is any gift to come of this loss, I think it will be in the strength and confidence we are forced to find within ourselves. It can be liberating to define who you are when you're by yourself, because there's a lot more options available to you. You can choose to be anyone, anything you can dream you can be, when you define yourself by nothing other than your own standards, preferences and ideas. I wonder what kind of person "Only Tamsen" will be? Will she be very different from the person "Tamsen: CJ's Wife, LaDonna's Daughter" was? Will she be someone CJ and LaDonna would have been proud of? I guess I'll let you know when I find out...

Today's the Day

I used to be one hell of planner. CJ used to joke about my "five-year plan". It could change fluidly from day to day, but the point was that I always had a course laid out, Captain. That way, no matter what happened I was five steps ahead. I always figured you can't move forward without a roadmap, you know? CJ was much more fluid than that and would often refuse to make plans more than a week or two in advance. I remember trying to get him to talk about a dream vacation once - you know, a where-would-he-go-if-he-could-go-anywhere type of thing. After about half an hour of shrugs and "I-don't-know"s I got pretty peeved. But he told me to ask him when it became a real possibility - when we had the means to go. It just didn't make sense to him to live for tomorrow when you could be living fine right where you were today. (Reminded me of Yoda in Empire Strikes Back - he'd poke me with a stick saying "Never her mind on where she was, what she was doing. Humph. Adventure, excitement... a Jedi craves not these things.) Hell, for all I know it may have just been impossible for him to look and plan beyond the immediate. He just never saw any use in putting more emphasis on tomorrow than he put on today (hence his favorite catch-phrase Have Fun.) It was always a fundamental difference to our marriage, one that was extremely frustrating on both sides. (It's very hard to have a five year plan if you don't know your soul mates preferences, I will have you know...) Turns out, CJ didn't need the five year plan after all...

After my mom's passing last year and then CJ's just five months ago, I've found the tables reversed. I realize I'd spent so much of my time we had focused on some hazy "one-of-these-days" that I never really took the time to appreciate what I had when I had it. Now I find myself adrift, no roadmap, no destination, not even a goddamned star to steer her by Captain. In a sense, this entire string of events has left me with a much greater appreciation for the life I'm living right this second. On the other hand, I find I can't plan more than a day or two out anymore. It takes too much effort. Friends will call and say "Let's _______". And if it's right now, I might. Otherwise, ask me when it's tomorrow. Even better, ask me when it's in an hour. I suppose it must be frustrating to them, this change in me. I do recall the frustration I had towards CJ when he'd often ask me what month it was (you think I'm kidding?) They tell you to take it one day, one minute at a time, and you think it's advice, but it's not. It's fact. There's no other road through this land of briars and thorns. I just can't seem to focus on the future at all anymore. But, in a way, I'm not sure that's all bad. Because, really, tomorrow was never there to begin with. It was just a big mirage that made me forget to love and appreciate the things that were. Even so... I hope to one day return to a happy medium. For a five-year planner it's kind of scary to only be able to survive moment to moment. I HATE not knowing where I'm supposed to go...

I received this lovely response from a fellow widow over at the Young Widow Bulletin Board. With her kind permission, I want to print it here for all of you new friends to our lonely circle. I think her metaphor is perfectly worded, and - for me at least - resonant with the hope we all so desperately seek. Thank you, Judy.

Tamsenita,

I often refer to this widow life as having the rug pulled out from under our lives. When we lose our spouse we are violently thrown into the air, with no idea where, how, if or when we will land. On our feet or on our face. Intact or with a broken back. Perhaps gently, having learned grace as we fly up and then down.

Will we twist around like a crazy diver, going in slow motion before we finally get back down to earth? How long might it take before we even feel like living again (even if it IS just a day at a time.)

I have found that as we go through grief, changes occur. We change from within and from without. Sometimes, when we do finally land, the person who gets to the ground is nothing much like the person who got tossed to begin with.

It is NOT an enjoyable ride. Someplace in my experience of being tossed, little tethers of hope and optimism attached themselves to me. I learned about floating and being suspended above my former path. It helped me to see things more clearly, to hang there for awhile. I learned about the triple gainer and the somersault. I got a handle on the gravity of my situtaion. I figured out that the ground was where I wanted to be.

Your loss will no doubt scramble your former sensibilities. I believe if we allow it to, this journey up into uncharted territory, will teach us what it is we need to know to grow as human beings.

I know you hate not knowing where you are going but maybe the real importance is in learning a new way to look at life. Take a good, hard look. I feel sure your husband has his hands under you to guide you back down to earth. Feel his assitance and allow yourself to stay up there for awhile. The five year plan can be a very scary and uncharted place. One day at a time is not the worse way to get through this terrible time.

Judy

Strength

Personal strength is a very relative concept. It is quite common for the bereaved to be told "You're handling it so well," or "You're such a strong person". Because, really we are. There's no other choice. The more hardship you endure in life, the better able you will be to handle hardship. It is my belief that people deal with personal crises in one of two ways: they become bitter or they gain a better sense of humor and humility. Because, either way, when shit like this happens, there's nothing that can be done about, nothing that can solve the problem. There are no answers, no fixes, no miracle cures, no deus ex machina, no clever plot twist. In the end there is nothing left but you and the glaring brutality of the fact, and how you react to it.

When Fate kicks you in the teeth, it presents the opportunity for learning; a chance to evaluate ones behaviours or beliefs. All events in life present us with the opportunity to choose who we are, who we want to be, in relation to those events. However, when Fate kicks you over and over again as you roll around on the ground screaming, you either learn that Fate is out to get you, or you learn to appreciate the times when she lets you stand back up. People who have lost those they really care about, be it parents, spouses, children, siblings or friends, suffer something that is indescribable to those who have not undergone the process themselves. While nearly every other form of loss or pain can be overcome, death is an unhealable wound. You do not get through grief. You do not get over grief. You do not overcome grief. You survive it. Time heals all wounds, it's true, but it doesn't heal them all completely. Sometimes life leaves scars that never go away, painful reminders that we're never in as much control of our lives as we think we are.

In the novel Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, there is a character that works in the department that writes marketing and propaganda for the state. He always feels like there is some element that is missing in his work, preventing him from being able to really create. Though his work is brilliant, it is still somehow lacking. As the plot unfolds, the argument is put forth that what he "lacks" is suffering. That, in a perfect society, devoid of want and suffering, there is no impetus for the creative nature of man. Our souls become stagnant when our every immediate need is met. I think that this idea might just apply to us as individuals as well. Not necessarily that our minds and character stagnate when our every wish is realized (though I could point to Paris Hilton...), but that when we do suffer and survive, we are better for it as people. Don't get me wrong, I would be much happier the way things were. I was very happy. But there can be no doubt that this past year has probably been the most character building of my 25. It might be argued that our grandparents were "the greatest generation" because they'd had the worst hand dealt - a world-wide depression, two world wars.

Those who suffer loss are strong by necessity. There is no other way to be. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way. Sometimes we barely manage to drag ourselves through the minutes of each passing day. Sometimes we lose our grip, our control - sometimes it just takes too much effort to keep hanging in, keep hanging on. But we will make it. We always get back up again. Not because we're special, but because we have no choice. I can't tell you how many times in the past few years I'd thought "Well, this it. I've finally hit bottom. Nowhere else to go but up now..." I don't think I'll ever entertain that sentiment again. When you endure a loss so complete, it makes you realize that nothing, nothing can ever hurt you again. We are strong people not in spite of our pain, but because of it. No matter what else happens to me in this life, it will never compare to this. We can face anything, because we have already survived the worst. The question then becomes whether we continue on the path angry and bitter for our loss, or with a better sense of understanding about the precious nature of life.

Passive Suicide

I'm not really the suicide type. It's not my style, dig? I'm more the "I-shall-overcome-so-help-me-God" type. In fact, I find that I often become aggressive with my own grief. I take it all head on, because in a lot of ways there's only two directions: down or through; and if I'm going through, I'm going through, you know? Screw you Grief, you faceless, silent son-of-a-bitch. I'm better than that; CJ made me stronger than that. My soul is not yours to claim, you heartless prick. You ain't seen nothing until you've met a girl with nothing left to lose and a bone to pick with Chance. I'd rather roll forward in fury than languish in despair - it strikes me as so much more proactive. Sadly, I've found no direction in which to focus my anger except the elusive emotions that haunt my days: grief, despair, depression, apathy. I'd rather pick a fight with my own loss than let the pain it inflicts end me. As such, I'm not likely to prematurely end my life. However I do think that I, like many other bereaved people, suffer from passive suicide contemplation. To put it bluntly, I'm never going to kill myself, but if I was diagnosed with cancer tomorrow I'd probably be thrilled to death (no pun intended). Tamsen, you've just been diagnosed with terminal melanoma; you only have two months to live! What are you going to do now? I'm going to Disneyland, yay! Hell, I think I'd probably even throw myself a going-away party. I have also been riding around without my seatbelt on... you know... just in case.

Essentially, there comes a point when those in mourning realize that they are no longer living out of their own desire to exist. Rather, you're living for everyone else's benefit. There are days when the only reason you get up in the morning is because all the other personal relations you've forged on this tiny speck of rock have instilled you with a secondary sense of concern and obligation. You've got children counting on you to see them through this. You've got parents, siblings, friends all mourning the loss as well and you just can't bring yourself to do it to them again. They may even mention it - "please, don't you leave me too." You know in your heart of hearts that to leave them alone to deal with the current loss as well as heaping on the guilt they would suffer if you offed yourself is something that is far too cruel to even contemplate. And I hate to break it to you folks, but on the darkest, most painful nights on this guided tour through hell, it's really hard to convince yourself that sparing other people pain is a compelling reason not to end your own. There's a little voice in the back of your mind whispering dangerous promises to ease your sense of obligation in the dark reaches of the night... Don't worry about them... isn't this pain too large to allow your heart concern for others? Besides, they'll be fine! The loss of your life couldn't possibly be worse than the loss of his...

Which leads me to wonder, what does keep us going? In the middle of the night when it's only you and the aching sense of alone that's become your personal valet, while you lie awake staring at the ceiling, stewing in your own thoughts... When the realization comes that there is no longer a personal motivation to keep up this charade known as life, why do we? A friend of mine opined that most people don't follow through on suicidal thoughts because of fear. They're afraid of the pain of suicide perhaps... because - really- there isn't a nice way to go. Pills have a high failure rating, and usually induce vomiting at some point. Shooting yourself takes a hell of a leap of courage and is pretty much impossible if you live in California. Standing in front of a train, jumping off a bridge, yelling racial epitats in Compton... all likely to work, but again you'd probably need to be high on E to have the gumption for the follow through. Other people have a fear of suicide for more esoteric reasons. Many religions tell us that to kill oneself is to destroy God's creation and is thus just as damning as murder. Many of us don't want to risk the possibility that we would be denied the chance to see our loved one again, post mortem. We're already in hell, so I'm not sure that's such a great deterrent, but the idea of not getting to see them again is sufficient for most people to tough it out.

However, I don't personally like to think that I'm making decisions (especially life and death ones) from a position of fear. As such, I need a more compelling reason than "being afraid" to say why most people don't commit suicide. I believe the real reason is hope. No matter how far gone you get, there's another little whispering voice struggling to be heard in the background of our grief. This quiet little voice is the one that says things will be better tomorrow. That this pain can't be this strong forever, that we can wait it out. It promises that there will come a day when our memories no longer bring us to our knees in grief. It's that sense of hope that carries us through. Every once in awhile, you have a good day. A day when the future doesn't quite seem like the bleak wasteland it was yesterday. The days when the warm summer sun breaks through the clouds and for just one moment, you're not sorry you're still alive. The moments when the love you feel for your husband or wife or child or parent or friend is reminiscent of the pure joy it used to be, untainted by the pain caused by their lack of physical existence (in other words the idea and memory of them brings you happiness, despite the lack of their physical presence). The good moments, few or short as they may sometimes seem, are the precious gifts that give us enough hope to batten down the hatches and weather the storm, rather than going out to sacrifice ourselves to the fury of the tempest.

This song came on as I was writing this, and seemed apropos.

All day, staring at the ceiling
Making friends with shadows on my wall.
All night, hearing voices telling me
That I should get some sleep,
Because tomorrow might be good for something

Hold on - feeling like I'm headed for a break down
And I don't know why
But i'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know right now you can't tell,
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
A diffent side of me
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired
I know that right now you don't care
But soon enough you're going to think of me
and how I used to be

Talking to myself in public,
Dodging glances on the train.
And I know, I know they've all been talkin' bout me
I can hear them whisper
And it makes me think there must be something wrong with me
Out of all the hours thinking somehow I've lost my mind.

Hold on - feeling like I'm headed for a break down
And I don't know why
But i'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know right now you can't tell,
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
A diffent side of me
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired
I know right now you don't care
But soon enough you're going to think of me
and how I used to be

How I used to be
How I used to be
Yeah, I'm just a little unwell
How I used to be

I hope, dear friends in mourning, that you hang on to that hope and find your way through darkness back into the light of day.

Tamsen