everybody wants to help the little widow

[ritaxis]

So it's garbage/recycle/compost day. And this is not a problem because of course I can carry the garbage out to the curb just fine. Even though it was more often his job than mine.

But it turns out it is a problem because we used to make a kind of a production about remembering garbage day, and we'd talk about it from Sunday to Tuesday, and we'd congratulate each other about remembering it, and about not filling up the garbage can every week, and we'd discuss getting the recycle down too. And there would be a discussion about washing the garbage cans, and maybe a discussion about what is and is not recyclable, which keeps changing. And there was no discussion about any of that, and I had to remember all by myself to haul the cans out, and that's not the problem even though I have the nmemory of a fruit fly. The problem is remembering without him is doing without him.

I've been slowly having a harder and harder time. More tears, more times when it hits me, hard.

On Sunday I met a nice little old couple -- 92 years old, neighbors of my friend I was walking dogs with. They were walking their son's dog. And they were nice and friendly and I got hit by a wave of just bitter jealousy because that was supposed to be us.

People are calling me and gettign me out of the house to walk with the dog and stuff. People are offering to help around the house. I'm more social than I have been in years and though I enjoy the people and stuff I hate it anyway. It would be so easy to go all Miss Haversham but I don't think the world needs any more Miss Havershams and so I'm out in the world. But it's getting harder rather than easier. Today I'd only been at work an hour or so when I noticed my hands were shaking and my vision was all sparkly. I figure this is an anxiety attack, I understand that's what happens to people, but I also don't get it because what'
s the point of having anxiety attacks now? The worst thing already happened a month ago. There's nothing worse to look forward to.

I'm going to the doctor Friday mostly to talk but also to have my blood pressure taken.

On another front, the plum wine from last year is nice but this year's turned to vinegar because I left it in primary too long. It's a really nice, sweet, mild vinegar, so I'm filtering it now and I will bottle it for gifts -- Zak says it would be nice in a vinaigrette or even a curd. He wants to make a plum vinegar curd, like a lemon curd, to go with a sweet olive oil cake from Provence that he likes to make.

Three gallons of it, though. Maybe two if I'm lucky (I have almost fifteen bottles of last year's wine).

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if it were time to revisit the "can I do anything" offer, but it sounds like maybe you're having a surfeit of helpful people. You know, it's ok if you spend some time raging at fate and indulging in naked, irrational grief. You can take it as a temp job to tide you over without making it a career.

[boxofdelights]

"No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear," is the first sentence of C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed. I read that when I was grieving for my stillborn baby. I remember that feeling, the body insisting that something terrible was about to happen and the brain, catching up, saying no, no, it already happened.

I think it must come from the same place as that was supposed to be us.


We do want to help you. Would you be bothered by a letter-writing campaign to the University?

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

This. Yes! I support some limited period of daily indulgence in the rage and loss. You could even schedule it in your new social calendar.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

And also this, regarding the letter writing. I've been thinking about that too.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Makes sense that this level of loss takes a while to really understand; so the grief increasing fits in.

Lots of the things the body does in extreme situations don't make all that much sense, on the level of anxiety attacks when the terrible thing is all over. Just wasn't important enough to have been eliminated, so we have to put up with it.

[ckd]

I'm holding you in my thoughts.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I know somewhat of what you mean about things getting harder because I know what you mean about "that should have been us." With me it was losing my mother just at the point when I became a new mother. Seeing mums and daughters walking together, pushing a baby in a pram cut like a knife. Every baby milestone reminded me that mum wasn't there to share it.

You're in my thoughts. I just wish there was something else I could do, though it seems as though you have plenty of willing helpers.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Oh, and what I should have gone on to say was that the grief become less painful eventually. I did reach a point where the good memories were still there and the regrets slowly faded.

[carolf.livejournal.com]

Kicking boxes. Worked for me. Physical, violent, harmless, exhausting.

Rage is part of the mourning cycle.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Kicking boxes is good. I have some very useful cushions for patio furniture that are nigh well indestructible.

[julesjones]

[hug]

You're coming up to a particularly hard time -- the time when just when you think you should be starting to get used to it, it actually starts to feel worse. Somewhere around six weeks in, the natural opiates produced by your body as a form of cushioning start to wear off. If you don't know that this is a normal part of the grieving process, you can wonder if you're going crazy. I think this might be why you're getting the anxiety attacks now -- as it sinks in, as that little bit of natural protection from the sheer shock wears off.

[carolf.livejournal.com]

You haven't just lost the person (and all he embodies.) You've lost the dream.

The dream is all encompassing. It's the framework on which you hang your life. When it's gone, well ... the life flops around without support, form or purpose. Until you can build a new framework.

All that is to say that you're not odd. Not about this, anyway. :-)

I've found emotional paths to be cyclical. Think of a spring. You go around and up/forward at the same time. You keep coming back to the same side, but from a different level/viewpoint. It seems repetitious, but it's not. It's still motion.

It hurts, though. And definitely sucks.

Still holding you and yours in my thoughts.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It takes as long as it takes, and you are not wrong for having feelings. I wish I could help. I mean, be really helpful. I could be there and when people come over to help, you could say, "Oh yeah -- take that guy over there to the hardware store and help him find a 3/8 wing planer," and then they'd be out of your hair for a while, and they'd feel like they were helping.

Anyway, you're sane and normal, and you're coping with something bad. Looks like you're doing okay at it, from here.

[katiekin.livejournal.com]

This helps me.