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.
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