Still Here

I have a confession to make.  Life is getting easier to live. 

This is not to say I don’t think about checking out on a daily basis or have the constant, passive death wish that I be allowed to join Ron as quickly as possible.  I still have those thoughts and I still feel like I would welcome a fatal accident or illness.  But, on the whole, I really am doing better.  At least right now . . . I do realize these things ebb and flow and I could experience a backslide.  For now, though, I can report, I am doing OK.

I was feeling really hurt and lonely and even angry.  I have not had as much support as I expected.  Ron and I had so much support through his illness and much of that has tapered off drastically since his death.  I felt betrayed.  I thought people cared about both of us.  I did not expect it to wane so quickly or by such volume.  As an example, when Ron was alive, anywhere between 100-400 people would read a blog post.  Since he died, I have 20-90 people who read the blog regularly.  I still feel blessed to have those 20-90 people who care enough to follow along.  I value you, whoever you are; you make me feel supported.  Yet, it is hard not to personalize the fact that a whole bunch of other folks no longer care to read anymore.  Maybe there are a lot of practical reasons my readership is down.  Maybe this messy, depressing, after-the-loss stuff is too hard for some to stick with.  Maybe they really were only reading to see how Ron was doing.  Whatever the reason, the numbers are a tangible way to express what I feel in my regular life.  When Ron was alive, people wondered how they could help us.  I am so grateful for that help.  Now that he is gone, only a handful ask how they can help me.

Maybe it is that the way to help me is much less clear than the help that was needed before.  And I don’t ask for it well.  I am not good at asking for help, no matter what it is, and this kind of help is less tangible.  There is no way to help other than just being there with me during this process.  There are no words that can fix it.  There is nothing that can be done to make it better.  Just having someone who cares enough to stick by me, to still talk to me, to think about me and let me know you are thinking of me . . . that is the help that I need.  It is simple, but apparently very challenging (or is it me?  do I make it challenging?) to help me.  Just be with me.  That is the main thing.

Every action I take, I consider what Ron would think of it.  Even my thoughts . . . how would he think or feel about what I am thinking.  I realize this is a bit insane.  Feeling like someone is in my head.  Wondering if he would/does like me still knowing the whole of me, even more than he could know me when he was alive and only knew the thoughts that I spoke to out loud.  It would be unnerving and maddening and anxiety provoking, except for two things.  1) Ron loved and accepted me so unconditionally, and was effective in making me feel that love, that I believe he would still be doing the same thing now.  2) Wanting to be a person Ron would be proud of makes me a better human in general, especially when I apply his values of love and acceptance toward other humans. 

Another way people can help me is by talking about Ron.  I hate that for me he is constantly on my mind, present in everything I do and think, but other people no longer speak about him.  Like he is forgotten.  Like he did not exist.  Like what we had was not real.  I need to hear about him and I need to speak about him.  People can help by offering space where Ron can live on in words and memory.  I am saying this here because, in talking with my sister, she said she was never sure if she should bring him up or if it would be too painful.  I think she was kind of surprised to hear that I wanted her to talk about him.  She mentioned maybe other people also should hear that this is what I need.  So, please, do talk about Ron often and with as much detail as you can.  Do ask me about him.  I am so eager to tell our story and what I know of him.  I like sharing about him. 

Rather than waiting around for people to somehow magically know how to help me and reach out, since that was making me feel disappointed, rejected, and angry, I have reinvented my life to be super, mega busy.  The busiest it has ever been.  I don’t know if it will be good in the long run, but, for now, it is helping me stay alive.  I am working full time and now I have a regularly scheduled activity every night of the week.  This way, I am not sitting around feeling sorry for myself that the phone no longer rings and I don’t have a partner in my life.  That was a bit pathetic anyway.  Too passive.  Time to move forward.  I have started going to yoga again.  I am attending the grief group and therapy.  And, as of last week, I am now going to roller derby practice.

I sat in on the Battle Creek Cereal Killers’ practice last week.  This week, I am taking my skates, helmet, and pads Ron got for me.  If nothing else, it will be good exercise.  But hopefully, if I can still skate and stay up, I will be fulfilling Ron’s dream for me that I become a roller girl who skates in the bouts.  I am a little nervous.  Can I do it?  What if I can’t even skate?  What if I break something?  What if I am too old or timid?  Having watched, I think I can do what they are doing.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.  I have not told too many people what I am up to (until now, for the 20-90 who will read this).  I treasure having this secret joy, nurturing my alter ego, knowing that maybe, just maybe, I could turn out to be the incredible badass I have always wanted to be.  I smile as I write this.  I like the two versions of me.  Hardworking, rule-abiding, detail-oriented, eager-to-please, compassionate to others far more than to myself, mental health professional Heather by day – tough, skating, hip-checking, body-slamming, roller girl by night.  Yeah.  I think I can live with that.  It makes it easier to breathe, knowing what I am in the process of becoming. 

And it is a process.  Not just derby, but all of it.  I am really working so hard.  I am reading so much about grief and loss and hope and the human condition.  I am reading Christian and Buddhist and secular texts about life and death.  I am learning and learning and learning.  I am applying what I learn.  I am meditating daily.  I am still writing to Ron.  I do see that, being so busy all of the time, I need to create balance in my life so I still have time for my reading and learning and grieving and feeling and writing and Ron Projects.  It is going to be tricky.  But I think I can do it.

I continue to honor what I had with Ron by staying in touch with the people I met through him who nurture me and who are not afraid or bothered to talk about him.  I spent a weekend in Ohio visiting his friends.  I got to hear stories about him and got to visit some of his favorite places from his time there.  I am planning a visit to Pittsburgh with a friend of mine, who became a friend of Ron’s, to go to the Strip District and eat at the places he loved and see the working class city he adored living in.  I continue to live my life with Ron in it, even if he is gone. 

Ron's most loved greasy spoon in Ashland, OH

I feel like I am a ship and he is my masthead.  I don’t know if this is insane or what, but it is how I get by.  He had such an influence on me.  I can’t just be done with him because he stopped breathing.  I need to go forth and do all of the things he didn't get to do and see the places he wanted to show me and include the things he wanted me to have in my life when he was gone.

I know Ron wanted me to be as happy as possible for as long as I am living without him.  He knew this wouldn't be easy.  He and I both wondered if I would make it.  But, if I am alive, I know he would not want me to be miserable.  I am trying to fill my life with events and moments, large and small, that make me happy.  Last night, I enjoyed walking around Art Hop with my brother.  Last Friday, I enjoyed dinner with my sister-in-law.  During the week, I enjoy lunches with friends.  On some weekends, I enjoy being social with my friends (and Ron’s).  Other weekends, I truly value the quiet and solitude of living in the country, hanging laundry on the clothesline, mowing the yard, and reading in the hammock.  Last weekend, I walked the dogs five miles along a river; they are a daily joy, even when they feel like a chore.  There is fullness to this busy life.  I need to achieve the balance between busy and restorative time, but that is something I have always been working on and something most of us will be working on for the rest of our lifetime.

Nothing earth shattering in this post.  Just a little update, for those still reading along.  I am going to get out there and enjoy this day.  I am planning on spending time with my brother-from-another-mother and am looking forward to a drive through the changing trees to whatever we end up doing (camping?  the lake?  drunken walk through Grand Rapids?  it has yet to be determined, and I like the spontaneity of that).  In closing, I share with you this picture I took a few hours ago of the last heart-shaped leaf still clinging to Ron’s memorial redbud tree.  It fell while I was writing this post.  I am not sure I have the exact leaf, but I went out and collected one from the ground (I didn't have the heart to pluck the last one while it was still attached) and am pressing it, maybe to frame or write a poem on or . . . 

last heart