anniversary

Widowhood Effect

/ alpenglow80 / 4 Comments

IMG_8252.JPG

We are quickly approaching a year since Patrick died. In many ways, this past month has been one of the hardest. With the marathon and the holidays behind me, I have felt unmoored, and as much as I’d like to keep drifting and linger in the open ocean, CR and my job keep me bumping against the shore of unrelenting responsibilities. In the final weeks of Patrick’s life, we had so much help — bodies bringing food, cleaning, helping nurse Patrick, and visitors — that I longed to just get my house and my own routine back. After the funeral, everyone left, and I had about two weeks of days alone at home, but that was consumed by all of the paperwork that accompanies death.

With just CR and me in the house in the intervening months, I’ve realized that I never got back into a “normal” routine. My ability to plan ahead in my personal life has been crippled, and I have spent much of my time at home reacting to things in front of me — piles of laundry, dirty dishes, meals, toys underfoot, dust, mail, bills, baths — in haphazard flurries followed by ignoring them completely. In the time Patrick’s been gone, I haven’t had a time to turn inward, to grieve alone, to drift and come to terms with an underlying depression that I feel just under the surface. I need a break from reality in a way that, as mother to a four-year-old, I will never get. So, I’m feeling stuck and tired and anxious. The constant torrent of troubling national news hasn’t helped much, either.

Earlier this month, I read an article about the “Widowhood Effect” by Canadian writer Christina Frangou, who was also widowed in her 30s. Perhaps some of what I’m experiencing is related to what she describes: “No one warned me about the cognitive impairment that comes with grief. Tears, heartache, depression – these are expected, but the sustained diminishment of my thinking skills astonishes me.” As I read, I compared my experience to her own. She and her husband were unable to have children, and while I agreed with much of what she wrote, I found myself bristling and wanting to shout at her, “This whole experience is so much harder when you have a young child who needs you to be okay and stable!”

For the most part, I HAVE been okay and stable. CR and I have a lot of fun together, and I am amazed by her joy and enthusiasm. She and I have been able to cry together, too. But her very existence has prevented me from a deep, dark sulk, which, in ways, I still feel I need.

A walk outside in the sunshine would probably help, too.

Beloved

/ alpenglow80 / 2 Comments

Tomorrow is – would have been – our fifth wedding anniversary. Five years ago, all of our friends and family were gathering in my hometown to celebrate the start of our marriage. Snow had continued to fall through May, and by early June the leaves on the aspen trees had just started to leaf. The week of our wedding, the weather turned suddenly hot, and all of the high peaks’ snow began melting in earnest. My mom and I collected sandbags from the fire department to reinforce the creek bank near our home for fear that the run-off would flood our yard and possibly the house. The water was rushing so powerfully, you could hear enormous boulders being rolled down the creek bed, particularly at night when the flow was the highest.

261613_2047043052187_1570661_n

The creek stayed in its bank and the sun rose over a glorious green valley on the day of our wedding. I remember looking at the faces of those gathered and feeling a surge of joy realizing that each person there was known and beloved, and that they were all there to support Patrick and me. How could we, how could any of them, even have imagined that in five short years, Patrick would be gone. In the brief, wonderful, intervening years, we fully lived our vows: We saw each other through periods of unemployment; pregnancy; home ownership; parenthood; loss of parents; terminal illness; death. Even knowing what I now know, I would have chosen Patrick again to be my husband.

I spoke with Patrick’s sister a couple of days ago, and she wondered if Patrick had set aside a gift or a note for me to mark this anniversary. He didn’t. Patrick considered a project like this for both me and for CR. He spent so much time thinking and worrying about it that the entire process became stressful and daunting, and he finally plotted a different course. The message that Patrick most wanted to convey was that CR and I are and always will be beloved. He commissioned a mirror from Charles Shakleton (descendant of the great explorer and master woodworker based in Vermont). Patrick spoke with Charles several times about exactly what he wanted. The resulting oval mirror that now hangs in our entry reads “BELOVED” across the top. Patrick’s gift to us, to everyone who enters our home, is that each time we see our faces in the mirror we know that we are his beloved, God’s beloved. This subtle reminder captures more about Patrick as a human being than any set of timed gifts or notes ever could. Patrick’s love is pure and simple and ever present.