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.

Lubbock -- A Meeting Place

There aren’t a whole lot of cars on the road through north Texas to Lubbock and not many curves, or hills, or anything else.  It’s an easy drive and really beautiful in its own way  We drove through the late afternoon listening to BW Stevenson singing, “Please Come to Boston” and “My Maria”, it was fantastic and Marty would have been harmonizing with us making us sound better than we did.

We pulled into Lubbock in the late afternoon.  The population is larger, but it still has the same small-town feel.  You can find your way around Lubbock easily, it’s all about sequential numbers and the alphabet and it’s square and flat.  It doesn’t fit just anyone.  Marty and I fit perfectly there.

I met Marty at a mutual friend’s birthday party in 1973.  A long time ago, literally a lifetime ago.  It feels good out there, it feels good in my soul.

We stayed with Skip’s brother Mike and his wife Pat.  Mike is a little older and he was part of that high school class that always seemed a bit intimidating.  Not anymore, both Mike and Pat are artists and part of a burgeoning art scene in Lubbock (yes, it’s true) and are consummate hosts.

Skip and I got up early on Saturday to go watch Texas Tech play Oklahoma State in football.  It gave us a chance to wander the huge Tech campus.  It was a cool panhandle morning as we made our way past familiar and unfamiliar buildings dotted with new and amazing sculptures.  The weather was perfect, and Skip and I meandered through the unfamiliar and familiar.

TTU has done an excellent job with incorporating art into the campus and sculptures and fountains dot the west Texas campus.  Marty would have loved the steel and stone figures sitting quietly in front of various buildings.  

The sun was bright at Jones stadium as were the Red Raiders as they beat OSU in a great game.  Marty, Skip and his ex-wife Sharon went to every game for a couple of years and Skip and I always had a great time.  I think the women Marty and Sharon silently humored us, maybe it wasn’t that silent.

After the game we headed out to Buffalo Springs Lake just east of Lubbock.  It’s not big lake but it is a beautiful lake in a small panhandle canyon.  Jerry, Marty’s brother, had a good friend whose relatives lived at Buffalo Springs back in the day and we would go out there and party.  At one-point Jerry bought a small sailboat and we would sail around the lake like real sailors (not).

We spent the evening talking, remembering hometowns, families and good and bad times.  Lubbock has always been a special place for me.  I went to college there, met some amazing people, met my wife, had a first shitty job, bought our first house (for 15k), got a dog, and lost that shitty job which led us to Paris.  

We got up early the next morning and hit the road for Pendaries New Mexico.

Muenster -- "I love to go, I hate to leave."

We got to Muenster about mid-morning.  Muenster is a small town, about 1400 people, that has a solid German Catholic heritage.  It’s right on highway 82 15 miles west of Gainesville and was one of our very favorite stops on our journey.

We lived in Muenster from 1980 to 1983.  We found it to be a warm, tight knit, self-reliant community.  There were two small grocery stores, a couple of restaurants, two or three beer distributors and two churches, Sacred Heart Catholic and First (and only) Baptist Church.

Marty did her Speech Pathology thing in a small school district in a small Oklahoma town I can’t remember.  I did customer service for Texas Power and Light and Erin was born at Muenster Memorial Hospital.  We were good friends with a couple of the nurses in the delivery room and Marty sang in the Cooke County Chorale with the doctor who delivered Erin.  It’s that kind of town.

Matt being a blonde haired and blue-eyed kid fit right in and attended a Montessori pre-school there.  We were great friends with the owner and operator of the local newspaper, the Muenster Enterprise and it was painful to leave.  While we were there we immersed ourselves in the community and the civic organizations associated with the town and made fast good friendships.  Marty did not want to move when we did and she told me, “I love going to a new place, I hate leaving the old place.”

Every year in Muenster they hosted the German fest in April or May.  Some 80000 people would come and polka, eat sausage and drink beer.  It was a huge party and Marty and I waltzed and two-stepped with the best of them.

I also remember sitting in the majestic sanctuary of Sacred Heart with it’s high ceilings and huge gray beams rising to the ceiling.  It was Christmas season and I watched and listened to the chorus Marty was in sing the “Hallelujah Chorus”.  I didn’t know you were supposed to stand during the Hallelujah part of the chorus.  Some old lady explained it to me succinctly and I’ve been standing ever sense.

When we got to town that morning Skip and I drove to the park and let some of Marty’s ashes drift to the ground amidst some tall old oaks close to the creek that runs through the park.  I didn’t say anything, I let the memories of this place that was such an integral part of ours, wash over me.  It was just about perfect.  

After the park I drove us through the little town.  We drove past our old house.  It was the first new house we ever had, and we put in the yard and hung drapes.  It was here we decided if we wanted to stay married we should again hang drapes together.  Marriage lessons learned.

We drove past Rohmer’s Restaurant, Fischer’s Market and the little motel I stayed in for six weeks while we waited on our move from Paris.  I stayed in the same room that whole time and finally brought my own light bulbs, no one can read off 20-watt bulbs.

Skip and I stopped at small bakery that used to sell the best Apple Strudel.  We got a cherry strudel, stopped at the Muenster Enterprise, now on it’s 3^rd or 4^th owner since we left, got a copy of the paper and headed to Lubbock.

I met Marty in Lubbock.