On Monday it will be three weeks since Michele died. Just twenty-one days chronologically but a lifetime for me. The first week I numbly moved through the activities of notifying friends and family, arranging her memorial service, and existing.
The second week I returned to work. Having routine and structure helped me to keep going. I made a list of chores and errands and doled them out each day like carrots on a stick. Most of the things I accomplished were done through physical memory, there was no real attachment mentally or emotionally to the world around me. Having my cats there helped more than I can possibly say. At times their total acceptance of me was hard to reconcile with how miserable I felt, but knowing that I had to care for them helped me through some rough moments.
This week I have again relied heavily on routine, chores, and errands to get me through the days. I am afraid of the evenings and weekends now, they are unending periods of emptiness and loneliness to be endured. Last weekend I wanted to spend money like crazy. I wanted to by a new cell phone, toys for my computer, and movies. I wanted everything and nothing at the same time. Some part of my mind knows that having new things in my life won’t fill the hole where my heart used to be, another part just wants to anesthetizes everything so I don’t have to feel at all. I suppose I am grateful that I am not into drugs or alcohol, I could do some serious damage to myself that way right now.
I’ve been setting up future events to occupy myself and to give myself reason to look ahead. In a couple of weeks my brother is coming out. Since he is good with computer setup I am thinking that weekend would be a good time to dig out the old Intel boxes and set them up. One of my friends here is trying to setup a weekend away trip - camping somewhere.
Thanksgiving will be very hard. I don’t have time off to go anywhere, and I am not sure I want to travel then anyway. I discovered one of my oldest friends has family here in Kansas City and she and her family are coming here for the holiday. They are going to stay with me. I am planning on making a pot of spaghetti and a chocolate cake for them Wednesday. I haven’t a clue what I’ll due that Thursday while they are at her brother’s house.
Christmas terrifies me. Michele’s birthday was the 24th, and she dearly loved the magic and warmth of that time of year. Last season we were both depressed and didn’t decorate our apartment for various reasons. This year we were going to setup our tree and some lights, and our collection of Santas. I am determined to follow through on that plan. But the thought of having to go through the Christmas season alone is more than I can really take in today.
In January I am thinking about going to see Ted and his family out east. It has been years since I was there and having that to look forward to over the Christmas/New Year’s holidays will give me something to focus upon.
I am realizing that earthquake of her death has setup aftershocks of varying strength and intensity. Some days I don’t react to anything, other days I am moved to tears by something as simple as seeing my cell phone and knowing she’ll never call me again. The ground is shaky here, the path ahead uncertain. All I can do is to breathe in and out.
As a creature of habit there are touchstones in my daily life that help me to feel grounded and on track. Obviously, talking to Michele was a big part of my life, and those times of the day are difficult now.
At work I usually called Michele once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Sometimes there would be three or four calls in a day. Today, after I finished my lunch my first thought was to call Michele. I still can’t get used to the idea that there is no calling her any more. I have called our number at times just to listen to the few words she said as a part of our voice mail greeting. It seems the aural memory is not my strong suit, I am already having a hard time remembering the sound of her voice.
On the evenings when we went to sleep at the same time we always said goodnight to each other. There was a pattern to our ritual and it was comforting. The first few nights I was alone I didn’t know what to do. Now I am closing my eyes and softly saying what I used to say to her in the dark. And when I listen with my heart I can hear her answer.
I still talk out loud to her at times. Not as much as the first week when it felt like I had a continuous running conversation with her, but some every day. I think hear the sound of my own voice helps to fill the emptiness that fills the apartment. Talking to Nekko and Taz helps too, and I think they like it as well.
Michele had her own routine regarding the cats and I am slowly discovering how to fill in for them. Nekko in particular liked to sit on the back of our overstuffed chair and have Michele rub her ears. I have learned to spend some time in that chair of an evening so that Nekko can get her needs met.
Part of my life seem normal, and other parts are still very surreal. I feel as if I have been turned inside out and I recognize that I may never be right side in again.
One of the things I like about Apple Computer is their sense of social conscience. Take their home page today for example.
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Think Different indeed.
Michele and I both shared a love of movies. Long before we ever met we looked forward to seeing new movies and renting old favorites to see again. Throughout our relationship we watched movies together. In what I later learned was a litmus test, one of the first weekends we spent together included a suggestion from her that we see “The Mirror Has Two Faces”, a romantic comedy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and my willingness to share that enjoyment with her earned me extra points.
About the only kind of movie Michele didn’t care for were testosterone action flicks. Or anything with “the Arnold” in it. Most of those I’d watch by myself, although the more dramatic ones she would sometimes watch with me. Especially if we did it in our home office where she could be working on her computer and only half watching the explosions and other male silliness on the screen.
I have been using movies to fill the hours these last two weeks. But I’ve stayed away from any that we saw together, or that I new she liked. I’m not ready to try and experience a movie we both enjoyed together. So I’ve been watch testosterone movies, one after another. Here’s a short list:
Kingdom of Heaven Gone in 60 Seconds Armageddon Deep Impact Ocean’s Eleven Bourne Supremacy Lethal Weapon II Terminator Terminator II Terminator III: The Rise of the Machines Braveheart Batman Begins
The last movie we saw out together was “Must Love Dogs”, which we both liked and enjoyed.
Lately I’ve been functional, but not creative. I’m able to get through daily activities, if only because I’ve done them before. But any activity that requires creativity or thought, and I’m out of luck. Meals are difficult to think up, prepare, and quite frankly, consume. I’ve been resorting to lists in order to accomplish anything. It is isn’t written down in a moment of lucidity, it isn’t likely to happen.
Thank God for 3M sticky notes.
I had a very long conversation with a very good friend last night. She is one of Michele’s oldest friends, and through my relationship with Michele I was able to develop my own friendship with her. Like me she is struggling to understand and absorb what happened to Michele. Like me she alternates between moments of relative calm and ones of great pain and sadness.
I was able to cry with her, something I have not done with anyone else until now. One of the most powerful aspects of my relationship with Michele was that I felt safe crying with her. She never looked down upon my tears and she helped me to see that the release of toxins they represented were actually healthy for me. Not having Michele here at a time when I have many tears to shed has been brutally difficult. However, last night I was able to let myself cry on the phone with Laura. Like proverbial tress falling in the woods unobserved, grief expressed in private only makes a sound for you to hear. Until it is heard by others it can’t be validated or confirmed. I need a place to express my grief where others can hear it, a place where I can validate the pain I am feeling. I know that finding a grief group is the thing to do, I just have to follow through.
We talked a lot about the act of suicide, about the anger it expresses, and the impact it leaves in the water of our lives. The ripples of Michele’s suicide are still spreading into my life, and I am being carried by them to unknown destinations. In one sense her death in this manner exposes an entire part of her I knew nothing about; and I liked to think I knew her better than anyone else alive. Ever since we first talked on the phone in early 1996 I knew she was fighting ancient emotional demons. At times she would include me in her struggles, at other times not. By and large I think she had dealt with most of the issues of her young adult and adult lives. However, I know that there were issues stemming from her childhood that she never fully expressed or was able to confront. She always said that marriage is where you deal with the issues of your childhood. We both explored so much of our inner emotional landscape in our ten years together, it is hard to believe there were unexplored canyons left.
Michele suffered greatly from her inner demons, and I believe she felt her having these made her a burden to others. She was loathe to feel obligated to anyone for any reason. Have deep seated feelings of guilt and shame must have been terrifying for her. She always told me that she would walk through fire for me, know I understand that she was really saying that staying and facing her inner demons every day was truly walking through fire. I don’t know if she was consciously aware of the daily ordeal, or if it was only apparent to her sometimes. I do know that in the end the demons got louder, and more present in her everyday life. She also always said that she would lay down and die for me. In the end that is what I think she believed she was doing. While she certainly understood at some level that her death by her own hand would hugely impact the rest of my life, I think she also believed that the removal of burden placed on my life by her demons would balance the scales.
I cannot judge whether her death was true wisdom or pure folly. All I know is that she had the greatest impact on my life that anyone ever has, or I suspect, ever will. She gave me so many gifts, not the least of which is my ability to openly share myself here, that I could never repay her. In her final moments I like to think that she believed she was giving a gift of life to me. I am resolved to accept that gift and make something of it.
I keep having flashbacks to the day Michele killed herself. Discovering her is indelibly imprinted on my mind. Like a sore in your mouth that you can’t stop touching with your tongue, I can’t stop replaying some parts of that Monday over and over in my mind. I realize that the movies I’ve been watching, the phone calls to and from friends, and staying up until I am utterly exhausted, have all been efforts to keep myself from playing the images from her death over and over in my mind.
For the most part I feel like I am doing okay, but then the tidal wave of despair and loneliness washes over me and I am lost for a time. The worst moments of any day are those when I would normal have contact with Michele or see her again after being apart. Leaving work to go home is no longer a joyous thing, instead it has become something I dread. Last evening I was tired, and worn out from a long week at work, I really wanted to connect to Michele. Instead I was miserably alone.
I cried and cried for about an hour, alternating body-racking sobs with fits of anger and rage. The littlest things are upsetting to me now. And big things are so far beyond my ability to grasp as to be alien to my world. So I make lists in my more lucid moments, and when all I know is washed away for a time by flooding grief, I cling to the bits of sanity contained on those pieces of paper.
Caring for Nekko and Taz is helping too. Their unconditional (well for cats, unconditional) love of me is the only solace I find when I am by myself in what used to be our home. Both seek me out in their own way for attention and responding to them gives me a tenuous grounding for a moment or two. I shudder to think what my mood would be without these two wonderful companions.
In the cold light of a new day I am still numb, still in shock, still reeling from this new reality. I realize that I am still circling around the truth of this, refusing to look at it head on until I am stronger in this new empty life I’ve been handed. Facing the truth about Michele’s death will take all the strength I’ve got, and all the resolve I can muster. Attempting that when I am not ready will only result in disaster, and so I’ll wait until my core tells me it is time.
I just yelled at my cat. She was curled up in my arms, being affectionate, trying to lick my face as that is how she shows love. And I yelled at her because I couldn’t get her to stop. Unfettered love, acceptance without bounds when you are trapped in the depths of despair is hard to take.
My two cats are so simple and direct. They love me and accept me without hesitation or reservation. This is the kind of love I used to get from Michele. And now that safe harbor is gone forever. I yelled at Taz not because of what she was or was doing, but because I miss the connection to Michele, I miss the love I got from her.
At some level I know that some day I will feel love again. But today there is a huge sea of grief separating me from who I was, and who I long to be again. The shoreline of my life is now uncharted and unfamiliar, the voyage home will be long and difficult. But I know it is possible. All I need do is weather the current storms of gloom and agony.
I find that my sense of the surreal in all of this is increasing. At my employment engagement we are engaged in a week-long series of meetings to “clarify” various points of the application to be designed and built. The conversations are often long and drawn out, with multiple perspectives and opinions from all corners of the room. Then, when all is said and done, it is decided that the word “custom” should be changed to “other.” Until someone objects and the whole situation spins out of control again; finally coming to rest on the word “additional.”
And all the while in my head there is a voice screaming “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ARGUING ABOUT? THIS IS ALL MEANINGLESS. IN FIVE YEARS NO ONE WILL CARE. HELL IN TWELVE MONTHS NO ON WILL GIVE A SHIT!”
While I may regain my ability to understand the meaningless drivel and minutia that fill in for truth in my job, for now I am unable to comprehend the words individually, much less make sense of the higher order sentence construct in which they are participating.
I am simply moving through life now, like driftwood on the ocean, carried uncaring by currents, tossed and turned by wind and waves, and all the while being carried relentlessly away from the familiar shoreline of my life with Michele by the ceaseless tide of time. I can’t even get worked up what shoreline the tide is taking me towards, or even if there is another shoreline for me.
In recent years I’ve discovered that under normal circumstances I have the short term attention span of a gnat. The technical term for this is N. A. D. D.. Michele would ask me to change out the empty 5-gallon water jug for a full one on the dispenser and, unless I did it immediately, I’d forget. She took to leaving the empty jug in my way coming into the house.
Grocery shopping is another area of my mind littered with sinkholes. I set off for the store needing three, or four items, and spend 30 minutes wandering up and down the isles trying to remember the one thing I really needed. My Palm sports a nifty little shopping list database to avoid that very problem.
The last ten days or so have been anything but normal. I figure I’m doing well to remember my own name, much less anything else. About the only thing helping me out here is my need to be a creature of habit. I have been relying heavily upon long establish routines to get me showered, shaved, dressed (properly) and off to work every day. Because what was formerly a cute form of ADD (Michele actually called me ‘ADD-boy’ on more than a few occassions.) is now a full blown case of Gnat Attention Span (GAS).
The prime example of GAS is happening right now as I can no longer remember the ultimate point I wanted to make with this posting. Oh well, at least I have the piece of paper that explains who I am and where I live.
It’s right here….
Uh oh.