Marcia ByalickIt feels a little pretentious, writing about becoming a widow after only two months. Years ago I read Joan Didion’s account, Sheryl Samberg’s story and Joyce Carol Oates’s experience. I think I read them all to shore myself up with their blueprint so I’d be ahead of the game when my turn came to sit in the front row at a funeral. They tell of making peace with uncertainty, moving forward not moving on, identifying grief as the unexpressed love you can no longer share. I’m not there yet. This is about what life looks like, after the bagels and babka, when loss is still fresh.
So far it feels like being in remission…chronic and incurable but not fatal. People comment on how strong I am. The truth is I’m like a swan skimming across the pond, the ferocious paddling it takes beneath the water to appear that way, unseen. There’s a lot of effort involved in not getting my sad on other people. My jaw is always clenched (welcome to my bedside, Ms. nightguard) and because I got through another hard day, 10:30 each night finds me chomping away at a way too large piece of dark chocolate.
These first weeks have brought some immediate small changes. Bob lived on the ground floor of a Brooklyn apartment building and grew up concerned about people looking into his space. He was more comfortable with the curtains half closed and the drapes drawn and so for 56 years they were. That I leave all the shades open now must be driving him wild. I don’t have to close my office door… or the bathroom door for that matter. Folding the laundry takes no time; bringing the recyclables to the curb is a breeze without the bottles of flavored water he drank all the time. And I finish the Sunday Times in one day (excluding the magazine).
The silence in the house is different now that it’s no longer temporary. For the first time I actually heard my desk clock (which I’ve had for years) ticking. I watch as the orange ring around the white bowl I now use for my cereal…the one stained with the tomato egg drop soup Bob loved… grows lighter with each washing. I never realized how much of my memory was stored in his brain. He supplied the names and dates to round out any story I told… his facts supported my color commentary. Will my stories suffer from inaccuracy forever more?
My computer skills… and common sense…and intelligence… were challenged far beyond their capabilities as I negotiated my way through a ridiculous number of legal forms. It took an hour and fifteen minutes to deal with canceling cell phone service. I knocked off the passenger sideview mirror the first time I pulled Bob’s car out of the garage. The scream you heard that morning was me. While it was being repaired, I drove my car to a friend’s house for dinner. That night the brake light flashed red and beeped relentlessly as I crawled the fifteen-mile trip home. A few days later a tree fell on the roof during one of those ferocious August rainstorms. Both outside lights went out, leaving the front of the house pitch black. Sounds contrived? I wish. Where’s that chocolate?
“If it is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.” Cheryl Stayed
Cars and roofs and lighting were never my domain. Blessedly I was rescued in each of those scenarios by the empathy and kindness of every person I asked for help. Now I know they’re here and they’re not going away. It was as if I was immediately forced to confront those areas I felt most ill prepared to deal with. As each situation resolved, I vowed to remember not to let those problems with solutions do me in.
I am strangely calm. I think the last months of anticipating how Bob’s illness would end were as painful as confronting it. The fact is some of us are grief stricken…and the rest of us are grief adjacent. My therapist said he’s never seen two people grieve the same way. Broken hearts define us as much as the joys we experience. That one-foot-in front-of-another thing, that take-it-one-day-at-a-time thing… they are brilliantly true.
My blood pressure is significantly lower now that I’m no longer in caretaking mode. The salads I now prepare for dinner include the carrots and almonds Bob disliked. What’s “upcoming” now requires more of that underwater paddling. The now will never be near as good as what was but I hope adjusting to life’s terms will keep me gliding.