New Normals

 

 

 

 

Nothing you love is lost,

Not really.

Things, people, they always go away,

sooner or later.

You can't hold them, any more than you

can hold moonlight.

But if they've touched you,

if they're inside you,

then they're still yours.

The only things you ever really have

are the ones you hold inside your heart.

~ Bruce Coville [Artwork by Allison Adams]

 

This is a rough time for me due to memories of losing the greatest love I have ever had.  August 27, 2005. 7:10 pm.  The memories are sharp and painful even yet.    I have been seeking a New Normal. 

 

I had not slept a full night for five weeks.  On my birthday, July 25, we got the final diagnoses.  No hope.  Get papers in order. 

“You mean, a year?” I asked, unbelieving.

“No”,” the VA Oncologist said, turning her screen of the MRI so we could see it.

“Months?” I asked slightly hopefully.

“No!” 

“Weeks?”

“No!” and I crumpled.

After a long pause my sweetheart asked, “What will my death be like?” with a calmness he was not known for.  (His wife had died a horrible cancer death.)

“You will go unconscious from the ammonia that will go to your brain.”

How the heck could it be.  He was not sick but he had lost some weight and said he often had a slight pain in his stomach area that he had been given medication for.  “An ulcer,” they said.

Life would never be normal again for any of us.

 

It was a beautiful Maine fall and we had had such awesome times in Fall.  We had camped all over the east Coast.  We had boated and were shown the beauty of the hardwood reds in the mountains and along the coast.  He would go “hunting” with his older brother.  Well, they would hike up Bear Mountain behind our house and where they had hiked since they were old enough to go up there.  They did not take guns.

 

Every day is a blur from that diagnosis on.  How do you say “goodbye” to the dearest person on earth in days?  I fed him everything that was ever his favorite because he had lost a great deal of weight.  I had been in Alberta taking care of a seriously ill brother for two weeks.  I got the call there, from him, saying his urine was a funny color and he had gone to the VA hospital in Manchester New Hampshire.  They had wanted to keep him.  He would not.  I caught the Red Eye home the next day.  When I walked in the house, I was shocked.  How, in less than two weeks, had he deteriorated so?  He was a skeleton of who he had been when I left.  We had no idea.  I had no idea.  We went, together to the VA hospital in Maine and they had set up appointments and tests.  His daughter was there and spent a few days with us then had to go back to her job.  He slept a lot.

 

Those first days I was numb and simply put one foot in front of the other.  Every day, he died a little more.  Within days, he began to get confused.  It was five lonely weeks as I dealt with it and with my own dying in so many ways.  Within five weeks it was over and I was destroyed.  Th exhaustion was incredible.  I was not eating.  Not sleeping. Grieving like I have never grieved before. 

 

The loneliness was huge.  I had done it on my own.  Hi daughter came a few times but had work and had to go back.  It was hard to get her to come at the end, when I knew it was the end.  She came the last three days.  For those last three days, with VA nurses coming once a day, his older brother came, his youngest brother came and stayed with me until his daughter got back from Florida.  It was if the whole world twirled but our world pressed in; even the walls and the whole house seemed to crush in.  Family came those last couple of nights but I could, in no way, respond appropriately to anyone but him.  It seemed that our world, his and mine, were being pressed into moments.  And, when it was over, that sudden silence at his leaving.  The final break.

 

I went outside when the coroner came to the house.  It was a huge full harvest moon and I begged her to comfort me.  I could not allow anyone else to be near me.  My whole being poured out into the soft light Grandmother Moon poured on to me. 

 

For months, I could not make a decision.  My daughter had to lead me around like a small child.  He was okay.  He did not suffer for even a moment.  Our memories left with him for months.  I was an empty shell.  I could not have made it through those next few days before my daughter flew in, without three friends who came and took me from the house I emptied in 24 hours.  I had been put our on the curb, literally. 

 

I never worked nor slept for those days.  Our little dog, Esqueese, my dog, his service Pomeranian, went under the deck and tried to die along with him.  Someone had to keep getting under and getting her out.  Watching her grieve was horrible.  Until my daughter got there, it was just her and I in the vacuum of grief.  So many mean things happened to me.  I do remember those things.  His daughter and I handled grief in horrible ways.  I was crazed in my loading up black plastic bags and taking everything, I owned, except deeply personal things, to the Garbage dump store.  Thousands and thousands of dollars went there.  I asked a family friend to come, knowing he understood First Nations’ ways and I gave away my pipe and my regalia and everything that represented who I was before.  I have never returned to that life because, it too was all gone.  I flew out with my daughter and my dog, back from Maine to Alberta, and my daughter, God bless her, and my secret benefactor took care of every expense for the move home and everything replaced.  (I will post more about that in a later post, but I will just say that I was given great love in my lifetime and someone came into a position to give this incredible gift to me). 

 

There were months of exhaustion and pain.  I was given a house, new clothes, everything I needed to simply survive in spite of not even caring if I did.  So much of my died with him.  I have never recovered all of who I was.  It took months before I even laughed.  My kids thought it important that I fly down to Yuma, back to our beloved home there.  I was to decide if I wanted to keep our place or give it up.  That added a whole new level of grieving to go there, to see our little Esqueese so happy and running to all their favorite places to find him as if we had somehow lost him down there.  Again, we grieved hard.  She kept trying to die and I cradled her night and days for a few days.  We went across the street to our best friends who took Richard’s convertible as he had said he wanted them to have it.  Esqueese discovered it in the back yard and hide under it until we could drag her out.  Yuma would never be the dame either.  Our beloved Chocolate Mountains held no joy nor the rocks we always found and the spots we knew to go for them held no draw.  Exhaustion, pain, grief, covered us for those months. 

 

After a few weeks, my brother and his beloved, Ev, came down and I was not alone there after a few weeks of total aloneness.  It was good that my grief did not weigh down anyone else.  I was a great maw of hurt.  Joy was gone and, in the vacuum, a sad acceptance and surrender to what happened to us took over.  I must have said a million times, “I want my old life back!” and of course, whomever I was whispering that too, did not hear.

 

For those months, I carried on, a mere shell of myself.  It has taken years for the hurt to go and some of the hollowness has never been filled.  Every day, every danged day, a memory surfaces to help the hurt fade.  We had made a deal, Richard and I, in those last days.  He did not believe in a god or religion of any kind.  He did, believe in our ceremonies and gatherings of First Nations’ ways.  I told him, “If, just in case, there is another place, send me a feather in strange places.”  And he did, over and over:  a feather dropped from the sky to land on my should.; a feather dropped from a tree and landed in front of me;  a feather blew into my vehicle as I was driving;  these are just a few mentions of the many many times a feather appeared in strange ways or places, and still do.   He proved that there was a meeting of those from the other pace in that he was in his last hours when he looked up at the blank wall in our livingroom and asked who all those people were,  and, a few hours later, when he sat up and waved like a child seeing his mother after a long time.  He left that memory as a gift that is poignant and strong.  He taught me what real love is.  He taught me that life is but a blink of time and we have to enjoy every moment of it because it can be taken away in a moment.. or five weeks.

 

Sometimes I feel like I am living a facade of life.  I work on myself every day, in some way.  In many ways I fail.  The many stages of grief are not linear.  The are spirals that return again and again and I have to recognize what it is that is triggering one of the stages and carry on to the next.  The spiral gets bigger but always there is one final hope; that I get to join him again and the wait, sometimes, is long.  I filter things through that sense of grief that is not as sharp but is deeply embedded in my psyche. 

 

There are times of incredibly painful waves of grief that wash over me, like yesterday, when I could not bring myself to blog this.  I can no longer write poetry.  I was a prolific poet.  Poetry has left me as I cannot seem to dip deeply enough to write.  An artist friend, Maggie Barbor, called these grief tsunamis, “Grief Bursts”.  I have borrowed that and if I share a Grief Burst with you, it should be all I need to type and you will know what has hit me.  Yesterday was a heck of a Grief Burst, as are those five weeks from my birthday to August 27^th, every year.  I have learned to simply draw within and be as quiet as I can and get through such days and hours, and moments.

 

None grieve the same.  Trite phrases meaning to comfort do not.  I lose a sense of focus during these times.  I lose energy.  I lose the intensity of grief but a sudden wave comes over me and I have learned to get through it.  Of course, alone as possible and not resent anyone intruding into that sacred space.  I smile when people speak of the waning of Covid and the “New Normal”.  I know all about “New Normals”.  I am not glad about it, but it is what it is. 

 Esqueese had to be put down a few weeks ago.. my last living piece of Richard. 

Forgive my inattention for these few weeks as I got through this and the fire and covid and everything life has handed me for these few weeks.

 

©Carol Desjarlais 8.28.21