Grief

 

Time passes.  It gets better.  But every now and then I can still feel grief sneak up behind me and grab me by the neck and shake me a little bit.  I’m always surprised.

There are five very distinct steps in processing grief (some say 7….who needs that?).  I’ve done the five steps, heck, I’ve even done the seven steps of grief.  Denial, done it; anger, oh yeah, felt it; bargaining, me and God, we talked a lot; depression, yeah, got the t-shirt, it’s real; and finally, acceptance, which is sort of a moving target.

What nobody ever bothered to tell me is you occasionally have do-overs with the whole grief thing.  Hey moron, start at step one and do it again.  I feel myself going through all the steps when the grief monster manages to grab me and attempts to swallow me whole.

For me as the chief cook and caregiver, for my kids, Erin and Matt, we started the whole grieving process on April 4, 2005, after Marty’s first stroke.  We lost so much of Marty after the first stroke and even more eight months later after the 2^nd stroke. 

The brain damage from the strokes robbed us of who Marty had been, the strokes killed off too much of her.  Of course, we mourned, of course we walked the steps of grief.

Long term caring gives you a lot of time to work through the loss and grief, it also gives you a lot of time to grieve, to feel the grief, to see the brokenness of your cared for every day.  You get an up close real look at denial and anger and depression almost daily.  The cycle of mourning became a daily struggle, and she was still with us.

When Marty had her first stroke, a cerebral aneurysm, I lived in a state of denial for a long time.  Really, the denial kind of kept me from going crazy.  I would have cratered had I known what really lay in store for us. 

I did the anger thing on a regular basis, sometimes anger at others, often anger at myself for not doing enough.  I bargained and I know I went through bouts of depressions where everything felt so dark and sad and bitter it was hard to rejoice in the sunshine that occasionally graced us. 

When I finally got to the acceptance part, where I realized where we were and how our life must continue in our new normal, life got better.  Those other feelings were there, grief over the loss of what was, but eventually I came to understand this was our life and we needed to live it the best way we could.

The sadness, the feelings of loss become a part of your essence.  They become a part of you, but never your whole, just a part of whole that makes you unique.  As time goes on, as you work your way through the important parts of grieving, it doesn’t go away, it settles in to be a critical part of who you are and your journey. 

Hopefully, that permanent part of grief that becomes part of your DNA is not a feeling that defines you or rules your brain.  In my journey, it hasn’t gone away, it is simply diminished, it is part of my background like my deep west Texas accent.

I still think of Marty every day, some days that makes me sad, some days that makes me smile, most days I smile, but the loss, the loss that started all the way back in 2005 is still there, and on the whole, I can live with that.

Again

 

She said it a lot.  I would reach down, Marty would turn her cheek to me, I would kiss her cheek, and she would say, “Do it again”.  I would kiss her cheek again, and she would say again, “Do it again”.  This repeated four maybe five times in a row.

Marty loved being loved.

That wasn’t always the case.  At times during her life Marty struggled with feeling loved, with feeling worthy of love.  Marty wasn’t ever sure she deserved the love and affection of those around her, more important; too often she didn’t feel very lovable.

Over the years, post stroke, that changed.

She loved to be hugged, she loved to be kissed, she loved to hold hands, have another human touch her arm or rest their hand on her shoulder, she loved physical affection.  Marty loved knowing she was loved, and she eagerly accepted that love and the affection that came with it.

None of that meant that Marty couldn’t be exceptionally ornery; occasionally the old Marty would resurrect her tart, acerbic self.  Like, when she told me that my shaggy hair and shorts and sweatshirt were just a little bit of an embarrassment to her.  But, overall, Marty evolved into a sweet and loving human who loved to be loved and was not shy about saying give me some more.

All of us, at times, struggle with the idea of accepting love, accepting care; even from someone we know loves us.  Marty was not alone in that.  We don’t feel worthy of another’s sacrifice, we don’t feel we deserve adulation or praise or affection.  We have that voice in our head rattling around telling us, “You are not worthy, this other person’s love is more than you deserve, I’ve done nothing to cash in such a rich reward. “

In her life Marty felt that, it made her angry, it made her sad, it was frustrating.  She got over that, post strokes.  Marty evolved to a better new normal.  She no longer thought about being worth loving, she didn’t run all the negative talk around in her head.  She found a place in her heart where she would very simply say, “Do it again” with a level of assurance and expectation that you would kiss her cheek as many times as she asked and that it was okay, it was perfect for her to ask, again and again and again.

I attended some business training years ago that focused, to a small degree, on accepting compliments, accepting nice things people say to you.  I learned early in life to be humble and too often I took that humility to absurd levels, not accepting kindness, not accepting good things; with the idea I must pass on kindness from others if I was a truly good human.  We need to learn to accept those kindnesses and simply say thank you, accept the words, accept the love.

After the strokes, all the way to the end Marty knew and loved knowing she was loved passionately.  She absolutely knew she was loved, and I think, remarkably, because of or after devastating strokes, she came to see herself as lovable, worthy, and deserving of my love, of our children’s love, of our family’s love, of our friends' love.  She got it, she understood we can never particularly deserve another’s love and affection, we can never earn that greatest of things through our behavior.

Love, the love of other people, the love of God is given freely, it is not earned, we don’t necessarily deserve the love of others, it is the greatest of things, it is the ultimate gift we give and receive.

When it’s offered we simply need to accept it; we simply have to say, “Do it again.”

 

 

Anger

I would get angry. 

It wasn’t too often but some time something would happen with me or with Marty or any number of other things and I would get mad, mad at the situation, mad at a store clerk, mad at a caregiver, even mad at Marty.

It was almost always stupid stuff but occasionally things would blow and then everything was a mountain.  It was and is a losing proposition.  I recognize it’s a real part of life, we get sad, we get happy, we get mad. It never felt good, it never felt like the purge was worth it.

We would be sitting in our chairs, kicked back, relaxed and then Marty would make an egregious mistake, one that was world shaking,  like spilling her drink on herself and I would have to get off my lazy backside and clean up the mess and her.

I can still hear myself, kvetching, complaining, angrily chastising Marty for something remarkably benign, for something she couldn’t help, for daring to be broken and unable to clean herself or her mess. 

I would rant and rave, she would sit placidly, listening, absorbing the ridiculous anger as I wiped up spilled Diet Coke (hey, it’s sticky).  I would tell her she had to be more careful because of how it affected me.  Too often I would go too long and bless her soul, all Marty would do is apologize.

Eventually sanity would take hold and I would get the mess cleaned up off the chair and off Marty and the quiet in the house would essentially point at me saying, “You are an idiot, this is not worth it.”

I would listen to the quiet and then feel the guilt of being angry at someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t defend themselves.  The guilt would then be something I could be angry about and I would mutter under my breath about how “she” was making me feel. 

Again, idiocy.

At that point in time I would have no choice but to face my own failings and look at Marty and with sincerity, real sincerity, apologize, one more time.  “I’m sorry I got so angry, it was a small thing, it wasn’t worth my reaction.” 

She would simply say, “That’ okay.” 

That’s it, no recriminations I so richly deserved and frankly wanted. She would just say, “It’s okay, I understand.”  And, she would mean it, it was a deep forgiveness, as authentic as one can be when someone else has been unreasonable and angry with you over something stupid. 

Her reaction was both inspiring and maybe a little frightening.  How do you deal with real and total forgiveness when you have acted the fool?  I have to say, there is nothing like it, there is nothing so real, nothing so powerful, nothing so elevating as having someone say to you with meaning, “you are forgiven.”

While too often I felt shame at my unreasonable anger and reactions, the love and kindness my broken bride extended to me was the balm to my bruised psyche. 

“I forgive you.”  Time after time we danced our circular dance and time after time, “I forgive you.” 

Where else do you get that?

Oh yeah, God.  Marty wasn’t God like, she was all too human as was I, but as God granted all of us a reprieve from our sins even when forgiveness wasn’t deserved;  Marty, the human, did that for me, every single time.