About fifteen months after we were married, Michele became ill. The illness itself isn’t important, the fact it was debilitating, potentially embarrassing, and chronic is important. This illness plagued her until the day she died.
My character is such that I never shirked my role in our lives. I provided care when care was called for, and emotional support when physical care could no longer make a difference. I discovered within me a tremendous ability to accept and to overcome. Before I start to sound self-serving or aggrandizing let me also say that more than once I wished the situation would be over. Hopefully in a manner that allowed us to have peace and comfort in our lives, but over.
As hard as this is to admit, especially here where all can see it, I am relieved to no longer have to suffer the burden of her demons. Once I emerged from the fog of immediate grief last winter and earlier this spring, I was shocked to discover a vein of relief within my emotions. At first I assumed that I was relieved for her, that she was no longer suffering her physical ailments and emotional scars. Certainly I am grateful that she is no longer in pain. However, I have come to realize that some portion of my relief is for myself. Selfish and small as that may sound, I am relieved that I am no longer under the strain of her condition.
A very good friend of mine, who also knew Michele for many years, helped me to see this today. Helped me to say it out loud, adding to its gravitas. I know in my heart that I gave all of myself to our relationship, that I was committed and involved, that there was nothing more I, or anyone else, could have done. Yet I still feel guilt at recognizing my sense of relief. I have often tried to look at what she did in killing her self as setting me free. I believe, more strongly now than ever, that in her mind she was paving the way for me to live without burdens, real or imagined, that she brought with her.
Recently I have started a new journey in my life. As the door to my past slowly swings closed, I am turning more towards the future, and its open doorways. Acknowledging all my feelings about Michele, our relationship, her death, and my life now, is the only way I know to be. I am moving forward with my life, not because she would have wanted me to, because I need to - because I must.
Our relationship began quietly and unobserved by many around us. Having a marriage ceremony was our way of saying to the world who we were, and who we wanted to become. Ceremony is important in life, it adds import and focuses all of your being on the momentous undertaking you are accepting. Michele’s life ended and I had another ceremony, also public, to honor her and to share a small part of the woman I knew with the people in our lives. Since that time I have shared some parts of my process here, and others in conversations with friends.
The name of this site, zanshin is a martial arts term that translates to “remaining mind.” The parable that explains it best relates the story of two monks who are forbidden to touch women. Coming to a river crossing where a woman is stranded, the older monk carries her across and sets her down. Later the younger monk asks how he could break his vow and touch a woman, how he could carry her. The older monk replies, “I set her down at the river’s edge, you are still carrying her.” Today I feel as if I have reached a milestone; I have managed to set part of my burden down at the river’s edge.
The energy that makes life worth living, comes from actually living. Not waiting around for life to come find you.
You can survive moving on from grief. The guilt over leaving your loved one behind passes, and you regain access to memories previously blocked.
Having an anonymous blog is freeing.
The world wide web is smaller than you thing. Especially when one of your anonymous blogs is found by a friend.
95 degree heat plus 75% humidity equals 110 degree heat index.
Anticipation is a good thing.
Cheap sunglasses are sometimes better than expensive ones.
I can eat the same menu (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) two days in a row.
Like the Owl in the old Tootsie Roll Suckers commercials who could only lick three times before crunching the sucker, I can only keep quiet for 42 minutes in a meeting.
Writing a list like this at the spur of the moment is not easy.
Due to a great $10 a month offer I joined the nearby fitness club earlier this week. Tonight I had my introductory session with one of their trainers and learned about the resistance training machines and how to utilize them for my goals. The trick now will be balancing the kendo workouts with the circuit training so that I don’t over tax myself.
Ideally I should do the circuit training two or three times a week, with a day in between to allow my muscle some recovery time. The kendo workouts are strenuous but not aerobic at all. The first few left my arms and shoulders weak the next day, but that has subsided now to where I don’t really notice it the next day. Whereas I am positive that (at least initially) I’ll feel the weight training the next day. Since kendo is Wednesday evening and Saturday morning, I think I’ll slot the weights in for Monday evening and Thursday evening to start, and once I get over the initial aftershocks, maybe add a third weight session to Saturday prior to kendo.
Already I am feeling better and have more energy. Just getting out and doing something is making a difference. That my chosen activities are going to move me in a healthy direction is a bonus.
Life goes on.
On Saturday, after getting home from my kendo workout, I noticed a new entry in the caller id register on my phone. My father had called but not left a message. At the time I thought this was a bit odd as he had shared with me his plan to be in Chicago for the weekend to visit area art fairs. After taking my shower I checked my email and discovered he had been hospitalized overnight Thursday after his blood pressure bottomed out.
For a minute it felt like my blood pressure was bottoming out too as my first thought was I was going to lose him too.
I immediately called him and learned the rest of the story. In short the doctors think his blood pressure medicine caused the extremely low reading, and he was kept in the hospital overnight for observation only. My brother was able to go to Decatur Thursday evening, and spent all day Friday with my Dad at the hospital. In the several days since then he has felt fine physically, and his blood pressure has been at its normal level.
While I understand his motivation for not calling me was to not worry me, it still rankles a bit to find out two days after the fact that he’d been ill enough to require a neighbor to drive him to the emergency room as well as an overnight stay in the hospital. He did say that he considered calling me on Thursday when he started feeling so ill, but that he wasn’t sure what I could have done from 400 miles away. I know that I would have been just as helpless at 40 miles away, even if I could have gotten there sooner. In thinking about it I’ve come to the realization that I need to convince him that he needs to be prepared to call 9-11 in the event that he needs help. A child of the depression, he tends to be stoic, wants to be self-sufficient, and hates the idea of being a burden. However, living by himself he is going to have to rely upon services from outside.
As for his habit of not sharing information like this until after the fact, well, I may have to take him to task on that now. I know he’ll say that there would be nothing I could do if he called me sooner, but that is an entirely intellectual approach to living. While he may be comfortable viewing incidents like this intellectually, I am not. My worst fear would be getting a call from someone else telling me how he died or got hurt or whatever, several days after the fact. I know after losing the two most important women in my life to date in the last year that I am overly sensitive anything that threatens my remaining family.
Ignorance is only bliss until knowledge is gained too late to be of any use.
This story explains that there maybe a genetic basis for my need to have the newest and latest of everything.
Really.
All kidding aside there are some disturbing parallels to addiction disorders here.
Now excuse me while I go to the nearest Best Buy and feed my need.
As a part of my efforts to regain some fitness and lose weight I joined the neighborhood gym. I received a mailer from them in the mail touting a $10 per month fee, good for three years, with no contract. Figuring I had nothing to lose I went to look the place over on Monday after work.
Lots of cardio machines (elliptical trainers, stair machines, treadmills, and a few stationary bicycles), the usual assortment of muscle specific weight machines, and a smattering of free weights make up the main floor. Suspended around the perimeter was a walking/running track (thirteen laps to the mile). The atmosphere seemed to be pretty good. I’ve been in clubs where there was a real “meat market” feel to them, and this place wasn’t like that at all. In my tee-shirt and ratty shorts I fit right in with the people there.
So I joined. I can quit anytime with a thirty day written notice, and at $10 a month I won’t have to go too many times to get my money’s worth. I’ve got an appointment with their trainer Thursday evening to learn about all the machines, and to get properly setup on their use. By the end of the hour I should have a customized program designed to help me lose weight and tone up. On my own I’ve already experimented with some of the machines, and last night I took a two mile stroll around the track.
I may never have the same fitness and body shape I did when I was twenty-five again, but I know I can eliminate the pear shape I’ve got now.
It appears that my long running windshield saga has drawn to a close. Today, in the rain appropriately enough, the fourth technician, on the fifth visit, replaced the gel pack under the sensor and, believe it or not the wipers started wiping automatically again.
Woohoo!
The next time the windshield cracks I’m going to leave the car on the highway, by an underpass, in the wrong part of town, where it can be stripped to the axles or out-right stolen. Getting a new car through the insurance will be simpler, and less time consuming, than getting the glass replaced.
One of the most dangerous, and perhaps damning, practices in our society today is the fixing of labels to individuals or groups. Any one who is in a minority group (label) already knows what this feels like. With just a word or three you are categorized, objectified, and shunted off to purgatory, never to return. As a white male, with a college education and a career in the high tech industry I’ve been largely immune to the potential ill effects of labeling.
Michele’s death however has added a new label to the skein trailing along behind me: widower. Quick, what comes to mind when you first hear the word: widower? An old man, wrinkled, gray or balding, stooped and spent. Some one who’ll just shuffle along a bit longer before joining his dear departed. I’m NOT that. I don’t want to be that. So I’ve been making an effort to stop using that term, even in my mind, to refer to myself. I think labels (like personal names) are self fulfilling prophecies, once you assume one you start to work towards making it reality.
My marital status, when asked for on official paperwork, is widower, but I am not just my marital status. Michele dying changed me profoundly, and altered the course of my life. Those changes cannot be summed in one word.
I am strong, courageous, intelligent, humorous, sensitive, caring, empathetic, athletic, purposeful, reflective, spiritual, kind, witty, casual, handsome, introverted, physical, mental, boyish, wise, complicated, simple, complex, driven, laid-back, questing, ancient, and single. In a word, I’m me.
Stereo microscope picture of Velcro being pulled apart at 94x magnification.
I’m starting to take some “next steps” in my journey back from the land of grief. Some of these are mental and or emotional adjustments, while others are more tangible. The most tangible one to date has been the changing of my voice mail greeting.
Until yesterday if you called my home phone you were greeted with the message Michele and I put together just over two years ago. I managed to make a recording of it over the winter using some VoIP software as it is the only (known to me) recording of her voice. But I’ve delayed changing the message as it was one more tangible reminder that she is truly gone.
I’ve also started to think about the artifacts she left behind. I want to keep them all but I understand that moving forward means letting go of the past. For some time now I have been waiting for life to resume again thinking that I’d let go when that time came. Now I realize that only by letting go will I get the resumption I desire.
It will be a true test of my maturity to collect and pass on the things that Michele left behind that will only hold me back. I’m a pack rat of the worst sort; keeping mementos from twenty years ago in boxes that just get moved from place to place. I learned that by letting go of my anger and quilt about my sister’s death that I could be happy and free. Now I need to learn that the part of Michele that is truly important - her love, her spirit, and her truth - will always live inside of me. Pictures, dresses, cards, and bits of jewelry may trigger fond memories, but they aren’t truly necessary to keep her alive inside of me.
I want to get or make a small chest, and fill it with a few things that I can’t part with just yet. Some things I’ll put into a safe deposit box at the bank. And the rest, well, the rest I’ll try and let go.
My love for her will last until I die, and being blessed with a good memory, my memories will last until then as well. But my relationship with her has ended, at least on the physical plane, and I need to release myself from the physical trappings of that relationship.