I dreamt of Tad this morning.
I was walking up a grass-covered hill with a group of French-speaking friends. The place was a cross between the Marin Headlands (steep hill with a view on the other side) and the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City (wide expanses of grass with a few tourists here and there). Deep green hill on a majestic blue sky. When we got to the top of the hill (effortlessly!!) a small group of people were sitting around talking and enjoying the view of a huge suspension bridge in the distance and water below.
Suddenly Tad walks up from the other side and speaks to them - he is wearing his usual baggy shorts and a tank top t-shirt with a back pack over one shoulder. He has his beautiful pre-cancer body back: broad masculine stance, thick biceps, perfect baby-skin, massive thighs, dark shock of hair. The only difference is he now has a tatto on his right shoulder - a radiant, sun-like circle with beams coming out.
He looks up at me, makes eye contact and smiles. I feel that immense indescribable warm sensation I get from his gaze, our gaze -- a gaze only he and I can create, so different yet similar to every other gaze in the world.
Then his sweet cat woke me up to tell me it was time for me to fix her breakfast. I tried to go back to the dream but it was gone. Dream chasing at 6:30.
Now - later - I am trying not to cling to it, to replay it all day like a looped video but the temptation is great.
I am preparing my bags for a long hike in a place I don't know, with people I don't know, in conditions I don't know.
For two weeks.
In silence.
The only thing I do know is that the organizer is a man of principles, a man of love; a mentor who has been part of my life for two decades now; who spoke the eulogy in a small village church when my dear friend's cousin was viciously murdered.
At a time when I see clearly that I do not want to make a new life for myself, I do not want to move on to the "next phase" of my life because I do not want to say good bye to the last one -- I am choosing to do something frightening and mysterious. I am choosing to step deeper into the world of the invisible relinquishing a large dose of control (which is of course only my fantasized version of "control").
I see clearly that silence speaks volumes more than all the words and noise, that the invisible is far more sustaining of my essence than the visible, the mystery is immensely more wise than the predictable.
How long will it take me to really understand this? And when will I start living by it?
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
things that surprise
It has been nearly five months since Tad died. Here are a few of the things that surprise me from where I stand today:
I'm surprised at how much I can enjoy life.
A few days ago I took the neighbor's dog for a long walk on a remote beach (said neighbor is by no means naive: she knows perfectly well that asking me to walk her dog twice a week is incredible therapy for my broken heart).
As we climbed over the beautiful sweeping green downs before hitting the beach I put Strauss's Last Four Songs on my player. Arly was beside herself with excitement. The smell of wild sage filled my nostrils. I peaked the first hill and got a glimpse of the rocky coast and the incredible expanse of blue the music swelled. I stopped and took it all in - weeping with some kind of joy/sorrow.
Words like peace, awe, joy come to mind to describe my inner state.
Now that I recount it I realize that at no point did I feel the cloying yearning to have Tad back here holding my hand or smiling over at me as we communicate silently about the incredible landscape around us.
This leads me to a second surprising notion:
I am surprised music and nature always come through
In this painful period where my crazy brain has been reminded against its will that we humans are temporary creatures I am amazed to see that some things are permanent.
Music, laughter, the smile of a child, time in nature, a hug, humble honesty…these are some of the things which never fail to deliver on their promise. These things always (okay almost always) manage to touch something deep inside me that is indeed permanent, that I feel goes beyond this fragile life.
I am surprised how I know which things Tad touched
As I go through my days I am aware which household objects were around when he was around. The bottle of ketchup he used to smother his fries is still there. The tube of toothpaste that's reaching the end was the one he bought for his last hospitalization. The ice cream in the freezer was the one I served him the day before he died. My brain is somehow keeping tally of which things in the house were here during his life and which ones are new since then.
As with every object I first feel the strong pull to keep whatever it is; to find a way to never throw it away somehow. I have now learned I can set things aside and give them time. After a few days I realize I don't need to keep certain object anymore - sometimes I realize I don't even like them.
Then I can let them go.
I am surprised I keep two houses
I am surprised by the fact that I still live part-time in Tad's house, still pay rent on a lease in his name, still pick up his mail and scrawl "DECEASED RETURN TO SENDER" on his bills. But more than that I am surprised at my capacity to give myself permission to keep this place. Well actually I haven't quite given myself full permission.
It makes no sense to me how this place fits into my "plan". I don't understand how it makes sense to live part time in one city and part time in another without being fabulously wealthy. Even though I paid an accountant who sat down to look at my financial situation and deemed it perfectly affordable - I still feel deep down that I'm not allowed this frivolous situation.
But here is what really surprises me: I am allowing myself to do something that doesn't make sense long-term but completely makes sense one day to the next. When I chat with my neighbors, play with my cat or walk on the beach -- all in Santa Cruz -- I can't find a reason in the world why I woudn't be there.
I am surprised people don't ask more questions
Having my beloved die in my arms feels like the biggest, most incredible event I have ever lived through. It surpasses all the major events of my life: exploring wildlife in South Africa, helping push through new legislation to protect patients, being published in fancy magazines, getting a masters in midlife.
Daily I tell people I am in mourning because my husband died of cancer a few months ago. It's the most prominent fact in my mind. I would be an impostor if I didn't say outloud what was filling up so much of my mind and body these days.
And yet I am surprised no one asks questions about it.
If the same thing happened to a close friend I would want to say: "How did it go?" "Was it peaceful or a struggle?" "What were his last words?" "Tell me what it's like because my spouse will die one day and I'd like to be prepared."
Then again - I have never asked this of any of my friends or acquaintances. (Though I did have long loving talks with my grandma in her sweet little house by the lake the year before she died - asking her to share her thoughts and feelings about it all).
I am surprised I have no attachment to Tad's ashes
The crematorium assured me that in exchange for his war-torn corpse which I reluctantly handed over to them - I would get a bag of ashes within 48 hours. It actually took them far longer than that causing me to sputter and blame for a good week. During that time I couldn't wait to get the ashes.
My beloved friend Carl took me to a houseware store to help me find a handsome urn while I awaited the return of what was left of Tad's beautiful body. So it is quite a surprise to me that I have no attachment to these ashes or the urn they sit in.
I keep them in a prominent place, with a few photos of him beside them, a sitting Buddha smiling peacefully, a candle and some incense which I light from time to time. But the truth is I feel no connection to them; they are nothing to me.
They are not Tad. They are not love. They are not a sweet touch on the hand and a murmur in my ear, "Could you bring me some more coffee please?"
I have decided to join some friends for a two week hike in the deserts of Southern Morocco. I will take Tad's ashes with me and leave them there. I will take the urn and break it into pieces to be used for potting in my garden.
I am surprised at how little compassion I have for myself
Yesterday I tried a new strategy during my morning meditation: I imagined a therapy session with myself. I sat down across from myself and lovingly asked: "So tell me: how can I help you?". Then I told my other self about losing my partner, about the pain, the loneliness. What I saw was that when I see myself with my therapist eyes I am amazed at all the good things I've done, all the positive healthy things I do daily to take care of myself. I am deeply moved by the other me's sorrow and the incredible enormity of what the other me has been through and is still here to tell.
Sadly during the day I find myself thinking I should be better at this, thinking I should be doing things differently, thinking I should have my sea-legs by now.
In the same way if I put myself in Tad's shoes, if I imagine for a moment that it is me with the cancer who has died I see how serene I am with that. I feel very fatalistic about the idea that I have lived a good life and that -if it were to come to this - I could say good-bye serenely.
But I can't accord the same serenity to Tad. I see his death as "premature" and "unfair". I see his absence as not part of the normal way things work and I resent it, lament it, blame someone for it.
I am surprised by the insidiousness of numbing behaviors and gratitude
A strange tragic phenomenon occurs with people who have severe depression. They actually attempt (or succeed) suicide when they start to get better. It seems that in the throes of mind-boggling depression they have very little strength to do anything but once they start medication and are on the upward slope they finally have the energy to do what they've been wanting to do for a long time: find a permanent end to their pain.
I am not suicidal. Far from it.
However I see that I am healing, I am getting stronger. And in so doing I see that I have the strength to do things I couldn't before.
For instance I am numbing more. I recently went out with friends and before I knew it I was drinking more alcohol than I ever would in normal times (a very moderate level compared to most people but a lot for me!).
I am purchasing more. I see that if I am not careful I could start spending in ways that are wasteful and unnecessary.
I am staying up more. I tried moving our bed into the office and putting the office in the bedroom. For various logistical reasons mostly having to do with a loud furnace it didn't work. So after repainting the death bed bedroom I put the bed back there. I now stay up late and watch silly drivel on television then find myself clicking it off at some single-digit hour.
In the same way I had my first fender-bender in the weeks soon after Tad died I got my first speeding ticket in my life this week. In all my years of mindlessly driving fast I had never been ticketed for it. Not so anymore.
And I am surprised at how quickly these various numbing strategies slipped into my life while I was looking the other way.
But an important good thing I see sneaking in as I gain strength is a deep undertow of gratitude.
Maybe in my new practice to be more compassionate with myself I should have started with this one.
I find myself wanting to buy cards, flowers and chocolates for the bevy of caregivers who spent time with Tad and me during the seventeen months of hell. I find myself wanting to stop at the various Oncology Units and give warmth and thanks to all the people who greeted us, hugged us, fed us and loved us day in and day out.
When I think about it I usually cry which could mean I'm not ready yet but I see the day is getting closer.
Ironically this week I crossed paths with Kelly one of the more proactive and loving nurse practitioners working with us locally. I glimpsed her across a busy avenue so I yelled her name and waved. She looked then turned and walked away. Later when I called to tell her it was me she apologized profusely. "I thought it was some straight guy making cat calls and hitting on me!" she said. I forget that women constantly get solicited in unsavory ways by men like me.
I am surprised how much I know what's good for me
I have spent a good chunk of my life not always knowing what is good for me.
Many times I have turned towards the mystery of what is behind door number two all the while seeing that door number one was wide open and behind it were an array of healthy things for me.
I am surprised that despite my sorrow and my fears that many times I do know how to turn to what is good for me.
I know when the clutter in the house is beginning to affect my serenity and I need to stop doing what I'm doing.
I usually know when it's time to pick up my phone and call another person, to let someone else's healthier brain help me pick over the details of the giant museum of memories that is my mind.
I know how to call my doctor when I feel sick, to stop and eat when I feel hungry, to let the tears come out when I feel sad/moved/overwhelmed.
I know I need to keep going to therapy each week.
I know I need to keep letting go of Tad's belongings that don't serve me.
I know I need to keep stepping into the mystery of nature.
I know I need to shut down my brain after a certain time by meditating, watching silly TV or changing the topic to something light and inconsequential.
This inventory may seem frivolous to some but to me this is huge. Self-care has not always come naturally to me. For years it never occurred to me that after a long hike in the rain or in wetlands I could actually take my socks off to dry therefore avoiding a cold.
I am surprised that my broken heart is actually an open invitation
to something bigger, something more alive
I know this sounds crazy.
When we walk around with a heart this tender, this fragile the first thing we want to do is bolt down a thick protective concrete shield to keep it from being hurt more.
We want to tell people "I'm fine". We want to wait til we're in the privacy of our own home to blubber til the drool comes out. We want to share few details with strangers because we don't want to burden but mostly because they're not intimate enough and our cave man brain thinks they might use it against us.
Fortunately my level of sorrow - and no doubt years of learning not to apologize for being gay - have made it such that I can't keep the cement cover on any longer.
When people ask me how I am I stop and identify - as well as I can - what's really happening for me. And it is difficult since it changes so quickly and comes so intensely these days.
What I'm seeing is that somehow this open vulnerability is leading me to something bigger. And I must admit I don't want it to go away - or at least not entirely.
I was planning on joining a group of friends on the beach of a small remote island in Southern Thailand. I've been there before and it's quite glorious in its simplicity and beauty. But at the last minute instead of booking that ticket I chose to join a group of 20 or so people who will hike in silence in Southern Morocco for two weeks.
I know this sounds masochistic. Let's call it the "road less traveled". I just have a hunch that - as scary as this is - it is the better place for me to deepen this living with an open heart.
I've already shared that I noticed that complete strangers offered me loving kindness during Tad's hospitalization in Seattle when I tearfully wandered the streets trying to find housing, public transportation vouchers, an open-hearted clergy and goodwill stores to buy clothing.
This experience is teaching that part of my brain which wants to have a Five Year Plan that I can just trust myself and other people each day.
Yesterday for the first time I got out on a sort of surfboard in the Pacific Ocean - a passion shared by a good half of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz it seems.
I am suddenly obsessed by the idea of getting back out in the water and doing it again. I feel like all of a sudden it makes sense to me why I see all those people walk, bike or drive with a surfboard over to the coast day in and day out, sitting for hours in the water waiting for the thrill of a good wave.
My next thought was: Now it all makes sense to me!! This is why I needed to stay in Santa Cruz.
I'm surprised at how much I can enjoy life.
A few days ago I took the neighbor's dog for a long walk on a remote beach (said neighbor is by no means naive: she knows perfectly well that asking me to walk her dog twice a week is incredible therapy for my broken heart).
As we climbed over the beautiful sweeping green downs before hitting the beach I put Strauss's Last Four Songs on my player. Arly was beside herself with excitement. The smell of wild sage filled my nostrils. I peaked the first hill and got a glimpse of the rocky coast and the incredible expanse of blue the music swelled. I stopped and took it all in - weeping with some kind of joy/sorrow.
Words like peace, awe, joy come to mind to describe my inner state.
Now that I recount it I realize that at no point did I feel the cloying yearning to have Tad back here holding my hand or smiling over at me as we communicate silently about the incredible landscape around us.
This leads me to a second surprising notion:
I am surprised music and nature always come through
In this painful period where my crazy brain has been reminded against its will that we humans are temporary creatures I am amazed to see that some things are permanent.
Music, laughter, the smile of a child, time in nature, a hug, humble honesty…these are some of the things which never fail to deliver on their promise. These things always (okay almost always) manage to touch something deep inside me that is indeed permanent, that I feel goes beyond this fragile life.
I am surprised how I know which things Tad touched
As I go through my days I am aware which household objects were around when he was around. The bottle of ketchup he used to smother his fries is still there. The tube of toothpaste that's reaching the end was the one he bought for his last hospitalization. The ice cream in the freezer was the one I served him the day before he died. My brain is somehow keeping tally of which things in the house were here during his life and which ones are new since then.
As with every object I first feel the strong pull to keep whatever it is; to find a way to never throw it away somehow. I have now learned I can set things aside and give them time. After a few days I realize I don't need to keep certain object anymore - sometimes I realize I don't even like them.
Then I can let them go.
I am surprised I keep two houses
I am surprised by the fact that I still live part-time in Tad's house, still pay rent on a lease in his name, still pick up his mail and scrawl "DECEASED RETURN TO SENDER" on his bills. But more than that I am surprised at my capacity to give myself permission to keep this place. Well actually I haven't quite given myself full permission.
It makes no sense to me how this place fits into my "plan". I don't understand how it makes sense to live part time in one city and part time in another without being fabulously wealthy. Even though I paid an accountant who sat down to look at my financial situation and deemed it perfectly affordable - I still feel deep down that I'm not allowed this frivolous situation.
But here is what really surprises me: I am allowing myself to do something that doesn't make sense long-term but completely makes sense one day to the next. When I chat with my neighbors, play with my cat or walk on the beach -- all in Santa Cruz -- I can't find a reason in the world why I woudn't be there.
I am surprised people don't ask more questions
Having my beloved die in my arms feels like the biggest, most incredible event I have ever lived through. It surpasses all the major events of my life: exploring wildlife in South Africa, helping push through new legislation to protect patients, being published in fancy magazines, getting a masters in midlife.
Daily I tell people I am in mourning because my husband died of cancer a few months ago. It's the most prominent fact in my mind. I would be an impostor if I didn't say outloud what was filling up so much of my mind and body these days.
And yet I am surprised no one asks questions about it.
If the same thing happened to a close friend I would want to say: "How did it go?" "Was it peaceful or a struggle?" "What were his last words?" "Tell me what it's like because my spouse will die one day and I'd like to be prepared."
Then again - I have never asked this of any of my friends or acquaintances. (Though I did have long loving talks with my grandma in her sweet little house by the lake the year before she died - asking her to share her thoughts and feelings about it all).
I am surprised I have no attachment to Tad's ashes
The crematorium assured me that in exchange for his war-torn corpse which I reluctantly handed over to them - I would get a bag of ashes within 48 hours. It actually took them far longer than that causing me to sputter and blame for a good week. During that time I couldn't wait to get the ashes.
My beloved friend Carl took me to a houseware store to help me find a handsome urn while I awaited the return of what was left of Tad's beautiful body. So it is quite a surprise to me that I have no attachment to these ashes or the urn they sit in.
I keep them in a prominent place, with a few photos of him beside them, a sitting Buddha smiling peacefully, a candle and some incense which I light from time to time. But the truth is I feel no connection to them; they are nothing to me.
They are not Tad. They are not love. They are not a sweet touch on the hand and a murmur in my ear, "Could you bring me some more coffee please?"
I have decided to join some friends for a two week hike in the deserts of Southern Morocco. I will take Tad's ashes with me and leave them there. I will take the urn and break it into pieces to be used for potting in my garden.
I am surprised at how little compassion I have for myself
Yesterday I tried a new strategy during my morning meditation: I imagined a therapy session with myself. I sat down across from myself and lovingly asked: "So tell me: how can I help you?". Then I told my other self about losing my partner, about the pain, the loneliness. What I saw was that when I see myself with my therapist eyes I am amazed at all the good things I've done, all the positive healthy things I do daily to take care of myself. I am deeply moved by the other me's sorrow and the incredible enormity of what the other me has been through and is still here to tell.
Sadly during the day I find myself thinking I should be better at this, thinking I should be doing things differently, thinking I should have my sea-legs by now.
In the same way if I put myself in Tad's shoes, if I imagine for a moment that it is me with the cancer who has died I see how serene I am with that. I feel very fatalistic about the idea that I have lived a good life and that -if it were to come to this - I could say good-bye serenely.
But I can't accord the same serenity to Tad. I see his death as "premature" and "unfair". I see his absence as not part of the normal way things work and I resent it, lament it, blame someone for it.
I am surprised by the insidiousness of numbing behaviors and gratitude
A strange tragic phenomenon occurs with people who have severe depression. They actually attempt (or succeed) suicide when they start to get better. It seems that in the throes of mind-boggling depression they have very little strength to do anything but once they start medication and are on the upward slope they finally have the energy to do what they've been wanting to do for a long time: find a permanent end to their pain.
I am not suicidal. Far from it.
However I see that I am healing, I am getting stronger. And in so doing I see that I have the strength to do things I couldn't before.
For instance I am numbing more. I recently went out with friends and before I knew it I was drinking more alcohol than I ever would in normal times (a very moderate level compared to most people but a lot for me!).
I am purchasing more. I see that if I am not careful I could start spending in ways that are wasteful and unnecessary.
I am staying up more. I tried moving our bed into the office and putting the office in the bedroom. For various logistical reasons mostly having to do with a loud furnace it didn't work. So after repainting the death bed bedroom I put the bed back there. I now stay up late and watch silly drivel on television then find myself clicking it off at some single-digit hour.
In the same way I had my first fender-bender in the weeks soon after Tad died I got my first speeding ticket in my life this week. In all my years of mindlessly driving fast I had never been ticketed for it. Not so anymore.
And I am surprised at how quickly these various numbing strategies slipped into my life while I was looking the other way.
But an important good thing I see sneaking in as I gain strength is a deep undertow of gratitude.
Maybe in my new practice to be more compassionate with myself I should have started with this one.
I find myself wanting to buy cards, flowers and chocolates for the bevy of caregivers who spent time with Tad and me during the seventeen months of hell. I find myself wanting to stop at the various Oncology Units and give warmth and thanks to all the people who greeted us, hugged us, fed us and loved us day in and day out.
When I think about it I usually cry which could mean I'm not ready yet but I see the day is getting closer.
Ironically this week I crossed paths with Kelly one of the more proactive and loving nurse practitioners working with us locally. I glimpsed her across a busy avenue so I yelled her name and waved. She looked then turned and walked away. Later when I called to tell her it was me she apologized profusely. "I thought it was some straight guy making cat calls and hitting on me!" she said. I forget that women constantly get solicited in unsavory ways by men like me.
I am surprised how much I know what's good for me
I have spent a good chunk of my life not always knowing what is good for me.
Many times I have turned towards the mystery of what is behind door number two all the while seeing that door number one was wide open and behind it were an array of healthy things for me.
I am surprised that despite my sorrow and my fears that many times I do know how to turn to what is good for me.
I know when the clutter in the house is beginning to affect my serenity and I need to stop doing what I'm doing.
I usually know when it's time to pick up my phone and call another person, to let someone else's healthier brain help me pick over the details of the giant museum of memories that is my mind.
I know how to call my doctor when I feel sick, to stop and eat when I feel hungry, to let the tears come out when I feel sad/moved/overwhelmed.
I know I need to keep going to therapy each week.
I know I need to keep letting go of Tad's belongings that don't serve me.
I know I need to keep stepping into the mystery of nature.
I know I need to shut down my brain after a certain time by meditating, watching silly TV or changing the topic to something light and inconsequential.
This inventory may seem frivolous to some but to me this is huge. Self-care has not always come naturally to me. For years it never occurred to me that after a long hike in the rain or in wetlands I could actually take my socks off to dry therefore avoiding a cold.
I am surprised that my broken heart is actually an open invitation
to something bigger, something more alive
I know this sounds crazy.
When we walk around with a heart this tender, this fragile the first thing we want to do is bolt down a thick protective concrete shield to keep it from being hurt more.
We want to tell people "I'm fine". We want to wait til we're in the privacy of our own home to blubber til the drool comes out. We want to share few details with strangers because we don't want to burden but mostly because they're not intimate enough and our cave man brain thinks they might use it against us.
Fortunately my level of sorrow - and no doubt years of learning not to apologize for being gay - have made it such that I can't keep the cement cover on any longer.
When people ask me how I am I stop and identify - as well as I can - what's really happening for me. And it is difficult since it changes so quickly and comes so intensely these days.
What I'm seeing is that somehow this open vulnerability is leading me to something bigger. And I must admit I don't want it to go away - or at least not entirely.
I was planning on joining a group of friends on the beach of a small remote island in Southern Thailand. I've been there before and it's quite glorious in its simplicity and beauty. But at the last minute instead of booking that ticket I chose to join a group of 20 or so people who will hike in silence in Southern Morocco for two weeks.
I know this sounds masochistic. Let's call it the "road less traveled". I just have a hunch that - as scary as this is - it is the better place for me to deepen this living with an open heart.
I've already shared that I noticed that complete strangers offered me loving kindness during Tad's hospitalization in Seattle when I tearfully wandered the streets trying to find housing, public transportation vouchers, an open-hearted clergy and goodwill stores to buy clothing.
This experience is teaching that part of my brain which wants to have a Five Year Plan that I can just trust myself and other people each day.
Yesterday for the first time I got out on a sort of surfboard in the Pacific Ocean - a passion shared by a good half of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz it seems.
I am suddenly obsessed by the idea of getting back out in the water and doing it again. I feel like all of a sudden it makes sense to me why I see all those people walk, bike or drive with a surfboard over to the coast day in and day out, sitting for hours in the water waiting for the thrill of a good wave.
My next thought was: Now it all makes sense to me!! This is why I needed to stay in Santa Cruz.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
finding the golden thread
I don't know what the hell I am doing.
I keep waking up at night and this is what races through my mind.
I don't know what I'm doing.
The other day I broke one of Tad's rules and took the cat up to the City without putting her in the loathsome cage that makes her yowl non-stop. Surprisingly she rode calmly on the passenger's seat the entire trip.
Quite proud of my success, I went to pick her up for the ride home a few days later and she made it clear she was having none of it. I tried to remember Tad's instructions: "Get a towel - Show her you are the alpha." A chase scene ensued that finished with me on the neighbor's roof, several scratches on my arms and the silver ring Tad gave me for our commitment ceremony lost.
This final mishap literally brought me to my knees. In sobs I cried out to whoever could hear me: "I don't know what I"m doing. Tad tell me how to do this."
Whatever "this" is.
People tell me: It's a process; the "grief process"; like a manufacturing chain where bits are added station by station till a new product emerges.
People ask me, almost daily: So have you decided what you are going to do? Maybe they too see I don't know what the hell I'm doing…
I believe they ask me this because they want me to have some kind of structure in my life; they assume more structure will mean I'm feeling better, I've "moved on" - (another term I hear a lot). They do it because they care about me no doubt.
There's a more rare category of folks who ask me how I'm "holding up". I imagine this is a grammatical formula they use to recognize that this is not normal life but a struggle - an uphill rock of Sisyphus.
The fact is I don't know what people assume. I don't know what these phrases mean. I do know what my inner life feels like today.
1 - I know there is nothing to fix; nothing to troubleshoot. I can't just do something and this state will magically go away; it's here for a while. (Though god knows I keep trying to numb my brain for a brief moment through various compulsive time-wasters that get me nowhere.)
Hence I find myself pulling away from people who "know what's best for me", the bootstrap troubleshooters who have a clear idea about what I should do differently to feel better immediately.
2 - I know it's not yet time for me to start a practice working with people in therapy. In part because of the above: I need to be careful not to rush into some grand project simply to avoid remembering that my heart is tender.
3 - That's something else I know: my heart is tender. Let me repeat that: My heart is very tender.
I cry easily. Events of the day move me incredibly. Aggressive actions or words are unbearable. Majestic moments like a sunset or a field of wildflowers are ecstatic. Both bring me to tears. Simple gestures of kindness: a smile, eye contact from a cashier are like sitting in front of a hot fireplace.
I yearn for (and get) calm, loving exchanges with people. During these exchanges I describe what is happening inside, how I'm feeling, how I'm different from yesterday or not, what thoughts are niggling at me.
4 - I am completely spooked by medical environments. Going to the doctor brings up flashes of painful memories. Just hearing a story about a mammogram recently had my heart racing, my palms sweaty and I needed to get a drink of water. An encounter with a young insensitive doctor-in-training at a recent function had me outraged. She was immature and making light of her patients. I almost left the party because of my rage.
5 - I see the one thing I come back to -- in between hikes, talks, massages, therapy, time-wasting and tears -- is the "getting rid of". The golden thread that runs through all of it is the piles of stuff I feel the need to rummage through and slowly scale back trying as much as I can to give things away or take them to charity.
The last step feels impossible so I often recreate new piles then once in a while actually get the courage to take them away.
(When I read the above I find it curious I see the Golden Thread as the rummaging and throwing away. If I were a monk or a priest focused deeply on the invisible aspects of life I would no doubt see the rummaging as just a pretext and the real Thread as the journey my heart is on. In my material, non-monk world I give "stuff" top billing and only once in a while remember the slow subtle transformation of my heart.)
But I see that in cleaning out I am also creating a new house. In a way I'm nesting. My gestures are telling me what I'm doing with my life right now, my "mission" is preparing Tad's house for some future life for myself.
It surprised me to be back at my own house in San Francisco and doing the same thing: a chair I was saving because I thought it might look good in our future house, old motorcycle helmets from a previous relationship, clothes I haven't worn in years all ready to go to charity.
I'm actually finding great pleasure in transforming my two places into something more comfortable, something that meets the needs of my life as it is today.
At the same time it is a lonely process; all of it.
I yearn to have a loving family of origin or tight circle of friends who live nearby, who are calm and supportive, who drop in with meals and mostly sit silently while we go through things together. We laugh as we look at old photos and sometimes tell stories. When I cry they hug me then simply hand me a kleenex. They notice my lawn needs mowing and they stop by to cut it while I'm at the grocery store.
Alas Tad and I are both exiles - the ones that ran away to live our gay lives serenely. And our families are spread here and there busy with their own work-a-day schedules.
The other day I said to someone "I wish I lived in an African village where we help raise each others' children and carry our dead to the cemetery together". Except I want hot showers and good mattresses.
When I read back on all this I see I am wanting the world to do something counter-intuitive: I am wanting people to be close but not too close, to sit in my discomfort with me, to not try to fix things. This is generally not how the world works.
During the holidays I found myself relishing in holding a newborn baby in my arms. I looked into his eyes and felt so peaceful. I also felt Tad's loving gaze on us. I couldn't wait to hand the baby to him who I knew would be squirming in both excitement and trepidation. But there were no Tad arms reaching out to take him from me. All I had was his loving smile in my mind.
The moment was so simple and tender I began to weep in the midst of dozens of people reconnecting, socializing, eating and drinking. My mind was muddled: I both wanted people to see my tears, to bear witness to my sorrowful, tender heart but didn't want anyone to do anything about it.
One friend saw what was happening from across the room and stopped his conversation. He got up from table, crossed over and simply sat down next to me. Without saying a word he just leaned in and pressed his shoulder against mine. No words were exchanged but I felt his deep love and support.
In that moment that was all I needed - a simple loving acknowledgement of this difficult path I'm on, a lonely path, but one that is not out of sight from the rest of the world.
I am really surprised to see -- when I take the time to put words to all of this -- that I AM preparing a future. This lonely path is taking me somewhere. I'm quite sure of that.
Ironically the future is the one thing I am not uncomfortable about. Even if the present is rocky at times I feel deep down inside everything will be fine. This is the great lesson I received from chemotherapy, from leukemia, from fighting with insurers and doctors, from Tad's death and of course from Tad's and my love.
No matter how uncomfortable the present is I am going to be just fine.
I keep waking up at night and this is what races through my mind.
I don't know what I'm doing.
The other day I broke one of Tad's rules and took the cat up to the City without putting her in the loathsome cage that makes her yowl non-stop. Surprisingly she rode calmly on the passenger's seat the entire trip.
Quite proud of my success, I went to pick her up for the ride home a few days later and she made it clear she was having none of it. I tried to remember Tad's instructions: "Get a towel - Show her you are the alpha." A chase scene ensued that finished with me on the neighbor's roof, several scratches on my arms and the silver ring Tad gave me for our commitment ceremony lost.
This final mishap literally brought me to my knees. In sobs I cried out to whoever could hear me: "I don't know what I"m doing. Tad tell me how to do this."
Whatever "this" is.
People tell me: It's a process; the "grief process"; like a manufacturing chain where bits are added station by station till a new product emerges.
People ask me, almost daily: So have you decided what you are going to do? Maybe they too see I don't know what the hell I'm doing…
I believe they ask me this because they want me to have some kind of structure in my life; they assume more structure will mean I'm feeling better, I've "moved on" - (another term I hear a lot). They do it because they care about me no doubt.
There's a more rare category of folks who ask me how I'm "holding up". I imagine this is a grammatical formula they use to recognize that this is not normal life but a struggle - an uphill rock of Sisyphus.
The fact is I don't know what people assume. I don't know what these phrases mean. I do know what my inner life feels like today.
1 - I know there is nothing to fix; nothing to troubleshoot. I can't just do something and this state will magically go away; it's here for a while. (Though god knows I keep trying to numb my brain for a brief moment through various compulsive time-wasters that get me nowhere.)
Hence I find myself pulling away from people who "know what's best for me", the bootstrap troubleshooters who have a clear idea about what I should do differently to feel better immediately.
2 - I know it's not yet time for me to start a practice working with people in therapy. In part because of the above: I need to be careful not to rush into some grand project simply to avoid remembering that my heart is tender.
3 - That's something else I know: my heart is tender. Let me repeat that: My heart is very tender.
I cry easily. Events of the day move me incredibly. Aggressive actions or words are unbearable. Majestic moments like a sunset or a field of wildflowers are ecstatic. Both bring me to tears. Simple gestures of kindness: a smile, eye contact from a cashier are like sitting in front of a hot fireplace.
I yearn for (and get) calm, loving exchanges with people. During these exchanges I describe what is happening inside, how I'm feeling, how I'm different from yesterday or not, what thoughts are niggling at me.
4 - I am completely spooked by medical environments. Going to the doctor brings up flashes of painful memories. Just hearing a story about a mammogram recently had my heart racing, my palms sweaty and I needed to get a drink of water. An encounter with a young insensitive doctor-in-training at a recent function had me outraged. She was immature and making light of her patients. I almost left the party because of my rage.
5 - I see the one thing I come back to -- in between hikes, talks, massages, therapy, time-wasting and tears -- is the "getting rid of". The golden thread that runs through all of it is the piles of stuff I feel the need to rummage through and slowly scale back trying as much as I can to give things away or take them to charity.
The last step feels impossible so I often recreate new piles then once in a while actually get the courage to take them away.
(When I read the above I find it curious I see the Golden Thread as the rummaging and throwing away. If I were a monk or a priest focused deeply on the invisible aspects of life I would no doubt see the rummaging as just a pretext and the real Thread as the journey my heart is on. In my material, non-monk world I give "stuff" top billing and only once in a while remember the slow subtle transformation of my heart.)
But I see that in cleaning out I am also creating a new house. In a way I'm nesting. My gestures are telling me what I'm doing with my life right now, my "mission" is preparing Tad's house for some future life for myself.
It surprised me to be back at my own house in San Francisco and doing the same thing: a chair I was saving because I thought it might look good in our future house, old motorcycle helmets from a previous relationship, clothes I haven't worn in years all ready to go to charity.
I'm actually finding great pleasure in transforming my two places into something more comfortable, something that meets the needs of my life as it is today.
At the same time it is a lonely process; all of it.
I yearn to have a loving family of origin or tight circle of friends who live nearby, who are calm and supportive, who drop in with meals and mostly sit silently while we go through things together. We laugh as we look at old photos and sometimes tell stories. When I cry they hug me then simply hand me a kleenex. They notice my lawn needs mowing and they stop by to cut it while I'm at the grocery store.
Alas Tad and I are both exiles - the ones that ran away to live our gay lives serenely. And our families are spread here and there busy with their own work-a-day schedules.
The other day I said to someone "I wish I lived in an African village where we help raise each others' children and carry our dead to the cemetery together". Except I want hot showers and good mattresses.
When I read back on all this I see I am wanting the world to do something counter-intuitive: I am wanting people to be close but not too close, to sit in my discomfort with me, to not try to fix things. This is generally not how the world works.
During the holidays I found myself relishing in holding a newborn baby in my arms. I looked into his eyes and felt so peaceful. I also felt Tad's loving gaze on us. I couldn't wait to hand the baby to him who I knew would be squirming in both excitement and trepidation. But there were no Tad arms reaching out to take him from me. All I had was his loving smile in my mind.
The moment was so simple and tender I began to weep in the midst of dozens of people reconnecting, socializing, eating and drinking. My mind was muddled: I both wanted people to see my tears, to bear witness to my sorrowful, tender heart but didn't want anyone to do anything about it.
One friend saw what was happening from across the room and stopped his conversation. He got up from table, crossed over and simply sat down next to me. Without saying a word he just leaned in and pressed his shoulder against mine. No words were exchanged but I felt his deep love and support.
In that moment that was all I needed - a simple loving acknowledgement of this difficult path I'm on, a lonely path, but one that is not out of sight from the rest of the world.
I am really surprised to see -- when I take the time to put words to all of this -- that I AM preparing a future. This lonely path is taking me somewhere. I'm quite sure of that.
Ironically the future is the one thing I am not uncomfortable about. Even if the present is rocky at times I feel deep down inside everything will be fine. This is the great lesson I received from chemotherapy, from leukemia, from fighting with insurers and doctors, from Tad's death and of course from Tad's and my love.
No matter how uncomfortable the present is I am going to be just fine.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
learning to forget
The most painful part of my story with Tad is the part where he dies. The part where he goes somewhere -or nowhere- and I don't. The part where he suddenly starts convulsing and struggling then stops. Dead. And all I can do is hold on for dear life, waiting for his pulse to stop and repeating to him how much I love him.
This may seem like an obvious fact - it's the culminating scene of nearly every Hollywood drama ever made - but it's important for me to note. That moment is so deeply and painfully engraved in my brain I find myself yearning to be free of its pull. And yet I also want to hold tight to it.
Separation has never been easy for me.
In love relationships when the other starts to pull away, I hunker down, I cling; start bargaining. Somehow I get to a point where I click into "need" instead of "want" as in "I can't live without this relationship." Animated in essence by the same drivel that filled the pop songs of my younger years, I forget that I am whole and capable when the other person pulls away, that I have a life and an identity of my own.
Needless to say this uncontrollable strategy of clinging usually serves to push the other person further away, bolstering my fear-driven pain.
In my friendships - and because of my bi-cultural status - I tend to have short-term but intense moments with loving friends around the world. Then we separate. I have incredibly fond memories of beautiful moments spent with lifelong friends in New York (John!), Paris (Matthieu!) , London (Fiona!), Dublin (Ross!), Bordeaux (Madina!), Bangkok (Geof!) which end with one of us getting on a train and leaving for an airport.
After those separations my mind does something funny: it tries to keep the relationship going despite the thousands of miles that separate us. I usually talk aloud to the absent-friend in my daily tasks. I make concerted efforts to maintain the connection with phone calls. This phase generally lasts a few days until my brain settles into reality and the fact that we are separated by an ocean becomes palpable.
Or maybe I just do it until the pain of their not responding with a presence, a voice, a smirk, a touch becomes too much for me. Maybe I stop talking to them simply because it hurts too much to continue the charade of magical thinking.
Pain. Pleasure. Pain. Pleasure.
This time it was not two weeks I spent with a friend but five and half years. This time it was not a friend but a lover, a life companion, a person who shared the mystery of ecstasy and the quotidian with me.
And this time instead of returning to my own place on the other side of the ocean - surrounded by my other language, my other circle of friends, very different sights, sounds and tastes - I stayed in Tad's world. I choose to stay there to this day despite my urges to bolt. I reach out and pet the cat he petted every day for eight years (who uncannily behaves a lot like he did). I go out in the garden and weed around the flowers he carefully planted. I sleep in the bed we shared for years, the one where he bled out on the sheets, where I changed his diapers, where he took his last breath - also the one where we made tender love, watched silly TV and read books til the wee hours side by side.
"Honey it's time to go to sleep - turn the light off.",
"But I'm reading" (actually asleep)
"No you're not - I just woke up and your book was on your chest. You were snoring.",
"No I"m reading.",
"Here let me just take the book and put it here on the table. Can I please turn the light off so we can sleep?",
"No, leave it -I'm reading."
I can't call or send emails. I can listen to old voice mails or look at photos but I choose not to - at the moment that hurts too much.
I have found myself looking for notes from him to me - as I rummage through the privacy of his office. I pick up pieces of paper and hope maybe there will be a love note to me, a reminder of his devotion to us. I read all of his diaries hoping I will find declarations of love and pining. But I don't. Alas he mostly used his diaries to write about difficulties he was having, including with me.
A few days ago I found a new diary, just a few pages jotted down on a notebook he'd bought in Paris - narrating parts of our long journey. There on the second page after a long description of the frenetic big city and his overwhelm he wrote: "...but thank God I have my beloved guide, lover, friend Greg."
Thank God.
Guide.
Lover.
Friend.
The truth is we both expected his death and yet we were sideswiped by it so there never was a formal moment of saying good-bye in that tidy way we therapists like to do it.
He was actually quite busy the last few weeks of his life. He worked diligently at finding, printing and piecing into collages photos of the important people in his world. First he glued his family back into the same configuration they were in before the Big Dispersion in 1977 when his mother died.
He pieced together photos of friends from all periods of his life: Arizona, the Navy and San Diego, the SPCA and Santa Cruz. Two days before he died he made a long list of all the people he wanted to invite to a party - this included people who had never met before, who lived in Europe, the midwest, Arizona, California. People who in all reality would never gather in the same room because of time, financial and social constraints. He grouped them all - he brought them all together before he died.
I can only imagine what a glorious gathering that might have been and what a painful separation would have ensued. I would have been talking to invisible people for days.
Mostly I keep communicating with Tad by talking to him in my head. Sometimes I cry and ask him to hold me in his arms (If I use my imagination can almost feel them around me, warm and strong). Most of the time I ask him for advice - admit to him that I don't really know how to do this grief thing very well.
(Today at the gym with my little brother in Iowa I quickly moved to a private corner, behind a small separation wall and curled up to sob to the thump-thump-thump music pounding in my head. But I didn't communicate with him. I didn't ask him to hold me. I just wept then - a few minutes later - went back to my workout.)
Pretty much all psychologists agree this is me simply projecting the voice of Tad I remember. This is me using memory and imagination to recreate something that is no longer there. Yet why does it feel so much bigger than that?
If I stop and listen, if I close my eyes and breathe, I ask him to just talk. His answers are usually quite prompt, almost immediate. They are incredibly loving and kind. Our conversations go something like this.
"Honey I miss you." (I usually start crying at this point) "It's so hard to not have you here anymore"
"I know baby, everything is going to be okay. I'm right here."
"But I don't know what to do sometimes. This is so painful"
"You're doing everything you need to do. Give yourself a break. You know that everything is going to work out fine - don't you?"
"Yes but I forget - I get scared. Then I miss you."
"I know. I feel it. I can feel everything."
"And I'm pissed off at you. You left left me all this stuff. Every time I pick something up it weights a thousand pounds and I don't know what to do with it."
"That was just me being human. I was scared so I accumulated stuff. Get rid of it. It's nothing. Just be happy. Soon you'll be dead too."
"How can I be happy without you here?" - I know as I say/think this that it is in fact not real, that deep down I know it is just my fear talking - "It's so hard without you."
"Well if you just sit still - you can see that you are not without me.You're not without anyone."
Leukemia and death made Tad so wise.
Just sit still he says: Not so easy - my brain is particularly bad at sitting still.
Lately it has been busy reconfigurng Tad's house so that - whether I have it for one month or one decade - it meets my needs and looks less like the place he died. My brain runs with a million different geometries some of which I actually physically attempt in the place. Move that sofa there, this table here. I've moved the bedroom into the office and the office into the bedroom. I have begun imagining ways in which I can mix and match furniture from my place in San Francisco with furniture from his house adding another layer to keep my brain running more laps.
Now single - my brain begins to weave incredible 100 mph scenarios each time a man begins a kind conversation with me. These scenarios almost always include a version where we become a new couple. The fact that I'm in love with another man and really not available does not enter into the brain's equation. The sweet guy at the coffee shop, the man who chat with me at the dog beach - I find myself wondering if it's the start of a new life, a new Greg. My brain completely disregards my gaydar telling me these men are straight.
In short my brain loves to imagine new possibilities - no doubt driven by that painful but unrealistic part of my soul that aches to go back to the way things once were.
Oddly I actually see my brain doing this. I see it running circles around me - like the ten year old boy with ADHD I once worked with who would literally run back and forth across the school courtyard three times between the moment I picked him up in class and the moment we arrived at my office.
But when I stop and take a breath and pronounce the words, "Tad I miss you" when I sit still as he tells me to do, then I understand. The sobs come bubbling up and I remember what I don't want to remember. I remember that I have stopped looking at pictures of his last few months on earth, replacing them with photos of earlier, happier, pre-cancer times. I remember that I am consciously pushing away the flashbacks of his last hour - a hauntingly irresistible tape I play on a loop like the plane flying into tower number two over and over and over again.
Ironically I realize part of feeling less pain, part of getting through this process is to remember less. My capacity to no longer remember the more painful parts somehow helps me move forward.
One of the most ground-breaking experiments in twentieth century psychology developed into a theory called "attachment". The experiment was very simple: a young child and mother are placed in a room for twenty minutes, the mother sitting in a chair, the child playing on the floor. At one point the mother is joined by a stranger. Then after a few more minutes the mother gets up and leaves and the unknown woman remains. Finally a few minutes later the woman gets up and leaves to be replaced by the mother.
The observations that psychologist Mary Ainsworth made in the 1960's from this study have had massive implications on how we see relationships. And as we learn more and more about the brain her discoveries are becoming even more essential.
In short the team of scientists were able to determine several types of reactions in the children - ranging from secure to anxious. These generally reflected the inner state of the mother which would get transferred to the absorbant child.
The ideal outcome for a healthy life is what's known as a "secure" attachment. If the attachment is "secure" - that is it feels safe, predictable, consistent, empathic, connected - the immature parts of the child's brain can actually learn to use the more mature parts of the parent's brain. The more solid person can help the other party learn to modulate their reactions and soothe themselves in times of fear or sorrow.
Long term this kind of positive deep connection can lead to what John Bowlby, the main theorist of attachment theory, called a "secure base" in the world - the recipient of the goodness begins to feel safer in general, more confident, better skilled at going out to confront uncertainty while knowing or remembering there is a safe place to retreat to. This generally results in that person choosing to surround him or herself with more secure, healthy people as well.
I see today that Tad's voice inside my head is that calm secure base. His is the solid "voice of god" the church taught me to listen for as a I child which always seemed to escape me; the voice of loving god.
It is extraordinary to me that a groundbreaking piece of psychology which continues to affect how we think about human behavior is simply a story about the joy of love and pain of separation. But the outcome is clear. If we love someone deeply and consistently, the beloved party is able to hold that love, to remember it, even after our disappearance.
It does not escape me that the most powerful, nurturing activity I engage in weekly is to sit with dying people in a hospice; to proffer them love. I also remind myself regularly of the uncanny fact that I began doing this volunteer work the very day Tad was diagnosed with the leukemia that was to kill him.
I see now that my biggest obstacle to remembering love, to holding onto the secure attachment is actually the material world. I see how difficult it is for my brain to remain strongly connected to the ephemera of love, serenity, and trusting life when the world surrounds me with solid, material things that seem so much more important. Bills, career, politics, injuries, hunger, war - these all seem to pull me away from remembering love.
Sometimes the most soothing thing I can do is to sit down and make a list. It's a very simple list and it starts with "This is who I am." Then I write.
My name is Gregory Rowe
I am 50 years old.
I love a dead man named Tad Crandall.
I am a psychotherapist.
I am bilingual.
I live in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, CA.
The list is always the same. The important part, the part that keeps me solid is the making of the list. The act of taking my brain out of the news headlines and thoughts of bills, out of the pain of Tad's absence and fearful thoughts of the future and simply remember:
This is who I am.
This may seem like an obvious fact - it's the culminating scene of nearly every Hollywood drama ever made - but it's important for me to note. That moment is so deeply and painfully engraved in my brain I find myself yearning to be free of its pull. And yet I also want to hold tight to it.
Separation has never been easy for me.
In love relationships when the other starts to pull away, I hunker down, I cling; start bargaining. Somehow I get to a point where I click into "need" instead of "want" as in "I can't live without this relationship." Animated in essence by the same drivel that filled the pop songs of my younger years, I forget that I am whole and capable when the other person pulls away, that I have a life and an identity of my own.
Needless to say this uncontrollable strategy of clinging usually serves to push the other person further away, bolstering my fear-driven pain.
In my friendships - and because of my bi-cultural status - I tend to have short-term but intense moments with loving friends around the world. Then we separate. I have incredibly fond memories of beautiful moments spent with lifelong friends in New York (John!), Paris (Matthieu!) , London (Fiona!), Dublin (Ross!), Bordeaux (Madina!), Bangkok (Geof!) which end with one of us getting on a train and leaving for an airport.
After those separations my mind does something funny: it tries to keep the relationship going despite the thousands of miles that separate us. I usually talk aloud to the absent-friend in my daily tasks. I make concerted efforts to maintain the connection with phone calls. This phase generally lasts a few days until my brain settles into reality and the fact that we are separated by an ocean becomes palpable.
Or maybe I just do it until the pain of their not responding with a presence, a voice, a smirk, a touch becomes too much for me. Maybe I stop talking to them simply because it hurts too much to continue the charade of magical thinking.
Pain. Pleasure. Pain. Pleasure.
This time it was not two weeks I spent with a friend but five and half years. This time it was not a friend but a lover, a life companion, a person who shared the mystery of ecstasy and the quotidian with me.
And this time instead of returning to my own place on the other side of the ocean - surrounded by my other language, my other circle of friends, very different sights, sounds and tastes - I stayed in Tad's world. I choose to stay there to this day despite my urges to bolt. I reach out and pet the cat he petted every day for eight years (who uncannily behaves a lot like he did). I go out in the garden and weed around the flowers he carefully planted. I sleep in the bed we shared for years, the one where he bled out on the sheets, where I changed his diapers, where he took his last breath - also the one where we made tender love, watched silly TV and read books til the wee hours side by side.
"Honey it's time to go to sleep - turn the light off.",
"But I'm reading" (actually asleep)
"No you're not - I just woke up and your book was on your chest. You were snoring.",
"No I"m reading.",
"Here let me just take the book and put it here on the table. Can I please turn the light off so we can sleep?",
"No, leave it -I'm reading."
I can't call or send emails. I can listen to old voice mails or look at photos but I choose not to - at the moment that hurts too much.
I have found myself looking for notes from him to me - as I rummage through the privacy of his office. I pick up pieces of paper and hope maybe there will be a love note to me, a reminder of his devotion to us. I read all of his diaries hoping I will find declarations of love and pining. But I don't. Alas he mostly used his diaries to write about difficulties he was having, including with me.
A few days ago I found a new diary, just a few pages jotted down on a notebook he'd bought in Paris - narrating parts of our long journey. There on the second page after a long description of the frenetic big city and his overwhelm he wrote: "...but thank God I have my beloved guide, lover, friend Greg."
Thank God.
Guide.
Lover.
Friend.
The truth is we both expected his death and yet we were sideswiped by it so there never was a formal moment of saying good-bye in that tidy way we therapists like to do it.
He was actually quite busy the last few weeks of his life. He worked diligently at finding, printing and piecing into collages photos of the important people in his world. First he glued his family back into the same configuration they were in before the Big Dispersion in 1977 when his mother died.
He pieced together photos of friends from all periods of his life: Arizona, the Navy and San Diego, the SPCA and Santa Cruz. Two days before he died he made a long list of all the people he wanted to invite to a party - this included people who had never met before, who lived in Europe, the midwest, Arizona, California. People who in all reality would never gather in the same room because of time, financial and social constraints. He grouped them all - he brought them all together before he died.
I can only imagine what a glorious gathering that might have been and what a painful separation would have ensued. I would have been talking to invisible people for days.
Mostly I keep communicating with Tad by talking to him in my head. Sometimes I cry and ask him to hold me in his arms (If I use my imagination can almost feel them around me, warm and strong). Most of the time I ask him for advice - admit to him that I don't really know how to do this grief thing very well.
(Today at the gym with my little brother in Iowa I quickly moved to a private corner, behind a small separation wall and curled up to sob to the thump-thump-thump music pounding in my head. But I didn't communicate with him. I didn't ask him to hold me. I just wept then - a few minutes later - went back to my workout.)
Pretty much all psychologists agree this is me simply projecting the voice of Tad I remember. This is me using memory and imagination to recreate something that is no longer there. Yet why does it feel so much bigger than that?
If I stop and listen, if I close my eyes and breathe, I ask him to just talk. His answers are usually quite prompt, almost immediate. They are incredibly loving and kind. Our conversations go something like this.
"Honey I miss you." (I usually start crying at this point) "It's so hard to not have you here anymore"
"I know baby, everything is going to be okay. I'm right here."
"But I don't know what to do sometimes. This is so painful"
"You're doing everything you need to do. Give yourself a break. You know that everything is going to work out fine - don't you?"
"Yes but I forget - I get scared. Then I miss you."
"I know. I feel it. I can feel everything."
"And I'm pissed off at you. You left left me all this stuff. Every time I pick something up it weights a thousand pounds and I don't know what to do with it."
"That was just me being human. I was scared so I accumulated stuff. Get rid of it. It's nothing. Just be happy. Soon you'll be dead too."
"How can I be happy without you here?" - I know as I say/think this that it is in fact not real, that deep down I know it is just my fear talking - "It's so hard without you."
"Well if you just sit still - you can see that you are not without me.You're not without anyone."
Leukemia and death made Tad so wise.
Just sit still he says: Not so easy - my brain is particularly bad at sitting still.
Lately it has been busy reconfigurng Tad's house so that - whether I have it for one month or one decade - it meets my needs and looks less like the place he died. My brain runs with a million different geometries some of which I actually physically attempt in the place. Move that sofa there, this table here. I've moved the bedroom into the office and the office into the bedroom. I have begun imagining ways in which I can mix and match furniture from my place in San Francisco with furniture from his house adding another layer to keep my brain running more laps.
Now single - my brain begins to weave incredible 100 mph scenarios each time a man begins a kind conversation with me. These scenarios almost always include a version where we become a new couple. The fact that I'm in love with another man and really not available does not enter into the brain's equation. The sweet guy at the coffee shop, the man who chat with me at the dog beach - I find myself wondering if it's the start of a new life, a new Greg. My brain completely disregards my gaydar telling me these men are straight.
In short my brain loves to imagine new possibilities - no doubt driven by that painful but unrealistic part of my soul that aches to go back to the way things once were.
Oddly I actually see my brain doing this. I see it running circles around me - like the ten year old boy with ADHD I once worked with who would literally run back and forth across the school courtyard three times between the moment I picked him up in class and the moment we arrived at my office.
But when I stop and take a breath and pronounce the words, "Tad I miss you" when I sit still as he tells me to do, then I understand. The sobs come bubbling up and I remember what I don't want to remember. I remember that I have stopped looking at pictures of his last few months on earth, replacing them with photos of earlier, happier, pre-cancer times. I remember that I am consciously pushing away the flashbacks of his last hour - a hauntingly irresistible tape I play on a loop like the plane flying into tower number two over and over and over again.
Ironically I realize part of feeling less pain, part of getting through this process is to remember less. My capacity to no longer remember the more painful parts somehow helps me move forward.
One of the most ground-breaking experiments in twentieth century psychology developed into a theory called "attachment". The experiment was very simple: a young child and mother are placed in a room for twenty minutes, the mother sitting in a chair, the child playing on the floor. At one point the mother is joined by a stranger. Then after a few more minutes the mother gets up and leaves and the unknown woman remains. Finally a few minutes later the woman gets up and leaves to be replaced by the mother.
The observations that psychologist Mary Ainsworth made in the 1960's from this study have had massive implications on how we see relationships. And as we learn more and more about the brain her discoveries are becoming even more essential.
In short the team of scientists were able to determine several types of reactions in the children - ranging from secure to anxious. These generally reflected the inner state of the mother which would get transferred to the absorbant child.
The ideal outcome for a healthy life is what's known as a "secure" attachment. If the attachment is "secure" - that is it feels safe, predictable, consistent, empathic, connected - the immature parts of the child's brain can actually learn to use the more mature parts of the parent's brain. The more solid person can help the other party learn to modulate their reactions and soothe themselves in times of fear or sorrow.
Long term this kind of positive deep connection can lead to what John Bowlby, the main theorist of attachment theory, called a "secure base" in the world - the recipient of the goodness begins to feel safer in general, more confident, better skilled at going out to confront uncertainty while knowing or remembering there is a safe place to retreat to. This generally results in that person choosing to surround him or herself with more secure, healthy people as well.
I see today that Tad's voice inside my head is that calm secure base. His is the solid "voice of god" the church taught me to listen for as a I child which always seemed to escape me; the voice of loving god.
It is extraordinary to me that a groundbreaking piece of psychology which continues to affect how we think about human behavior is simply a story about the joy of love and pain of separation. But the outcome is clear. If we love someone deeply and consistently, the beloved party is able to hold that love, to remember it, even after our disappearance.
It does not escape me that the most powerful, nurturing activity I engage in weekly is to sit with dying people in a hospice; to proffer them love. I also remind myself regularly of the uncanny fact that I began doing this volunteer work the very day Tad was diagnosed with the leukemia that was to kill him.
I see now that my biggest obstacle to remembering love, to holding onto the secure attachment is actually the material world. I see how difficult it is for my brain to remain strongly connected to the ephemera of love, serenity, and trusting life when the world surrounds me with solid, material things that seem so much more important. Bills, career, politics, injuries, hunger, war - these all seem to pull me away from remembering love.
Sometimes the most soothing thing I can do is to sit down and make a list. It's a very simple list and it starts with "This is who I am." Then I write.
My name is Gregory Rowe
I am 50 years old.
I love a dead man named Tad Crandall.
I am a psychotherapist.
I am bilingual.
I live in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, CA.
The list is always the same. The important part, the part that keeps me solid is the making of the list. The act of taking my brain out of the news headlines and thoughts of bills, out of the pain of Tad's absence and fearful thoughts of the future and simply remember:
This is who I am.
Monday, December 5, 2011
subsiding pain
Something shifted for me during my trip to France; something profound and healing. As my caring friend John said, "It's like the dove has returned with an olive branch."
It took me a moment to remember the full Noah story since I was focused on the more popular symbol of peace and end of war: After a long time in the dark hull of the ark, being tossed around on waves, Noah sent out a dove that returned with a bough from an olive tree. He and his family knew that land had been found, that they were within bird's flight of a new life.
I spent my last day in France in Paris, an afternoon and evening with good friends from San Francisco, Dublin, and Bordeaux. It was nothing extraordinary: we gathered first in the apartment for drinks and chatter around a wood fire in the marble fireplace (no other source of heat in the chilly flat!) then went out for dinner in a nearby cozy Moroccan restaurant we had spotted that day.
While eating my yummy tagine of lamb and dried fruit, while bantering back and forth about silly things and our life stories a door opened. I just got a glimpse of life on the other side but it definitely opened. I didn't see where I might be living, with whom or how. But I saw a feeling, an atmosphere. It basically said "You've had a full life. The world is huge and full of possibilities. You can be whomever you want to be. " And scribbled in between those lines was a bigger message: "There is hope for you."
This is curious to me since I feel as if I have never been without hope. I have known ever since Tad's diagnosis that without him I will be okay. I will have a full life, a career one day, friends. Maybe I'll even find someone who will want to have a child with me, the child Tad and I couldn't have but wanted so dearly. But abstract phenomena like hope -- along with other messy stuff like love, awareness and anxiety -- seem to come and go in multiple layers, "like peeling an onion" as a friend says.
I see now that I probably could not have opened the door that last night in Paris if I had not had the first nearly three weeks in the southern town of Bordeaux where I mostly continued the same pace I had had in Santa Cruz.
I stayed predominantly anchored to my friend Madina's stone house in a residential neighborhood breaking my home-boundedness with short jaunts to the market, to the school to pick up Ella her daughter, to the hardware store. For some reason I found incredible comfort in fixing little things around my dear friend's house - a form of caregiving I suppose.
Breakfasts with fresh bread, salty butter and homemade jam, long hot baths with eucalyptus oil, bicycle rides around the bumpy cobbled streets, short trips to the station to pick up friends, tea with Madina's parents in the big house in St Emilion: this was the busy schedule of my stay in the Southwest.
When I look back I see that as the days went by my tears became less and less abundant.
During the flight over I cried probably a dozen times (I've learned to do it now in a way that looks almost as if I've just gone into a short meditation by placing my hand on my forehead just so). I so wanted Tad to be on this trip with me. I wanted it to be as beautiful as my last trip to France, the one where I introduced him to my circles there, where I showed him my old house, where we played dodge ball in the pool with my godson and his brothers.
Each time I saw someone new I wept again; something about being held in their arms, about Tad not being there in our arms, something about the physical presence suddenly making concrete the invisible love that binds us.
Around day four or five Madina and I went down to the river on a full moon and said good-bye yet again to Tad as we tossed some of his ashes into the churning muddy Garonne River right in front of his favorite fountain. Like the night he fell in love with that fountain, there were people sitting around talking, drinking, singing, enjoying the last evenings before the arrival of the cold winter temperatures. Like that night with Tad Madina and I got back on our bikes and rode home through the old quarter past the illuminated Gothic churches and the medieval city gates - only this time in silence and with tears in our eyes.
One morning I sat on the sofa in the living room, crying softly, yearning for Tad to be there when little Ella came downstairs. That whole week for reasons no doctor could explain this lively six year old had been having stomach cramps, some strong enough to send her home from school. She looked up at me and said "Gregory pourquoi tu pleures?" I told her I was crying because I missed Tad. She asked me this with the same tone of voice used two years earlier when she would wake Tad and me each morning by climbing into bed with us and barrage us with "why" questions.
The most memorable morning we awoke with her riding Tad's torso like a pony and him half asleep mumbling to me: "Greg - what's she saying?" As her perky energy slowly pulled me out of my slumber I looked up at her smiling face and focused on the words coming out of her mouth: "She wants to know why you have such a fat stomach?" ("Tad! Tad! Pourquoi t'as un si gros ventre?"). Needless to say Tad awakened immediately, fighting back with tickles to regain his dignity.
That evening while her mother bathed Ella she shared that she had seen me crying on the sofa. It seems my tears helped her to burst wide open with her own sorrow and tell her mother how much she misses having daddy and her in the same house together. How even though it's been two years she doesn't want to live like this; she wants things to go back to the way they were; back to life before separation.
From the mouths of babes....
Looking back I see another moment that helped push back the sorrow quite unexpectedly was a phrase from Matthieu my host in Paris whom I have known since he was fourteen years old. Now a 43 year old gerontologist he has been around quite a few folks living their last days on earth. His simple idea ran counter to everything I had thought about death: "Sometimes it's just not a good idea for family members to be there when a person dies."
This seemed anathema to my old fighting spirit born from the untimely deaths of so many friends in the 1980's: being with someone dying was ALWAYS better than not. In my volunteer gig at the hospice it seems we all more or less secretly hope we will be present when one of our beloved residents stops breathing. ( The likelihood of being there that one second when everything changes is statistically quite low. There are after all 86,400 seconds in just one given day). Plus I had begun sitting with dying people as a form of service the very day Tad got diagnosed with leukemia. Surely that was some kind of sign? Or was that just a coincidence?
I asked Matthieu what he meant. He explained that even though we all imagine death to be beautiful and serene most people's aren't very pretty. They're messy and painful, especially so for those who love the person. "It's like birth," he said. "We have this idea it's always a great thing but it can actually be really messy and bloody and traumatic."
I am aware now how much those words helped. The last six months of Tad's life were a constant struggle. The last ten minutes watching him fight to breathe were excruciating for me - even though both of our two friends present described it as peaceful moment.
I see today that I have not just been carrying immense sorrow at having lost the person I feel closest to. I am also the bearer of a certain level of post-traumatic stress disorder, what used to be called "shell shock" when soldiers came home from war in a stunned, apathetic state. The flashbacks, the numbness, the tears were all part of the complex package I carried.
Funny...I used the past tense. I think this is indeed the part that lifted. I am aware of it because it's no longer there.
While at Matthieu's the temperature plummeted quite suddenly and I was in the market for a wool cap to cover my ears. I stepped into a local Monoprix only to discover they were selling a knock-off version of a jacket I had lost a good ten years previously. Since buying my first for a reasonable price I discovered the style had become quite trendy and the price had gone up astronomically. Hence after losing it I gave up on ever having one again. In fact when it disappeared my boyfriend at the time seemed to have been the last person wearing it. Although he apologized generously I still held a petty grudge.
I came home from the store without a wool cap but instead with a new quilted jacket, much like the one I had worn so many years ago. When I arrived at the flat I called out to Matthieu to come see my new purchase. I was actually having a playful, retail-therapy moment, my first since Tad's death. Matthieu walked into the living room and immediately said, "Looks great. Oh that reminds me I still have that old blue quilted jacket of yours. It's a bit worn out but I'll bring it back the next time we go to the house in the country."
Not only did it delight me to discover that all these years I had been wrong about the jacket's whereabouts, but it was comforting to know that it had always been in Matthieu's possession. The coat dated back a good twenty years - fourteen more than my time with Tad. Its near re-appearance was a gentle reminder of the continuity of things, the coherence of my world even when it's scattered across two continents and two decades.
Today I am back in Tad's house in Santa Cruz. It feels more and more like my house. I am laying down my arms, resting from the weary battle. I am not pulled into deep sorrow when I see our yard, our bed, our cat, our photos. Instead I find myself smiling more, singing aloud even. And in the smiles I feel Tad's love.
That night in the bathtub when Ella wept and finally blurted out her deep yearning to see her parents back together, her mother had the wisdom to lovingly tell her she and Ella's dad would not get back together. I imagine Madina knew such words would not be easy for little Ella's ears yet in the long run this was the healthy response, one steeped in reality.
I see how --driven by my old childhood desire to protect the ones I love from pain at all cost-- I fought very hard by Tad's side to help him survive leukemia. I also see how I somehow fantasized I could keep him from suffering if I just fought hard enough. By handily transforming my own neurotic ball-and-chain into a sword and shield I mistakenly believed I could relieve him of any pain. And if he did suffer then it was my fault for not working hard enough.
I also failed to notice that my "weapons" do not entirely protect me from harm either.
I hope one day my beloved -whoever that may be- will hold me in his arms while I breathe my last breath the way I proudly did with the beautiful and valiant Tad Crandall. And already I pray that the inevitable pain he will suffer from this last act of love does not last too long.
It took me a moment to remember the full Noah story since I was focused on the more popular symbol of peace and end of war: After a long time in the dark hull of the ark, being tossed around on waves, Noah sent out a dove that returned with a bough from an olive tree. He and his family knew that land had been found, that they were within bird's flight of a new life.
I spent my last day in France in Paris, an afternoon and evening with good friends from San Francisco, Dublin, and Bordeaux. It was nothing extraordinary: we gathered first in the apartment for drinks and chatter around a wood fire in the marble fireplace (no other source of heat in the chilly flat!) then went out for dinner in a nearby cozy Moroccan restaurant we had spotted that day.
While eating my yummy tagine of lamb and dried fruit, while bantering back and forth about silly things and our life stories a door opened. I just got a glimpse of life on the other side but it definitely opened. I didn't see where I might be living, with whom or how. But I saw a feeling, an atmosphere. It basically said "You've had a full life. The world is huge and full of possibilities. You can be whomever you want to be. " And scribbled in between those lines was a bigger message: "There is hope for you."
This is curious to me since I feel as if I have never been without hope. I have known ever since Tad's diagnosis that without him I will be okay. I will have a full life, a career one day, friends. Maybe I'll even find someone who will want to have a child with me, the child Tad and I couldn't have but wanted so dearly. But abstract phenomena like hope -- along with other messy stuff like love, awareness and anxiety -- seem to come and go in multiple layers, "like peeling an onion" as a friend says.
I see now that I probably could not have opened the door that last night in Paris if I had not had the first nearly three weeks in the southern town of Bordeaux where I mostly continued the same pace I had had in Santa Cruz.
I stayed predominantly anchored to my friend Madina's stone house in a residential neighborhood breaking my home-boundedness with short jaunts to the market, to the school to pick up Ella her daughter, to the hardware store. For some reason I found incredible comfort in fixing little things around my dear friend's house - a form of caregiving I suppose.
Breakfasts with fresh bread, salty butter and homemade jam, long hot baths with eucalyptus oil, bicycle rides around the bumpy cobbled streets, short trips to the station to pick up friends, tea with Madina's parents in the big house in St Emilion: this was the busy schedule of my stay in the Southwest.
When I look back I see that as the days went by my tears became less and less abundant.
During the flight over I cried probably a dozen times (I've learned to do it now in a way that looks almost as if I've just gone into a short meditation by placing my hand on my forehead just so). I so wanted Tad to be on this trip with me. I wanted it to be as beautiful as my last trip to France, the one where I introduced him to my circles there, where I showed him my old house, where we played dodge ball in the pool with my godson and his brothers.
Each time I saw someone new I wept again; something about being held in their arms, about Tad not being there in our arms, something about the physical presence suddenly making concrete the invisible love that binds us.
Around day four or five Madina and I went down to the river on a full moon and said good-bye yet again to Tad as we tossed some of his ashes into the churning muddy Garonne River right in front of his favorite fountain. Like the night he fell in love with that fountain, there were people sitting around talking, drinking, singing, enjoying the last evenings before the arrival of the cold winter temperatures. Like that night with Tad Madina and I got back on our bikes and rode home through the old quarter past the illuminated Gothic churches and the medieval city gates - only this time in silence and with tears in our eyes.
One morning I sat on the sofa in the living room, crying softly, yearning for Tad to be there when little Ella came downstairs. That whole week for reasons no doctor could explain this lively six year old had been having stomach cramps, some strong enough to send her home from school. She looked up at me and said "Gregory pourquoi tu pleures?" I told her I was crying because I missed Tad. She asked me this with the same tone of voice used two years earlier when she would wake Tad and me each morning by climbing into bed with us and barrage us with "why" questions.
The most memorable morning we awoke with her riding Tad's torso like a pony and him half asleep mumbling to me: "Greg - what's she saying?" As her perky energy slowly pulled me out of my slumber I looked up at her smiling face and focused on the words coming out of her mouth: "She wants to know why you have such a fat stomach?" ("Tad! Tad! Pourquoi t'as un si gros ventre?"). Needless to say Tad awakened immediately, fighting back with tickles to regain his dignity.
That evening while her mother bathed Ella she shared that she had seen me crying on the sofa. It seems my tears helped her to burst wide open with her own sorrow and tell her mother how much she misses having daddy and her in the same house together. How even though it's been two years she doesn't want to live like this; she wants things to go back to the way they were; back to life before separation.
From the mouths of babes....
Looking back I see another moment that helped push back the sorrow quite unexpectedly was a phrase from Matthieu my host in Paris whom I have known since he was fourteen years old. Now a 43 year old gerontologist he has been around quite a few folks living their last days on earth. His simple idea ran counter to everything I had thought about death: "Sometimes it's just not a good idea for family members to be there when a person dies."
This seemed anathema to my old fighting spirit born from the untimely deaths of so many friends in the 1980's: being with someone dying was ALWAYS better than not. In my volunteer gig at the hospice it seems we all more or less secretly hope we will be present when one of our beloved residents stops breathing. ( The likelihood of being there that one second when everything changes is statistically quite low. There are after all 86,400 seconds in just one given day). Plus I had begun sitting with dying people as a form of service the very day Tad got diagnosed with leukemia. Surely that was some kind of sign? Or was that just a coincidence?
I asked Matthieu what he meant. He explained that even though we all imagine death to be beautiful and serene most people's aren't very pretty. They're messy and painful, especially so for those who love the person. "It's like birth," he said. "We have this idea it's always a great thing but it can actually be really messy and bloody and traumatic."
I am aware now how much those words helped. The last six months of Tad's life were a constant struggle. The last ten minutes watching him fight to breathe were excruciating for me - even though both of our two friends present described it as peaceful moment.
I see today that I have not just been carrying immense sorrow at having lost the person I feel closest to. I am also the bearer of a certain level of post-traumatic stress disorder, what used to be called "shell shock" when soldiers came home from war in a stunned, apathetic state. The flashbacks, the numbness, the tears were all part of the complex package I carried.
Funny...I used the past tense. I think this is indeed the part that lifted. I am aware of it because it's no longer there.
While at Matthieu's the temperature plummeted quite suddenly and I was in the market for a wool cap to cover my ears. I stepped into a local Monoprix only to discover they were selling a knock-off version of a jacket I had lost a good ten years previously. Since buying my first for a reasonable price I discovered the style had become quite trendy and the price had gone up astronomically. Hence after losing it I gave up on ever having one again. In fact when it disappeared my boyfriend at the time seemed to have been the last person wearing it. Although he apologized generously I still held a petty grudge.
I came home from the store without a wool cap but instead with a new quilted jacket, much like the one I had worn so many years ago. When I arrived at the flat I called out to Matthieu to come see my new purchase. I was actually having a playful, retail-therapy moment, my first since Tad's death. Matthieu walked into the living room and immediately said, "Looks great. Oh that reminds me I still have that old blue quilted jacket of yours. It's a bit worn out but I'll bring it back the next time we go to the house in the country."
Not only did it delight me to discover that all these years I had been wrong about the jacket's whereabouts, but it was comforting to know that it had always been in Matthieu's possession. The coat dated back a good twenty years - fourteen more than my time with Tad. Its near re-appearance was a gentle reminder of the continuity of things, the coherence of my world even when it's scattered across two continents and two decades.
Today I am back in Tad's house in Santa Cruz. It feels more and more like my house. I am laying down my arms, resting from the weary battle. I am not pulled into deep sorrow when I see our yard, our bed, our cat, our photos. Instead I find myself smiling more, singing aloud even. And in the smiles I feel Tad's love.
That night in the bathtub when Ella wept and finally blurted out her deep yearning to see her parents back together, her mother had the wisdom to lovingly tell her she and Ella's dad would not get back together. I imagine Madina knew such words would not be easy for little Ella's ears yet in the long run this was the healthy response, one steeped in reality.
I see how --driven by my old childhood desire to protect the ones I love from pain at all cost-- I fought very hard by Tad's side to help him survive leukemia. I also see how I somehow fantasized I could keep him from suffering if I just fought hard enough. By handily transforming my own neurotic ball-and-chain into a sword and shield I mistakenly believed I could relieve him of any pain. And if he did suffer then it was my fault for not working hard enough.
I also failed to notice that my "weapons" do not entirely protect me from harm either.
I hope one day my beloved -whoever that may be- will hold me in his arms while I breathe my last breath the way I proudly did with the beautiful and valiant Tad Crandall. And already I pray that the inevitable pain he will suffer from this last act of love does not last too long.
Friday, November 25, 2011
the power of imagination
I reach my leg under the little formica table and say his name to nudge Tad awake. Outside in the drizzle is a stunning 17th century farmhouse on a hill surrounded by handsome Cypress pines. He wakes from his slumber, turns his head and looks up at me from under the rim of his red baseball cap with those big green eyes of his. (I told him not to wear baseball caps in France because he looks like a tourist). He's smirking because he knows I've woken him up to show him yet another pretty house. He often gets tired of my distractability and shows his need to pull away and recharge his batteries by nodding off. This time he reaches his hand across and touches mine, with just a smile, he rubs his ankle up against mine out of the view of the other passengers as a way to say, "Yes dear. I love you. Now let me sleep." Then he lies his head back down. A big smile comes to my face followed seconds later by a slow gentle cry that brings fat tears tumbling down my face which I cover with my hand so other passengers won't notice.
The reality is: Tad is not here; he is not on this trip with me. The reality is: Tad is dead. And the power of my imagination is both the incredible joy it brings me by creating pleasurable images and the terrible sorrow it unearths when it reminds me that it is -in and of itself- just a mental image setting off bodily sensations.
(If I use my imagination just right I can even feel the particular texture of Tad's hands.)
As I rush across the French countryside in a long metal train I find myself wondering if those seventeen months of cancer even existed. Maybe I just dreamt them too. The long nights in hospitals, waking every time the nurse walks in to check his vitals, the constant struggle to to see if I can understand what the doctors "really" mean behind their multiple masks. Did I just make up that fight, those phone calls, the hollering matches, the tearful nights holding each other?
Was this too just my imagination?
What's clear is that I did not dream the part of the story where the leukemia finally killed Tad. I did not dream the day he stopped breathing in my arms after suffocating on his own fluids. I did not dream the view of his cardboard box coffin sliding into the square chamber of the cremation furnace. That I know is not my imagination.
He is dead and I am not. Can someone please give me the instruction manual for loving a dead man? Because I don't know how to do this.
I find myself wondering when it will stop. When will I get back to wanting to be in love with a live person? I guess I am already there - I want to be in love with a live Tad. He's the one who is unavailable - so to speak.
If I were to give a name to this state it would be "bittersweet" - every memory is like a sweet dark chocolate that I get to relish in then suddenly I hit the bitter, hard center of reality and it becomes unpleasant.
* * * * * * * * * * *
This is not my first dance with death; far from it.
I saw my first cadaver at age 12 when I went to see my cousin lying in a casket; shot dead during a hunting accident. I saw my grandfather's corpse before I turned 18.
But the long, ongoing dance with death similar to Tad's was when I was in my early thirties and was told I had a medical condition that could be controlled temporarily but never healed. It would only get worse and for years smart doctors told me I needed to prepare for my imminent death.
Then some brilliant team of scientists came along and discovered a drug that saved my life. It's pretty clear to me that none of the men in white saw it coming given the seriousness with which they conveyed their concern that I prepare my family and friends for my death.
Now that I am back in France I see how being here helped me deal with the reality of death.
When I lived here in Bordeaux I was restoring a 17th century farm house. One of my pleasures as a cerebral break from the exhausting physical work was to come into the city and do research on the history of the house and the families who had lived there.
The notion that this place had been there hundreds of years before me and the thick stone walls would probably be there many years after me somehow made my loss and fear of loss much more bearable. The old house with its multiple owners whose names populated the "cadastre" at the local archives put me and my own life in perspective. History is just a long story about dead people.
I grew attached to that house and had romantic images of being buried in the park out near the tiny 18th century chapel.
During this visit my sweet friend John and I went back to that house - now a bed and breakfast slash winery. I walked from room to room noticing the floor slats I had replaced, the sink I had installed, the paint I had slathered on the walls. I walked around remembering names and faces of people who had come and gone in those rooms.
At one point John intimated that this visit might make me uncomfortable (it is indeed a rather enviable place to have lived).
But the truth is I didn't feel any painful urges tugging at my heart as I walked through this old rambling place. It was a big part of my life. I shared it with someone dear to me and now neither is a part of my life and I feel quite at peace with that. It's that simple.
I wonder what it will take for me to get to a phase in my life when I can say to myself "Tad Crandall you were a big part of my life but you are no longer and I feel at peace with that. It's that simple."
* * * * * * * * * * *
While here a young Frenchman appeared to flirt with me in a way that stirred something. He was sweet and sexy and seemed smart (one or the other alone would be insufficient to prick my ears). As we began to get to know one another I suddenly began to feel nauseous. Without notice I became aware I needed to get to a toilet quickly. I proceeded to vomit profusely.
If I am to believe many Hollywood movies this vomiting was caused by severe emotion but according to my GP I simply developed a stomach flu, what the French call "une gastro". Needless to say it brought an end to any flirting. I took the prescribed medication, went to bed (alone) and slept for a long time.
When I woke up this morning I found myself thinking: "Tad knew every one of my physical and psychological quirks. How will I ever be able to meet someone who will accept me for who I am? There's no possible way I'll ever be able to invite someone new into my life."
Then I began to say aloud to the stone walls words that surprised even me: "Tad I can't believe you left me alone? Why did you have to go and leave me here? I'm really pissed off at you for dying!"
I had never felt anger about Tad's death before and I immediately thought of Kubler-Ross and her silly stages and how I was actually having one of them; finally an experience that someone had documented as normal.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Driving back from the airport where I've just dropped off Madina it occurs to me that most of life is about memory.
My capacity to drive a manual car after ten years of driving an automatic, to find my way around the unmarked Bordeaux suburbs, to remember how to negotiate a round-about at high speeds during rush hour - these are all based on memory.
How is it that some memories are so painful and others so warm?
The Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says that one of the reasons it is hard for us to measure happiness is that we confuse our feelings about our life with our feelings about our memories of our life.
And what worse his work has shown how something that has the potential to be a really good memory turns into a bad one when it has a less-than-happy ending such as a peaceful vacation that finishes with a harsh dispute over the hotel bill.
If this is true then we might surmise that most relationships will become a painful memory - because they will end in unwanted separation. It's a wonder we allow ourselves to have children, to open up to other humans, to find a mate!
It would no doubt make my memories happier if I believed that Tad's departure from this earth was the immediate delivery of his soul into the arms of a loving god. It would allow me to walk around saying how happy I am for him; how lucky he is to be with god. But I can't. I simply don't know that to be true.
What I do know (or at least feel very strongly) is that this painful sorrow, this revisiting of memories, this conjuring of loving images, this talking aloud to a dead man is all part of our love story. It is all part and parcel of the beautiful encounter between Tad Crandall and Greg Rowe.
I can't have the beauty and love without the pain.
* * * * * * * * * * *
PS When I put the new SIM card in my French phone I was served up a series of beautiful text messages from Tad so excited to be sharing his arrival first in Florence, then Rome, and finally Venice where he compared the throngs of tourists to locusts. These were from 2009 where we split paths so I could go back to the US. With the magic of telecommunication competition, the new company kicked in and all the messages disappeared. I stood in the phone store smiling even though it stung. "The temporary nature of life," I thought.
The reality is: Tad is not here; he is not on this trip with me. The reality is: Tad is dead. And the power of my imagination is both the incredible joy it brings me by creating pleasurable images and the terrible sorrow it unearths when it reminds me that it is -in and of itself- just a mental image setting off bodily sensations.
(If I use my imagination just right I can even feel the particular texture of Tad's hands.)
As I rush across the French countryside in a long metal train I find myself wondering if those seventeen months of cancer even existed. Maybe I just dreamt them too. The long nights in hospitals, waking every time the nurse walks in to check his vitals, the constant struggle to to see if I can understand what the doctors "really" mean behind their multiple masks. Did I just make up that fight, those phone calls, the hollering matches, the tearful nights holding each other?
Was this too just my imagination?
What's clear is that I did not dream the part of the story where the leukemia finally killed Tad. I did not dream the day he stopped breathing in my arms after suffocating on his own fluids. I did not dream the view of his cardboard box coffin sliding into the square chamber of the cremation furnace. That I know is not my imagination.
He is dead and I am not. Can someone please give me the instruction manual for loving a dead man? Because I don't know how to do this.
I find myself wondering when it will stop. When will I get back to wanting to be in love with a live person? I guess I am already there - I want to be in love with a live Tad. He's the one who is unavailable - so to speak.
If I were to give a name to this state it would be "bittersweet" - every memory is like a sweet dark chocolate that I get to relish in then suddenly I hit the bitter, hard center of reality and it becomes unpleasant.
* * * * * * * * * * *
This is not my first dance with death; far from it.
I saw my first cadaver at age 12 when I went to see my cousin lying in a casket; shot dead during a hunting accident. I saw my grandfather's corpse before I turned 18.
But the long, ongoing dance with death similar to Tad's was when I was in my early thirties and was told I had a medical condition that could be controlled temporarily but never healed. It would only get worse and for years smart doctors told me I needed to prepare for my imminent death.
Then some brilliant team of scientists came along and discovered a drug that saved my life. It's pretty clear to me that none of the men in white saw it coming given the seriousness with which they conveyed their concern that I prepare my family and friends for my death.
Now that I am back in France I see how being here helped me deal with the reality of death.
When I lived here in Bordeaux I was restoring a 17th century farm house. One of my pleasures as a cerebral break from the exhausting physical work was to come into the city and do research on the history of the house and the families who had lived there.
The notion that this place had been there hundreds of years before me and the thick stone walls would probably be there many years after me somehow made my loss and fear of loss much more bearable. The old house with its multiple owners whose names populated the "cadastre" at the local archives put me and my own life in perspective. History is just a long story about dead people.
I grew attached to that house and had romantic images of being buried in the park out near the tiny 18th century chapel.
During this visit my sweet friend John and I went back to that house - now a bed and breakfast slash winery. I walked from room to room noticing the floor slats I had replaced, the sink I had installed, the paint I had slathered on the walls. I walked around remembering names and faces of people who had come and gone in those rooms.
At one point John intimated that this visit might make me uncomfortable (it is indeed a rather enviable place to have lived).
But the truth is I didn't feel any painful urges tugging at my heart as I walked through this old rambling place. It was a big part of my life. I shared it with someone dear to me and now neither is a part of my life and I feel quite at peace with that. It's that simple.
I wonder what it will take for me to get to a phase in my life when I can say to myself "Tad Crandall you were a big part of my life but you are no longer and I feel at peace with that. It's that simple."
* * * * * * * * * * *
While here a young Frenchman appeared to flirt with me in a way that stirred something. He was sweet and sexy and seemed smart (one or the other alone would be insufficient to prick my ears). As we began to get to know one another I suddenly began to feel nauseous. Without notice I became aware I needed to get to a toilet quickly. I proceeded to vomit profusely.
If I am to believe many Hollywood movies this vomiting was caused by severe emotion but according to my GP I simply developed a stomach flu, what the French call "une gastro". Needless to say it brought an end to any flirting. I took the prescribed medication, went to bed (alone) and slept for a long time.
When I woke up this morning I found myself thinking: "Tad knew every one of my physical and psychological quirks. How will I ever be able to meet someone who will accept me for who I am? There's no possible way I'll ever be able to invite someone new into my life."
Then I began to say aloud to the stone walls words that surprised even me: "Tad I can't believe you left me alone? Why did you have to go and leave me here? I'm really pissed off at you for dying!"
I had never felt anger about Tad's death before and I immediately thought of Kubler-Ross and her silly stages and how I was actually having one of them; finally an experience that someone had documented as normal.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Driving back from the airport where I've just dropped off Madina it occurs to me that most of life is about memory.
My capacity to drive a manual car after ten years of driving an automatic, to find my way around the unmarked Bordeaux suburbs, to remember how to negotiate a round-about at high speeds during rush hour - these are all based on memory.
How is it that some memories are so painful and others so warm?
The Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says that one of the reasons it is hard for us to measure happiness is that we confuse our feelings about our life with our feelings about our memories of our life.
And what worse his work has shown how something that has the potential to be a really good memory turns into a bad one when it has a less-than-happy ending such as a peaceful vacation that finishes with a harsh dispute over the hotel bill.
If this is true then we might surmise that most relationships will become a painful memory - because they will end in unwanted separation. It's a wonder we allow ourselves to have children, to open up to other humans, to find a mate!
It would no doubt make my memories happier if I believed that Tad's departure from this earth was the immediate delivery of his soul into the arms of a loving god. It would allow me to walk around saying how happy I am for him; how lucky he is to be with god. But I can't. I simply don't know that to be true.
What I do know (or at least feel very strongly) is that this painful sorrow, this revisiting of memories, this conjuring of loving images, this talking aloud to a dead man is all part of our love story. It is all part and parcel of the beautiful encounter between Tad Crandall and Greg Rowe.
I can't have the beauty and love without the pain.
* * * * * * * * * * *
PS When I put the new SIM card in my French phone I was served up a series of beautiful text messages from Tad so excited to be sharing his arrival first in Florence, then Rome, and finally Venice where he compared the throngs of tourists to locusts. These were from 2009 where we split paths so I could go back to the US. With the magic of telecommunication competition, the new company kicked in and all the messages disappeared. I stood in the phone store smiling even though it stung. "The temporary nature of life," I thought.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
recalculating
The gut-wrenching, painful memories are slowly letting go of me, no doubt tired of gripping my brain for so long. I no longer lie down in my bed and immediately think of Tad's corpse that was there less than two months ago. I no longer wander the aisles of Trader Joe's my eyes wet with sorrow my heart yearning to prepare him dishes he enjoys.
I vaguely remember the seizures that took him to the floor, the spontaneous bleeding here and there, the moments of exhaustion when I would struggle to move his 195 pound body from the bed to the toilet on his office chair with five little wheels as support.
I've been called "resilient" by many of my friends. I find myself wondering if this is simply a well-developed capacity to forget pain.
More and more what I do remember - actually it's not a memory, it's a new original thought each time. So let me start again: More and more what I hear in my head is Tad's loving voice encouraging me.
This pisses me off somewhat.
I always swore I would not turn someone into a demi-god just because they're dead. Death does not make us perfect; Tad was by no means perfect.
And yet what remains in my head is Tad's perfection. The voice that appears when I stop and listen is that of Tad so full of love that every word he utters is supportive and kind; reminding me not to "sweat the small stuff", to dive in face first, to relish it all.
This voice also delights me beyond belief.
It seems I have always only had one voice inside me: a strident, rather demanding, easily distractable voice. Tad's departure has left me with a new voice. A loving voice. Not permanently - I have to lean into it to really hear it. But it's there.
I can think of other departure's in my life where people left a negative voice in my head. These departures were mostly painful ones: separations, divorce. Then there are the many departures which have left no voice in my head at all.
Couples specialist Jonathon Gottman tells us it takes five positive bits of feedback from our beloved to balance out the damage done by one single negative message. Imagine the power our loved ones hold over us!
So perhaps it's possible that in the face of an incredible 18-month long human tragedy during which I received thousands of loving messages from my beloved that somehow I have been able to replace the harping voice from my childhood with a caring voice for my adulthood.
It's possible when we walk someone to the edge of the precipice with complete love that the gift we get in return is a loving voice whispering in our ear. I find myself wondering what I can do to maintain it - to keep it whispering til my own body stops functioning.
What if Tad and I had had a fight the day before? Would this all look different today? Is it possible that his last words sealed the deal somehow? When he looked at our friend Carl and slurred through the fog of what was probably a brain hemmorhage: "I am okay to die, where is Greg?" was he setting our love in stone?
It's almost as if I can finally hear the "loving voice of God" promised to me time and again by the elders of my childhood church. Only now God sounds vaguely like Tad on a good day.
I maintain a family plan with the atrocious AT&T until I can find a way to record Tad's voice mails for eternity (funny choice of words, right?). But ironically when I listen to them they don't really deliver on my hopes of rekindling something with him. They're rather disappointing.
The ashes don't really work for me either. I just assumed when the crematorium gave them back to me that I'd feel some kind of satisfaction like people on TV. After all I did give them a body - you'd think I could fetishize what is left of that body. But I can't seem to relate to these ashes in any way despite my efforts to keep them in a central place on my altar.
It seems the only thing that evokes Tad in me is a photo. I find I prefer the ones of him hiking in nature. I tend to reach out, to caress the surface of the photo when I walk by as if I were caressing his cheek and I say aloud, "Tad, I love you." In that moment he is there.
But finding Tadness is a tricky thing. I have been giving away a lot of his belongings, to his family, to neighbors, to Goodwill. I keep wondering at one point will I go over the edge and suddenly his world will disappear forever. Why is that sofa an important part of maintaining Tadness but not that chair? How is it I can't find anyone who wears size nine and half shoes - is this Tad telling me not to get rid of his abundant collection of sports shoes?
This kind of superstitious thinking can take me to strange uncomfortable places. A few days ago I was so altered by my thoughts and emotions that I ran into the car in front of me at a stop light. Fortunately the other driver was extremely compassionate. I felt a strong need to explain to her the reasons I couldn't stop crying had little to do with the fender bender- yet the words wouldn't come out; just sobbing. "My", "husband", "just", "died", "of", "cancer" got slowly pieced together and she put her arm around me lovingly. The strident voice immediately corrected in my head reminding me it had been five weeks and I should be more 'together' than this.
Ironically we had pulled over to exchange numbers onto the parking lot of the clinic where Tad once got his blood drawn. She had actually slammed on the brakes to avoid an emerging ambulance. I remember those.
After Tad died I thought my "job" was to:
1 - keep his belongings that are meaningful to me
2 - get rid of his belongings that aren't and
3 - start a private practice either in San Francisco, Santa Cruz or both.
I see now that this is far more complicated than I had ever imagined. Any task I engage in is potentially overwhelming if it happens to bring up emotional material. Needless to say just about everything in the above list brings up deeply emotional material. Some things I trudge through nonetheless but most of the time I simply stop and do something else, something not on my list.
Turning off Tad's telephone line, sorting through his office, redecorating his living room, repainting parts of the bathroom have all taken weeks. I went to see a clairvoyant who told me to let go of my goals for now so instead I decided to go get coddled in Bordeaux by my sweet friend Madina. Suddenly buying a plane ticket to take a break from my emotions was too emotional. It took me three weeks to decide on a date, an airlines and an itinerary!
I've begun attending a "grief group" (on top of grief counseling and therapy). One of the facilitators shared with me her impression that people grieving are doing an incredible amount of work, even when they are not working. This notion resonated strongly with me even though it was not clear what this "work" is.
Last weekend I attended a men's gathering - a gathering held in the very place Tad and I met and where this summer we had a beautiful commitment ceremony. While there I understood what this "work" is. It became clear while listening to a friend tell a story about getting lost with a GPS.
Imagine you've decided to take a month-long trip across country. Let's say you're driving from New York to Los Angeles. You don't have an exact itinerary but you have a pretty clear idea where you'll be each day for the next thirty days. But then, when you get to Missouri you suddenly discover for reasons beyond your control that you can't go any further. No matter how convincing you are, no matter who you know, no matter how smart you are - you are stuck all alone in Missouri. This notion in and of itself is overwhelming. Your whole relationship to Missouri begins to transform. But the more time you spend there the more the two end points take on a different meaning as well. New York becomes this place of memories; the sacred land of life events both happy and sad. And LA becomes the unattainable land of unrealized dreams.
Then the space between the two changes in significance. That nap in the rest stop in Ohio suddenly takes on new value as does that sweet Bed and Breakfast in Amish country.
The entire time your GPS keeps muttering "Recalculating", "recalculating". The poor one-chip computer keeps trying to figure out what the hell happened. Its sole purpose is to get you to LA.
And that is the "work" I'm doing even when I'm not doing any work: Recalculating.
The bunk bed in room one of cabin two at Saratoga Springs Retreat Center is no longer just a bunk bed - it has become a sacred temple built solely to celebrate the first time Tad and I made love. A ticket to Bordeaux isn't just a visit to my family on that side of the world - it's a bittersweet pilgrimage to what Tad called his "favorite memory ever". The garden he carefully constructed over six years now full of historical significance merits national park status - worthy of millions of visitors.
As I do all this recalculating work I wonder how long I need to stay in Missouri. At what point am I doing damage to myself just sitting and reminiscing on my years with Tad? How long should I stand staring at a photo of him? Was the timing right for me to have that sweet tryst over the weekend or was it too soon? Do I really love living in Santa Cruz or is it just a way for me to keep Tad's home intact a bit longer? Am I rushing back into the real world or am I lingering too long in the world of the dead?
I don't have answers to any of these questions. Actually I do have answers in my head but they keep changing. They are the subject of a gentle disagreement between the strident voice and Tad's voice. "Stay", "Go", "Linger", "Work".
But there is one thing I am dead certain of (another great choice of words): connecting with loving people always feels right, even if they can't talk about Tad or the events of the last year. The handsome guy at my favorite coffee shop, the gentle hug with my sweet neighbor who just got a cancer diagnosis - the same woman who told me I could call her day or night if I needed help moving Tad, lunch al fresco with my dear friend Carl, a support group of broken hearted widows...At times I find myself wishing it were the 1950's again so people could drop by unexpectedly with tuna casseroles or to refresh the water in the living room bouquet.
These encounters are the crumbs showing me the path out of Missouri and on to the next voyage. Actually let me recalculate: they are the bountiful, nutritious picnics laid out beautifully in pastures along the winding road that might take me back to my next departure point.
My "job" today is to feast and wander. And if I stop and listen to Tad-God Voice while I'm there, it's saying to me: "YES! Keep loving! Keep crying! Keep laughing!"
PS Apologies to my loving cousins in Missouri - it's not personal!
I vaguely remember the seizures that took him to the floor, the spontaneous bleeding here and there, the moments of exhaustion when I would struggle to move his 195 pound body from the bed to the toilet on his office chair with five little wheels as support.
I've been called "resilient" by many of my friends. I find myself wondering if this is simply a well-developed capacity to forget pain.
More and more what I do remember - actually it's not a memory, it's a new original thought each time. So let me start again: More and more what I hear in my head is Tad's loving voice encouraging me.
This pisses me off somewhat.
I always swore I would not turn someone into a demi-god just because they're dead. Death does not make us perfect; Tad was by no means perfect.
And yet what remains in my head is Tad's perfection. The voice that appears when I stop and listen is that of Tad so full of love that every word he utters is supportive and kind; reminding me not to "sweat the small stuff", to dive in face first, to relish it all.
This voice also delights me beyond belief.
It seems I have always only had one voice inside me: a strident, rather demanding, easily distractable voice. Tad's departure has left me with a new voice. A loving voice. Not permanently - I have to lean into it to really hear it. But it's there.
I can think of other departure's in my life where people left a negative voice in my head. These departures were mostly painful ones: separations, divorce. Then there are the many departures which have left no voice in my head at all.
Couples specialist Jonathon Gottman tells us it takes five positive bits of feedback from our beloved to balance out the damage done by one single negative message. Imagine the power our loved ones hold over us!
So perhaps it's possible that in the face of an incredible 18-month long human tragedy during which I received thousands of loving messages from my beloved that somehow I have been able to replace the harping voice from my childhood with a caring voice for my adulthood.
It's possible when we walk someone to the edge of the precipice with complete love that the gift we get in return is a loving voice whispering in our ear. I find myself wondering what I can do to maintain it - to keep it whispering til my own body stops functioning.
What if Tad and I had had a fight the day before? Would this all look different today? Is it possible that his last words sealed the deal somehow? When he looked at our friend Carl and slurred through the fog of what was probably a brain hemmorhage: "I am okay to die, where is Greg?" was he setting our love in stone?
It's almost as if I can finally hear the "loving voice of God" promised to me time and again by the elders of my childhood church. Only now God sounds vaguely like Tad on a good day.
I maintain a family plan with the atrocious AT&T until I can find a way to record Tad's voice mails for eternity (funny choice of words, right?). But ironically when I listen to them they don't really deliver on my hopes of rekindling something with him. They're rather disappointing.
The ashes don't really work for me either. I just assumed when the crematorium gave them back to me that I'd feel some kind of satisfaction like people on TV. After all I did give them a body - you'd think I could fetishize what is left of that body. But I can't seem to relate to these ashes in any way despite my efforts to keep them in a central place on my altar.
It seems the only thing that evokes Tad in me is a photo. I find I prefer the ones of him hiking in nature. I tend to reach out, to caress the surface of the photo when I walk by as if I were caressing his cheek and I say aloud, "Tad, I love you." In that moment he is there.
But finding Tadness is a tricky thing. I have been giving away a lot of his belongings, to his family, to neighbors, to Goodwill. I keep wondering at one point will I go over the edge and suddenly his world will disappear forever. Why is that sofa an important part of maintaining Tadness but not that chair? How is it I can't find anyone who wears size nine and half shoes - is this Tad telling me not to get rid of his abundant collection of sports shoes?
This kind of superstitious thinking can take me to strange uncomfortable places. A few days ago I was so altered by my thoughts and emotions that I ran into the car in front of me at a stop light. Fortunately the other driver was extremely compassionate. I felt a strong need to explain to her the reasons I couldn't stop crying had little to do with the fender bender- yet the words wouldn't come out; just sobbing. "My", "husband", "just", "died", "of", "cancer" got slowly pieced together and she put her arm around me lovingly. The strident voice immediately corrected in my head reminding me it had been five weeks and I should be more 'together' than this.
Ironically we had pulled over to exchange numbers onto the parking lot of the clinic where Tad once got his blood drawn. She had actually slammed on the brakes to avoid an emerging ambulance. I remember those.
After Tad died I thought my "job" was to:
1 - keep his belongings that are meaningful to me
2 - get rid of his belongings that aren't and
3 - start a private practice either in San Francisco, Santa Cruz or both.
I see now that this is far more complicated than I had ever imagined. Any task I engage in is potentially overwhelming if it happens to bring up emotional material. Needless to say just about everything in the above list brings up deeply emotional material. Some things I trudge through nonetheless but most of the time I simply stop and do something else, something not on my list.
Turning off Tad's telephone line, sorting through his office, redecorating his living room, repainting parts of the bathroom have all taken weeks. I went to see a clairvoyant who told me to let go of my goals for now so instead I decided to go get coddled in Bordeaux by my sweet friend Madina. Suddenly buying a plane ticket to take a break from my emotions was too emotional. It took me three weeks to decide on a date, an airlines and an itinerary!
I've begun attending a "grief group" (on top of grief counseling and therapy). One of the facilitators shared with me her impression that people grieving are doing an incredible amount of work, even when they are not working. This notion resonated strongly with me even though it was not clear what this "work" is.
Last weekend I attended a men's gathering - a gathering held in the very place Tad and I met and where this summer we had a beautiful commitment ceremony. While there I understood what this "work" is. It became clear while listening to a friend tell a story about getting lost with a GPS.
Imagine you've decided to take a month-long trip across country. Let's say you're driving from New York to Los Angeles. You don't have an exact itinerary but you have a pretty clear idea where you'll be each day for the next thirty days. But then, when you get to Missouri you suddenly discover for reasons beyond your control that you can't go any further. No matter how convincing you are, no matter who you know, no matter how smart you are - you are stuck all alone in Missouri. This notion in and of itself is overwhelming. Your whole relationship to Missouri begins to transform. But the more time you spend there the more the two end points take on a different meaning as well. New York becomes this place of memories; the sacred land of life events both happy and sad. And LA becomes the unattainable land of unrealized dreams.
Then the space between the two changes in significance. That nap in the rest stop in Ohio suddenly takes on new value as does that sweet Bed and Breakfast in Amish country.
The entire time your GPS keeps muttering "Recalculating", "recalculating". The poor one-chip computer keeps trying to figure out what the hell happened. Its sole purpose is to get you to LA.
And that is the "work" I'm doing even when I'm not doing any work: Recalculating.
The bunk bed in room one of cabin two at Saratoga Springs Retreat Center is no longer just a bunk bed - it has become a sacred temple built solely to celebrate the first time Tad and I made love. A ticket to Bordeaux isn't just a visit to my family on that side of the world - it's a bittersweet pilgrimage to what Tad called his "favorite memory ever". The garden he carefully constructed over six years now full of historical significance merits national park status - worthy of millions of visitors.
As I do all this recalculating work I wonder how long I need to stay in Missouri. At what point am I doing damage to myself just sitting and reminiscing on my years with Tad? How long should I stand staring at a photo of him? Was the timing right for me to have that sweet tryst over the weekend or was it too soon? Do I really love living in Santa Cruz or is it just a way for me to keep Tad's home intact a bit longer? Am I rushing back into the real world or am I lingering too long in the world of the dead?
I don't have answers to any of these questions. Actually I do have answers in my head but they keep changing. They are the subject of a gentle disagreement between the strident voice and Tad's voice. "Stay", "Go", "Linger", "Work".
But there is one thing I am dead certain of (another great choice of words): connecting with loving people always feels right, even if they can't talk about Tad or the events of the last year. The handsome guy at my favorite coffee shop, the gentle hug with my sweet neighbor who just got a cancer diagnosis - the same woman who told me I could call her day or night if I needed help moving Tad, lunch al fresco with my dear friend Carl, a support group of broken hearted widows...At times I find myself wishing it were the 1950's again so people could drop by unexpectedly with tuna casseroles or to refresh the water in the living room bouquet.
These encounters are the crumbs showing me the path out of Missouri and on to the next voyage. Actually let me recalculate: they are the bountiful, nutritious picnics laid out beautifully in pastures along the winding road that might take me back to my next departure point.
My "job" today is to feast and wander. And if I stop and listen to Tad-God Voice while I'm there, it's saying to me: "YES! Keep loving! Keep crying! Keep laughing!"
PS Apologies to my loving cousins in Missouri - it's not personal!
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