Steps and Realizations

The obsession to write this whole experience down seems to have passed, at least for a while. I'm not sure what that's all about. Even tonight I wanted to write, but it's going to be a bad, perfunctory recording of a few thoughts. The deep processing I had been doing before is not coming easily right now.

As the days pass, I feel less tortured about the specifics of Chris's decline and death. This is a good thing. I do believe that writing helped work through some of that. Also, many kind friends have reached out after reading and your support has also helped to process what happened. I still don't like to revisit the memories of his last day, but I have allowed myself to remember how Chris communicated with me even when he couldn't talk. He slowly winked his good eye several times that day and by doing so, for sure he was sending me his love. Even though I didn't know at the time it was the last day and I'll never know if he knew it for sure, Chris took every opportunity to convey his love to me. I have a lot more peace about that now. He was loving and forgiving of me always. That day may be something that I need to struggle with from time to time, but I will remember how Chris winked and know what that meant.

Every day that passes takes us farther away from acute trauma, and also from Chris. That last fact is excruciating. I miss him so very much. The sadness is pervasive and sometimes overwhelming. Some days are really, really bad. Not long ago I woke up with a terrible cold and needed to get through grocery shopping, homework supervision, and cooking alone. It was not the end of the world but being tired and sick brought desolation home to roost. Nothing could stop the waterworks. In the last few weeks I have spent time with several really great couples, and I have some thoughts marinating about marriage and what I miss deeply about being married to Chris. Nothing is coherent enough to articulate yet. I cannot believe he is gone, that our marriage is over. It's just too painful to put into words beyond that right now.

To be fair, I have been doing a lot of things and taking a lot of steps. I think I am functioning quite well given the circumstances. Things are under control. 

I have had to take many steps to sort through taxes, assets, and legal dealings. With coaching from key friends with good recommendations, I've got a team assembled that seems to now be populated with competent and helpful people. I feel good about my approach to dealing with these unpleasant things and my ability to get on the phone to straighten things out. I've given up anticipating everything and instead just scrutinized the credit card statement to find the things I didn't even know Chris took care of, things like auto-renewing Amazon prime, an Angie's List subscription, and anti-virus software. These are steps that I am proud of. 

In a more interesting category, there's the big step of searching for a dog. The good news is that Phoenix is the one! We made it through the rescue agency's interview and home screen process, met her, and she will be ours on Thursday. While it will be a crazy amount of work for me, I'm sure it will be distracting and that's probably going to be helpful. The kids and I will certainly benefit from puppy kisses and play. Becoming a dog family will be quite a change. Once again it's a sign of Chris being gone, but I know he would be happy that we are working toward bringing more happiness to our home. As N said, it's the worst possible reason to be doing the best possible thing. It's a step that the three of us are taking as a reduced unit, and I know we need to be taking healthy forward steps as a trio. We can't always be looking back or just running in place. This should be good!

I have continued to take several steps to help myself integrate the loss of Chris. Mostly I focus on self-care. Walking with friends, discovering new conservation areas, and running are my mainline strategies. I know that I need interactions with others who are in a similar boat, and I've been pushing myself to reach out to various resources. There are several online support groups and I joined one. There's the Widowed Parent Podcast discussion group that I mentioned before; I have connected with a few folks on social media and get a lot out of it. A few friends have asked me whether I would like to be connected with other widowed parents and spouses of seriously ill parents, and I have been saying yes even as the introvert in me would like to say no. Without fail, I am not sorry when I say yes and have conversations with these strangers. I have communicated with several people who have been amazingly kind and supportive!

I carefully consider options for helping the kids take steps to integrate their loss. They are doing well for the most part. They really are great kids. Chris would be so proud of them, and he would be enjoying them as I am (mostly, ha ha). Still, the gravity of their loss is not something to take lightly. So, tonight the kids and I took a big step by starting a family bereavement support group. We have agreed to give it three solid tries before either committing to more or pulling out. The structure is such that everyone starts together as a large group and candles are lit for the people who have died. Then kids meet/play with other kids at roughly their ages while parents talk with parents. At the end, everyone comes together again to put the candles out before leaving. There is a focus on confidentiality and respecting the right to not share during group time. Apparently things went well for the kids. I appreciated my time with other widowed parents and learned from the things they chose to share. It was hard, though. Everyone was much farther out than me which I did expect. My feelings were complicated in ways I did not expect. Everyone was very kind, but the group experience put it in my face that this is not going away. I started imagining two years, four years, five years from now. This is permanent. I don't like that one bit. I have a long way to go toward true acceptance...

Collectively my steps bring forth new realizations, some of which I'm not ready for. I'm seeing that there is time to sit with the discomfort of the situation. Life will keep moving along but the pace and focus is different. Consciously applying the brakes and riding them for a good long while can be good, but being open to nudges can also be good. Phoenix will be one giant leap!

Phoenix

I want to write about Chris, but I don't know what to say besides the usual. It's all just a jumble in my mind now; there is less clarity as the days go on.

I miss him so much as the days of March move on. I remember what was happening last year at this time: it was the start of sinister GBM symptoms. Exactly a year ago seizure activity ramped up and Chris suddenly could not work due to a variety of other symptoms. There was a flurry of treatments and a dark foreboding cloud over everything. It was the start of living in the present because the future was too uncertain and not guaranteed. 

I do not understand why Chris died so young. Why him? He was so good, so responsible, so smart, so loving. He would have made such an impact in many ways had he lived longer without problems from the tumor.

Sometimes panic over his death still overcomes me, it is very strange. It already happened, I don't know why I would worry about it happening again. I guess that means I have not accepted it... My heart and mind are truly railing against the situation. How can this possibly be permanent? Come back... I don't want to think about what happened because it is too horrific and I don't want to think far into the future because it is too desolate. The beautiful days of my marriage when illness wasn't at the forefront seem distant, and I have a hard time remembering how it was, which also makes me sad. When I do access good memories, the pain of separation is unbearable. The only things that consistently help are exercise and dog searching, so I've been doing a lot of both. (Cooking, not so much...) 

With respect to the search, at the advice of a couple of wonderful friends I turned to shelterless rescue agencies for our search. Oh dear, here I go again... I've lost my heart to another lab mix puppy. I put in several applications and happily we were matched with her! I've been screened by the agency and in touch with her foster mom. We will be meeting her on Wednesday and if all goes well she'll be ours soon. I really, really hope it turns out that she's the one. My heart needs puppy mending and my mind needs the distraction of learning something new. When she gets bigger she can exercise with me, too.

She was born on the same day Chris died and her name given by the rescue agency is Phoenix. I won't call it a sign, but the symbolism of her name and her entrance to the world as Chris was leaving means something to me. Maybe she will help us rise up from the tragedy and move forward.

sweet Phoenix, please be mine, I need your velvet ears

(Look at those colt-like legs! There's a tiny white spot on her back!)

The Lows are Lower

A kind colleague asked me today if things were going okay since I looked a little... I filled in the unfinished comment: worn out by life? (Out of control? Disheveled? Defeated?) I appreciated the concern and assured my friend that things are going okay, but I am indeed worn out by life. This was a tough, sad week. I learned several things that I wished I hadn't. The main lesson is that in my fragile state, normal lows are knocking me lower than ever. 

I made a mistake yesterday of spontaneously chasing after what seemed like the perfect dog at a shelter that is a decent drive from home, on a school night. This shelter business is killing me! They require the whole family to be there and it takes hours just to talk to anyone about the dogs, and the information given ahead of time is sketchy at best and incorrect at worse. Plus they make it so you leave with the dog that day and pets are adopted quickly. You have to be ready to move quickly if you are picky, which we are. Anyway, we got our hopes super sky high again for a little lab mix puppy said online to be 13 weeks and about 10 pounds. I called about her and the advice was to Hurry! Come Quickly! Quick as you can!

(how can you resist this face?)

Of course we did, which was not quickly at all in Boston traffic. Once finally there, we fell in love with her and all of her siblings when we saw them in the little puppy kennels. We waited forever to talk to an adoption counselor and visited all of the puppies. The K pups were so cute (all siblings had K names), and Kaydee the best of all. Then we were basically staging our adoption picture in the waiting room because we were so excited. Finally we were allowed to meet little Kaydee outside her kennel in a play room. Oh my, she was sweet and cute and we were losing our hearts to her as she gave us kisses and played.

There was something not ideal for us, though. We saw that her legs were extremely short for a lab. The adoption counselor thought she had basset hound in her. 

(Kaydee's sister)

N and I met eyes and had an unspoken conversation - we don't like that body shape for dogs, we had already decided not that long/low dog type, so it will not be this dog after all. Later googling made us feel good about our decision. The bassadors are supposed to be wonderful companion dogs, but prone to obesity and back problems.

(adult "bassador" from the internet, is it a seal?)

We met a different lab pup who was said to be the same age but seemed much older. He was twice as big with nice long legs, but J was scared. No go. Mind you it was 7:30 at night by now... We left, dogless and bereft, and more than one of us cried a little in the car. Those kids pulled through - they really handled it well - but it was sure disappointing when we had brought a leash, dog treats, and a box with old towels for her to ride home with us.

I woke up this morning with a deep malaise. That Kaydee had wiggled her way right up into my broken heart and started puppy-ing a few pieces back together. To leave without her smashed them apart again and was a lower low than I expected. It took a while to pull myself out of bed and get anything productive going this morning; everyone just barely got off to school and the kitchen is still a wasteland. It was a lost puppy love "hangover." 

Something similar happened earlier in the week when I had expected something to go well in lab and it didn't. I really wanted to publish this student experiment I have been working on for years, this was the last week of the project and it just wasn't great. I did some trouble-shooting and editing of the procedure for Wednesday's section and it DOES work (I feel quite indignant!), but the students needed more explicit guidance than the procedure the way I had written it at first. I had been looking forward to writing a paper on it this summer, but now will have to re-think that or at least re-frame it. What should not have been a big deal felt like an enormous disappointment, dejection would be accurate.   

There were some parenting lows. There were some crummy parts to my legal dealings. I have realized that strangers make assumptions about me as a single parent, as a widow, as a woman making decisions alone. None of that is fun. But mostly there is an overwhelming sadness under everything. I miss Chris so much. He made me laugh and not take myself so seriously. He always listened and softened life's lows by sharing them. I just miss him. 

Trying Not to Fold

It has been a very difficult few days. We did get through the birthday. Chris's family really showed up for us; they made the house happily buzz and N feel special. Several family members and friends called, too, honoring their commitment to Chris to be there for the kids. Thank goodness because if left up to me, I think I only would have shed endless tears which isn't exactly the right tone for your child's birthday. The next day marked 2 months since Chris died.

I'm really struggling hard now. It's getting worse, not better. The nadir better be approaching because this is close to unbearable...

Going out to see family or do activities in Boston is incredibly difficult. The eastward drive alone brings back so many memories that it is hard to concentrate. When we are in crowded public places, I can't help but think that this dreaded thing did not happen to most or any of the people I see and I wonder why it did to our family. Why Chris??? It's not comfortable to see how big the world is and how full of unfamiliar people, and it brings me a lot of anxiety about the future. I have noticed that anxiety of any kind pokes at the place in my mind that revisits Chris's last moments, agonizes over what happened, and wishes to do things differently. It's so easy to enter that downward, futile spiral.

Recently when picking a few things up at a craft store I saw a cheesy sign that said Home is Where You Are. I had to leave the store. Immediately. I left the items in my hand right on that shelf and walked out because I simply couldn't see that phrase for one more second. It was too painfully true, home was with Chris and he is gone. Boston/Cambridge/Southborough felt like home when I was with Chris and now I feel displaced. Will I ever feel at home again? Right now I am so completely unmoored that I cannot imagine feeling securely at home anywhere.

Reading grief memoirs and resources had been helping until suddenly it is not. From the reading I see that my loss experience is not unique at all. At first this was comforting but lately it is not at all helpful. The whole framework of my life is blown up and it doesn't fit with any situation I know in town or at work. It feels unique to me. Maybe deep down I actually want a pity party that yes, this is terrible, and no, nobody knows what it feels like. I don't want to feel like just one ant in a teeming colony.

Writing had been a balm in February, almost an obsession to help process my grief, but now I see that nothing I wrote is original. Cliche or otherwise, I don't have much of anything to say this week because I do not have the energy to try to process anything. The pain is too raw; my insides actually feel ripped apart. I am so deeply sad... The part that is coming clear is that there is just no end in sight. I'm actually very early on in this journey even though it seems like a terribly long time.

As every grieving person apparently is, I am incredulous that the world just keeps turning even though mine is obliterated. The chemistry community moves forward and more ELT papers come out, Chris's company is hiring new people, friends are having babies. What did we do wrong to be derailed in this way? Does anything important to me mean anything at all? Does anyone think about Chris anymore?

Intellectually I know that we did nothing wrong. It was a cruel mistake of biology that was not repaired. Still, I cannot leave it alone. I decided to re-read Chris's words on CaringBridge. Opening the site has become difficult because he doesn't write there any longer and people don't really visit it (of course not, there's nothing new to read!). Since Chris died I visited daily or more often, but that started to feel counterproductive and pathetic. Journaling here filled that space a bit. But today as I went back to read Chris's entries the words took on new meaning for me. He wrote them to record the experience for friends and family, for the kids, for himself, and I'm starting to wonder if he knew that his words would become a lifeline to me, too. The entry he wrote exactly two months before his death, just as things were on the cusp of getting really bad, spoke to me now as I'm two months past his death. 

Chris wrote on 11/8/18:

Rich Cowles captured the situation well with this comment: "We don't get to pick our cards, we just get to play them..."  ... I certainly would not have chosen to have a brain tumor and this is a tough situation particularly as the cancer is progressing. ... starting in mid-March the symptoms became rapidly worse with a negative impact beyond the normalcy we had been able to have. ... Things are difficult, but it makes me appreciate the good cards I still have, like talking and spending time with Nathan, Julia and Betsy. Again as Rich said, I wouldn't have picked this but it is what it is...

Oh, he was so brave. The entire last year of his life was so, so hard. Starting about one year ago, Chris lost so much but he never lost sight of the importance of making the most of his time. He never gave in to the temptation of folding. I can imagine a little better now that I am in the after just how much emotional pain he must have been in. I understand now his urgency to write on the site; I had not fully gotten it at the time but I tried really hard to support Chris and help him write those entries as he wanted them done. How precious that shared writing time was, and how incredible his words are. Chris wanted them to be better, more articulate and profound, but to tell the truth I think they are amazing just how they are from the situation he was in.

My cards are different from his, they always have been. I'm a different person than Chris. No matter how much I loved him or how comforting I found our marriage or how much refuge I took in our partnership, we were always two individuals. It's also fair to say that, while different, my cards are still pretty tough in their own right. Not the hardest hand in the world because I do recognize my significant privileges, but still fairly rough in the context of my peers. I never would have picked them. I'm going to have to try to channel Chris's attitude and appreciate the good cards I still have. Nathan and Julia, and my memories of Chris. He was able to do that with a worse hand. 

It is what it is. I never liked that saying; it seemed too pessimistic or fatalistic in the past. Maybe now there is something in it that could be helpful to me, though. There is no changing what happened. It wasn't my fault. There is no need to blame myself and try to rewrite the details of the end; it simply was. I did the best I could, personal faults and shortcomings and all. Those personality flaws do not magically go away in times of duress and Chris always loved me despite them all, why would the end be any different? The thing is that IT IS SAD, that's what it is. It is really, truly, devastatingly sad. It is not comfortable in any shape or form, but fixing blame on myself won't change that. Nothing can take the sadness away. It is what it is.

My hand of cards is starkly different from Chris's because it is not the end of my life unless I choose to make it that way. I gleaned this nugget of wisdom from the Widowed Parent Podcast. (This is a niche podcast that has become an important source of community to me. Sometimes it is hard to listen to because I am still grappling with acceptance of my situation, but it has opened doors to me. Even if I cannot fully digest the content now, the episodes are there to revisit in the future. It makes me think and it provides coaching for my parenting now that I do not have my co-parent to help me do better. Also, the host orchestrated an e-discussion group complete with a video conference call. With trepidation, I "met" seven other widows and happily found solidarity with them.) There was an episode in which the host interviewed a life coach who described thinking that her life was over in the early days of widowhood, but she was able to turn her thoughts to a post-traumatic growth mindset. Her outlook evolved to this: your life is only over if you choose to believe it is over. I felt like kind of a loser as I listened because I am firmly entrenched in thinking that the best days of my life are indeed over, but also I had a little spark of hope that maybe someday I could make changes and find some happiness, maybe even overhaul my life and start a completely different chapter. Maybe. At some point in the future.

It is what it is. According to the wisdom of the movie Love Actually, it was always going to be a totally $h*t time. I'm here to emphatically say IT IS - that was in the cards and it came true in spades. Despite my current state of despair, I'm also here to say I hope it won't always be. I hope I can find it within me to rise to the occasion of working toward a positive goal again. Yay me! I hope for future positivity! Now that is pathetic. But, it's where I am right now. It is the only way I can play these cards in this particular moment other than folding. I hope that counts for something, and I hope Chris would understand.

Directionless

As I continue to move through the days, one foot in front of the other, the motion feels intentional but directionless. It takes a great deal of effort to do the things I must do or even want to do, yet I am inefficient and easily distracted. My current lean professional to-do list means that there is a looser structure to the work week which, again, I am deeply grateful for but I also find disorienting. I often lose track of the days. Throw in spring break and a snow day for the kids, and I have no idea where we are in the week or year.

Except I do, underneath all of the aimless activity my subconscious mind is acutely aware of and busily trying to avoid the important birthday coming in just a few days. I have done nothing to prepare for the birthday. There is definitely something to that and it has everything to do with Chris being a thoughtful gift giver. He had a knack for knowing a person well and connecting this knowledge to a gift that was perfect, not extravagant but always generous. Chris often had clear ideas for our presents and it made birthdays fun. To top it off, he would throw in a prank gift that would make us all laugh and then we would relive that joke for years. Several years ago, Chris and Nathan wrapped up an iPad as a major surprise birthday gift for me but set up a ruse - they tricked me into thinking Nathan had spilled the beans about the gift, "Mom, aren't you excited about that book? Oh, oops, sorry." Surprise, not a book! One of the more recent triumphs was a roll of Trump toilet paper that put us all into stitches when it was opened. I do not know how to do birthdays without Chris. I'm not fun like he was.

Celebrating our children's birthdays without Chris doesn't seem right and I simply don't want to do it. There is a world of pain in revisiting the happy memories of their births when the only other person who experienced those moments and is invested in them in the same way that I am is gone. The only person who loved them more than anything, as flesh of his flesh, in the same way that I do, is gone. I'm grappling with what that means for them, for me, and for Chris. They will turn new ages that he will not see.

The truth is that the kids have already changed in the eight weeks he has been gone. J asked me to answer a question and to tell her the truth, for real, "Does Santa put the presents in the stockings or do parents?" My heart skipped a few beats, and then I told her the truth. Just like that, no more Christmas magic. At least I won't have to play Santa alone; Chris was there for the last time. Even though I filled the stockings, we were in front of the fireplace and lighted garland together. He saw her believe in reindeer and enjoy the most magical night of the year one last time. Like so many other lasts...

The wisdom in doing this is debatable, but I've been spending a lot of time thinking back to the last months of Chris's life and fitting specific memories with the amount of time he had left. My mind is busy wondering what he thought of all of those lasts. Surely he knew it would be the last apple-picking trip, the last Halloween, the last trip to Minnesota, his last birthday. I know for a fact that he did know. I want to go back and ask him about how he managed to keep going because when I look at the pictures on my phone from those events all I see is gentleness on his face and love radiating from his being, not despair. I also cannot help the mental calculus. At the orchard he had only three and a half months to live. Trick-or-treating, only two and half months. Visiting family in MN, now just two months left. At Christmas, only a handful of days. I remember thinking on one difficult December night that Chris was in the last of his days and estimating that at best his life was 99.8-99.9% over. It was such a bleak thought. Like so many others from that time, I did not know what to do with the truth in that thought. What would I do in the last 0.1-2% of my own life? I did not have an answer. Even at the time, there were flashes of feeling like I was in denial because I didn't know how to process the thoughts, but I don't think that was the major thing going on. The truth was that Chris was in rough shape and had very little time left, and there was no guidebook. Nothing I or anyone could do would change those sad facts or prepare to deal with the aftermath. It was horrifyingly sad and I did not know what to do, period. 

The train that had been set upon the track those eleven years ago chugged along quietly, then gathered steam and headed steadily toward us. We felt the vibration of it far before we actually saw it coming, we heard the deafening alarm whistle, we braced for impact. And yet, as it slammed into us it seemed to be in slow motion and there was only disbelief that it was actually happening. Now the engine has fully blasted through, sending splintered debris of our treasured life flying in all directions. The train has come to rest, but the air is thick with choking dust and smoke.

I still don't know what to do. It is overwhelmingly sad.    

I don't know how to do any of this without him. He is gone and I feel the weight of being the solo captain of our family now every single day. There is no consultation, no encouragement, no laughing over the mistakes, no debriefing after bedtime. It's up to me to decide whether a child needs to see a doctor, I alone have to clear the snow off the roof and driveway, it is up to me to decide whether to fire a lawyer or stay the course, and nobody else is going to set up the coffee when it is late and I'm tired. The kids and I can go look at a dog and seriously consider bringing him home because Chris is now not there with his allergies, and I am the one who has to deal with the deep disappointment of that dog not being the right one for us.

It is all so different. Even despite that unfamiliarity, it doesn't feel real that Chris is gone. I can go from being factual about his absence and having a few better days to completely devastated by seeing his picture and things, realizing that he is not coming back. The return of anxiety, shock, and despair over his death is showing itself to be somewhat of a pattern. Wait, did that actually happen? Why? What do I do now? Come back. I love you. I MIIIISSSSSSS YOU. We need you!

Directionless is not a state that I am comfortable with. In my teens and twenties, there was always the next goal to move toward, the next milestone to look forward to. One of the things I said in the Health Story Collaborative interview with Chris was that there was a period of time after his diagnosis where we had to just "see how things were going to be" before having a second child and I was not good at just living in the moment like that. We did it, though. This past year I did much better at this living in the present approach. I knew it was important to be with Chris fully and I managed to do that, I think. I do not have regrets about the beautiful time we had together in 2018, especially over the summer and fall. It's okay if there was an element of denial underneath that as long as it helped me be present to him. Now, though, there is a lack of purpose to my directionless state; it is very different than living in the moment with Chris. That had a meaningful purpose.

There are no easy answers tonight. It is just going to take a long time of seeing how it is going to be before finding a purposeful, comfortable direction. In the meantime, when a jolt toward a temporary direction is needed there's always the funny memory of that baseball dad cheering "DO SOMETHING!" to fall back on. It sticks in my mind and it makes me smile, and it just might be enough to kick my tail into buying some birthday presents tomorrow for my boy.

It's Not Just One Thing or Another

The clouds that gathered at the end of the day yesterday delivered a burst of winter overnight. It was forecast perfectly, about 4 inches of snow came down in the night, just as predicted. The phone call at 5am to announce a two-hour delay for school was also expected, as was the appearance of my son in my bedroom doorway at his usual wakeup time. Nothing can outwit the internal alarm clock of that boy…

We saw fuzzy snowflakes coming lazily down to rest on the heaps already covering the porch railing. The sky was beginning to lighten but we agreed that it was more than snow blowing off the trees, it was still falling. The snow was gentle and, in line with that, I did not feel anxious about the school delay or hurried to clear the driveway or worried about damage - the morning just unfolded peacefully. Once my daughter wandered out to her perch on the couch to look out the window, pancakes were requested and made while I nursed a pot of coffee. The three of us were content to be together, and then headed out to clear the driveway. By then, the snow had stopped and given way to sun. We marveled at how sparkly the snow was. It was not sticky or slushy, but light and fluffy and catching the sunlight, like a flawless snow globe just settled after shaking.

Time passed, the middle school bus came, and I was impatient for the elementary school bus to come. It wasn’t to get rid of my daughter, it was just that the sun was strong and I wanted to tromp around at the conservation land in the perfection of that snow before it began to melt and dull into something else. My eagerness to start my walk was not a feeling of desperation but rather excitement; I was looking forward to something. After she climbed the steps of the bus, I hurried to gather my things. Once again I needed my winter gear and I also wanted to bring the camera. Something in my mood made me want to try to capture this morning with the high quality lens of Chris’s camera. He hadn’t used it much in the last year due to the convenience of a smart phone or maybe something else - it was for the preservation of happy memories and it had been such a difficult year. No matter, today I would try. I wasn’t sad as I unzipped the case, not even as I figured that Chris was the last person to use it and pack it away. I was pleased to find that the battery showed some life. At the conservation land, the parking lot was not cleared as I figured it would not be. There was one set of tire tracks but the vehicle that made them was gone, and no footsteps disturbed the hill up to the trails. I had the place to myself once again and I was euphoric about that.

The ground was still bright white, feathery soft, and iridescent as the sun struck it. The magical had not yet morphed into the ordinary, I had not missed my chance to take it in. I felt a spark of happiness - the last day of literal February had offered something magnificent from winter, and this feeling was something I had not known could exist for me right now. The snow struck me as reminiscent of a happy caricature of winter, like a scene from a glittering holiday card too perfect to be real, but here it was right under my feet. Before I climbed the first hill I tried to use the camera. It was so bright I couldn’t even really see what I was doing and I'm an amateur photographer to start with. It doesn’t matter, the point is that I looked carefully, noticed the details, and appreciated it all deeply. I was cognizant that this particular moment in time wouldn’t last, it could not possibly last because of its very nature – the winter sun was reflecting light off the intricately formed snowflakes and just as it was also warming my face, it would soon turn those geometric crystals into something else less defined.

(nobody here, the trail was covered)

I proceeded slowly, playing with the camera and snapping pictures before the battery died. The only tracks on the trails seemed to be from animals, and I marveled at the perfect formation of the prints. Even though I knew there was a slick coating of ice underneath the snow and moved slowly, I still slipped frequently. And, I laughed at myself for my clumsiness. No wonder there were no other human footprints, it was treacherous underneath that fairytale blanket of snow. Right away I sought out the flowering tree that looked so forlorn yesterday and examined it in today’s brilliant light. It seemed transformed again, set off by the shimmering background. There were small, dead, star-shaped flower heads everywhere, still open to the sky such that many had collected puffs of snow. You can’t make this up, the entire scene was stunning.

(empty, dead star flowers)

I made my way up the next big hill and, as I did, I saw that the sky was perfectly clear and brilliantly blue behind starkly barren trees. The contrast struck a chord deep inside me. It stirred a memory of something that a wise friend wrote to me several weeks ago; she had lost her husband more than a decade earlier. As I walked, I remembered her words this way: grieving is not one thing or another. It crossed my mind that the depth of my harsh February state was also the height of my humanness, not just one thing or another.

The trail into the woods had no footsteps. It blended into the tree cover such that you wouldn’t easily know it was a trail unless you knew of its existence, but I did indeed know of that path. A friend had shown me in January when Chris had just died. The snow gently heaped on baby pine trees was captivating as the separated confetti flakes dispersed light. I took time to appreciate it all. It felt that somehow Nature knew I needed this extravagant display. I had to hold a few branches as I slipped and slid down the path, and at a couple of points I had to follow my instincts about where the trail was. As I emerged from the woods onto the main trail in the fields, the path was undisturbed by footprints. Once again, I was the only person who had come this way, but now the path was so familiar to me I did not need any guesses about its location. I just kept going, one foot in front of the other. 

My walks and runs are the closest I come to meditation. This is why they are important to me, they are so much more than physical exercise. Deep emotional work happens without effort or intention. Without judgment, I allow thoughts that feel profound to me but are probably just clichés, and I follow them where they want to go. I consider analogies, some deep and others less so. I invite memories, even the difficult ones, and talk to Chris in my head as if he were with me. None of it makes intellectual sense, but letting it happen is the only thing that feels like dealing with this pain and a step toward healing. Today was no exception. I did not think about work, financial matters related to Chris’s estate, or what to make for dinner. I allowed the morning to just continue to unfold, the thoughts and emotions to unspool in an undisciplined way. It was sometimes deeply sad and yes, quite a bit tending toward happy, and sometimes wistful and other times funny as I continued to forge my own path on the new snow while slipping wildly. I wished I could be here with Chris, to hold his arm and struggle over the slippery spots together.

This conservation land is my place, and ours, and his. It’s not just one thing or another. I mourned that we could not share in the winter beauty together, but I soaked it up for me, and for him. As I again thought of Chris on his last day, I imagined somehow giving this all to him just as he wanted to give every good thing to us. If I had the world to give, I’d give it all to you.

After I finally tore myself away from the beautiful place, I went straight to a coffee shop where Chris and I had spent our fall Tuesday mornings together. I treated myself to a coffee and sandwich while writing on my laptop. But first, I searched for my friend’s actual words in my email account. Oh, they are so much better than what I remembered. I’m grateful for the wisdom of my circle of friends who have gone before me. She wrote:

Grieving is not one thing and is not the same for two persons. Not unlike cancer, it moves in, and intrudes. It changes and morphs (sharp to dull, overwhelming to bearable, near to distant).

It is not only azure, cobalt, and perfection or relegated just to monotonous, steely, and gray. It is also the barren set against the blue.

It is the gray cloud moving quickly over the sun and covering it for a moment, then moving away.

It is the warmth of the full winter sun making me remove my hat and, a few minutes later, the frigid shaded wind forcing my hands up to cover my exposed ears. It is a moving line of a shadow over a field. 

It is a dangerous mass of ice existing beneath the twinkling fluffy snow, and it is taking a few confident, excited steps only to fall down hard with my bare hand dipping under snow. It is a devastating despair followed by surprising lightness. It is being deeply thankful that it all happened while being profoundly sad that it is over.

Grief is not just one thing or another, neither is love.

February

March used to be my dreaded month. Even though March holds the first day of spring, the month is mostly still winter in the places I have lived, and a long month at that, with only slight teases of spring. In a turn of positivity, both my opinion of March and my ability to cope with it has improved with my age. My children were both born in March, one near the beginning and one at the end. My professional position bestows a "spring" break in the first week and sometimes Easter holidays come later in the month which further interrupt the cold run of days. With March comes the forward turn of the clock to give more daylight during waking hours and also the eternally hopeful first spring flowers: crocuses. I look forward to seeing these small shoots poke up in the yard and open to reveal their spring colors of purple, yellow, and white. They seem brazenly optimistic as they do so at great risk of freezing in a cold snap and being buried in a snowstorm. All of these anticipated events make March easier to take.

February is a different story, though. It is one of those months that is fully contained within one season and it is decidedly winter, through and through. There are no flowers in sight. Technically February is a short month, but only on paper for me. The rhythm of the academic year makes it a long month without any holidays. Whenever I carry out the task of setting the spring lab schedule, I see four weeks in a row with the potential for a paralyzing dump of snow that must be kept in mind. Particularly since the winter of 2015 when sixty inches of snow fell in February, I have a resigned approach to the month which involves an eye on the forecast, contingency plans for school cancellations and delays, and suppression of fears about trees falling on the house and power lines. This year, the winter has not been harsh but February has seemed particularly endless. It has been my first full calendar month without Chris… This means that it is also my first full month being a widow and a single parent. I feel physically sick when I hear or read these terms and admit they relate to me, but they do indeed apply to me by the standards of the world, regardless of whether I continue to feel married or wear my rings.

I’m mentally done with February but, as I wrote before, I’m not truly on board with moving to a new season. I don’t feel ready for March with its memories and birthdays that will feel so painfully different to us. I’m not sure I can handle the increasingly hopeful outlook of my fellow New Englanders. The bitter lesson of the last several months is that time does not care what I am ready for, it will not stop because I am unprepared nor turn back because I long for it to rewind. No, time will continue to relentlessly pass and bring forth whatever must happen. All I can do is keep waking up and getting out of bed to put one foot in front of the other.

That is what I did this morning. One might even note some degree of progress since I set a small goal the night before and met it: I graded the six remaining lab reports immediately after the school bus with no procrastination involved and had time to squeeze in a walk at the conservation land before leaving for my office. I do not like running outside when it is below 20 degrees and I hate my treadmill with a passion, but walking outdoors seemed palatable for some reason. I doubled up on leggings, found my wool socks and boots, zipped my jacket lining into the outer shell, located gloves and mittens, put on my warmest hat, tucked my sunglasses into my pocket, and set off for the familiar trails.

When I pulled into the parking lot, bumping over an uneven expanse of ice and frozen mud, I doubted the need for sunglasses because the sunny sky of the early morning was clouding over. The place appeared deserted. I finished putting on my winter armor and started up the hill to the trails. Instantly I could see why I was alone here. The wind and cold were formidable but, more challenging, the path on the hill was shellacked in ice with a few frozen footprints here and there, spaced too far apart to gain a solid footing. I walked on the side of the path on some long-dead meadow grass. There wasn’t much actual snow, but rather the slippery granite-like remains of a snow-rain-freeze cycle. A phrase from a Christmas carol came to mind:

In the bleak midwinter

frosty wind made moan

earth stood hard as iron

water like a stone

Yes. Just those four lines for me, no need or desire to go further in the song today. The ground beneath my feet was hard as iron, my heart felt like a stone. Where once I could feel joy and the force of life, a drive for the future, mostly I am frozen now. Things happen around me as they do around rocks.

(It’s not quite that bad, I guess, I do things. I was out walking for goodness sakes, that’s not nothing. I completed my work, I showed up to teach, I collected some data. One foot in front of the other. Still, those four isolated lines seemed on point.)

As I always do, I thought of Chris as I walked. We walked here frequently in the last year when our life became so limited. We tried hard to make the best of a bad situation. We did together and separately put in quite an effort. Personally, I worked to check my worries for the future and live in the moment. I tried to come up with ways to make our constraints interesting and fun. But mostly, I have to give the credit to Chris. The words valiant, heroic, and courageous to describe Chris’s effort would not be hyperbolic. As we walked, Chris and I processed the experience. I remember a specific walk in early May when we talked over various medical events and decision points, and wondered if we had been able to get radiation started sooner in 2018, even by one week, would it have possibly preserved some of his reading and writing function. We both felt the need to go over everything that happened, to review the illness. I had been angry about a specific doctor’s apathy and seeming lack of attention, Chris had not been. That particular day was a stunning mid-spring day. There were flowering trees in full glory with bees buzzing here and there, all set against a gorgeous blue sky. I remember thinking about how Chris would probably be gone by the next time spring came around and recoiling at the thought. I told myself I could not think that way because it was disrespectful to consider the after while he was walking with me in the here and now, but in total honesty it was more than that; the thought of Chris being gone was too searing, the pain too intensely white hot, to allow in my consciousness.

(from that day, the picture doesn't do it justice)

Today as I walked there was no disrespect in thinking about Chris being gone. He is gone. I have not seen him in fifty days, and it has been many more since we were living anything close to normal. The absence of his gentle, kind, funny self is all I think about for most of the day. I miss him so much. I worry I am forgetting him. And yes, the pain is actually as searing and white hot as I sensed back in May. I am not strong and it burns me, badly. I cannot avoid it now and so there is no choice but to try to bear it in most situations. Walking in a deserted nature area is about as good as it gets, there was nobody around to hear my crazy person cries and see the sheen on my cheeks from the frozen tears.

Why did he have to die and I have to go on? Why did he have to die and I get to go on?

The two variations on the question rattled around in my head as I walked. “Have to” versus “get to.” The former implies a reluctant duty, the latter a privilege. Which is it? Hopefully both in time. But for now, I am meeting the responsibility of “have to” in the only way I know how. One foot in front of the other, one joyless day at a time. I'm going on but it's not pretty, just as the same flowering tree from May was totally transformed into a desolate shadow of itself to survive winter.

(I think it's the same tree, different angle. See the treacherous icy path?)

As I approached my car to go home, I did honestly (and melodramatically) think to myself that this may be the depth of winter for my soul, my own literal and figurative February. I feel completely closed off from the elements around me, barren like the trees on the conservation land trying to preserve whatever life is buried deep inside. The warmth of a personal spring and possibilities of growth are remote. The sky today thickened into a blanket of gray, later covering the sun completely and darkening on the horizon. It felt appropriate whereas the cerulean blue of yesterday would have been unwelcome.

I wondered, as Dar Williams wondered in song (albeit in a different context):

The nights were long and cold and scary, can we live through February?

I think so. Everyone says that time helps. Joe Biden promises that I’ll think of Chris with a smile instead of a tear after time passes. He should know, he has experienced more untimely loss than most people have to withstand. It’s just that I know February and it feels like it never ends when you’re in the middle of it. It’ll be February for me for a long time even when I turn the calendar page on Friday.