Cry, Cry, Cry

It turned into quite a beautiful spring day. We spent a lot of time playing in the yard with Phoenix, yard games, basketball, and a few tasks. Weekends still feel off without Chris, but I'm doing my best to get through them and provide some fun for the kids while getting the usual jobs done. One thing that I've gotten used to doing that Chris always took care of is packaging up the trash and recycling to take to the town transfer station. The dump closes at 6pm on Saturday and it's good to get there before the last second rush. I wanted to get rid of the trash since Phoenix is very interested in the full trash bags on the porch. As the afternoon proceeded toward evening, I loaded up and J helped me with the trash and recycling, with the bonus of then going to the Swap Shop. This is a place where residents can leave items they are done with but could have use for others, and people can pick up what they want. J loves finding trinkets at the Swap Shop and happily poked around to see what was there. As she looked for treasures, I idly rifled through a box of CDs. I did a double take as I saw the album Cry, Cry, Cry. As I often do, I became lost in my memories.

Cry, Cry, Cry is the name of a folk group that performed in the late 1990's, comprised of our favorite Dar Williams and two other singers Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell. We didn't know much about this group until last year. Chris was always on the lookout for Dar's performances, and he saw that Cry, Cry, Cry was getting back together for a tour and had a performance in Northampton on 3/31/18 (the night before Easter). He bought tickets, reserved a hotel room so I wouldn't have to drive back late at night, and asked our niece to babysit overnight. It was our last overnight alone not counting the hospice house of course. 

We arrived in Northampton well before the show, checked in, then wandered around town to find a place to eat. We had been to Northampton to see Dar several times, at least three other times in this town, the first at the Calvin Theatre and then at the Ironhorse Music Hall a couple of times. That night was a relatively nice evening for the time of year, and the streets were full of people similarly enjoying spring. We headed for the Northampton Brewery but found it absolutely packed when we arrived. We shared a laugh because this was not the first time we had been shut out of this place before a Dar Williams concert. We tried to find a different restaurant but many were jammed with people and the show time was approaching. Finally we ended up at Amanouz Cafe, a Morrocan/Mediterranean place. As I often did in the last year, I ordered for both of us because Chris struggled to get the right words at times and it made situations like ordering stressful and awkward. On this particular weekend, Chris's word-finding issues were getting more pronounced and he was having a lot of vision problems. We were worried, but we enjoyed our time together.

The timing ended up to be perfect for the show - the doors were opening just as we arrived at the theater. In a turn of coincidence, we ran into some parent friends from Southborough. I remember being stressed because in our small talk, Chris could not come up with Dar Williams' name, calling her "the woman." Alarm bells were clanging loudly in my head. This was not like him. Dar's music was so special to Chris that it surprised me he couldn't say her name...

We took our seats and settled in together. Chris always liked to get seats close to the front for performances, his thinking being that if we were making the effort and spending the money to go, it was definitely worth it to pay more for better seats. We were on the side but close enough to really see the singers. We smiled when Dar took the microphone to speak and exchanged a look, one of those looks that couples share that convey the understanding of a lifetime together. We both were reliving many memories of listening to Dar's music and chasing around to catch her live.

We weren't familiar with the other two singers nor the Cry, Cry, Cry music, but in a way that made the concert more special. We sat back and let the new-to-us music wash over us. Chris had listened to one song ahead of time, The Ballad of Mary Magdalen, and he nudged me as the group began to play it. The song was plaintively beautiful, and the lyrics complex and interesting to think about.

The Ballad of Mary Magdalen

Chris loved the concert. He enjoyed it fully despite the worry and uncertainty of the moment in our lives. We both had tears in our eyes from the beauty of the rich harmonies and the bittersweet feeling of this maybe being the last time. In fact, it was the last time we saw Dar.

When I saw the Cry, Cry, Cry album in the Swap Shop I had to have it. I brought it home and played it immediately. As the first song filled the dining room, I remembered the feeling of that trip to Northampton. I had been so worried and stressed about GBM, the future, and losing Chris. I wish I could have set that aside and enjoyed that moment a bit better. There's no revising how I felt then, it was what it was. Now I can listen and listen, remember and remember, whenever I want. Some of the song lyrics touch off meaning out of context from the actual songs, and Chris would understand how I find him in these songs even though that wouldn't make sense to an outsider. He often talked about how he found music meaningful even if the context wasn't quite perfect for his connection to it. As I listen to one particularly gorgeous, harmonious song a repeated line makes me weep: 

I know what kind of love this is. I know what kind of love this is. I know what kind of love this is.

I do know what kind of love we have. This love is the real deal. The kind of love that lasted an entire marriage, through a crazy dramatic terminal illness, right up to the double doors when death parted us, and beyond. And beyond.  I know what kind of love this is. I am the luckiest person for having found this love. He also knew what kind of love this is, and what a gift to know that he did. I just want Chris back to draw sustenance from it with me in person...

I Know What Kind of Love This Is

There's another track that is fitting to my current state, hopefully, called By Way of Sorrow. The last of the lyrics are below. The music makes you want to tap your foot and the message is uplifting. Maybe if I listen enough I can believe that the sorrow and tears of the present are just part of a path toward something different.

All the nights that joy has slept
Will awake to days of laughter
Gone the tears that you have wept
You'll dance in freedom ever after

You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you'll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

By Way of Sorrow

A simple trip to the dump and Swap Shop gave me the gift of music, memory, and connections to Chris. I know that Cry, Cry, Cry meant something to Chris. He took a picture of the cafe where we had dinner as he did of the concert tickets. I have tucked them away in our scrapbook containing tickets and playbills from special times. I'll keep these things and always remember how special he was.

Not Wanting to Leave Chris Behind

Our canine family member was adopted 3/28 and the kids and I haven't looked back. Phoenix is wonderful! Most evenings after the kids are in bed she puts her paws up on my legs until I invite her up to curl against me in my lap. I have been known to let her lie on my chest as I read or watch tv. It is not conducive to writing, working, housework, or anything productive in a standard, future-oriented way. It's been about living in the moment with that pup and it's done me some good. The shine of new puppy life is wearing off though, or maybe it's the four potty accidents in one day that made me put Phoenix in her yard (pen) outside her home (crate) for the evening. She happily put herself to bed and I was glad. I needed to write. I finished off my last entry that was started before we adopted her, a couple weeks ago. I'm feeling something different tonight that I wanted to work on, though. Last night we went to family bereavement group and it was good. Mostly I listen to the other parents because A) I'm new and B) they are so much farther out than me. This group shows me that I'm just at the very beginning of this, with a lot of work ahead of me... I don't love that feeling. But the nudge to keep processing is probably healthy, and I know that writing for me is, too. So, here I am again.  

Yesterday marked three months since Chris died. I struggled with the 8th as it approached because it is starting to feel like a long time ago that he was here and we had normal family time. A large part of my mind is still consumed with identifying key dates and marking time in relationship to them. For example, it was five months ago today that we left on our last family trip. It was a difficult one because we fully knew it was the last time to visit MN family and our last trip, but it was still a good one. Chris and I enjoyed time alone together at some of our favorite St. Paul haunts - coffee shop, lunch/dessert cafe. I remember talking earnestly and deeply as we often did in the last two years. At other times the kids played with their cousins while Chris took it all in calmly. There was one last sibling dinner out, the energy muted a bit compared to other years. As we deplaned in Boston, Chris stumbled in the aisle as his right leg wouldn't cooperate for a minute. We knew it could mean nothing good and of course everything got worse rapidly after that... 

I do mark time since Chris actually died and sometimes still obsess over the darkness of December and early January, but I return more frequently to the lasts of the reasonably good time with him right up until November 30th. The time ticks quietly by. Five months ago we traveled as a family, nearly five months ago we celebrated Chris's 41st birthday at a favorite restaurant, had our last Thanksgiving, did our last Christmas shopping together, and enjoyed our last outing on a weekend as a family of four. Thinking about these precious times brings Chris back to my mind with vivid clarity which is a dichotomy of amazing blessing and devastating pain. I love him so much and feel relieved when I can close my eyes and hear his voice in my head, but then I have to open them up and see that he is gone all over again. It's those moments when I miss him so much it's hard to breathe. Still. Again. Whatever fitting word. The intensity of the missing has not lessened, if anything it is worse.  

Those five months since good times can be counted on one hand making it seem in the recent past, but that's almost half a year ago now... Whether distant or recent, the perception of time doesn't particularly matter. Chris is gone now. I still think of him every hour and long for him, I long for that elusive feeling of "us" that was the foundation of our life. I still love him with all of my heart, even more if that is possible. Now that I know how it all ended, I cannot believe the calm and peace that Chris lived with. Obviously I am biased, but I do not think most people could withstand what he did with so much grace. I am so deeply grateful for the love he showed under the shadow of the incredible sadness of saying goodbye. I want to debrief with him about everything that has happened. I want so much to tell him how I am amazed by how he handled everything.

Chris is gone. The world of Betsy and Chris is over. Us against the world is now me alone in the world.

I have to write those words tonight in effort to make my brain accept it. This need to push acceptance has been rattling around in my mind since I read a book that a widow generously sent me (her own memoir, Beauty in the Brokenness, by Dr. Angela Lindenmuth Marick). Her journey had some remarkable similarities to mine and I read with great interest, but her book laid clear one difference. She was able to accept quickly that her world as she knew it was over. She took off her rings early and that felt right to her. She found new love at three months post-loss and married about a year later. I'm just not remotely close to that.

I've been fighting honest, deep acceptance hard, for so long. I see now that in all of the struggles of 2017 and 2018 I could not truly wrap my head around the idea that Chris would really and truly die, leaving us behind. We prepared pragmatically and "intellectually accepted" it, but I myself could just not fully get there. Now, loving him and missing him so deeply makes me feel all the more that it cannot be possibly true that he is gone, that we are over. What we had was so special it cannot possibly fit the mold of everyday death, surely we were so close that we could escape the disintegration wrought by brain cancer. It's idiotic. It's magical thinking. It's protective neural circuits kicking in. It's a powerful force. Or maybe I'm one goshdarn stubborn person holding on with a vice grip... 

The season is definitely changing to spring around these parts. As it always does, it comes in bursts of gloriously warm weather followed by spells of cold, damp regressions to near winter. Two steps forward, one and a half back so it seems. Still, when one looks back, there has been progress toward spring. Longer days, crocuses, daffodils, mud. It would be great to draw a personal analogy here and claim slow progress in healing, but that is honestly not the case. Deep within me there is a recalcitrant resistance against moving forward because I do not want to leave Chris behind. I don't want his story to be over. I don't want our story to be over. If I could, I'd push every one of those daffodils under the soil and freeze the ground back to rock hard earth because winter was when I had him. What I can do is leave his favorite hoodie on his dresser and all of our pictures on the mantle, what I can do is remember and honor his incredible journey through the last decade. I'll eagerly be the last person thinking about him as the day draws to a close.

If I'm also the last person ready to accept that he is gone, so be it. He was here, he mattered, he made all the difference to me. We had an amazing life together, we understood each other, and we loved each other. I do not want to leave him behind, I simply cannot leave him behind just yet.  

Boss it Up and Cry

Recently a fellow widow posted a meme on social media that went something like this:

Are you going to boss it up or cry about it? First of all, I'm going to do both, says the widow.

That about sums up my life. There's just a ton of stuff that I have to do. There is no choice but to find a way to get it done. Accordingly, I have spent a lot of time bossing it up and I'm downright proud of the stuff that I've recently closed out. Case in point, I have never been so happy to write a check to the good old IRS and put a big bold check mark on my to-do list to categorize 2018 taxes as completed. I outsourced that but hey, it took work to find a good CPA and acquire some key documents in addition to the usual docs sent to me.

My new life is forcing me to be the boss. I don't feel comfortable in this role, but I'm the boss of the house, the kids, the dog (we got Phoenix!), not to mention my own life. It is so strange that it is not a team effort anymore. No more consultation, joint decision-making, or shared visions for the future. It's all there for me to steer so the ship doesn't go under, not to mention find some distant shore of my choosing. Once again, there's a tension between "having" to decide and "getting" to decide various matters. Some things are definitely have-to's (financial stuff) and some are obviously get-to's (dog, coaching baseball) but there are sometimes unexpected flip sides to both.

Despite the satisfaction and relief from getting some of death tasks done, each one brings a world of pain and a torrent of tears. So yes. I will boss it up in this new life. And, chances are, I'll be crying over my lost life and love at the same time. If I look a bit haggard, you'll know why. This is all exhausting.