Looking for a way to cope

In Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brick talks about waiting for the click–the point at which all the pain drains away and everything seems all right. He gets there by consuming large quantities of alcohol. I don’t drink very much or very often–and even less so the last six weeks. But, like Brick, I am waiting for the click.

…I haven’t done it as well as I could.

I’ve been waiting for it for 63 months now. I’ve tried losing myself in work, in films, in books, in research; I’ve tried meditation, grief groups, and therapy. Increasingly, I begin to feel my father had it right the night Jane died: there is nothing anyone can say that will make any of this feel any better. In truth, there is nothing anyone–including me, apparently–can do to make the hurt go away.

The click in my head

Yes, it is less paralyzing most of time than it was at the beginning. Lose an arm or a leg and you will learn to cope over time. It does not bring the limb back–you always miss it–but you do figure out a series of workarounds that enable you to look normal from the outside a good percentage of the time. But you know it isn’t the same even if the world can forget.

…my father had it right…

I keep hoping, though–foolish as that is. In December, I passed the five-year mark since Jane’s death. I thought that would be the moment of the click in my head–at least that was what a part of me wanted to believe. I resolved to cut back on my visits to her grave; I resolved to at least think about dating again; I resolved to do more things that would make me happy.

Death has murdered sleep

I’d been there several times before. I believed the nonsense about the first year–what the grief community calls “The Year of Firsts“–being the hardest. The second year was much harder than the first because–no matter how hard you try to believe the second year will be better, the person you loved is gone and not coming back except in your dreams–and when you wake up it is so bad that you don’t want to go back to sleep again.

I keep hoping, though–foolish as that is.

You start putting off going to bed at night because you can’t handle the dreams–no matter how happy they make you feel when you are in them. You gradually come to see them as you see drugs–a temporary escape that makes things worse when you come down from them. But lack of sleep carries its own consequences. The depression simply increases from another angle.

Everything comes with a price

I knew better than to expect much from the second anniversary of Jane’s death. But I had hopes for the third–and for the 25th anniversary of our marriage–and, most recently, for the fifth anniversary of her death. There is no magic bullet for grief, though.

…you don’t want to go back to sleep again.

Intellectually, I know that. I know taking her pictures out of the main living areas was a good thing. I know emptying her suitcase last week was a good thing. I know slowly redesigning the yard and the rooms of the house is a good thing. But each comes with an immediate and crippling emotional price–just as each date on the calendar does.

Why, this is Hell…

Much of January and February of this year were dead months. I had trouble getting up, trouble writing, trouble thinking, trouble getting anything done. They were the price of my expectations of what that fifth anniversary would mean. There was no click and my mind descended into the Hell of its own making.

Intellectually, I know that.

Hell is a place of pain without hope of an ending made worse by the illusion that things will get better. Sometimes, I live there.  But I am also the ghost of Jacob Marley. I can do nothing about my own pain–but perhaps I can find some way to ease the spirits of the other damned souls; perhaps I can find a way to prevent–or at least delay–others from joining me here.

Fighting destiny

In my head, I know it is a foolish idea. I know that at least half the population is destined to lose someone they care about; that half of us will be widows or widowers no matter what I do. I cannot stop death. I can only help to slow it down, at best. In the cosmic scale, it amounts to nothing.

There was no click…

But my heart sees the mother with her children, the husband with his wife, the child with her parents. We do not live on a cosmic scale–we live within the construct of our short lives in these fragile bodies. People will tell you these bodies are but vehicles or vessels for souls. I will tell you the same thing.

Body and soul

But in this world we inhabit our bodies matter every bit as much to us as our souls to us. This life is the one that matters now–and it may be the only thing that actually does. Jane’s soul my flit about the house, but I cannot hold it in my arms or feel its breath in my ear. Absent that, she has likely better things to do than hang around waiting for me.

We do not live on a cosmic scale…

And I have better things to do than lying in bed mourning for things that are gone and cannot be recalled in any meaningful way. Jane and I lived to ease the suffering of others, to offer a hand up out of ignorance and poverty, and to bring some small modicum of joy and hope to those who need it.

Waiting for Godot?

For 63 months, I’ve tried to keep doing that. My disappointment is I haven’t done it as well as I could. But, like the person who has lost an arm, or more, perhaps I need to work harder on the workarounds and stop waiting for the click.

…I have better things to do…

We live by living–and not by waiting.