Two Years On, a New Awareness

Two years on (and a couple of months) of processing Andrew's final years / months / weeks, I have a lot of hindsight now. I recently found myself feeling consciously and deeply  thankful that he had me, for his sake, as that enabled both of us to perceive him as autonomous long after he really was not. If I hadn't been there to talk things over with, to cooperate in his plans, to share his activities, I believe now that he would have shown up as confused and incompetent much, much earlier. That spousal partnership kept him on track. And he was happy and confident in it.

I can't bear to think of how it might have been otherwise. I'm so incredibly glad he still had the feeling of being in charge of his life until perhaps the last six months, so much so that neither of us questioned the fact. And it was a nice life, which I know he felt too. Yes, there were the health problems, but for the most part they were not incapacitating until the end. We did have a scare two years earlier, when he had a fall, went to hospital a while, and came home frail — but he recovered from that. 

I suppose he would have coped, and had help around him, had I not been in his life. His family would have made sure of that. But  still, ours was such a close, intimate connection and we were so like-minded, it made all the difference in the world.

Just before I turned the light out last night, I read a poem by Galway Kinnell about a woman, apparently Kinnell's wife, looking after her father, who had Parkinson's, as if he was the child. So like some of the ways I looked after Andrew! Maybe that's why I had vivid dreams about his children not fully understanding the situation, and about putting him into and taking him out of nursing homes. It became a nightmare — in life and in the dream.

I am glad the nightmare is over. I know his children loved him dearly and understood as best they could. (We were geographically distant from them in their father's last 18 years, which may have made it harder — but it wasn't their doing; it was Andrew and I who moved away.) And yes, I am deeply thankful he had me, and we had each other.

In a way, I still have that. I have become fully aware that he is lodged firmly in my heart for as long as I shall live.

Coming Back to Life, Perhaps?

At my core since his death has been a lack of purpose, under a veneer of tasks and responsibilities, interests and engagement. Just lately, though, I catch myself in moments of new vigour, emotional vigour that is, where I do feel purposeful in going about my concerns — much the way I used to feel as half of a couple who shared a sense of purpose in all our little doings.

Because they are all little doings really, I know that now. They seem big and important while we are doing our lives, while we still think our lives and activities matter. And now, suddenly, I have recovered some of that sense, in self-forgetful moments. I am momentarily absorbed in, taken over by what I am doing, as if I had a life all before me still, with that consciousness of immortality and invincibility which everyone carries around. We know it's false with our rational minds but can't bring ourselves to really feel that. I lost that false consciousness a while. 

I haven't been afflicted by my lack of purpose or my understanding of the true tenuousness and unimportance of individual life. Despite underlying grief, I've enjoyed many moments of living, and have still preferred to find myself alive and well enough. But now ... I wonder how it will go now? Shall I gradually become unconscious again, immersed in my activities? Will I be as robustly single as I was when half a couple? Intriguing thought! 

I have been living these last many months, it seems, in underlying awareness of the Illusion. I imagine one does not lose that again, not entirely, even if it becomes in the course of time more thickly overlaid.

It Seems All Griefs Are Different

Freya

Nine days ago I lost my little cat, Freya. Silly phrase! I didn't mislay her; I chose to be without her from then on, rather than have her cancer get to the stage of causing extreme suffering. Click here for the story.

Well, duh, of course it's different from losing my husband, you may think. But she was part of our family too: we often referred to her and her brother, Levi, as 'the children'. And she was with me for 16 years, only four years fewer than my husband was. 

'Time to be with your Daddy now,' I told her, saying goodbye.

She was a little more my cat, as Levi was a little more Andrew's, but the affection went in all directions. Levi and I always had lots of chats and smooches, and quality times for just the two of us. We're just having a few more now, as I consciously try to make sure he isn't bored or brooding.

He moped a lot for the first week. There was a bleakness about him. I decided that for his sake I must stick to established routines. That was OK so far as I had control of it. One thing he stopped doing, though, was going outside — a cat who normally loves the outdoors and has favourite spots where he spends hours. In the end, I went out myself on a sunny day and sat on the front veranda, leaving the door open. That worked: he came to keep me company, and since then has been going out of his own accord.

I myself had lots of tearful moments, mentally 'seeing' her in familiar places, in typical behaviours. I sought out Levi for cuddles, as much for my own sake as his. It was not a happy household that first week. Neither of us, we two remaining family members of the original four, quite knew how to go on. I would see him in his favourite sunny spot in the spare room, but instead of sleeping he'd be lying there with head raised and eyes fixed blankly, apparently pondering something. Confronting the fact of her ongoing absence, I suppose. 

Yet after that first week, we seem to have adjusted. I think he is discovering the upside of being the only cat now: the only child, the sole focus of my attention. I am finding that giving him that extra attention is good for me, too. And the stable routines, the ongoingness of what we're used to, albeit with someone absent, have helped both of us. We're calm now, getting on with things; a little subdued at times, yet not unhappy. We're both enjoying this new, exclusive relationship.

How can that be? After Andrew died, we went through great grief. So did Freya, but Levi's grief was extreme. He took months and months; he tore out his own claws from stress. I had to put him on Rescue Remedy for weeks. I have had both of us on it now, but only for a day or two.

For myself, one difference I notice is that, when I cry over Andrew's dying, as I still do sometimes, it's not so much about the death itself as the years of increasing ill-health and pain he endured first. Sure, I also miss him and wish I could still enjoy his companionship in the ways I used to, but the greatest distress comes when I recall the traumas of what he went through and how little I could really help.

He was extraordinary, and still got the most out of life right until the end, overcoming the pain and limitations not by making them go away, which unfortunately wasn't possible, but by focusing on the joys of life despite them. 

It was so much easier with Freya, who, even after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, remained outwardly fit and healthy for another four months. 

But it's early days yet, and I have learned that grief is unpredictable. Perhaps I'm just burying it at present. I do notice how tired I am just now. I could spend practically the whole day sleeping. Maybe I should; it could be part of healing. 

Levi

The Old Anniversary Reaction — and a Change of State

Cross-posted to LiveJournal

Feeling useless, dull, vaguely pissed off. Each day I make plans to pull myself out of it, clean up the house, start on various projects waiting. Each day, instead, I stay in dressing-gown most or all of the day, do the minimum required to take care of cats and self, only go out to the shops if I absolutely must, can't be bothered writing poems or reading anyone else's, almost forget to turn on the news at night — that important lifelong ritual! — and bury myself in escapist books. (Melina Marchetta and John Marsden, the literary end of Young Adult — but escapist all the same: immersing myself in fictional lives rather than be present in my own.)

I think I am describing mild depression. My mother suffered long-term depression late in life. I have friends who have severe episodes of the disease. But, thankfully, I never experienced it. Well, not until becoming widowed. I have now discovered it is one of the stages of grief. And, as I have mentioned before, those stages do not happen in a nice, orderly, linear progression — no, they get all mixed up and tangled; and they like to ambush you, sneak up and pounce unexpectedly. I know I'm lucky the depression bits have been slight for me, but they are a nuisance. Being pissed off is part of the depression — and then I get pissed off about the depression. Vicious circle.

However, anger is a form of energy, and it also helps lift depression. Lacking good, honest, passionate fury, this lack-lustre, can't-be-bothered pissed-offness will have to do. Action! What can I take action on?

I know the cause. It's the good old anniversary reaction, two years on from the time in which Andrew started to die ... and did die. But what exactly was going on today, two years ago? Thank goodness for the invaluable FlyLady calendars, which I keep for future reference. And for my Shifting Fog: Dwelling with Dementia blog, and my Personal Journal (also a blog, but a private one for my eyes only).

Today, two years ago, I was just about recovered from the ghastly flu that hit me at the same time Andrew went to hospital for the last time. (Not that we knew it then for the last time.) I couldn't visit him for the first week he was there: I needed to get myself well, and also not take infection into the hospital. I was giving myself this one more day to make sure I was fully recovered. I was in limbo, wanting to see him yet dreading the news I had to give — that he would have to go from hospital into permanent care, for both our sakes. It was all too clear I could no longer look after him adequately, and was risking my own health trying.

An astrologer had told me a few months before that if I didn't get him into permanent care by September, I myself would become seriously ill. I had been hoping to compromise, getting by with frequent respite visits to the lovely Heritage Lodge and having him home between times. It seems the Universe took a hand. In one way it was just in the nick of time that he ended up in hospital at that point — for himself as well as me. No way I could have continued meeting his care needs as he went into decline.

But I didn't know that, this day two years ago. I still thought he could have a lot of quality of life left, and many months left.  This day two years ago, I was partly savouring one more day to myself to get well, partly yearning to actually see him and spend time with him again. And, as I said, I was having to confront a new reality.

I was wrong, of course, as to the details of that. When I saw him again, next day, it was obvious he was dying.  He went from hospital into palliative care on August 23, and died on September 3, by which time he had had visits from all his children. I was fully engaged, then, in the needs of the immediate moment. So if the anniversary reaction holds true, perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to swing into action and get a few things done.

One thing I did, this day two years ago, my Personal Journal shows me, was give myself a detailed Tarot reading about my situation. The overall card was The Tower — dramatic and apparently disastrous breakdown of the structures one has built up; for the best in the long run, letting in new energy; embrace the new.

In detail I was told to get out into nature, socialise with my women friends, listen to my guidance, further develop my magickal self. Yes, I have been doing all those things. It doesn't take away my loss, but it keeps me occupied, sometimes interested and sometimes even joyous.

On a TV show the other night, someone was widowed, and was shown a couple of years later having got on with her life. Clearly she still deeply missed her man.

"What do you do when you're faced with a bereavement?" her son said to the interviewer. "You carry on. There isn't a choice. You have to carry on." I knew exactly what he meant.  Today, I suppose, I am having a little rest from carrying on. And for the last few days — equivalent to when, two years ago, I was laid low with gastric flu.

Nevertheless, I made a small yet conscious shift today. I suddenly registered that the Personal Journal had a dry, empty, desert background. The text was in a narrow column with tiny writing, hard to read. The better to display the bleak background? OK, so it's not on public view, but I get to see it. Why would I put that into my subliminal consciousness? It must have reflected my mind when I did it — my private, inner mind (my public blogs are brighter and prettier) — but I'm not willing to put up with that environment now, even in private cyberspace.  I changed it to a picture of a dinghy on calm blue water, with deep blue mountains on the far shore and an expanse of sky only slightly streaked with cloud. It reminds me of the 6 of Swords Tarot card, which represents a journey to a place of earned peace. I've also enlarged both the text box and the font. I believe we are emotionally affected by what we surround ourselves with, consciously and subconsciously.

************

A little while ago, a friend rang out of the blue to say she was coming into town and would I like to meet her for coffee. I had even thought of phoning her this morning to suggest a meet-up, then decided, "Oh no, she'll be too busy." Lucky she's so tuned-in! So I am dressed after all, waiting for her to text me that she's there. It's a very quick trip to town from here. My mood is brighter already. So — not a very serious depression!

This friend never knew Andrew, though of course she knows of him. She is one of a number of new friends I have made in the last two years, since I have been freer to get out and about and meet people. Life, as they say, goes on.