I’m not sure what this post is to be about. I have not started a post this aimlessly
before. To do so seems . . . frightening
. . . pointless . . . rambling. But, I
have been really quiet the past couple weeks about where I am at in this grief
process. Quiet makes people more
comfortable. Makes me easier to talk
to. Yet it is not real. My body can feel how incongruent it is. Inauthentic.
This is not me. I am honest to a
fault. When I stop being honest, I stop
being me. When I stop being me, I don’t
know who I am. I walk around feeling
nauseated and I can’t quite pinpoint the source. I just keep swallowing back the bitter taste
in the back of my mouth and wondering what I ate. But it isn’t anything I ate. It is the holding back of what is. The swallowing of my sincerity. So, tonight, I write. I write without plan, but not without purpose.
The purpose is, letting it out so I can
stop feeling like I might puke at any moment.
I have been trying to be a good robot. I have been consciously trying to complain
less. I have been trying to put a
positive spin on things more. I have been
reaching out to others, starting and rekindling friendships, arranging lunches,
and writing letters and emails, with more effort than I have put into a social
life than ever before. I try to remember
what is going on in people’s lives and to ask about it. This is something that came more naturally
before, but has taken real effort since Ron’s cancer. It is hard for me to care about anything . .
. about myself or about anyone else . . . but I am trying.
I think my efforts are working. I am feeling more liked. I am feeling like if I wanted to do something
or be social, I would have people to call.
Most of the time, I don’t feel like even talking on the phone, let alone
going out to actually see someone, but if I wanted to, I could. This feels good.
Yet, when I am sobbing and completely depressed, I don’t
feel like I have anyone to call. I don’t
want to disappoint anyone. I don’t want
to show anyone how little progress forward I have actually made. I don’t want people to know how truly, deeply
sad I still am. I know this is
silly. I know people who read this will
reach out and tell me I can always call them when I feel bad. But I also know that I won’t. I am deeply embedded in this new cycle where
I want to appear like I am doing better, in part because I feel like if I
pretend to do better, maybe I really will do better. Fake it until you make it, and all that crap.
All of this takes so much energy. I am exhausted. My job has become a major source of stress
that I do not know if I can deal with. Three
people from my 10 person team have left since August and more are on their way
out. There are new hires, and they are wonderful
additions, but it is hard to have so many new people all at once. It means more responsibility on those left
behind, at least until all the new folks are trained and up and running. But some of the replacements have not yet
been hired, let alone trained and proficient at what we do. There is a long gap between someone leaving
and that happening. The gap is going to
be very large for a long time to come, since we do not have an easy job to
learn. I have more on my plate at work
than I can accomplish, yet I cannot complain about it, for there is no one else
who can share the burden. And it will
just get worse, at least for several more months. Pair that with overwhelming duties and
decisions to make about my home. And
stir in the grief and emotional struggles I am facing. It is not a good mix. I am not sure what to do about it. I am not supposed to be making major
decisions so soon after such a major loss, yet I feel faced with the need to
figure things out or lose myself very quickly.
One night this week, I forgot the book in which I write to
Ron. I left it at work. I couldn’t write him. The next night, I had the final session of my
grief support group, in which I let some of my stress and anger and sadness
out. I was worn out after that and was
staying at Dustin & Carrie’s that night and I just got too tired to
write. The next night, I also put off
writing. I did the same yesterday,
Saturday, even though I had all day and all night to write. I found chores to do instead. I created a list of chores I did not
accomplish in a day and probably would not accomplish in a week, even if I
weren’t working full time. I told myself
I could write when the chores were done.
I did not write. This morning I wrote
to Ron. I caught him up on what had
happened in the 110 hours that lapsed between entries.
It is not that Ron would mind the lapse, if some version of
spirit Ron has any inkling that I am writing to him. He would not mind, especially if I were out
living life to the fullest and having fun.
He would never want me to feel obligated. Still, something feels weird in my taking
this long pause in writing to him. It
did not feel like it was a conscious or healthy decision on my part. It felt like I was procrastinating. Avoiding.
Why?
In the past, my Ron Projects have given me some
comfort. I have several going that are
going to take a long time. One of them
is converting his blog into a book.
Recently, when working on this, I have been filled with a sense of joy
and peace. I read Ron’s voice in his
writing and it is like he is still with me.
I feel so grateful for his outlook on things. So grateful he shared that with everyone. Even more grateful that I was lucky enough to
have him share more with me than he did with anyone else. Luckiest.
Girl. Ever. That is how I usually feel when working on
any of the Ron Projects.
Today, I attempted to work on the blog project. I could not even get the first entry I had to
work on completed. I wanted to find a
picture that I knew he snapped of this sunrise he was mentioning in the
blog. I had to look on his old Netbook
to find it. This led to me looking at
lots of pictures he took. The world
through Ron’s eyes. My desire to share
it all. Looking at the things he found
interesting or funny. Marveling at how almost
every picture he ever took of me is somehow unflattering and hilarious, wondering
to myself, ‘if this is how he saw me, how could he possibly have loved me?’ yet
knowing that he did, in fact, love me.
Still, I did all this looking and realized I did not have the energy to
shift from the emotional state this left me in to my logical, technological brain
to transfer files from computer to computer.
I just didn’t have it in me.
So, I thought I would just read his blog for a bit instead
as a way to feel close to him. I read
and I did feel close. I could remember
exactly the moments he described. I felt
pride as he praised my egg-scrambling abilities. I felt gratitude as he talked about my
brother picking him and his groceries up when his Toyota ’s
water pump died. I felt a strange,
wistful nostalgia for those trips when I would take him to Ann
Arbor and advocate for him and spend the whole day
going from appointment to appointment at University
of Michigan
I was loved once. Wholly. Hugely.
Unabashedly.
I loved once.
Fiercely. Totally. Joyfully.
I am still in love. I
do not know if I can still be loved by someone who no longer walks the
earth. I like to think so, but I don’t
know. How can we ever know? And whether I am or am not, I am alone in
this life. I am alone in my house. I am alone with the decisions I have to make
about work and whether to invest in repairs that are needed at my home and
whether to refinance to get the title just in my name and whether to try to
sell it again. I am alone when I go to
sleep and when I wake up. Whether I sing
in the shower or sob silently. Whether I
put effort into getting dressed or throw on whatever article of clothing my
hand first touches. There is no one who
sees me for me anymore. I don’t even see
myself. I look in the mirror and I truly
have no idea who the person is
looking back at me. I don’t see myself
in my eyes or my chin or even my hair. I
am a ghost of a person who was once loved.
I know there are many other people who are alone. I don’t mean to whine or act like this is
something totally unique to me. But
there is a difference in being single and in being widowed. I cannot explain it except to say this
aloneness is more than just being alone.
It is the feeling of being left behind.
Abandoned, even when the person leaving you didn’t want to leave
you.
I realized, tonight, after writing to catch Ron back up on
my life and after reading what he has left written for all of us, that I have
been avoiding these activities because they are as much a way to stay connected
to him as they are proof of his absence.
Proof of the fact that I cannot ask him what he thinks about something
or share a joke with him or converse about a beautiful moment one of us
experienced. There are no more two-way
conversations. There is me writing to
him. There is me reading what he already
wrote. That is all there is.
I have been making fires this week in the woodstove. I still enjoy the cozy effect, but the process
of making the fire - chopping and hauling wood up to the house, skillfully
setting-up the kindling, blowing to get the coals hot, tending it every half
hour or so – the process is so much more tedious now that I am making it just
for me rather than making it for Ron, to keep his precious, small body warm
against the cold, dark nights that we fought against in those two winters that we
battled his illness.
By tomorrow, I will have put my functioning work face back
on. I won’t be talking about this stuff
with anyone. You won’t even know it is
inside me. I don’t even know it is
inside me most of the time. Lately, I
run from one thing to the next and I perform as well under pressure as I ever
have (or at least pretty close, I would say).
I avoid and I procrastinate about getting really real because I am so
stressed out that I have no room to feel the things buried in my heart and my
psyche. But if I am honest, I am still hurting
terribly. I am still as shocked today as
I was the first day when I realized Ron was gone. This does not become less baffling to
me.
A world without Ron Clark is a sad world indeed. I miss his laughter. I miss his hugs. I miss his insight. I miss his humor. I miss his cooking. I miss his compassion. I miss his optimism. I miss his stubbornness. I miss his desire to learn and try every new
hobby. I even miss his messes . . . I
would give anything to come home from work to find an array of eating and drinking
utensils and dirty socks and various scraps of paper with strange pass codes
written on them and candy wrappers and technological devices surrounding the
love of my life in a little nest wherever he had sprawled out for the day. Anything . . . I would give anything.
Oh, luv, hug the dogs and keep on, keeping on.
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