Changing Focus and (Almost) Moving On

I seem to be done with processing the traumas of his final months — at last. Been doing it for three and a half years!

I am still having lots of memories of our time together, but now it is of the previous 19 years, and the many experiences it makes me happy to recall. Even things that weren't especially happy in themselves are happy memories now, because we really did have a good life together and enjoyed it.

This too is processing, in that I find myself going over and over these memories now, just as I did with the traumatic ones. Well, whatever's necessary, I guess. One day it may all settle down to just random happy memories, and then I suppose I'll be ready to really move on.

Reliving Traumas That Are Over

How I spend my time is occupying my mind lately. The ways I spend it are all according to my choices and tastes — the problem is more that I have no-one to talk to about it in that married-couple way of fascination with the minutiae.

'That's what you have facebook for,' I tell myself. But I find I am reluctant to share too much detail on fb, for fear of becoming a bore. LJ is good for deeply personal stuff that I want to share somewhere, but I don't want to inflict endless trivia on my friends there.

So it goes into my personal — strictly private — journal. My private journal is not the repository of dark secrets so much as snippets of the boringly mundane.

The other thing that goes through my mind a lot just lately is a dwelling on — even after all this time! — the traumas A went through in his final two years, the medical appointments, the practical problems....

E.g. finding no parking spot outside the dentist, being unable to drop him off and then go park because he was having a very confused day, so having to get him to walk what was for him a long, slow distance while the peripheral neuropathy in his legs gave him agony.

Or the time when he was still driving, when he ducked out to the local shops and found he needed to park on the side of a hill. As he walked back to the car, his legs collapsed going up the slope, and he had to sit down on the nature strip. It was dusk, and the car was around the corner from the shops. No-one saw, to help. He didn't have a mobile phone. It got dark. Eventually he recovered his strength and was able to get in the car and drive home, somewhat shaken.

I relive my distress that he went through such things. Then I recall him saying about various difficulties during our marriage, 'We'll get through this!' — and we did.

And he got through those episodes too; we both did.

Eventually I arrive at the realisation: 'It's over. He got through it all, and now he never has to again. He's not at risk any more. He's not in danger any more. He's not in pain or discomfort. He's not in anxiety or fear. He is free.'

And I close my eyes, bow my head, take a deep breath. The tears come to my eyes, but softly.

And me, I never have to go through that again, either — all that agonising over my dearest person, all that vigilance and responsibility, all the need to be inventive at some times, reassuring at others.

However I am finally feeling lonely, despite the writing and networking, the good friends and loving family, the many absorbing things to do.

There were times in those final two years of his life when I longed for some time and space to myself. I knew there might well come a time when I would find that ironic — and here it is.

Gone But Not Gone

By now I have pretty much adjusted to being on my own, doing things on my own, living my life on my own, making my decisions — large or small — without reference to another. 

The only one I have to consider is my cat, Levi. He doesn't care what I watch on telly, or whether I choose a new printer over a new pair of shoes. 

The interesting thing that I notice, though, is that I was only able to settle down into this self-sufficiency once I accepted the fact that Andrew's not really gone and isn't ever going to be gone.

You can think of it in terms of him still being around in spirit, in an unbreakable bond with me. Or you can think of it psychological terms, as my having an internalised Andrew in my head.

The way it manifests is the same, regardless of explanation. He's a constant presence in the background, not in an intrusive or spooky way but just there, kinda like he was when alive except it's not a physical presence any more, and interactions are a lot more one-sided.

I'm not doing a very good job of explaining.

See, for quite a while I thought I had to come to terms with the fact that he had gone. I believed I must accept this. I must live in reality, I told myself. Yes, he was around in spirit and I had occasional confirmation of that, but in everyday terms I was on my own. I felt I must be tough with myself, not hang on to illusions.

I don't know what shifted this thinking. Probably it was the fact that I went on a self-designed retreat for two weeks, with meditation and reflection, and as much withdrawal as possible from mundane concerns.

However it came about, I eventually noticed that I was no longer resisting Andrew's ongoing presence in my consciousness, and that this was doing me no harm and in fact seemed to be a good thing. E.g. I  can still talk things over with him after all, being familiar with his reactions and opinions.

Now I understand more fully what is meant by the remark that the dead live on in our memories. It goes beyond remembering the many particular incidents and moments — though I do plenty of that too. It is another kind or aspect of memory, I suppose. It does seem as if there is a living Andrew with me, just not in the flesh.

I think this is a psychological phenomenon. I also think it can be a way of accessing his actual spiritual attention and communication, if and when that is needed.

Anyway, that sense that he's still here makes it easier to get on with things.

Paradoxically, it makes it easier for me to function alone. Knowing that I can get his slant on things, I no longer feel I have to.

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.