Grief Shadows

Introducing the New Me by Kim Malchuk

2011-11-17T09:48:00.001-08:00

Introducing Kim Malchuk. My first guest submission! Keep 'em coming.

Guest Blog Submission

Editorial Contact: Kathy Cabrera, media@fivestarpublications.com, 770.569.8221

Introducing the New Me...Like Me or Not?

By Kim Malchuk

As my husband Mel was in the final stages in his battle with terminal cancer, I faithfully sat by his side preparing myself for how my life would be without him. I knew it was going to be a scary transition but I thought I was being realistic by readying myself to face the future alone. I was terribly mistaken.

What I would not realize until many months after he passed was that the service was not just for Mel. Invisible to our friends and family there were two people lying in that casket. The ‘Kim’ that everyone knew was gone forever.

Experiencing a major loss in life cannot help but change you. When coming to terms with a devastating loss it is not unusual for people to re-examine themselves and life in general. While in the process rediscovering your ‘new’ self this can bring about discomfort to some of the people around you. Change is inevitable but not everyone is open or willing to accept change.

It had been approximately 6 months after Mel’s passing that I was waiting and hoping to catch a small glimpse of the person I used to be. I waited with anticipation but she never came to visit. It was at this time it finally became very clear that my waiting was pointless. My old normal was gone forever and I needed to find my new normal going forward.

Once the fog was beginning to clear I discovered something very interesting about the people we choose to have in our lives. I assumed that certain people would always be there for me; however, I quickly learned that is not always the case.

Through no fault of their own some people will slowly distance themselves for a number of reasons. They too are having a difficult time dealing with the loss and the surviving spouse is a constant reminder making them feel awkward. They don’t know what to say or do for the one left behind so they slowly disappear. The fear of talking about it after the fact makes them feel uncomfortable so the words completely come to a halt. They only saw you as being part of ‘the couple’ and now that is gone so the dinner invitations stop being delivered. Some get frustrated and don’t understand why it’s taking so long for us to ‘snap out of it.’

The lesson I learned from my grieving journey is that everyone who comes into our lives are gifts. Mel taught me that. The friends who faded away were only meant to be in my life for a certain amount of time. By vacating themselves they made room for new friends to appear that would bring me back to life...a new and different life.

I have not harboured any ill-will to those who came and left. Death affects people in many different ways but it is up to them to deal with their emotions no how they will move forward. My obligation was to heal myself first, last and always. I did this by writing, reading, spending time alone and with new friends. I got involved with new activities that would help me discover new things about myself I had never known before.

My grief journey has been a life-changing experience. I compare it to a wild rollercoaster ride because it was filled with ups and downs and loops and hoops. When I was able to finally get off that ride I emerged a changed woman. My feelings about how others perceive me are none of my business. Either you like me or you don’t. Death made me appreciate and learn how to live a more meaningful life. I choose to live it with hope, love, happiness and a whole lot of gratitude.

# # #

About the Author: Cancer took Kim Malchuk’s husband, but not the enduring spirit of their love. Now a motivational coach, speaker and award-winning author, Kim shares her personal journey of loss, healing and hope in her new book, Tasting Rain (www.tastingrainbook.com).

Secret Lessons From Books and Grief

2011-10-25T14:34:00.000-07:00

A cross post from Insane Parents Unite!

Strange.
Emotional spilling over.

While reading a book, I move from one scene to the next -- one sentence to the next -- and start to cry. With no hint of a reason why.

"... 'Don't worry so much, my dear," [the doctor] says reassuringly. "There's no such thing as being allergic to India.'

One night, I dream of Nana. ..."

My chest tightens and I feel warm all over. A distant observer part of me thinks, Here's your emotional PMS showing up. That's good. Let it come then.

Not really expecting that it would.
But it did.

The hotness wells up to my throat and then eyes. I feel the moisture and with even breaths I exhale through open mouth repeatedly until I can gain control.

What was wrong with me? Where did that come from? PMS might (ok, does) make me tender and sensitive, but there's always a catalyst. Where did this come from? I was just reading. About nothing emotional. A follow-up trip to a doctor and 'one night I dream of Nana.'

I look up, holding the tears in my eyelids like little bowls. I'm still pushing the heat out with my breath.

Why did those two unrelated sentences cause me grief?

The eyelashes of my right eye stick together and poke my eyeball. I blink rapid staccato and the light from the NJ windows looks like a strobe light for a few seconds. I continue blowing the emotional pain out.

I used to hold my breath when I'd cry. But then I learned that our muscles hold memories, and holding our breath while crying did something similar. It made the dense emotion of grief to stay within. Now I struggle to breathe when I cry. To let it out. For realsies.

Compassion!
Being taken care of.
Love.

I blink the eyelash straight and two solid fat globs of tears drain down my cheeks.
Like twins.
Separated at birth but still unknowingly doing things simultaneously, across the country.

The doctor had compassion and kindness for his patient. A tenderness.
The Nana the author dreamed of loved her. Shared a special bond with her. The author was going on a quest for her now departed Nana.
Love.

I look to my own life. Past and Present. And feel loss and emptiness. Loneliness. No one to care for me now. No grandmother figure in my life. Nor mother figure really either. As mine has geographically and , I fear, emotionally drifted from me. And the woman I associated as my other mother figure for years has done the same. Only I am to blame, if not solely, for that. For divorcing her son.

Feeling ever much the victim, I wallow, and my stomach sours and my lungs harden.

I am not blowing anymore.

I am in my lover's house.
He cares for me.
Nurtures me.
Holds me.
Aches for me.
Does anything and everything for me.

Is this why I love him?
Is that a good reason to love someone? Because they love *you*?
(No. Otherwise I'd still be married to my ex.)
But somehow N's love for me and mine for him feels different. Newer. With more promise. More possibility. More passion.

I'm distracted by the blue sky and the sticks of branches that have lost their leaves to autumn, and the Arabic French music of Souad Massi fills the apartment. I wonder if it contributed to my mini-meltdown.

N. and I spoke yesterday of tradition and heritage. Ancestry. What to pass on to your children's generation. What do I want to bring? What can I bring?

Certainly this love. This love and compassion and caring that I spontaneously cried about. This delicate reminder of the importance of life and love.

And my love of books and words.
And magic.
The seasonal changes.
The Full Moon song.
And reading in bed at night.

I can bring those things to my children.

What can you bring yours?
What reminders have you found in books lately?

How are you Grieving?

2011-09-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

Instead of asking "How are you doing?", ask "How are you grieving?"

This makes far more sense to me as a recovering griever. Whenever someone asked "How are you doing?" -- and I could even be crying when they asked -- I'd always stop mid-blubber and stare at them slack-jawed. Like I'd been slapped. HARD.

My internal responses were: "What the fuck do you think?! [insert irreverent name based on gender]", or a more generic - yet not quite vanilla - "I feel like shit. Duh."

Instead, out loud, I resorted to "Fine" or a shrug with a trailing off "Well ..." or "You know ..." Embarrassed-like.

And then I'd feel even more shitty for suggesting that I was "Fine" that my husband had just died, and I felt like throwing up in my mouth a little bit.

Seriously. Don't put grievers in that situation.

What you really want to know anyway is how they are grieving. Do they stare at the wall? Are they sleeping? Can they eat yet?

Ask those questions.

Guest Posts Coming Soon

2011-08-05T18:41:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start inhabiting this blog more often. Showing up and spreading peace and hope through other people's grief and loss stories. This may seem ironic to some, but grieving people often find great solace in hearing about other's grief. It reinforces that they aren't alone on this great scary trek of widowhood (or whatever their loss embodies.)

In the near future, look for an inspiring woman named Kim coming to this blog to tell her story. She's an ordinary woman, a storyteller, a motivational coach ... and a widow.

I look forward to welcoming Kim to these pages.

Call for Submissions

2011-07-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

Grief and loss are ubiquitous. Unfortunately.

You only have to turn on the news to see it. Or hear your child cry. Or listen to a friend when she's had a fearfully bad day. Or, turn inward and see what you've been thinking of lately.

Grief and loss don't always have to do with death, or divorce. Grief comes with: losing a job, moving, watching someone move away, fighting with a loved one, missing a child who's at summer camp. Grief spills over into lots of things. And grief doesn't always have to be GRIEF. It can just be grief. With little letters.

Little lettered grief could be opening up a brand new bag of cinnamon raisin bread to make a much anticipated piece of toast and finding mold. Or gleefully making a birthday cake for your son and discovering that you don't have any eggs because the last person to use any put an empty carton back in the fridge. Or maybe you spilled your coffee on the way to work. See? Little lettered grief.

I would like to hear from you. I would like to open up this blog for guest posts on the subjects of grief and loss. Big GRIEF, or little lettered grief. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, Big GRIEF, little grief, what begins with grief? It can be on any topic within that thematic framework. It can be in any format: essay, short story, or article. Fiction or non. Please email it to me (identifying what format it is in) at valeriewillman@gmail.com and I'll post it.

Let's build some community and start healing.

Audio Teaser

2011-06-22T23:35:00.000-07:00

Grief Shadows Excerpt
read by JoJo Jensen.

The link takes you to a website page where several audio teasers are posted. Mine is the last one. Under the heading: Memoir.

Let me know what you think.

Grief Shadows is awarding--winning

2010-11-23T17:29:00.001-08:00

Wow!
I'm award-winning!

PsychologyDegree.net

Grief Changes Friendships

2010-11-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

*Some of the names have been changed.

When Rob died, my best friend, Jennifer – whom I called at least every day and saw at least weekly – was there for me in all ways. She was on bed rest for her pregnancy but still showed up at the house with her husband the morning of Rob’s death. The parlor and the basement with the red countertops were full of family and friends that already missed him and wanted to hold our hands and hug us.

When Jennifer showed up I said, “What are you doing here?!,” knowing she should be in bed. I burst into tears. The compassion of her being there. The wretched pain in her husband's eyes. He was one of Rob’s greatest and oldest friends, and we'd attended his sister’s memorial service only months before with some of these very same people.

I leaned on most of them, and a few leaned back on me and we mourned together. It wasn’t quite so lonely that way. Jennifer was one of those that cried with me. We held onto one another and told stories of Rob, and then stared blankly at each other when we just couldn’t believe that he wasn’t coming back to us.

And then a few months later, I felt a definite alteration in our closeness. It happened in her living room one winter afternoon. I was telling her about Sandy.

Sandy had lost her infant daughter to death at only twelve days old. As a result, Sandy had shifted her worldview enough that she started helping others with their own grief using hypnosis – among other things. She called herself a soul coach and I was seeing her as my grief counselor.

I wanted to explore the reasons why this tragedy had happened and what I was supposed to do about it and how I was going to make myself feel better. That was it in a nutshell. I felt so unbelievably pained, like all my bones had razor blade spurs on them and each time I took a breath or moved in any way, I would bleed anew with excruciating devastation.

I just wanted it to stop. I would do anything for the pain to go away – even something as drastic as having a past life regression done. Even something as drastic as seeing a spirit medium.

I was late getting to Sandy’s that first time. I’d remembered the time wrong. She offered me tea and I used the bathroom with the brightly colored fish shower curtain. My session was held in her sun room. Pastel cushions on white wicker, a small fountain splashing and serene music washed over me. I settled into a chair across from her and put my feet up. The tea mug was in my hands but still too hot to drink.

She closed her eyes and rested her hands, palms up, in her lap. Her legs were uncrossed.

In the silence I waited for messages from Rob. She began by describing him and who he was with, and the first thing he said through Sandy was:

“Don’t be fearful. I don’t look like that anymore. Don’t remember me like that.”

I took this to be a message for his mother and sister. They were the only ones to see his body in the coffin – it was closed for the funeral service and wake. But I accepted this message for myself, too. I had my own slideshow of possibilities scrolling through. Those possibilities were much worse than what my mother-in-law and sister-in-law saw in the coffin that day, I’m sure.

For the next two hours I listened to Rob’s messages and asked a few clarifying questions. It was a strange three-way conversation that I never forgot.

“Make your decisions out of love for the children.”

“When no one is around, I am still there with you. I’ll be with you until the end.”

“Don’t worry about finances. There are some (plenty) coming your way – you just don’t see it yet.”

I only came with one question for Rob.

“Did you choose to die?”

He answered with Sandy’s help:

“Not like you think. Soften the word death, more like a doorway. My awareness had

an agreement.”

I wiped the tears away and nodded my head. Of course. It would be that way. The way that he said.

“Rob’s telling me that you are not to blame yourself for him dying,” Sandy said. “It was part of the contract. ’We’d decided it before we were even born,’ he’s saying.”

“But if I believe he died for a reason and that that reason was for my spiritual growth and maturity, wouldn’t that ultimately make me the cause of his death?” Tears dripped off my chin.

“No,” Sandy reassured. “Remember it doesn’t have to do with you like that. You made him feel good!”

She paused again and closed her eyes.

“He says he has instructions for you,” Sandy said.

“Ok.” I sat up straighter and wondered if I should write this down.

“One was coming to see me.” She paused, listening, then laughed.

“What?” I asked.

“He’s saying: She’s stubborn, isn’t she?”

I smiled through my tears. It did take me a long time to mount the courage to make this appointment.

“He says the stubborn part was for ‘ … letting go. Not letting me go. In fact, I’m not asking that – just letting go of your belief system.”

Then she said for him: “Once you allow the fullness of my presence into your heart, your spirit will find peace – you’ll be at peace.

“Remember the promise we made three years ago. Ignore the ‘until death do us part’ part. We do not part with death. You didn’t marry me for my physical body, you married my spirit. The part that defined me. Who I was. That part will never die or leave,” Rob said.

“What are you doing there, Rob?” I asked.

“Getting my feet wet. I’m still getting used to not having a body. I can get really small and then really big. It’s cool,” Rob said.

“He’s kissing your belly.” Sandy smiled. “He says the baby will look like you.”

“Can he hear my thoughts?” I asked Sandy. She answered for him.

“I don’t invade your thoughts but if you direct them to me I’ll “hear” them.” Rob said. “Do you hear me?”

“No. I wish I did,” I said.

“Don’t worry. You will,” Sandy promised.

“Did you do what you needed to in this life? Or at least some of it?” I asked.

“I met you. And the kids.”

I swallowed and looked down at my lap. I shook my head. Was that enough? Were we enough? How could I be enough?

After a few sessions with Sandy, I started feeling more hopeful and became

interested in my surroundings again – venturing out a bit. It was on one of those ‘ventures

out’ that found me in Jennifer’s living room that winter afternoon. Our little ones played

and I told Jennifer about the peace I was getting from seeing Sandy.

She wiped her hands on a towel at the kitchen sink and walked to her mantle. She lit

three candles.

“One for Baby, one for Beth and one for Bob,” she explained. She meant the twin inside of her she knew she’d already lost; Beth was her husband's sister that had died only months before, and Bob – that was their name for Rob.

“Have you ever thought about contacting Rob or Beth?” I asked. Her eyes were round as she shook her head.

“It’s helped me so much – I can understand the why a bit more and that’s made all the difference for me.” I waited for acknowledgment or a request for more information. This was so fascinating to me that I assumed she would feel the same way.

I offered to pay for a session so she or her husband could go to a Sandy session in the hopes that they could find some comfort as I did.

She said, “No, thanks,” and that was pretty much it. Our friendship started slipping then.

But let me explain: There was no explosion of wrath, I didn’t take her response personally, or as a rejection from her. And I didn’t end the relationship because she wouldn’t accept my gift. I simply started putting my energy toward another friend I had at the time.

Here’s the thing -- grieving a big loss turns things around for you. You try on new values (“No, I don’t mind if you only brush your hair every other day …”, said to my son at eight years old) and belief structures. In my case, reincarnation and duality of the soul.

These concepts brought me peace at a time I sorely needed it – obviously you’ll have to find your own system to ease your pain; mine may not fit you.

I tried to be real careful about who I told my new beliefs to so I didn’t create any discomfort. And truthfully, because it was less than mainstream, I was worried that I would be rejected or ostrocized. So I only shared it with one other friend of mine. Her name was Andrea.

I would take Aubrey to Andrea’s house and our children would play together while I went to counseling at my soul coach’s place. After I was done, I’d come back and share my experiences with Andrea. She was fascinated, and a very sympathetic listener.

I’d known Andrea for just under two years. We’d met in our childbirth preparation class and our kids were born on the same day, in the same hospital. And she cared for Aubrey while I worked part-time.

So, I could say that Andrea was a willing listener when I most needed one, and Jennifer didn’t want to hear about it because it made her uncomfortable. But mostly what I think what was happening was the speed at which I was moving through my grief was different from her speed.
No blame. No right or wrong. Just was.
And that changed our friendship.

"I'm sorry for your loss"

2010-10-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

I never know how to respond when people say this to me.

Even when it's slightly modified, like in Emma Thompson's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility when Mrs. Jenning's son-in-law says to Elinor when Marianne was sick: "I'm more sorry than words can say."

When people say that to me, my first and only thought is: Well, me too. I'm sorry he died, too. I'm devastated. Adrift.

People never know what to say to grieving ones, but grieving ones don't either.

I went shopping with my mom during my first visit to Oregon after Rob died. We were at a consignment shop to pick up some maternity clothes for me, because I'd already started showing.

I ran into a girl I'd gone to high school with, also pregnant, also with her mom. She chatted happily about her family and her plans and even mentioned her husband. I plastered a fake smile on, chuckled and said, "Me, too." I left as soon as I could and hoped I never ran into her again.

I couldn't tell her about Rob. It would've terrified her -- people think widowhood is somehow contagious. Or probably it's just the sudden realization that everyone's mortal and the same thing could happen to them. People don't want a reminder of that having lunch with them. Besides, she wouldn't have known what to say, and I hate putting people in that position -- where their eyes widen, and fear and sadness and grief pool in them and their mouth opens and closes like a caught fish flapping on the shore.

I didn't want to do that to her. It would've ruined her day. So I laughed instead, and waved good-bye.

Stages of Grief -- Checkoroony

2010-10-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross broke new ground when she shared the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Most people I’ve talked to believed these stages were linear – one happened after another, though this is not the way Kuebler-Ross herself said it would work.

And to top it off, if those crappy stages weren’t enough, there are more. More that she didn’t talk about. Like, shock and guilt.

Despite the non-linear approach Kuebler-Ross intended, I still saw the stages as a checklist of sorts. It didn’t matter in what order they happened for me, I was just ready to start crossing them off my list. The faster I could do that, the faster I’d feel better. And that was something I desperately wanted to be in control of. I was in control of nothing else, so this would be my thing. This I would rule over. And I was ready to get down to work.

So, denial. Ok, that happened briefly for me when the troopers came to the house. My first words were: Are you kidding? But that only lasted a few moments really.

This is great. I cross the first one off my list.

Shock, I think, lasted about three or four months. It took awhile to come up for air and to settle into some semblance of a routine. Check. (But remember, this wasn’t one of the original five stages. This one was thrown in for free.)

I never did bargaining. I don’t have much to say about that. I do know what it is though, and I watched out for it, but it didn’t make any recognizable appearance. For all intents and purposes – check.

Sadness. (Or it’s alter-ego, depression.) Sadness permeates everything for years. Sorry to be so crass and blatant, but there it is. It isn’t the sadness of sobbing and heartsickness. That took me around a year or so to pass through. But good days bled through them all. So in the midst of the pain, joy would show up, too.

But the sadness that lasts for years is more elegant. It shadows your thoughts and activities like the dappled sunshine that survives through a canopy of trees above a summer deck. Soft, nostalgic. Tender, even.

The anger was tricky and I’ll tell you why in a little bit. First, I gave myself a freebie. Before I even started crossing them off, I checked off anger. I wouldn’t do that. I’d never been raised with anger displayed in obvious ways. Good Christian girls didn’t get angry. They worked things out calmly. Or in my case, just avoided all confrontation.

Growing up, my parents never displayed anger. Sure, there were disappointments and disagreements – maybe even disgust sometimes – but never raised voices. Never slamming doors (except among outraged siblings once in awhile), and never ever ever any physical anger, hitting or throwing plates against the walls or at each other.

I wasn’t mad at Rob for dying. I was sad he died. I was lonely because he died. I didn’t blame him for dying. He fell asleep. It was an accident.

Irritatingly enough, denial resurfaced for a small time. No one asked any of us to identify the body like they do in the movies. No one asked if Rob had any distinguishing marks on his body, like the blue triangle and eye of Ra on his left shoulder blade. Wouldn’t they automatically ask that of everyone? What about the long scar down his belly from the surgery he had when he was four hours old? Wouldn’t they want to make sure they had the right guy before putting his death notice in the paper? So maybe he didn’t really die. Maybe it was someone else.

But then Fernanda and Lena went to see the body at the funeral home before the wake. So that ended the denial bit. Again. The shitty part was: I did the work again, but I didn’t get to check it off the list again.

And then I wondered about the way he died. The troopers said he fell asleep while driving. But that sounded so unlike him. He’d pull over to the side of the road to sleep, even with the threat of a commanding officer at formation bearing down on him. So why wouldn’t he have done that on that night? Maybe he didn’t fall asleep, maybe he had an aneurism, I speculated. But the autopsy didn’t show one.

Guilt is another bonus grief stage. Most of my guilt stemmed from not making him stay home and sleep. He could’ve gotten up after a few hours of rest and made it to formation by six that morning. And I asked him to stay, but he said, “No.” And that was that.

I knew I really couldn’t make him do anything. He was an adult who made up his own mind. I left it there; no more dwelling.

And acceptance. Well that was dumb. Of course I accepted his death. He was gone, wasn’t he? It was almost an insult to my intelligence. Fucking check.

So, I’m done right? Checkoroony.

Yeah. Right.

Remember that anger I was telling you about? Well, four years later after I was “done” grieving it showed up. Surprise!

I was angry at Rob for dying. I was angry at him for working a 24 hour shift and not having any sleep. I was angry at his National Guard unit for proposing the 24 hour work shift. I was angry that I wasn’t going to have any more of his children. I was angry that we never got to go to France and Germany together. I was angry that he wouldn’t be there for the kids to do daddy things with. And I was angry that he was gone and I might never have the same intense love that he showered on me from anyone else.

Whew.

The most important thing to remember after that, for me, was that it was ok to feel this anger. It was normal and right and safe, and I wasn’t a bad person for feeling it.

Double whew.

Somewhere in those four years I was at a certification training for bereavement facilitation led by Alan Wolfelt, PhD. He spoke several times during that week and I learned something that has given me peace ever since. And now I give it to you.

Grief is cyclical. You can check off whatever stages you want, but you’ll most likely revisit them. And that’s normal. You aren’t delayed, or dwelling on the death. This is supposed to happen. Not forever mind you. And it’s not eternally on your mind, or anything. Maybe six months – or four years -- will go by and you’ll feel this overwhelming anger or sadness and wonder what’s wrong with you. Nothing. Grief is cyclical. It’s not a tidy inked line on the paper, it’s a big ball of yarn that’s been tangled up by the new puppy.

Something else I learned from Dr. Wolfelt helped me feel much less crazy in those first few years. He described something called “grief bursts.” Boy, was I relieved when I knew what these were. I’d had one and thought I was delusional.

I was driving to the mountains with my roommate, Susan, for a day of snowshoeing. We were listening to an India Arie cd in my rig and the song “Beautiful” came on. In the middle of it I burst into tears. I had no idea why. It was actually fairly terrifying. I had no trigger: we hadn’t heard the song together before he died, Susan and I hadn’t been talking about him, it wasn’t a random anniversary of ours or his. Nothing to warn me. Just an overwhelming sense of him, and my sadness that he wasn’t there.

Susan and I dissected the possible causes for the outburst for a long time. The most plausible to me was that I was wearing Rob’s flannel coat and there must have been some residual smell of him in the fibers and the heater warmed it up enough to smell them. His smell being enough to trigger the tears.

But the truth is, it doesn’t matter. There doesn’t need to be a reason. In fact that’s pretty much the definition of a grief burst. You randomly burst out with emotion related to your grief for no apparent reason. It’s just there suddenly and then fades just as quickly. Done.

But it certainly creeped me out when I experienced it. Not to mention I was again discouraged that I wasn’t yet “over” this irritating grief. So, to learn that grief bursts were normal was a huge relief and had solidified for me that the stages of grief weren’t tasks that need to be checked off.

Grief lingers, but not in an irritating-younger-sibling-tagging-along way, or a flu that linger on and on and on. It’s a sweet grief. Like the favorite special sweater of his you saved and bring out every year for Samhain*.

*Sambain is celebrated as the Celtic New Year. It’s more commonly referred to as Halloween, or the eve of the Day of the Dead. Our family celebrates this holiday with an altar decorated with things our ancestors, friends or close family members who’ve died once owned, or liked. A camera, pencil sharpener, dog tags, a watch, or an empty carton of cigarettes. Camels. (And we sometimes wear clothes that once belonged to them, as well.)

Yoga, Grief and Cliches

2010-08-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

Grief is like Bikram Yoga, I think. In class today, I was reminded that my body sometimes betrays me and doesn’t fold into a pose I could do the day before. Or my balance will be all wonky and I can’t stand on one leg in one pose, but in another I can.

When I first attended these yoga classes I would rage inside when this happened. I could get my forehead to my knee in this pose two days ago, why not now? Last week the instructor told me I had the best balancing stick pose in the class, and today I can’t even get into the pose without falling forward on to my hands. This new source of irritation would rankle until the whole class was ruined for me and my dour mood would follow me home and extend to the children, or a headache would blossom and I’d suffer the rest of the day.

Now I know that the trick is to recognize that this is just where my body is that day. I can meet myself where I am and accept that this is who and where I am today. And that’s ok. It’s more than ok, actually. It’s loving. It’s self-compassionate.

Grief, for me, was like this as well. I’d get past taking off my wedding ring. I’d give away his last pack of cigarettes. I’d welcome him in my dreams and channel his words in my journal. And I’d feel quite pleased that I was handling it all so well. I was applauded for it, even. And then a grief burst would smack me along side the head and humble me to my boots. I’d hear my infant son laugh for the first time and reach for the phone to call Rob.

It was uber-confusing. I’d rant and cry and write in my journal and try to swallow the scorched and scrapey feeling in my throat. Would this wretchedness never pass? Just when I thought I was “over” the worst, a resplendent low would stun me with awe. Like when, on Valentine’s Day night, I was soberly closing my eyes to the unromantic and helpless day I just spent without Rob, when Aubrey crept into my room hours past when I thought she’d been asleep.

“What’s wrong, Aubrey?” I rolled over to face her and brushed back her dark bangs.

“Where’s Daddy?”

Quite frankly, this stumped me a little. This wasn’t a new question, but it was one I thought we’d dealt with.

“He’s in heaven, Sweetie,” I said. Aubrey looked down at her hands picking at the blanket on my bed.

“When’s he coming home?” she asked.

My heart stopped. I’m sorry for the cliché, but there it is. Right up in my throat, too. Another cliché. I think I can honestly say, that apart from the soldier handing me the American flag at my husband’s military funeral, that this was the worst moment I’d experienced since Rob died.

“Oh honey,” I said, pulling her into my bed and arms. “He’s not coming home.”

Blam. My body just crumpled at the base of a brick wall.

After I’d gotten her back to bed, I cried myself to sleep. On Valentine’s Day – when every other lover was having dinner with their sweethearts, eating chocolate and pressing flowers into each other’s hands.

Eighteen months had passed since Rob had died. I had been dating for about five or six of the last ones and had really felt like I was past the grieving stage. I thought I was cured. Life went on and so did I, right?

I was looking for a new partner and parenting my two exquisite children – but occasionally days or nights like these would set me back. I’d feel like I had to start grieving all over from the beginning and the exhaustion that that thought lowered on me would send me to bed for as long as my infant and toddler would let me.

And then things would get better again.

I’m sorry to say that it took me about four years to finally realize that my grief would come and go and that that was ok. Like the yoga, I needed to just show up and accept where my heart and emotions were that day. No fighting it; no raging that I’d just been fine yesterday.

I accept where I am and what comes up for me, no matter what I experience on any given day. I’ve stopped calling them “bad” days. They are just “grieving” days. And that’s ok.

It’s better than ok, actually. It’s loving. It’s self-compassionate.

Grave Intentions

2010-08-05T14:58:00.000-07:00

I wish the grass here was lush and silky like some grass is. I want to swim my arms and legs through it like you do in your sheets when you first wake up on Sunday mornings. But the grass is brown and pokey underneath my belly where my tee-shirt rides up and on the underside of my arms.

I’m lying on top of Rob’s grave anyway.

But I don’t swim in it. Instead I close my eyes and listen to the wind rustle the trees and hear birds. I hear car engines, too, from the nearby roads, but I pretend they are wind, too.

I was hoping there wouldn’t be anybody around so that I could talk openly to Rob, though I only have to turn my mind to him and we can converse the other way. The wind snares madly at the trees in consent.

But there are people here, planting flowers four graves down.

I wonder what his body looks like now? After ten years would it be just skeleton yet? Or a mummy? Or only slightly decayed? When does the flesh rot off bone completely – underground, with no oxygen?

The wind is madly hopping from tree to tree, ruffling the pages of my journal and my hair. Smiling, I wonder what Rob is trying say. And why – if he is trying to say something – he’s not communicating in my mind – as was our custom years ago.

You won’t listen to me now, he teases. You’re writing and not turning your mind to me.

Do you have something of import to say?

No. Only that I’m always here for you. Forever. Through good times and bad.

The wind slows to caress my cheeks, then ruffles again in laughter.

And I think of Paul, who promises those things, too.

Being in Massachusetts is weird now. We drove to a park in Rhode Island yesterday and I felt sick with Fernanda driving. Not carsick, but sick with worry and fear. She drives too close to cars and doesn’t lift her foot from the gas pedal when the car in front of us brakes. And I realized today that I was afraid we’d crash. Even when I drive here, my hands are clasped around the wheel and my shoulders are tense and the teeth in my mouth ache from clenching.

I remembered for years that I didn’t want anyone but me driving Aubrey anywhere. Her first field trip on a bus was traumatic for me.

I like lying on my back on Rob’s grave. It feels oddly comforting, as if I’m snuggling with him. On the way here to the cemetery I saw a young man walking down the road and his facial features reminded me of Rob.

I remember seeing other men through the years that have looked like Rob, but only one that made me look more than once.

It was in a group of people outside waiting for my step-daughter to get out of school. He was turned away from me with a young girl in pink at his side. His hands on his hips, the way his shorts fell and his hair cut all paralyzed me. I stared at his back for two minutes but never had the courage to call attention to myself and seek out his face.

The first time I brought Aubrey to Rob’s grave after we’d moved away to Oregon, she picked up a rock and handed it to me. I had picked one up, too. But she hadn’t seen me do it.

I kept them both for a few years, until they disappeared one time while going through his box of things. (More like Rubbermaid tote – but you know what I mean. Box sounds more elegant.) The stones’ import was forgotten, I suppose, because I don’t have them now.

(GRIEF TIP #1: Always label everything even though you know there’s no way you could forget the significance of one of your treasures.)

How can I keep coming here to Massachusetts? I feel useless and dis-oriented.

To remember little tidbits I forget back home, I travel here as pilgrimage to never forget.

To forge a bond between the cousins in case it’s needed later on when the children are older and they want a friend that remembers them from back when. Or if anything ever happened to me and Paul, the kids would come here and Zoe and Nora would become their sisters. Insurance against them being strangers if that were ever to transpire. These are all my reasons.

Is that cold? Heartless?

I feel floaty and restless.

I don’t know how to tell our story anymore. Has it been too long ago? I want to cry here, at his grave, like a true widow. But so much of what I think widows are, come from books and movies. Odd sentiment, beings that I am a widow and lived such a horror. And the truth is, I have felt like crying here – even twice on the way to the gravesite – but I stopped them, the tears, to save them for the cemetery. Isn’t that stupid?

The ground is hard, but I don’t want to get up from Rob yet – like he’s sleeping next to me. I wonder if he’d like me now. Maybe. Some of me has changed (I think even Fernanda notices my growing confidence) but my parts of color are more pronounced, and that may be likable to him. Or not. He was pretty opinionated and jealous.

I imagine texting Paul.

At the grave.

Wanna say anything to Rob?

But I already know the answer.

Thank you.

As strange as that may seem to others, I understand this perfectly.

I’m sorry you died – but because you did – thank you. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for helping her become the woman she is now. I never would’ve had her in my life except for you – so thank you.

And now I tear up. But I don’t know why. Because of the beauty in Paul’s soul? Because I love Paul and I thank Rob, too? Or cry because of Rob’s death -- and that it feels creepy to thank him for dying?

The wind whips up again and I take deep breaths … I allow the love of the universe to fill me up. A mantra. It works and I feel calmer.

I’ve collected a little yellow stone from beneath me that reminds me of the sidewalk chalk Joey was playing with two days ago.

(I wonder what Rob’s casket looks like now?)

It’s odd. When I get up to leave, I find I can’t. Not yet, for some reason. I wait to see if I can know.

I like sitting here. It’s the first time in ten years I’ve allowed myself the time to just sit and write or rest while here. Usually it’s just a quick duty call of sorts. Something I do before leaving Massachusetts.

I’ve always wanted a place to visit in Oregon. I planted a pear tree (that’s what Rob told me Pereira – our last name – meant) in Oregon at my first house, but moved soon after. It died under the first renters’ care. I planted another one just this spring – many years later – still with that wish to have an Oregon monument of sorts to visit. The dog ate the damn tree.

I was beginning to think I wasn’t meant to have a place to grieve, that I must always carry my conversations with me instead of bringing them to his gravesite (or proxy site.) But then weeks later little sprouts of leaves have poked out of this seemingly dead, and definitely violated, stick in the ground. There are no branches, just leaves sticking out of a teeny dwarf variety trunk. The leaves start all the way at the ground. So funny and awkward looking – but determined and proud.

The wind calls again and I wonder if Rob helped those leaves to grow – to remind me not to give up hope. That remembering him and loving him still, after all this time, is not wrong. And that loving Paul is not wrong and that, perhaps, Rob is saying thank you, too. To Paul. For loving me and bringing me back to life – and love.

Thank you

A Blessing

2010-06-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

“I’ll always love you, Rob. And I’ll never forget you. That is my solemn vow and promise. Something tells me I’ve said this before, I’m remembering.

But here’s the new picture. I’m married to a loving, humorous, kind, gentle man. He likes kids but he loves me. He’s very devoted and I have great emotion and love for him. But you are always there. Your pictures are still in albums in our house. Your Christmas ornaments still go on the tree every year, with new ones from our new family.

But strangely enough, this doesn’t bother my new husband. He understands and more importantly, he accepts.”

I wrote this five months BEFORE I met Paul, my husband. What a great manifestation! Paul is exactly like this. He accepts all the things about me, even when my ugly shadow side rears up. And when that happens, and he doesn’t run away … I feel blessed and honored to have him grace my life.

And as far as kids go, he loves mine – which are now ours. And he is devoted, to all of us. We do have Rob’s pictures up and in albums. We talk of him and Paul even reminds the kids of things I’ve told Paul about Rob. Paul wants them to remember Rob. He is not threatened by this. He is not threatened by my continued love for Rob. Paul is his own man, on his own journey.

But I’m so glad he’s chosen to bring us along and then helps us with the obstacles on ours.

Podcasting This Fall 2010

2010-06-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

I just finished listening to a webinar on podcasting and I'm excited to tell you that Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed will be available to you free as weekly podcasts starting this Fall.

But first I need to school myself in how to do it. :)

One Down -- Infinity To Go!

2010-06-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

I got my first rejection to "Grief Shadows" yesterday. And I'm actually pretty excited about it.

I know that may sound weird to non-writers, but to me it's just bringing me closer to the person who will say 'yes.'

Also, this rejection letter wasn't formulaic in the slightest -- that could get a writer down. Form letter rejections are depressing in their anonymity. So, below I am proud to post a copy of my rejection letter.

What I especially liked about it was the concrete suggestions about what I could do to make another agent say, "Yes."

Platform.

And while she said that I was doing all the right things, I still just didn't have enough of an audience yet. (Another magic blessing of a word from an agent -- proving they believe in you and your story.)

So. "Go Me!" I've got the proposal already out to three other agents and the Willamette Writer's Conference is in August and I will re-pitch it there. Forward Momentum!

Thanks so much for sending your proposal. The writing is strong, and your words are compelling. Unfortunately, it's not enough. Especially right now, especially for memoir, author platform is critical. Don't get me wrong. You're doing all the right things, but the audience you're reaching isn't quite big enough at this point. I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear. In order to sign someone today, I need to know that they have an established audience, and from all the positive things you list in your proposal, I just can't see that the size of that audience-the people you're reaching-is large enough to come out to buy the book. I wish it weren't that way. It's hard to even give that message to you, but it's where we are at this point in the industry, particularly with memoirs.

I wish you the best in finding the right home for Grief Shadows. Keep at it. The work is good. I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and that is huge. That is the hardest part and really can't be taught to an author, so you have a way with words, to be sure.

Why it took me so long to write this book ...

2010-05-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

When I first sat down to write this book, I struggled. A lot. Mostly because going back and re-thinking the past doesn’t work for me. In fact, I try really hard to stay in the present because I usually think ahead five years. But here I was, wanting to go back, and afraid to do it at the same time.

On August 17, 2000 – almost ten years ago – my husband died. Being twenty-six and newly pregnant complicated my grief, and in some ways I felt like I didn’t even start mourning him until after my son was born. I knew at that point I wanted to write about my experience – my journey through grief. I wanted others in my place to not feel so alone in their world when they read my words. And also I knew something about the cathartic and healing power of writing, having journaled for years. So I was committed to writing about that time and tried, however, without success for more than eight years.

At first my grief was too raw. I spent my days staring at the living room wall, and – when I did go out – avoided friendly strangers at checkout counters and swim classes, people who didn’t know he was gone and asked about him. I called credit card companies to cancel his cards and gave away some of his clothes. But I couldn’t throw away his toothbrush or the pregnancy test stick I’d peed on that evening before he died.

I couldn’t write about it then, so I waited and tried again later. I tried again when I’d moved out of state and bought a new house. I purged my emotions into wet clay vessels, and my roommate watched my then two-year-old daughter and six month old son while I ran around and around the block in my Saucony sneakers. I watched the sun flash out from behind trees and counted the seams in the sidewalk. The air was nippy and I composed words in my head to write later.

But later was always later. The words, when I wrote them, weren’t what I wanted. They didn’t express how I found myself holding my breath for no particular reason. They didn’t articulate how it ached when I had to call my mom to tell of my infant’s first laughter because I couldn’t tell my husband.

And then I fictionalized it. And a door opened. I wrote of someone else’s pain and mine lessened somehow. But I wanted to tell my story, so I stopped.

I needed to begin again. It was time. Time to write our story. But I had to go back to do that. I needed to re-open the wounds and examine the pain in all its concrete sensory detail. And I was afraid.

I was afraid of the pain that I knew must accompany that trek. Afraid of how I’d be with my family while I was excavating my memories. Who would care for my children while I was in the past? Who would be a companion to the man I was married to now? Wouldn’t it hurt him to see me crying over Rob? How would me going back to Before affect my relationships in Now? Would it threaten the serenity and happiness we had?

My two year old is eleven now. She’s learning Japanese, stays up too late at night reading, and draws when she wants to express herself or be alone. She’s in a ballet class now, but will go back to swimming and riding horses this summer. She loves magic, music, nature and American Dolls.

The baby I found out I was pregnant with, the night before Rob died, is nine now. He whoops when he walks and is an expert scientist, especially regarding sharks and snakes. He loves the ocean -- and all the creatures in it – ninjas and sandboxes with running water nearby to make trenches and waterways. He hates people who litter, loud noises and taking his supplements or trying new foods.

Paul -- the man my children call “Dad” -- fed my son formula in bottles, changed his diapers and played “Tickle Monster” with him. He cradled my daughter in his lap when she was little and read to her at night and they both called him “Big Hairy Guy” for laughs.

So, would it be worth it to go back? Could it shatter the Now? Those questions plagued me and stunted my writing. I couldn’t even start.

This is perhaps why I have not written the story before now. The potential for hurting the people that I cared about was so monumentally in front of me.

Because what would happen was this: I’d remember a flash of memory and go to write it down. While I was there I’d fester and cling to shards of recollection and agonize over not the way things used to be but the things that would never be. And this was where the present got tricky. How did I stay pleased with my life and my new marriage while I lamented over my dead husband never walking my daughter down the aisle at her wedding?

And then digressions bleed through, like, I struggle over saying “my” daughter. I want to say “his” daughter. Rob’s. But then flash to “our” daughter. But that couldn’t be right because the man I’m with now, Paul – the one that has raised her since she was three years old – has adopted her. So she’s our daughter – Paul’s and mine. Not my late husband’s. Not anymore. But how can I say that?

Even now I have to ask: Where does he go in my life? Where can he fit? He must be allowed to stay in some form.

And so he does. A black and white photo of him feeding my infant daughter hangs on our upstairs wall; a flower he gave me and I pressed long ago is framed and holds a place on our living room altar; and he lives on in my journal, my dreams and my memories. And that is enough. It has to be.

So now that I’ve finished the book, I feel like an epic section of my life is over. I still have days where I miss Rob. In fact, I just went to the Azores on a recent vacation (a place he had visited as a teenager and where he still has family) and I got teary-eyed thinking how I wished we could’ve gone there together; or when I went in one of Lisbon’s huge cathedrals during that same vacation, I lit a candle for him and cried, knowing he would’ve loved seeing it.

My “Grief” days, or “I Miss Rob” days, aren’t overwhelming anymore -- or honestly very often anymore (a statement which at one time I would’ve been loath to say.) And despite those days, my life is rich and full.

I remember him with fondness and love. I cry at movies when the husband dies. I write about him. I dream about him. I tell my kids stories about him. We talk to his mom every week by phone, and we fly to visit her every summer. He is still very much in our lives and sometimes we still cry about him, but those times are fewer and fewer between.

It didn’t hurt those around me to write this book. Turns out, it even brought us closer.

I hope you enjoy the book and that, somehow, it makes a difference in your life.

Namaste,

Valerie

Grief Shadows OVERVIEW

2010-05-20T14:30:00.001-07:00

Three state troopers came to my front door at five o’clock in the morning and told me my husband was dead. He had fallen asleep driving on his way back to the National Guard base on Cape Cod.

I just saw him four hours ago. Smelled him. Kissed him. And told him we were pregnant. And now, all at once, I was a widow. My daughter was a toddler and I had one on the way.

I was twenty-six years old.

But how could I be a widow? Widows were old, with white hair and sensible shoes that cushioned their bunions and who waited for people to visit them in assisted living homes. Or maybe they were fifty-five and had lost a spouse to cancer. Someone with grown children. Not pregnant, like me. Not with a toddler who’d never heard the word death.

Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed was the book I needed then.

Grief Shadows holds the reader’s hand and explores both the dark and light places I found during my grieving process – showing them that they aren’t the only ones. Others have done this before. Others have come out the other side. Those dealing with grief will feel less isolated, as if they’ve met a fellow traveler.

Grief Shadows is a memoir and shares my spiritual and emotional journey back to wholeness, reaching out to those who are searching for that connection.

I wrote of my horror, my sadness and then how I moved through life without my husband. I sludged through the muck of mundane to cancel his credit cards. I picked my way through horrific minefields, just waiting for the one thing that would send me into a catatonic state: Would it be picking out the coffin? Would it be telling my daughter that her daddy is never coming home? Or what about giving away his clothes? Throwing away his toothbrush?

Throughout the book, I wove in old love letters written by Rob, some of our family snapshots, and newspaper clippings of the accident.

A key element to my healing process was redefining myself and, conversely, remembering who I was. All the labels I had once associated with --mother, wife, friend, student -- were stripped from me in a matter of seven minutes. That’s how long the state troopers were in my house. Yes, I was still a mother, but now I was a single mother. Yes, I was still a friend, but not to the same people as before the accident. Grief changed me, and my relationships to other people necessarily had to change along with me. Here was an opportunity – albeit an unwelcome one – to grow and redefine who I was. To remember who I was underneath all the labels and layers. To discover the person I wanted to be after this tragedy.

The other theme woven through the chapters is that grief had never fully left me -- always seeming to shadow my experiences. But the intense pain did yield, and grief – soon enough – became something manageable. Something I wore with grace, like an accessory: a watch that was my grandmother’s, a scarf my mother bought me, or a necklace my daughter made.

I cried in cars, went to water aerobics, decided to move cross-country and delivered my baby. I found art and pottery, and journaling became a lifeline for me. But before I moved to Oregon, I started the strangest trek of all – seeking out a spirit medium. And then there was the dating.

Somehow this seemed worse than the spirit medium.

But it worked. I dated, I moved on, I doubled back, I cried some more, and I learned how to ride the grief bursts. I joined a new family and we created our own hybrid of hearts – understanding along the way how not to feel like I was betraying Rob by being with another man.

Grief Shadows is more than a legacy of memories; it’s a way to reach out and

connect to other grieving souls – to let them know they aren’t alone.

The Balm of Phone Calls

2010-05-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

One night I was lying on the couch in the dark watching television. Aubrey was asleep in her crib in the next room, the bedroom I alone shared with her now. It seemed I was doing a lot of this tv watching in the dark thing lately, staying up way past when my head normally hit the pillow. It dulled the senses and for a second I could forget the worst of the pain.

But mostly there was no forgetting. In the quiet times after Aubrey slept, I remembered. I remembered Rob’s face after not shaving for a day or two. Scruffy. I remembered when he’d stroke my hair and face. He was so tender. I remembered that when we were dating and still living in the barracks at the base in Colorado, we’d walk in the nighttime and find places to sit and snuggle. Find private places where he’d get all shy, or he’d sing to me, or tell me his darkest secrets in Portuguese. I remembered his laugh, and the chest hairs that would peep out from above his tee shirt, and that when he got sleepy, he’d get extra snuggly. Or that when I walk away to do something, he’d pull me back to him for a kiss or a hug.

Sometimes he’d think of song lyrics just to sing to me, or play for me. It was like reading me poetry.

The show was a re-run but I watched it anyway because I didn’t want to go to the bed alone and know that he wasn’t down the hall playing his online computer game.

The phone rang. I needed to pick it up because Fernanda wasn’t home from work yet – it was maybe only 9:30 in the evening. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but I didn’t want the ringing to wake Aubrey. I lifted my fae from the arm of the couch.

“Hello?”

It was my Aunt Mary from North Carolina. Her husband, my uncle, was the only one of my family members that could attend the funeral.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“I’m fine, I guess.” I quietly clear my throat. It’s been a couple hours since I spoke last.

I remember when my dad called me right after Rob died. A day or two later maybe. I was pacing the blackened parlor room where my happiness was stolen. The computer screen my only light in the sleeping house.

“You’re strong,” my father said.

“I don’t feel strong.”

And another phone call a couple days after that. Again, in the parlor. Why did I haunt this place? A place I rarely hung out in before Rob died? Was it because this was the last place I’d seen him alive? And therefore closer to him somehow, in this room?

This time the call was from my uncle Phil. It’s a call I remembered long after all the other words of condolences were given to me. Long after the neighbor rang our bell and handed me a musical water globe with two doves in it “for your little girl” and a white business sized envelope of cash collected for me from all the neighbors that I’d never met in the two years I lived in that house.

After a few beats of silence over the phone line I say,

“I don’t know what to say.”

It was honest. I actually didn’t know the man but he was one of my favorite uncles and the only family member, it seemed, that tried to keep in touch with me – save my mom and grandmother.

His answer was truthful, too. And poignantly perfect.

“Neither do I. But that doesn’t matter. You won’t remember what I say anyway. You’ll just remember that I called.”

My heart paused, swollen with love and relief.

So now it was his wife calling. Someone he married when I was a young teen and whom I knew even less about. I think I’d met her twice.

“Are you praying?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and quieted my sigh with effort. She was Catholic, too. It seemed I was surrounded in unwanted waves of Catholism, everyday holding myself apart a little from almost everyone I knew in Massachusetts and out. Not wanting to be preached to -- or converted -- in my weakened state, to a religion I felt was filled with frivolous hypocrises. But at the same time desperately wanting connection and a warm soul to lean my aching head on.

“I’m trying.” I gave in and bowed to the love and peace I knew my aunt was trying to offer me. “It seems I’ve forgotten how to though.”

It did seem … relieving, to be able to spill your angst at the feet of a diety that claimed to love you with no conditions – except the hundreds the priests threw at you.

“Have you tried praying to your husband?” she asked.

I was silent.

“To Rob?” I asked, thinking I must have misunderstood.

“Yes.”

As far as I knew you could only pray to God, through Jesus’ name. Anything else was, well –

“Isn’t that blasphemous?”

Aunt Mary laughed. Her dad was a bishop, for Christ’s sake!

“No.” I could hear the smile in her word. “If it helps, do it. It might lead you back into prayer to God. Get you used to praying again.”

We said good-night and I hung up the phone, thoughtful.

I turned off the tv and sat in the dark for a few moments.

“Rob? Can you hear me? I miss you.”

So You're A Single Mom Now

2010-01-22T15:35:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest differences between young and old widows is the itty bitty kids. Young widows often have young children. My daughter was twenty-two months old when her father died, and my son was on the way.

Grieving as a parent is a terrible, difficult thing fraught with question after question. Should I cry in front of Aubrey? How do I talk about his death with her? How do I find time to cry and grieve on my own? What happens when I'm feeling positive and in a moving-on space, and she is mourning rob and wants to talk about her sadness with me? And when my son was born, was I an adequate parent? Or did I leave him emotionally neglected by my own sadness and loneliness?

Happy Thanksgiving, Rob

2009-11-25T18:30:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, Rob, wherever you are. I am thankful that you and I connected in this life and that we've many lives to meet in again. Thank you for loving me as you did. I will never forget you. I love you.

(I just noticed that in this picture, Rob's reflection shows in the window behind him. Just his earlobe -- which I liked to flick back and forth, to tickle him.)

Depression and Wallowing ... it comes with the territory

2009-11-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

Grieving requires lots of soul-searching and introspection. Truly, it's a solo project. You can go to support groups and talk with friends and lean on family members, but the tough stuff -- the work that bleeds out your eyes and makes you want to throw up -- has to be done by yourself.

So, you could say that grieving is fairly selfish in nature. Not in a bad way, you understand -- it's just something that can't be one when others are around. Usually.

Experiences You'd Never Wish On Anyone

2009-10-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a sample of one of my section abstracts for my proposal:

The next section holds heart-wrenching details of nasty decisions that have to be made -- ones that require a lit cigarette in your shaky hand, though you don't light one because you've quit.

I'm in awe of how the human brain decides to record memories. How are they filed? is it a double-entry system? How do you access them? Why can they randomly jump out at you when you least expect it?

"Do You Remember?" skims my sub-consciousness for memories of the grave site service, and I wonder why I only remember things in slivers -- not whole memories.

Like, I barely remember twenty-two month old Aubrey standing next to me at the grave and a soldier handing me an American flag. But I especially recall that for the rest of the year, every time she'd see one, she'd say, "Look Mommy. A flag for Daddy!" and I would tear up and hold my breath until my throat unseized.

Making decisions is excruciating for a grieving person. "The Funeral Pyre That Never Happened" is the story of my decision to respect Rob's mom's wishes to bury Rob, instead of following Rob's wishes for cremation. It's the story of my decisions to not look at his body, what to bury his body in and what casket to buy.

Another decision I make in those first days is not to view the pictures my family and friends take of the Explorer and the crash site and the marker they left there. I almost wait a year before viewing them. It takes a long time to feel ready. When I do, I expect tears, but instead, only cold analysis shows up. i contemplate the philosophy of guilt and the choices I have right now in this place -- a choice to live and to find purpose.

I think the piece de la resistance for tasks you'd never wish on anybody is in "Where's Daddy?" where I have to tell my daughter that her father is never coming home again. That it's not because he doesn't want to, it's because he can't. That he's far, far away, but that he loves her and always will.

RobDaddy

2009-10-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

This last photo was taken about a month before he died.

"Going Back" Abstract

2009-10-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

One of the most confusing aspects of integrating your grief, or as some delude themseves into believing: "getting over it," is how to do it with the least amount of trauma to your family or new relationships.

When I first started talking on the phone with Paul, at the beginnning of our relationship, I told him that Rob's family would always be weaved into our lives: weekly phone calls, yearly visits, pictures on the wall -- that sort of thing.

"I know you had a history before I came along -- I did to," he says. He always makes sure that Rob is not forgotten and that he doesn't replace Rob -- only adds to the love we have for the children.

Despite this assurance I always wonder if my remembering rob aloud or having a day where I'm pensive and miss him causes hurt feeling for Paul. Is it possible, perhaps, that Paul feels badly when I talk about Rob even though he says differently?

This affects how I grieve and -- truthfully -- stunts my process. How can I let go and feel sad when Paul is there feeling second fiddle, or trying to make me feel better? And so for a long time I felt shame for grieving.

The writing of this book was a highway of mixed emotions -- swerving around each other, passing on the right and unexpected traffic jams.

My essay, "Going Back," addresses the fears of messing with your new partner's heart while you're still grieving your old one.

Do You Remember?

2009-09-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve been saving up topics and memories for essay starts for a couple of days now. I started collecting them on a scrap of paper smaller than a playing card. It became my bookmark, and soon enough it had tiny words squeezed onto every available white space, front and back.

Memories from random pockets of my sub-conscious floated to the surface. I’m surprised by these long forgotten snippets of a time I thought I’d never forget – but actually wanted to. Like, that Rob’s Uncle Louie spoke at the funeral and cried at the podium and talked about taking Rob to McDonald’s every week and watching him eat French fries with his ketchup; and that the priest that said the funeral mass was also the priest that married us six months earlier. (We got married in 1997 in Colorado where we were stationed, but had the Catholic ceremony in 2000 in Massachusetts so his family could be present.)

Or the limosine ride to the gravesite after the funeral.

I sat in the back seat with two people on either side of me. I don’t even remember who now. It must have been Gerry and Lena.

The leather was a luscious creamy color that reminded me of homemade organic vanilla ice cream. I stared at the back of the front seat thinking, This would be where the driver’s picture would be, if this were a cab.

My view through the windshield was the hearse in front of us. The back door hadn’t been closed yet and the cherry wood of the casket blared out, There’s a body in here. Rob’s body. I knew it wasn’t him in there. He’d gone somewhere else, but the rest of him – the part he wasn’t using anymore – was in there.

My uncle from North Carolina (the only family member from my side that was able to attend) slid in the front seat next to the chauffeur. His navy suit collar met the skin below his graying red hair. His shoulders suggested that his hands lay in his lap without clenching and his head was bowed. And then he cried.

He gasped and sobbed and his shoulders moved up and down and I cringed. He was crying and I was not. He didn’t even know the people in the limo and his vulnerability leaked out along with his tears. He didn’t even know Rob, save the one time Aubrey, Rob and I visited him. I was embarrassed for him.

But later I remember that I once went to a memorial service for a long time friend of Rob’s. I cried there. I didn’t know anybody there and I’d never met Beth. But I knew the people that loved her. I knew Rob and Chris and Susie and Stacey. And I knew that they were in pain and that hurt me, so I cried. My uncle was doing the same. He didn’t know anybody there except me, and he loved me and I was hurting, and so he cried.

At the military funeral that we had for Rob, the soldiers in Class A’s stood at attention and Taps was played not by a bugler at the site, but on a black boombox placed conspicuously and irreverently on a nearby headstone. Tacky, but moving nonetheless. That was the part of the service I cried at.

At the end two soldiers in white gloves folded the flag with precision movements. One of them walked it up to me and placed the flag in my upturned hands. He saluted me. Through my tears I was stymied. Being an army veteran myself, I knew that soldiers didn’t salute other soldiers out of uniform. And civilians didn’t salute at all.

In fact, it was kind-of a joke to the soldiers I buddied with at my MOS training. Whenever we saw civilians saluting to each other, on movies or something, we’d roll our eyes and shake our heads.

So I’m out of uniform, not a soldier anymore anyway, and I’m being saluted to. What do I do? I salute back. It seemed the expected thing to do and it felt right. I always liked saluting -- showing someone respect and that you honored them – like taking your hat off when you entered a building. It just felt right.

And then after the services, the gathering at our house. The only piece I remember of that time was walking around the house and coming up past the open garage door. It was packed full of people with red-rimmed eyes telling stories and smoking. I made eye contact with Danny Almeda, a neighbor friend of ours – one who’d grown up with Rob and played in the forest and rode bikes together – and Joe Filipe, Rob’s cousin that owned a night club. I so wanted to be in there and to light up a Marlboro Red from a hard pack, but I’d quit smoking Thursday. The day Rob died. I was pregnant now. So I walked on past, lifting my chin at them. They nodded in response, and one raised his cigarette, like his own version of a salute.

You’d think I’d remember huge chunks of this surreal day in my life, but no. Only these. Sometimes I wish I remembered more, wished that I’d written it down at the end of each day to preserve it forever. I never thought I’d have to. Who would’ve thought I’d forget something so horrific? But other times I remind myself that I know enough.

I remember as much as I am supposed to.

Where's Daddy?

2009-09-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

One day before Rob died I was perusing a book store and discovered a book with great graphics and a sweet ending. I immediately bought it for Aubrey. I had no idea how important that book would be for us. In fact, nine years later … it is still on our bookshelf and I will never get rid of it.

I love books, and I so wanted my daughter to love books, too. I’d saved some of my favorite of favorites to pass down to my children: The Velveteen Rabbit, Little House on the Prairie Books, and the beloved (to me at least) Anne of Green Gables series.

My daughter was only around twenty months old and was a tad young for those titles, so I bought new ones for her. She had all the Mickey books, and Dr. Seuss, and I made it clear I loved her to receive books as gifts.

Most of those old titles from her toddlerhood are gone, except “No Matter What” by Debi Gliori. “No Matter What” is the book I will always cherish as the one that gave me the answer to Aubrey’s question: “Where’s Daddy?”

It was vastly important to me that I answer this question correctly. I didn’t want Aubrey to think he wasn’t home yet, and keep her waiting. I didn’t want to tell her he wasn’t coming home, in case she thought he’d just left and didn’t want to come home. And so I settled on he can’t come home. This highlighted to her that he would come home if he could – because he loved us, but he just couldn’t. He wasn’t able to.

Inevitably there were ‘why” questions, but I couldn’t bring myself to use the “D” word with her yet. Instead I remembered the “No Matter What” book and pulled it out to read with her.

The characters are two foxes. One big, one small. They have no gender in this book and are only called Large and Small. “No Matter What” is a book about love, and how no matter what Small does or says or becomes, Large will always love Small. The book even goes into abstract ideas about mending love with smiles and kisses, but the best part – the part that hurdled us over “Where’s Daddy?” was on the last three pages.

“But what about when you’re far away?

Does your love go too, or does it stay?”

“Look up at the stars. They’re far, far away.

But their light reaches us at the end of each day.

It’s like that with love – we may be close,

we may be far,

but our love still surrounds us …

wherever we are.”

Daddy’s far, far away and he can’t come home, but he still loves us and we can feel it every day. He’ll always love us, no matter what.

An Anniversary

2009-08-17T09:00:00.001-07:00

Nine years today since Rob died.
I hope you are having fun where you are
and learning lots.
I love you.

Photo Scrapbook

2009-08-12T09:23:00.001-07:00

How to Write the Perfect Book Proposal

2009-08-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm actually having a really good time with this book proposal. I've set aside a big chunk of time this afternoon to work on it. (The kids are having a play date.)

Jeff Herman's "How to Write the Perfect Book Proposal" is well-defined and everything seems so straight forward that it looks like a breeze. (snort -- We shall see.)

But for now, off to my chiropractor appointment.

Closing Grief Shadows Blog?

2009-08-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

Attention Any Readers of the Grief Shadows Blog:

At the conference I just attended this weekend, I was given "permission" to not write in this blog anymore. What would you guys think of me combining this blog with my Insane Parents Unite! blog?

Grief spills over into all sorts of places in your life. I've tried to keep my writing about grief segregated to "Grief Shadows" but often the posts seem to cross over. Or I'm writing about my kids and a Rob Thought plops out.

It seems kinda silly to write (or not write, as the case may be) in both blogs, if I'm not consistently leaving posts in Grief Shadows.

What say ye all?

Off to the Conference!

2009-08-06T10:51:00.001-07:00

I'm off to the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland for a long weekend and I'll be pitching my idea to a handful of people.

Let's hope I interest some people in Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed.

I've got about 120 pages of written material and 10 - 20 "pages" of pictures, art work and clippings to add in as a publisher would allow. I'd like to write another hundred pages to add to the manuscript. To fill out the edges, so to speak. To round out the topics and bring in my voice a bit more.

My critique group suggested that instead of straight essays of memories, I should weave in a 2nd person narrative that gives the reader hope and direction. That's the other hundred pages.

Good Luck to me!

Book Update: The Conference is Loomin!

2009-08-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

The other day I spent a huge amount of time typing up my manuscript and tweaking the format. Willamette Writers Conference is this weekend so I'm freaking about preparing for that.

I've researched agents and publishing houses and printed out a selection of the manuscript and took it to our critique group Monday night.

Group was great. It's a strange mixture of inspiration, discouragement, and hope. My book is still very rough draft and the whole structure needs to be changed. It is written in chronological format right now, and it really needs to be organized thematically instead. I need to write another hundred pages or so, and there are other subjects that need to be addressed.

This all can't happen by Thursday, of course. So, mostly I'm working on the hook and my pitch. I also want to finish researching and spinning my pitch to specific agents and their houses.

I'm heading out of the house to get a chiropractor adjustment, and then back to writing.

And maybe making some yogurt.

Sideswiped

2009-06-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

When I was told my husband, Rob, had died in a car accident, I thought the troopers were kidding. Some morbid deranged candid camera. Can you blame me? Maybe it was wishful thinking. Please let this be a joke. I just saw him four hours ago and told him we were pregnant again.

My mother-in-law wailed in incomprehensable Portuguese and paced and pulled at her summer robe. She picked up the phone and put it down again. And picked it up again.

"The number. I can't remember the number." She was crying and gasping.

I knew she meant Gerry, my sister-in-law. Fernanda spoke on the phone in words I didn't understand. I reached for a chair and sat down. The troopers -- three of them -- were still there. I didn't look at them.

Aubrey, my twenty-two month old, cried from her crib. I wrapped Rob's robe tighter around me and floated down the hallway. She stopped crying when I picked her up. Her heart beat and her skin was warm. I held her fast to me.

Fernanda reached for her to comfort the blissfully ignorant, but she clung to me instead. I know I looked at the troopers now, but I don't remember their faces -- only the blue uniforms.

One of them asked if they should wait to leave until someone could come and be with us -- the bereaved.

(It's funny ... it wasn't until August of 2000 that I even knew how to spell bereavement -- and now I was one of their ranks.)

I said, "No. My sister-in-law is coming," though how I knew this was a curiosity.

I was told months later from an acquaintance of an acquaintance of Rob's that one of the younger troopers must have been grappling with his own mortality because he -- strangely -- felt angry with me during his call to my house.

Maybe he wondered why I wasn't with my husband that early morning before the sun came up. (Rob had been driving back from our house to the army barracks in Cape Cod to complete his shift of National Guard A.T. [annual training].)

Perhaps he was confused at my lack of affect, my absence of emotion and tears. (Truly this aspect of my grief would continue to haunt me for months, as well.)

But when Aubrey cried and I returned to the New England parlor that we rarely used, with her in my arms, the reality of what the young trooper was there for hit him with a force that sickened him for a long time. All judgment gone, he recognized that this could be him. This could be his baby.

They left. I called my boss and told her I couldn't open the salon that morning. She was the first person I told that my husband had died.

Fernanda, Aubrey and I went downstairs and waited, with the lights on.

We heard the garage door upstairs. The feet scrambling downstairs.

"Valerie?! Mom?!"

Gerry and Lena, my sisters-in-law, burst through the doorway. One look at them and the tears came.

It wasn't a joke.

Here's the Wind - Up! (the pitch comes later)

2009-06-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Valerie Willman

http://www.valeriewillman.com

http://valeriewillman.blogspot.com

http://insaneparentsunite.blogspot.com

Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed

Nine years ago, three state troopers came to my living room at five in the morning and told me my husband had died in a car accident. He'd fallen asleep driving.

We had a 22-month-old daughter and I'd just told him four hours earlier that I was pregnant with our second child. And now I was a widow.

When I was acutely grieving, I looked everywhere for a book that would help me. Amazon.com, the library, my local bookstores. Nothing was there. In all my searching there were two books that eased my pain a bit. One was "I'm Grieving As Fast As I Can" filled with case studies and interviews of other young widows and widowers. The other was a book of letters one woman wrote her husband for one year after he died. This one, in particular, was the only book that held my hand and showed me what direction to face. I felt a little less isolated when I read it, like I'd met a fellow traveler.

Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed is the book I needed then.

Linked essays chronicle the tough decisions I now had to make alone and the isolation I felt after the death of my husband.

They address things like: who to give his clothes to, not being able to throw away his toothbrush, telling my daughter that her daddy was never coming home, picking out his casket, trying to decide whether or not to view his body and moving cross-country and discovering art as a healing tool. And how to start dating again.

Grief Shadows moves beyond the days and months after my husband died, and travels to more abstract -- yet still relevant issues, like dealing with guilt and grief in a blended family.

Grief Shadows is not just a monument or a legacy of memories, it's a chance to reach out and connect to other grieving souls. To let them know that they aren't alone and that the intense pain does yield and that grief -- soon enough -- becomes something of an accessory that can be worn with quiet grace -- even while it doesn't fully leave you.

I see this book in a number of places in the bookstore. Memoir, Self-Help, Parenting, or Healing and Grief Recovery.

A Plug for Journaling

2009-06-03T12:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Friend,

I sit in my home office thinking of love. Of two trees entwined together, growing and living and supporting each other -- even beyond death. Because when our physical bodies die, something else happens to them. They go somewhere else, they exist somewhere else. Where? Does it matter? All that matters is they are not with us anymore.

And it hurts.

Really badly.

How do we make the pain stop? Do we really want it to? Will that mean they are less real to us -- our dead loved ones? Will that mean we didn't really love them if we can somehow manage to "move on"?

When my husband died, my whole reality split apart. I didn't know who I was anymore without his anchor. I didn't fit in with my friends and even my family anymore, because they were mostly his. Friends he'd made before me, the family he was raised with. Not mine. I didn't belong with anyone.

And I was pregnant.

And 25.

The only widows I knew of were old.

I went to the bookstores to connect with anyone in print that had experiences like me. I found two books that helped. Not exactly a resource list.

My friends and family loved me and helped me in ways that they knew how: bringing food, providing childcare, listening, checking up on me, inviting me over for dinner so I didn't eat alone. But they all had lives of their own, and grief that they had to process as well. I couldn't expect them to help me with mine when they had their own to work on.

And so the support dwindled. Not out of well-meaning "you should be over it by now"'s, (though there were a couple of those) but just because it dwindled. People started picking up the pieces of their own lives that they'd put on the shelf to help me and about three months after the death of my husband, I started looking outside.

I looked for someone or a group of someones to help me through my grief where my family and friends left off. And I thankfully did.

I used to cry in the car where no one could see me -- though I found that not particularly safe, as I couldn't see well through the tears. I discovered that group work, at the time, wasn't for me. I wasn't ready to share my story with a group yet and I wanted to work one on one with someone I trusted.

Journaling was a lifeline for me and I could not have lived through my grief, let alone grown through it, without my journaling. Journaling became a way to meditate and connect to whoever was listening and carrying me through my pain. I didn't know any gods to pray to, I didn't have the support structure of a church or congregation where I belonged. It was just me and my writing.

I found that I was ready to talk about three or four months after Rob's death. But that may be different for you. Everyone grieves differently and on a different time table.

Feel free to comment here or send me a private email if you need some direction.

Journal Entry from 2002 "I Can Look At The Paul Painting Now"

2009-03-29T23:24:00.001-07:00

I think perhaps I've been trying so hard to keep Rob in my sights to not forget even a litte bit. I was afraid to stop thinking of him for fear I'd forget once I turned my mind from him. But that's like trying to look at two paintings at once.

If you stand back and not really focus on them, you can do it. Or if you focus on one , but stand so that the other is in your peripheral vision you can see them both, but while you are focused on the one visually, your mind has drifted to another.

I think I can see that the proper way to look at each painting is to go at each one wholely at a time. I have been looking at the Rob picture, so now I can turn my eyes and mind and heart to the Paul painting. I can turn off the Rob-drifting-mind because I know I won't forget him. I just need to take a time out from Paul watching and look at the Rob painting to remember everything.

I don't have to remember, I can just look back at the rob painting when I need to -- when it is appropriate. I will be able to see the Paul painting better this way.

It's like making a list when things are running around in my head. I write it doen so I don't have to remember. So I can think better.

I won't need to spend so much energy in remembering Rob anymore. I will simply "look back" when I need to. But my focus will be on Paul's painting now.

Perplexities

2009-03-25T15:06:00.000-07:00

I had another dream that you hadn't really died and were living in a different country.

Sometimes I still see you in other people and wonder if I'll run into you downtown.

I love you.

Thinking of Titles

2009-03-24T00:25:00.000-07:00

I just finished another essay for the book. I'd love to post it here, but don't know if I should.

I'm trying to decide on a title, too.

The essay is about the first time I looked at the pictures of the car my husband crashed and died in.

My title options are:

"Pictures of the Crash"

"Live Laugh Love"

"Just For the Day."

The first title is self-explanatory but the last two relate to the last paragraph of the essay.

"'Obrigado, Roberto. I miss you.' I walk back to my new life with a hint of promise in my steps, remembering the lyrics to a song we both loved: 'Live, laugh, love, Just for the day.'"

Any preferences?

Working Title and Outline

2009-03-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

Grief Shadows is not a how-to book, nor a memoir, but a series of essays relating the emotions and practical issues (like whether to throw away his toothbrush) that immediately followed her husband's accidental death, all the way up to until she re-married.

Valerie Willman reaches out to the reader with honesty and compassion and teaches us how to live with grief, gracefully.

"Grief Shadows: One woman's quest for inner-peace after the death of her husband"

I. Moments after the accident

II. Days after the accident

A. Uncle Phil crying in the limo

B. Sitting at the table calling credit card companies

III. Months after his death

A. The swim class

B. Not telling people he was dead

IV.Seeing the crash site

A. Avoiding driving by

B. Looking at the pictures

V. Supernatural/Angelic/Spiritual Help and Experiences

VI. Practical Stuff

A. How to buy a house

B. How to move on

C. Do you really want to?

VII. Dating again -- Connecting

VIII. Blending families

A. Falling in love again

B. Adopting

C. Hang-ups

D. Baggage

E. Betrayal

F. Fears

VIV. Wearing Grief with Grace -- like a smart accessory

Depression and Anxiety Are My Special Needs Children

2009-02-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

( ... and yet another cross-posting.) (I struggled with whether to put this here, because it doesn't pertain to Rob. And it doesn't pertain to grief ... not really. But it does have to do with depression and anxiety and that, my friend, is a lovely thing called "byproduct" of grief. More 'shadows of grief' you might say... Tell me if you think this was inappropriate here. Thanks.)

Movies I watch can inspire me to write or paint or sculpt.

But some only create the longing for it, and not the release – like the nightmares where you can’t scream but know that if you try with all that is in you, you could make enough noise to cast your voice out among the billions who also trudge this land.

There’s an ache – when I feel unable to create my art -- a loneliness that wiggles inside my brain so that it hurts, and my throat so that I cannot communicate.

My fingers are frozen at the page, clamped desperately around the pen. My breath stops as I wait for the timid kernel of inspiration to share itself through me – but alas, it is not Inspiration or Idea or even Plot Device that appears … it is: Clamminess, Brick Wall, Pettiness, Fatigue, and Not Good Enough.

The metallic sour taste of lethargy and self- judgment sit with me when the longing to create art is strongest. I’ve sat with and asked these soul-sucking companions why they visit. I sometimes get a response and sometimes not.

I wonder how to get rid of them – like they are the slugs on my sugar snap peas that eat holes before I get a taste.

But perhaps I should simply share space with these evil shadows of myself and honor their place in my house. What if I extended love to them, accepted them and knew there was an ancient lesson they came to teach me, if only I would listen -- like the hundreds of thousands of families with special needs children?

Depression and Anxiety are my special needs children. I court them, suckle them and find their triggers to tantrums. I sit with Depression and rock him to sleep with haunting music lilting from the iTunes across the room; I coax Anxiety out to play -- break out the glue and treeless paper and collage until she is more grounded.

I discover their strengths and weaknesses and take time out for myself when they become too much for me to bear alone. I nurture myself with popcorn and movies under the feather blanket, hot tea with a friend, or an afternoon alone at a coffee shop with my laptop and latte. And I think. I take time to Feel.

When I do this -- when I give myself permission to emote -- only then am I open enough to welcome ideas and plans and as-of-yet formless characters into the sacred circle I have created for them. Only then am I able and willing to give birth to their stories.

But that’s not right either. I am always willing. That yearning and longing to write and to create are always there. But maybe the readiness is not.

Maybe I must coddle my children, Depression and Anxiety before I can create. But … I don’t believe that one must be depressed or suffer anxiety attacks in order to create art. Art lives in us, we breathe it as air and it binds to the molecules within us. We bleed our art. We are art.

Perhaps I don’t need to be depressed to create art, but that if I am struggling with it at some particular time, I must sit with it first before I attempt to express an emotion I do not yet understand. Only if I take time to nurture myself, to Think, to Feel, to ask Depression why he had another nightmare, to ask Anxiety why she cried today when the house was a mess – maybe then I can unfreeze my fingers and find my voice and let it roar with all the passion and longing and creativity I have.

And then, I can create. I can write, paint and sculpt. I can communicate and breathe and love myself again. All the parts of me. Even the shadowy parts.

The Functionality of Grief

2009-02-01T12:09:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to send out an apology to my readers of this blog.

It seems that I only feel compelled to write in my grief blog when I feel grief. (Go figure.)

Lately I am immersed in the holidays, family vacations, catching up with the laundry and dishes after the family vacation, a four day weekend, and Imbolc is tomorrow. A new hamster has arrived in our home, more holidays are coming, two birthdays coming up, and Valentine's Day plus my anniversary to my husband.

Lots of stuff is on my mind (oh and I'm reading my book club book, trying to edit a bit of my manuscript every week and start sending out query letters for magazine articles, too), so I am not currently in a state of grief.

It comes in waves, and it seems that this blog will come and go in waves, too. Though, for grieving readers, I understand that that is not the nurturing hand-holding that you need right now. If you need to connect and there isn't a new post for two months ... how can you feel connected?

So, here is my proposition. You can comment on any of these postings in this blog and I will find it and email you back. If you choose a non-public forum, you may email me direct. You may comment on a posting, saying you want a private email. I will email you privately, thereby giving you my email address.

You can also check out my other blogs where I write about other aspects of my life. You will see subtle cross-overs into grief, because so much of what we encounter during our lives is tainted with grief. It can be a shadow that clouds out our peace during certain days, or months, or always.

This is not to say that you will always be depressed and weepy and unable to function on a daily basis because of your grief. But that you will wear your grief with grace. It touches (perhaps that is a better word than 'taints') pieces of your life and becomes a part of who you are.

I can't always think of milestones in my children's lives, without also thinking about Rob and his absence. Sometimes I am melancholy about it, other times I think: What a character! He would've loved this. And then I laugh.

Sometimes I remember his love for me and I feel sorrow that I don't have that now. True, I have a different kind of love, from a different kind of man and I have love for him. And, I don't have Rob's love anymore. Not in this realm, at least.

Sometimes I reach out into that other realm and connect, even for the briefest seconds. It brings a calm, snuggly feeling that reminds me that I am never alone. That his love really is there, even if I don't experience it every day.

But maybe I don't experience it because I don't reach out more often. But if I did that, would my husband now be affected? Would our relationship be affected? Would it diminish if I thought too much about Rob? Would it stagnant my growth as a person if I clung to the past? A past that can never be returned to me.

So are my thoughts this morning ... along with: it is lunchtime and I don't want to fix lunch for me and the children (Paul is a work), and we are going over to a friend's house to do some work on her house and I'd much rather get in sweats and pretend I can knit. :)

I hope you are well in spirit today.

Just for today.

Tomorrow is in the future, and we will only focus on today.

Just today, feel peace.

Namaste.

A new kind of grief

2009-01-16T17:44:00.001-08:00

This is my sister and brother-in-law. My nephew is on the tractor and my nieces are the two girls 'inside' my own children. (My son is in yellow hugging his cousin and my daughter is on the other end, hugging her cousin.)

This is what my sister sent me in an email tonight:

"Well...I am starting to limit what I do and who I associate with outside of the witnesses....unfortunately that means, it also limits what I do with you and Mom. It is tearing me up inside...But Jehovah is important to me. I know that we have talked about this in the past..but I have been thinking about it a lot, for a long time. I originally thought that the purpose of not talking to disfellowshiped ones ( or ones that don't want anything to do with the witnesses-basically disfellowshiping themselves) was to help them come back; but now I understand differently. I want you to know that I LOVE you very much, and I am very sorry that I haven't actually talked about this to your face, in person. I will still talk to you about family type stuff..I just can't chat about nothing. I will be canceling my MSN messenger too.

I am forwarding this to Mom also, If you guys want to call me and talk about this...or say "good-bye" that is fine. But please don't try to talk me out of it. It hurts a lot as it is..."

I'm extremely pissed, hurt, angry and I ache for my children. This is something that has actually been going back and forth for long years with my sister and me, and I can file it away under 'shitty things that have happened to me', but I am very sad for my kids who will not be allowed to visit, contact or get to know their cousins.

It's wrong. And she is wrong for doing this to us. And it stinks.

And I miss her already.

Remembered Emotions through a Picture

2009-01-11T15:42:00.001-08:00

I missed you a lot yesterday, Rob.

I was gathering pictures to put on a Love Altar to celebrate upcoming Valentine's Day and ran across this one. I stared for the longest time, running my finger along your face.

I put it on the altar along with pictures of Aubrey and Joey now and when they were much much younger.

There's pics of my new family, yes, but you are still on my love altar.

Understand the six needs of mourning

2008-12-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

From the same book I mentioned before ("Healing your Grieving Heart" by Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD), comes another list that just knocked my socks off. But not if you just skim it.

Each of these needs we have (while we are mourning), have an activity to do that Alan Wolfelt believes will help your healing process do its thing. Really read the statement and do the 'homework' associated with it.

And let me know if it works for you, please. One of my favorite quotes from Alan is: "Grief is a process, not an event." Let's work through this process together.

1. Acknowledge the reality of the death.

~gently confront yourself

~it may occur over weeks and months (this is ok)

~acknowledge your loss with your head and then your heart

~keep in mind that integration comes in doses, as you are ready

Tell someone about the death today. This will help you work on this important need.

2. Embrace the pain of the loss.

~we don't naturally want to do this -- it's easier to avoid

~this is how you learn to reconcile yourself to it

~dose yourself on embracing your pain as you need to -- you can't do it all at once.

Reach out and spend time with someone who doesn't try to take your pain and sense of loss away.

3. Remember the person who died.

~he/she lives on through our memories

~actively remember and commemorate the life that was lived; it's healthy

~never let someone else try to take your memories away (trying to help you); it's good for you to continue to display those pictures.

~remembering the past makes hoping for the future possible.

Brainstorm a list of characteristics or memories of the person who died. Write as fast as you can for ten minutes, then put away the list for future reflection.

4. Develop a new self-identity.

~part of who you are was formed by the relationship you had with that person that died.

~the way you defined yourself and the way society defines you has changed (ex: wife to widow)

~re-anchor yourself, reconstruct your self-identity. This is long and hard work.

~you may discover some positive changes as you work on this (more caring, less judgmental, more strong)

Write this statement down: I used to be ________________. Now that ______ died, I am _______________. This makes me feel ___________________.

5. Search for meaning.

~naturally you will now question the meaning and purpose of life and death (particularly this one that you are now grieving).

~Why and How questions may surface uncontrollably. (Why did this happen? How will I go on living?)

~question philosophy of life, explore different religions and spiritualities

~"Blessed are thos who mourn for they shall be comforted." Even if you have faith, you still need to mourn.

Write down a list of 'why' questions that have come up for you since the death. Go through them with a friend or counselor who won't feel she has to give you all the answers.

6. Receive ongoing support from others.

~we need the love and understanding of others to heal.

~don't feel ashamed of your dependence right now; revel knowing others care for you.

~society places too much value on "doing well" and "carrying on" that we lose support too

soon.

~grief is a process not an event. You will need support for weeks, months and years.

Friends want to help but don't know how. Call them and tell them you'll need help

in the coming weeks.

Things To Do Together With The One You Love

2008-12-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

This list is the sort of thing you would want to have before your partner dies.

I, thankfully, had made this list while Rob was still living. Mind you, we did only three or four of the things on the list -- but I wrote it with him in mind. And then when I found it tucked in an old journal after his death, it was a secret little gift of a memory.

So, thank you to whoever helped me find my old list.

And here's a copy for you. Maybe you have one tucked somewhere, too. Or maybe you can make a list of the things that you did do together, or maybe you can make a list of the things you wished you had done together. That would be a healing gift to yourself right now.

Blessings and Peace to you, Reader.

And now here is my list:

Things To Do (or Wish You'd Done, or You Had Done) With The One You Love

1. feed the ducks at the park (but don't bring bread 'cuz that makes the ducks sick)

2. make a picnic lunch and explore a beautiful place we've never been and eat our lunch there

3. go hiking

4. go on a scavenger hunt

5. go fishing under a covered bridge

6. plant a garden

7. write a story about ourselves

8. jump in a river together

9. go to the coast and eat clam chowder

10. go dance in the fields and pick wildflowers

11. pick somewhere and plant wildflowers

12. go visit botanical gardens

13. go to the zoo

14. go camping

15. leave notes in fun places

16. build a collage together

And Gramma Follows

2008-12-09T23:17:00.001-08:00

I just got the call that my gramma died tonight. I was trying to figure out a way to see her tomorrow. I was there visiting today. I was there maybe an hour total.

She asked me (one of the few coherent things she said the whole time I was there) to stay until hospice could get there to bathe her, and I had to say, "No." I had a meeting with Robert's web academy teacher. I felt yucky about not staying with her when she asked, especially now that she's died tonight, but I'm happy that I went and saw her today.

I had this fantasy that I would be there with her when she died, but just told my mom this morning that if it didn't happen, I would be at least content that I'd been visiting up until she died. (But that's not entirely true. I hadn't been visiting. My record has been pretty much nil, until I would say October. (possibly September).

I visited once in October, once in November, once last week and today. After seeing her today and talking with the staff at the assisted living place she was at, I had decided to see her as close to daily as I could before she died -- knowing that she most likely had less than a week to live.

So. That was my brilliant "visiting my gramma before she died" record.

It was difficult to understand most of what she said to me today. I did catch, "You and I come from the same place ... But that's not right .... " Was she talking of the spirit realm?

I told her: "I know that you and I believe different things, but I believe that you and I will see each other again. In a different life. We'll be together again."

It looked like she nodded. Or maybe it was just a tremor.

I gave her Reiki while I was there today. I tried talking to her spirit and telling her silently that she could leave whenever she needed to.

In tears I remember my grandmother. She was such a neat lady. Truly one of a kind. With all the neuroses and creative angst one would expect from a woman writer that wasn't supported very much in her art.

I love you, Gramma. Find peace and health in your next life, and remember me. As I will remember you.

The Mourner's Code

2008-12-08T05:00:00.000-08:00

"The Mourner's Code: Ten Self-Compassionate Principles" is taken from Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD's book, "Healing Your Grieving Heart."

I thought maybe it may help some of you begin to believe that your grieving pattern is normal for you. Everyone grieves differently and you are no exception. (Or maybe we're all exceptions.)

THE MOURNER'S CODE

Ten Self-Compassionate Principles

1. You have the right to experience your own unique grief.

2. You have the right to talk about your grief.

3. You have the right to feel a multitude of emotions.

4. You have the right to be tolerant of your physical and emotional limits.

5. You have the right to experience "grief bursts."

6. You have the right to make use of ritual.

7. You have the right to embrace your spirituality.

8. You have the right to search for meaning.

9. You have the right to treasure your memories.

10. You have the right to move toward your grief and heal.

An Eskimo Legend

2008-12-05T09:22:00.000-08:00

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy."

~inspired by an Eskimo legend

~a card given to me after Rob died

I'm done with my novel's rough draft

2008-12-01T11:20:00.001-08:00

I'm taking a break from novel writing and will go back to edit in about a month.

In the meantime I'll be able to pad this blog up a bit. I am sorry for the delays and neglect, but Nano called. :)

My grampa died this morning

2008-11-25T11:43:00.000-08:00

My sister called me this morning and told me that my grampa died this morning. Then Mom emailed me the particulars: he didn't want a funeral and wanted cremation and to be interred at the National Cemetery in Portland, OR. It was all pre-paid and everything.

It's so weird that there won't be a funeral or anything. I feel like I should do something to note his passing. And honor him and the memories I have of him. The things I loved about him.

And the graveyard in so far away. Realistically, I won't be visiting his gravesite.

Rainbow suspenders, cacti, RedLo Cacti stationary, the sound he made when you'd snap the suspenders, the game he'd play that made you look away from your plate so he could steal food (or your fork), his laugh, his weird glass eye, his marvelous garage that held awesome treasures: wood building stuff, rock polishing stuff; his greenhouse, his dahlias that topped the clothesline, his black glasses, his thin white hair, typing on my first computer at his house, learning how to play cards from him, the chinese checkers board in the coat closet at his house, the ring he made me, the table he made me, the step he made me, the clocks he made, his genealogy quests.... mostly his joy of life and all the things he yet wanted to learn! Those are the things that I remember about him.

My mom wrote: "Noteworthy and a little sweet………. I was hoping Grampa would make it to Friday, since that was their 58^th anniversary. When I mentioned that to Gramma this morning, she ask for today’s date. I told her it was the 25^th. She pointed out that the date that they really got married in 1950 was November the 25^th. So he DID make it to their anniversary."

Misconceptions

2008-11-13T12:06:00.000-08:00

I feel exhausted when every time I watch a movie where someone dies, I worry that Paul sees me crying and thinks I'm thinking of Rob.

It lessens my enjoyment of the movie. I wish that Paul would just take it for what it is: emotions rising from the inside of me, the passion of the piece of art I'm watching, my compassion for the character in front of me.

Or maybe he does and I'm just projecting.

2008-11-08T18:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Rob,

I'm so happy and contented with our beautiful children. How I wish you could see them. I want to show you all the pictures I've taken of them in the past months.

Do you remember sitting on the couch looking at Aubrey pictures when she turned one? I knew that that was to be the start of a new tradition for our growing family: to look over the past years pictures of our birthday child.

I haven't done that with Paul. I've mistakenly assumed that Paul would not be interested in looking at pictures of Aubrey and Joey before he met them. And so I didn't show him pictures of Aubrey at 1 and 2. She was 3 when Paul and I met.

But now what is my excuse? That this was our tradition and that it can't carry on to my new family? No. That's not right. That's like saying I can't celebrate the past year of my child's life through pictures with Paul because you aren't there. ??? It doesn't quite make sense, does it?

There. I have just committed to showing Paul pictures of our little ones on their coming birthdays. And just because's.

Thanks for listening, love.

Love, Valerie

Apologies

2008-10-29T17:24:00.000-07:00

I wanted to extend my apologies for not keeping this blog more current. I have uncovered some old journal entries from the months after Rob died that I will be adding to the blog in the near future. My work on this project (the non-fiction book I'm compiling) will be stunted for thirty days while I participate in the NaNoWriMo for this coming month. Wish me luck and joy!

I wonder what you would think of me now

2008-09-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Rob,

I wonder what you would think of me now. If you were here, what would we talk about? Before, we talked mostly of our love, about work and about moving into our own place. We talked of love and passion and sex and blow jobs. We talked of silly jokes and military life and I listened to you speak to me in Portuguese. A language I never learned but still think of trying every now and again.

But what would we talk of now? What I've been doing since you left, most likely. How funny. Saying 'you left' sounds like you took a job in Alaska instead of dying five hours after I discovered my pregnancy with Joey. Your last gift. My last child.

Though sometimes I still wish I could have more. Adopt or -- anything. But Paul doesn't want anymore and (maybe) it wouldn't be the same anyway. Because it's occurred to me that maybe I want more children so I can be reminded of the life I no longer have with you. It's a way of missing you, of missing something that hadn't happened yet; a dream we had together. Did you remember you wanted seven children?

I still smile at that. We could've done it -- you and me. And all your Portuguese family. That family is mine, too, if I allow it.

I'm not close to your family, Rob. There. I feel mean and little and hard. But I'm not close to them. Oh, it's not intentional. It's not a conscious attempt to block them out. It's the same with all friends I've moved away from. We just migrate. Lose touch. Though your mom won't allow that too much. She still calls once a week or so and checks in. I'm glad she does.

Joey actually talked to her yesterday. He doesn't like to talk to her on the phone usually. It may just be that he won't be a phone person. Or maybe he blames her for his homesickness when he spent a month in Massachusetts this summer. Who knows. I'm awed at how much I don't know about our children.

There it is again, Rob. "Our" children. They are as much Paul's children as yours, yet I feel compelled to call them 'our' children when I talk to you and 'our' children when I talk to Paul. It's weird. I guess they really are all "our" children. All three of ours. You fathered them in the biblical sense -- biologically. But Paul's been the 'Dad' for the last seven years.

So maybe I should tell you about this Paul guy: He loves them. He truly does. He hangs with them, holds them when they're sad or hurt, kisses them good-night and plays with them.

He does work long hours and wishes to spend more time with them, so he's started going into work a little late -- stealing minutes to give back to Aubrey and Joey.

Aubrey's still a daddy's girl - though not as much as with you when she was 20 months old. She likes school, Harry Potter, magic, fairies, music and art. She's in choir for her fourth year and I just watched her dance with my scarf on the side of the road yesterday. Music was playing in the streets as we watched a parade going by. She's at once self-conscious and courageously and artistically spiritual. She's at home with who she is but can and will weep when she feels unjustly used or put upon.

She is me. But looks like you. Paul said one day that "Aubrey always looked like Aubrey. In her baby pictures -- she always looked like her." And Paul is right, too. It's true. She still looks like her baby pictures -- yet I see glimpses of the young woman that is coming fast. Before I'm ready, I fear.

Joey looks more like a Hanna -- my mom's side of the family. So more of me. And he's an Aries sign -- just like me. And he's got a fire-y temper that burns off fairly quickly --just like me. But I suspect he has a lot more of you in him. Interesting things that I pause and wonder at. Like, he has imaginary friends - tons of them - but not in the sweet "isn't that cute?" way. More like the goblins hiding in the closet to steal the baby in that movie "The Labyrinth." Though in a sad way - not evil.

He has a 'friend' that, I suspect, corrolates to each different facet of his personality. Fun boy, Punching Boy, Quiet Boy, Skateboarding Boy.

When his temper and frustrations get the better of him (as happens often), he gets rough and aggressive with the people he's around. No matter if they are adults, children or pets. Afterwards he feels bad about it and seeks comfort from me. When I talk to him about it, he says peculiar things about his "friends." His "friend" told him to do it. His mind told him to do it -- not him. And for a couple of months, his "friends" wanted him dead. It was quite alarming actually. I've wondered if he could be depressed like you and your grandfathers were. It does run in the family. I watch and wonder. And wait.

Joey tried to "feed the good wolf," as he put it one day after a friend used that expression. But sometimes he's just not successful. Poor kid. He loves snakes, sharks, Tom and Jerry, and bugs. But not bees.

And now I'm wondering about me. And you. I wonder if you'd like me now. Resonate with who I am and what I stand for now. I'm still not Catholic -- though I did have Joey baptized to carry on the tradition, so to speak. And to quiet your mom.

Me. Who am I now? Well, I dated a little after Joey was born. I journaled a lot. I treated myself monthly to nurturing pedicures and massages. I bought a house and had it fixed up. And I met Paul.

I think you know him from other lives, Rob, but I only remember one. I get the sense that you wanted me to be with him in this other life. You died in that one, too. And Paul was our friend and you wanted Paul to care for me, and for me to seek comfort with Paul after your death. Strange that it happened again -- sort-of.

I went to massage school and I'm a licensed massage therapist now. I'm serious about my writing and I've got a bit of art on the wall and shelves around my house. After you died, I did a lot of my healing in art. I started working with clay and dabbled in painting and always wrote. I meditated and journaled and channeled and cried and healed. I tried to parent as best I knew how, with the strength I had. And Paul helped.

We share things, Paul and I. He'd parent when I was sick or at school; I'd parent when he'd had a bad day at work. Paul encourages me to continue expressing myself creatively and never nags at me to do the housework.

Do you remember the time you said, "What do you do all day?" You were looking at the toys on the floor, the unmade bed and the dishwasher half-loaded.

I remember other things, too. I remember your giggle when you were excited. It wasn't your regular laugh you shared with everyone, it was the one you only used with me, when you were being tickled or caught off-guard sexually. It was the giggle you giggled when I showed you the pregnancy test for Joey. You jumped up and down in the bathroom, penis flopping. Giggling.

I hugged you -- "We're having a baby."

But now? If I was pregnant right now with your baby I'd still hug you and say "We're having a baby." But it would be different. I'd do it based on who I am now.

Cloth diapers, breastfeeding for a year, organic baby food, no plastic toys - only wood and natural materials like organic wool, silk and organic cotton. Natural dyes, Waldorf-y toys. Homeschool. Unschool.

I'm homeschooling Joey -- did I tell you? I think you'd approve.

Oh, and I have prayer flags on my front porch and goddess flags in my living room. I rarely watch TV and I mow the lawn with a push reel mower -- no gasoline. I recycle. I compost. I use no harsh cleaners (no more bleach for your warts). I even bike when I can, instead of drive, and hang the clothes outside to dry. Organic everything if I have the choice, homeopathic or naturapathic medicine only. Alternative diets and yoga.

Yeah. My life has changed a bit since I've known you.

But I still miss you. And I still wish we were together. I love you.

Love, Valerie

RobDaddy

2008-09-05T08:59:00.001-07:00

I was walking my daughter to school this morning after a last minute switch from home-schooling.

"You know why Mrs. Ryan is so happy to have me back this year?" Aubrey grinned and did a little hop-skip.

"Why?"

"Because I'm so good at math." She smiled.

"You are good at math. You know why?" I looked over at her as we walked from the office to her classroom.

"Why?" She tilted her head, curious.

"Because RobDaddy was. He was great at math." I try to bring him into the conversation in positive ways because often she associates him with pain, grief and tears. I want to help her get past the connection that when she feels sad she must me missing RobDaddy.

She smiled and said, "I'm great at math, too. I just really hate it."

New Website!

2008-08-21T11:07:00.001-07:00

I've been working hard to get a new website up and running. Please take a look and let me know if their should be any changes made -- for readibility, etc.

Thanks! (Click on 'Thanks!' for website link.)

"I like going to the cemetery alone"

2008-06-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

I like going to Rob’s grave alone better. On this trip we only had a few minutes. Fernanda said a quick prayer, Aubrey laid a mournful hand on the tombstone (but I can never tell if she’s just being dramatic – especially with her headphones on), and Joey was trying to look sad but giggled instead, covering his mouth with his fingers. Like trying to pull the smile from his lips.

I took a couple pictures of them at his grave and we left. The closest I got to an honest emotion was reading off his footstone aloud to Joey.

“Sweet dreams,” I traced with my finger. Inside I said, I miss you. My throat swelled and I ignored the heat rising in my face to trace his name and date of birth for Joey and reminded him we light a candle and sing ‘happy birthday’ to him.

If I had been alone I would’ve had more time to talk to him and meditate on how I really feel right now. Every year (well, every chance I get actually) I like to check in and feel around and test for pain and/or healing. Like using your tongue as a probe to feel for the hole your excised molar left after the last trip to the oral surgeon.

Is the pain still there? Hmm. A bit. Some left over. Yes, that deeper patch way in back. I imagine it a black color like a deep cave cut into rock. It's smaller than last time. But is that because I’ve layered cheerleader happiness over it or because it’s really healing. And I probe some more. Noticing any tender spots.

Once a year Aubrey, Joey and I try to visit our East Coast family, and this time -- for the first time -- my children are staying on after I go home. Fernanda has asked me to do this every year since they were born. I deep saying, "When they're older, when they're older." Well, I guess they're older now. Gulp. They are staying with their grandmother for one month, which is good for them -- getting to see cousins and staying a part of Rob's family -- but feels terrible to me.

Fernanda has slipped twice this trip and called Joey ‘Bob’ -- her name for Rob. That’s never happened before. She must be seeing more of him in Joey lately, or it could be that we were talking about Rob as a child this afternoon.

In the middle of one reccollection, Fernanda’s voice gave a sad little gasp after the word, “I”. Like, maybe she wanted to say, “I miss him so much.” Or maybe it wasn’t “I” but “Aiy,” as in an exclamation of pain that is overwhelming sometimes.

I leave tomorrow. I hope the children are ready for their solo stay. On the drive home Joey asks me:

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“When we get home can you do something with me?” He’s been feeling a little left out of life lately. Aubrey’s growing up and letting go of Joey and he’s just not ready for that. Especially without any other friends to galavant around with.

“Of course.”

“I’d really like it if you’d ... I’d really like it if you’d … give me a hug,” he said. I reached behind me and touched his shin right above his Spiderman sneaker. He grabbed my hand and squeezed. I wonder if the cemetery visit had more of an effect than I thought.

“Mom?”

“Yes, love?”

“Is pus an infection?” ??? Umm . Maybe not.

“Yes.”

“I hate pus.”

“Why? Do you have some right now?” You’d think I’d know. I see his body often enough and he always tells me of his owies right away in an attempt to receive a waiver from chores. (“Ooo, Mom. I can’t set the table. See? My bruise.” ) This usually involves elaborate limping that switches feet every other step.

“No. I just hate my school where I got it.” Now that I knew he was talking about a past boo-boo, I switched gears from pus to school angst. I perked my ears up again and sat straighter in my car seat. I couldn’t see his face as he was right behind me and if I turned, my head would pop and I’d puke in his lap. I'm cursed with carsickness. Sometimes it even happens when I drive.

I’ve been listening for school conversations that might hint at his emotional and mental state regarding school. He had a hard time last year and I want to know if I need to home-school him until his name rides up the waiting list for the Montessori school we want to try him in, or if he can swing it with this one a bit longer. Is it detrimental for him to be at that school? Or merely a struggle?

“I hate that school. It gave it to me.” Back to the pus, I see.

“Your school didn’t give it to you. Pus is just your body’s natural reaction to infection. It’s a good thing. Without it, infection would spread throughout your body.”

I sounded like a science lesson, or a commercial. So I stopped.

I wish I could’ve gone to the cemetery alone. Talking about imaginary pus isn’t what I’d had in mind. I wanted to meditate and miss Rob properly. The internal and external conversations weren’t jelling.

I don’t know though. Pus and Pain do have much in common. Maybe Joey was just probing his own psyche, as I was trying to do.

"Do not stand at my grave and weep ..."

2008-04-16T11:38:00.001-07:00

For the first Christmas my family celebrated, after the death of my husband, I made photo albums for each of his sisters, his mom, our two children (one of them yet to be born), and a close friend.

These I filled with every picture I had of him and a typed copy of Frye's poem: "Do not stand at my grave and weep ...".

Some of them cried to receive it, some thanked me, some quietly closed the book and changed the subject. But I know they all appreciated it.

Especially when you consider that they all lived so close that not one of them took pictures of him on a regular basis. Why would they? He was right there.

~~~

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the softly falling snow,

I am the gentle showers of rain,

I am the fields of ripening grain.

I am in the morning hush,

I am in the graceful rush

Of beautiful birds in circling flight

I am in the starshine of the night.

I am in the flowers that bloom,

I am in a quiet room,

I am in the birds that sing,

I am in each lovely thing.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there, I do not die.

~Mary E. Frye (1932)

Words of Inspiration

2008-04-16T11:29:00.001-07:00

When my husband died I received countless cards from friends and loved ones, and some from family I barely knew -- or friends of his that I'd never met. I didn't want to throw them all away, but quite frankly they were a little sad and somewhat creepy to keep around.

So I found a pretty blank journal, glued a picture of my husband to the inside cover, wrote the words: In loving memory -- Robert Joseph Gomes-Pereira, August 17, 2000, and then copied out my favorite greeting card poetry and/or comments that were written within the cards into my new journal.

That way I had one place to look through for inspiration and love whenever I needed it and I didn't have hundreds of loose cards lying around.

Character Sketch

2008-04-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

It was requested that I write a character sketch of Rob, as you would for a fictional piece, so that people reading about my grief could better see him in the essay.

I've been thinking of this for a few days. I am reluctant to begin, to construct him on the page, because I am afraid that I won't remember him enough to draw that picture.

"The Funeral Pyre That Never Happened"

2008-03-31T22:30:00.000-07:00

We're standing in the room where my mother-in-law, Fernanda, sleeps. The furniture in her own room was too big, towering over her, smothering, so she slept here. And I needed to speak now or forever wonder if I should have. Fernanda and one of my sisters-in-law, Lena, stood opposite me across the twin bed. Like a face-off.

“I just wanted to tell you.” I started and stopped, feeling my inferior 25 years, facing this matriarch. Her mouth was set with hardened grief. How can a mother prepare to bury her only son? I looked down at the yellowish comforter.

“Uh. Rob and I just happened to talk about his wishes a couple months ago. You know, in case he died before me.”

The irony.

Fernanda clutched the lapel of her blue housecoat with her left hand. Lena looked nauseous, her face paling while I faltered with what I needed to say next. My lips for Rob's voice.

“He said he wanted to be cremated.” Fernanda muffled a squeak at my words and swayed.

“He said he wanted to be cremated in the open air, without a box around him, because he didn’t want to be trapped inside. Smothered. He wanted to be free. In the air.” My words stumbled to a stop. Fernanda had her Catholic hand over her Catholic lips. I imagined her thoughts. Her son ... burnt to ash? I didn't understand her visible revulsion, like she was repulsed with my morals. Were Catholics not cremated? Maybe not.

“Well.” I shook my head. I certainly didn’t want to fight for a funeral pyre -- something that wasn’t allowed here anyway. And she was so clearly horrified, I wanted to protect her from anything more traumatic. Though I wished I could honor Rob’s memory, give him exactly what he had wanted. I sighed and looked at the aged comforter again. And then to Fernanda’s eyes.

“It doesn’t matter." But it did. We weren't even married three years. Maybe I didn't have a say in this. But I should. They knew him much longer than I. Did they suffer more grief than me?(Snort.) No. Do they have the right to decide what happens to him? Or do I? Me. I was his wife.

But she was his mother.

"We’ll bury him. I’d like a gravesite to visit.” And this much was true anyway. I felt a twinge of remorse. Do my wishes mean more than Rob's? Fernanda and Lena breathed collectively and one of them patted my arm. I looked through the doorway to the hall.

Gerry, his other sister, pulled me aside.

“Valerie, do you think Rob would’ve liked to be laid out in his army Class A’s?”

I laughed and covered my mouth at the unexpectedness.

“No. Just his black suit.”

Fernanda, Gerry and Lena packed up a change of clothes for him in an overnight bag – as if this were somehow temporary. I slipped in a photo of the three of us: Rob and me and our daughter, Aubrey. We were sitting in the green throne chair. All of us shmooshed together. Last Easter. All dressed up. I wanted the picture with him, wherever he was going. I left instructions for the restoration artist to have it placed in Rob's breast pocket after he dressed the body.

At the wake, I asked the funeral director for Rob’s ring. I wanted to take that with me. I put it on my right thumb and clenched my hands in one big sweaty fist. I bent, sobbing over them.

When I picked out the casket, I chose one with gleaming red cherry wood and the "Pieta" at every corner. I liked how this mother's grief wailed out mine as well. I didn't know if I wanted to view Rob's body or not. Did I want to see a pale, grey version of the man I loved? Would I feel drawn to kiss his stitched-closed lips and forever feel their coldness? Could I take that as my last memory of him?

In the end the funeral director made that decision for me. He insisted on a closed casket and I didn't dwell too long on why. I never did see Rob again. Instead, I had a different last memory.

“Drive careful,” I had told him at the door.

“Always.” He leaned over and kissed me good-bye.

The fire red of his wooden resting place gleamed under the funeral parlor's lights, and a long strand of yellow rosebuds -- strung together to form a rosary -- ignited the top, so much like the pyre he wanted after all.

I love you. Always.

Angels Among Us

2008-03-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy."

--inspired by an Eskimo legend.

"Angels Among Us"

by Valerie Willman

3243 words

My friend's son fell from a two story window onto the gravel below in the summer of 2000. She held his screaming body down in case of spinal cord injury, until the ambulance came. Earlier that week I received a sample copy of "Angels on Earth" in the mail. I wondered why - a magazine I didn't order and had never heard of - because I believed things happened for a reason. I told Maria it was because of Justin's accident. Angels must have been with him to slow his fall. But it turns out the magazine was for me.

On Wednesday, Aubrey and I walked through the beige hall down to Stacey's apartment door. Well, I walked and Aubrey toddled. Do twenty-two-month-olds walk yet?

"Here we are." I pointed to the door. "Do you want to knock?"

She did and we heard Stacey's muffled, sing-song voice.

"Open the door, Aidan."

Aidan grasped Aubrey's hand and dashed her off to his bedroom. Stacey held the dining room chair for support and her other hand possessively stroked her belly. I shooed her back to the couch.

Aidan and Aubrey were six months apart in age and made good playmates and I was here to cheer up Stacey. She was bedridden and pregnant with her second child. Rob and I had been trying at the same time, only I wasn't there yet.

Candles and miniature framed photos lined the entertainment center. I sat on the carpet below the couch and the TV was set low to one of those hideous talk shows she watched. Aidan and Aubrey squealed from the bedroom on his PlaySkool slide.

"Maybe I'll try another pregnancy test," I said. She knew about the last one. "Did I tell you about my weird period?"

"No." She shifted on the blue sectional and gestured towards the fan in the window. I pulled the drape back to expose the open window a bit more and crawled back to my seat on the floor. Massachusetts had mean humidity in the summer and August 2000 was no exception.

"I had my period and then two weeks later I had another one." I made a face and Stacey mirrored it.

"So I don't know when to take the next test. Do I count from the first period or the second weird one? I didn't even bleed that long -- like two days. If I count from the first one, I could take another one now. If I'm counting from the second one maybe I'd be ready for another one -- but probably not."

"I'd wait until Friday and take one then."

"But I want to take one now." I smiled, not at all ashamed of my impatience.

After visiting for a few hours, Stacey asked if we'd stay to dinner.

"I can't. Rob visited Monday night and left a note saying he might make it home tonight for dinner."

"Monday?"

"Yeah. He came home from The Cape to visit me." I rolled my eyes and shook my head. "I always have school on Monday nights. Why would he forget that? But while he was home he got a chance to give Aubrey a bath and had dinner with his mom."

"Is he enjoying himself?"

"Yeah. He gets to play soldier, practice at the rifle range and hone his survival skills." I struck a warrior pose. "I talked to him on the phone yesterday and he said his squad was dropped into the swampy woods and they found their way out, thanks to a refresher course in navigation."

"Come on, Aubrey. Sleepy, sleepy." I walked her around the room, alternately swinging or bouncing her in my arms to induce sleep. Rob hadn't made it home for dinner after all. I sighed; oh well. He didn't promise. The note just said he'd try. I hummed to Aubrey and walked another 1/116 of wax off the wood floors in the path in-between my and Rob's bed and the crib.

Our bedroom, that the three of us shared, was crammed with furniture. Our modest 10x10 room held a queen-sized bed, a crib, a vanity table with mirror, and two dressers. Also a diaper genie and two end-tables with lamps. The window and closet took up most of two walls and we were left with eighteen inches to walk around the bed to get from one side of the room to the next.

"Hush little baby ..." "Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home ...." "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound ..." "Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, tomorrow I'll miss you ..." This child was never going to fall asleep.

Singing wasn't doing it for her tonight. Aubrey fussed and wiggled; too hot for my arms. Fine. I laid her in the crib and, drapes closed against the summer sun at 8pm on an August Wednesday, I laid across the foot of my own bed and cooed from a distance.

I woke at 10pm and felt foolish for succumbing to sleep so soon. I remembered my disgust at my mom going to bed at 8:30pm when my sisters and I were young. Fernanda wasn't home from her swing shift yet and Rob was, of course, still at A.T. at Cape Cod. It was just Aubrey, blessfully now asleep, and me.

I went to pee and recalled Stacey's suggestion to take the test on Friday. Impatient, I pulled the box out from underneath the bathroom sink. There was one test left; I'd tried the other one last month. I opened the new test stick and followed the instructions.

Is that a line? The skin around my eyes crinkled and pulled. "Perhaps perhaps perhaps" as the Cake song went.

I snuggled back into bed, this time under the covers and without jeans on, and wondered how to tell Rob.

A doorbell rang through fuzzy sleep and I looked at the clock. 1:00 a.m. Rob? I flipped back the covers and pulled on Rob's navy robe. It was closer than mine. I rushed down the green shag carpeted hall to the door that led to the garage and opened it. Fernanda beat me to the door. It was Rob.

He stepped through the white screen door that always slammed too hard and hugged his mom.

"Ay! Why are you here?"

"To see you." A big smile. White teeth against his dark Portagee skin, black hair and sooty lashes.

They embraced warmly. I smiled at Rob over Fernanda's shoulder. He smiled back and his eyes spoke of tenderness. Fernanda got one more smooch and happily padded downstairs to her section of the house.

Rob and I retired to the bathroom. It was our favorite place to talk. Many heartfelt confessions had been revealed at two, three or four a.m. in that blue and white tiled bathroom. The noisy and annoying overhead fan was perfect for private conversations. Even though we had our own living space, privacy was still an issue while we lived with Rob's mom. So that was where we talked. And that was where I told him we were pregnant. After eight months of trying we finally had number two on the way.

Rob yawned. We stood in the kitchen. I handed him a travel mug to drink from in the Explorer.

"Why go now? It's almost two in the morning. Just stay the night and drive back to the base in a few hours. Sleep now." I pulled at his jacket and pleaded. I missed him and a forty-five minute visit in the middle of the night wasn't as satisfying as you'd think.

"I can't. " He smiled with that knowing smirk. "I'd never wake up in time for formation."

I drooped. He was right. We walked to the door and I hugged him again.

"Drive safe."

"Always," he said. He looked down at me with his additional five inches.

"You have to, because you have us to think of. Me and Aubrey. And another one now, too." I added the last bit quickly, as if to convince him to stay after all.

His head cocked and joy lit up his face. Brilliance and love.

"That's right!" Remembering. Though how could you forget.

"I love you, " I said. He walked through the door and as I closed it behind him I sang the words of Alabama:

Oh I believe there are

angels among us.

Sent down to us

from somewhere up above.

They come to you and me

in our darkest hours,

to show us how to live,

to teach us how to give,

to guide us with the light of love.

I swayed down the dark hall and climbed back in bed smiling. Rob knew. We were pregnant. And our beautiful baby girl was still sleeping beside me in the crib. Life was wonderful.

And then I woke up.

The five a.m. knock at the door sent fingernails of dread scratching on the blackboard of my mind. Funny how the one a.m. doorbell didn't scare me but the five a.m. knock did. I stumbled to the window and saw a flashlight beam shining in the dark. Three uniforms appeared from the shadows; stiff navy blue fabric held the men rigid. It was Thursday, August 17, 2000.

"Mrs. Gomes-Pereira?"

"Yes," I said. My lips felt dry. I clutched Rob's robe tighter around me.

"May we come in?"

Rob's mother had followed me into the parlor.

"Who is it? Who's here?" she demanded in Portuguese accent.

I felt dazed. I knew there were here because of Rob. I grappled with the screen door lock.

Nothing was said, the silence shouted at me, and I watched the somber faces file into the dining room. The face in the back closed the door. The one in front, a mustached man of fifty, held up a scrap of paper.

"Does Robert Gomes-Pereira live here?"

"Yes," I whispered. My legs betrayed me and I flopped onto the computer chair, facing the trooper.

"I don't know how to tell you this, ma'am, but there's been an accident and he didn't make it."

My breath raggled to a stop. I looked at each of the three Massachusetts uniformed state troopers one at a time. My brain couldn't take these words and make sense of them. They just floated and rolled in the waves like soggy driftwood. Through blurry eyes I saw Fernanda bend over and stumble. Grief punched her in the stomach.

"My poor boy. My beautiful baby!" Fernanda wailed. She lunged at the telephone receiver and stopped. Horror.

"The number! What's the number? Why can't I ... I don't remember ..."

I knew she meant Gerry's, of course. I recited the phone number and looked over at the green pseudo-suede parlor sofa and the "throne" chair that Rob would never inherit from his mom. He died first.

"Do you want us to stay until someone get here for you?" The mustached trooper stepped forward, the forgotten scrap of paper still in his hand.

"My sister-in-law is coming." I could see the troopers getting restless, wanting to leave this suffocating haze of grief before them, but I wanted to know what happened. The two younger men shifted their hats and cleared their throats.

The man with the mustache was talking again. I looked into his apologetic eyes and struggled to understand. He was saying something about the accident. I tried to listen but a tiny green fuzz nestled between his shirt collar and neck distracted me.

"...but it appears he fell asleep driving. He hit an exit signpost on Route 25."

A wave rose from my stomach to my throat. I swallowed and shut my eyes. No tears came, but I heard crying. It wasn't me; it was Aubrey. I hurried to lift her out of the crib, grateful to escape the nothingness in the parlor.

Aubrey's thick toddler hair was damp from the sweaty room but despite the humidity she clung to me as if scared. Another clunk in my throat. Can she know already?

Fernanda sobbed something in Portuguese. She reached for Aubrey but Aubrey appeared frightened what with all the tears and sounds coming from her beloved Vavo. She clung instead to me. And grateful, I buried my nose deep in her hair and crooned softly in her ear until the uniformed faces left.

Wearing Rob's robe, I stared at nothing. Somewhere in the back a TV sang inappropriately cheery songs to occupy the innocent Aubrey. Fernanda shuffled back and forth moaning and praying under her breath. I looked at the floor. I have to call my mom. I need to do it now before I collapse. It was time. I blinked at the phone. Sandpaper eyes. My right index finger dialed the number; I stared at its ragged cuticle.

This isn't real, I promised myself. The answering machine picked up. It was 2:30 a.m. in Oregon. Should I leave a message? What would I say? 'Hi Mom, Call me back. Rob's dead?'

I shook my head and took a deep breath.

"Mom? It's Valerie. Are you awake? Wake up. I need to talk to you." I waited, holding my breath, hiding in the dark of our bedroom.

"Hello? Valerie? I couldn't find the phone ..."

"Mom!" I was so relieved that she was truly there, the word just gushed out. "Mom. Rob died this morning -- in a car accident." My throat burned and felt like something was stuck in my windpipe. Darkness burned the edges of my mind, curling them like charred paper. I started to shake and finally a few tears came. But not nearly enough to dislodge the huge boulder pressing at my lungs, invading my throat and initiating the gag reflex.

Mom worked great in a crisis. I knew this. All my life I always saw my mom take on a billion tasks at a time and succeed at everything she did. It was a rather daunting example to follow actually. But I knew that when I called my mom, she would know exactly what to do.

I didn't really hear anything she said on the phone. Only the part: "I'll be there. I'll figure it out and call you back in a few hours. I love you."

I drifted downstairs aching for Aubrey, so beautiful, so oblivious. I ached for Rob, too. I missed him already. Is he really gone? What am I going to do now?

I wanted to grow old with Rob.

We just got our passports in the mail. We planned to go to France and Germany in the spring. A sour feeling rose within me. The European family trip was only one of many unfulfilled dreams that he and I would never get to do. Our family was broken.

Where would I go now? Who would I belong to? Where would I fit in?

A door slamming and a flurry of steps interrupted my thoughts.

"Mom?! Valerie?!" Thud, thud, thud down the steps. I looked around the corner to Rob's two sisters, Gerry and Lena, weeping and snuffling down the stairs. Their extreme emotion acted as a catalyst and I burst into tears on the sight of them.

Embracing and leaning into them, I sought comfort. We wept together and then they turned to their mother.

Slowly more family arrived to share condolences and grief. Some brought me comfort and strength where I had none. Some came in an outpouring of grief and I splashed into the waves and cried, too. I felt small relief from these tears, though. It was never enough.

Why can't I cry? Really cry. These little wimpy tears don't mean anything. Why am I not thrashing around and sobbing like everyone else? Shock? I felt weird and unsettled by it. It couldn't be shock though. If a person's in shock, they're not supposed to know about it, right?

Portuguese families are big. They are full of noisy, overbearing, loving and helpful people. I relied on this aid; I leaned into it. Uncle Louis stepped in to handle some of the phone calls and family affairs and I was relieved. No one had to ask him, he just did it.

Like when I got the call from Rob's unit looking for him. I explained that he died that morning and the caller was so incredulous she asked me to repeat myself three time. Fed up, I shouted in the phone, "He's dead!" and Uncle Louis stepped up to finish the call.

Other offers of help mercifully came in. Lena asked about food, knowing of my pregnancy, and a dry bagel materialized. Gerry offered to take Aubrey home with her to be with the cousins.

"She's so little that I'm worried all the somberness and tears might be frightening for her. But whatever you think best. Whatever you want, Valerie."

At first I said no. Selfishly I wanted her warm, live body close by because Rob's was so clearly not. But an hour or so later I changed my mind. It would be better, healthier, for Aubrey to not be there.

That morning, after Aubrey and most of the family had left, I made my way to the shower. I know with certainty that now, alone, I would be able to cry those real tears. It would come, I knew.

Rob was my soulmate. We had both known it and felt it from the very beginning. The day we met we shared a pizza and conversation. The next week we started dating. Three months later we were married and exactly one year later, on our anniversary, our daughter was born. We were so closely linked in spirit we often thought thoughts at the same time. Of course I would cry! But alone in the dark, the real tears still did not come.

What am I going to do now? How am I going to live without you? I asked the wall. I felt no anger, only sorrow and emptiness. I felt as if I were perpetually holding my breath. It doesn't matter how. I just have to. For Aubrey. For the new baby.

With water pounding my skin and the shower mists blanketing me, I began to pray, "Dear God, Whoever you are, please. Please give me strength and courage to make it through this day." I shuddered to think what would follow 'this day'.

Dripping, I stepped over the side of the porcelain tub. Water soaked into the cotton bathmat. Reaching for a towel, I caught sight of a lone sunbeam shining through the slats of the blinds. It was a strong beam; bright and steady in the dark room.

Awed, I whispered, "Thank you, God. I know you are here." I dried off in silence. I joined the house of mourners with renewed strength. Still with heavy heart and full of sorrow, yes, but with a quiet strength inside me. For the moment at least. But that was all I had asked for, strength and courage for the day.

"Oh, I believe there are angels among us. Sent down to us from somewhere up above. They come to you and me in our darkest hours ..."

A journal entry dated 8-17-2001 (one year death anniversary)

2008-03-04T17:10:00.000-08:00

Grief - Courage - Memories - Love (8/17/2001)

It is one year today. I just lighted four candles in a ceremony I hope to carry on for many more times. I think Aubrey and I and Joey will appreciate it as a sacred ritual to remember you. A special memorial, and then we can talk about special memories. I'm going to see if I can get a video done of you with all the pictures I have of you and movie footage, too.

I need to say my thoughts out loud so I have a better chance of remembering them.

I miss you being proud of me. I miss you holding me. I miss you loving me. Everyone I was around today at the rehearsal dinner was married.

Seeing the picture video of Leslie and Joey tonight made me miss you so much. All the shots of Leslie and Joey kissing and the look of love they have for each other -- I remember that from us and I wish that it still was.

I miss you. It will never be right again. How can I find the gift I know is there?! Where is the lesson? Help me find it before I am ravaged by these strong feelings -- this emotional current that is dragging me under the sea of life, ripping my bleeding heart on the coral reef of love.

I wouldn't give up my life with you, my memories. But this emptiness and hollow void can't be filled until I meet up with you again. I want to make you proud. But I feel weak at the same time.

I wanted that life that we dreamed about. I wanted that big porch and sitting on the rocking chairs as we grow older, watching our children playing in the yard.

I'm holding my breath watching the candles flicker half-terrified, half-hopeful they will blow out.

I want to immortalize you but you are already immortal. I want to enshrine you but how can I move on? I don't want to move on. It seems so final, like I can never think of you again if I date another. How do I find a man that loves children -- that will love our children? I know you'll be proud of me if I raise our kids to be respectable adults; if I cater to their brilliance and find schools that will do the same.

I want to see the clouds rolling by because then I know the whole world hasn't stopped because I am in anguish. I hear crickets chorusing around me and I remember that life is eternal; it does not stop. It is ever evolving and revolving.

Randy gave me strength today. I am reminded of those who still care and want me to continue to fight to live.

Haze -- I should listen to the lyrics again. Everything -- friends, movies, songs, predicaments -- all have new meaning as a widow.

Three are out. The last struggles.

One year.

A lone plane engine rolls in the distance. Birds sound so mean here, indignant of being roused from sleep. Or is it bats?

Hospitality. Thankfulness. Grateful.

The orange kitten padded softly across the kitchen floor as I tried not to think of bats. The last candle blows out. The breeze ruffles my hair and caresses my skin. I don't want to go in. I want to stay outside in the dark and feel Rob's presence or hope to. Sometimes I think he must be too busy to visit but other times I know he is here. I don't want to face questioning glances tonight. But I must go in to see if Joey or Aubrey need me and besides the candles are out, I can't really see the page, what if those are bats? and I don't want to push too deep tonight because of the time commitment.

Am I still being responsible if Aubrey or Joey need me and I don't want to stop a 'therapy cleansing session in mid-epiphany'? So I won't start.

But one question (request actually): Please Rob, will you stay with me tonight? I miss you -- I miss us, that's the truth.

The crickets sound like they are fighting. I smell left-over BBQ exhaust fumes, grass and dirt. I love it. I am in Kentucky. If my mom moved here -- I would move to Mass. I miss Gerry and Lena and Maria and everyone else.

The sky is always changing.

Please help me, Rob, to point me in the right direction to bring me to the next highest and best part of my life. And so it is.

When does the war end?

I love you, Rob. I can't wish you a happy anniversary. Not this year. Maybe next. I hurt.

A Hug From Daddy

2008-02-25T11:21:00.002-08:00

The green slip-cover was thin. The nubby texture of the original upholstery bled from underneath. The room was small despite the warming September sun to lighten it.

It felt like I hadn't left it for weeks. Bereavement cards scattered the desk's surface.

The TV was on to some placid children's show and Aubrey puttered around toys and books; her slippered two year old toes shuffling atop the waxed pine floor.

Careful not to trip over the area rug, she picked her foot up and held onto the rocking chair's spindles for balance.

Draped across the rocking chair was Rob's BDU shirt -- still starched. I'd pulled it from his duffle bag -- the one his National Guard unit sent with the Major that was handling the loose ends -- whenever it was that I got it.

I pretended that time didn't exist anymore. That I had full control over it now. I could stop it and pretend my husband was still at Cape Cod doing his annual training for the Guard. I could rewind it to play over the last conversation I had with him. The one where I told him I was pregnant again. And put into slow motion his jumping up and down.

Sometimes I selected scenes in the past of vacations we went on or words of love spoken in dark rooms; private jokes that sounded stupid to third parties.

I creaked forward from the couch and picked up his camoed shirt -- swirls of green, brown and tan memories. I sniffed it and put it on, leaned back and pet the sleeves. Was I touching him or he touching me?

"Mommy." Aubrey's voice sharp contrast to Playhouse Disney.

"That's Daddy's."

Did she think I was stealing it, as her Daddy was stolen from her? Did she think Rob would be mad at me for wearing his clothes? Was she just stating the facts as she knew them to be true? It was 'Daddy's'. But not anymore.

"Would you like to wear it?"

I pulled it off and held it up to her. She toddled forward, chubby fingers grasping. I wrapped it around her pink fuzziness. I was careful not to touch her two short pigtails, lest she remember they were there and pull them out again.

Aubrey turned for appraisal and then crinkled her eyes.

"Mommy, a hug from Daddy!"

Indeed.

My throat constricted and I held my breath so I would not cry.

I took her picture then; getting a hug from Daddy.

~September 2000~

"Going Back"

2008-02-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

I'm a forward thinker. I struggle to stay in the present, am usually thinking ahead five years, and rarely look backward. I don't have time. And I have little patience for myself when I spin to the past and lament or guilt about whatever. But now I want to go back and am afraid.

Seven and a half years ago my husband died. Unusual circumstances complicated my grief and I'm committed to writing about them. But, I've tried -- without success -- for over six years.

At first my grief was too raw. I spent days staring at the living room wall, and -- when I did go out -- avoiding friendly strangers at checkout counters and swim classes that didn't know he'd died and then asked about him. I called credit card companies to cancel his cards and gave away some of his clothes to our family and friends. But I couldn't throw away his toothbrush or the pregnancy test stick I'd peed on that evening before he died.

I couldn't write about it then; it was too painful. So I waited and tried again later. I tried again when I'd moved out of state and bought a new house. I purged my emotions into wet clay vessels and my roommate watched my two year old and six month old when I ran around and around the block in my Saucony sneakers. I watched the sun flash out from behind trees and counted the seams in the sidewalk. The air was nippy and I composed words to write later.

But later was always later. The words, when I wrote them, weren't what I wanted. They didn't express how I found myself holding my breath for no particular reason. They didn't articulate how it ached when I had to call my mom to tell of my infant's first laughter because I couldn't tell my husband.

And then I fictionalized it. And a door opened. I wrote of someone else's pain and mine lessened somehow. But how would a novel help someone through their grief journey? Because that was what I meant it to be -- a book that helped someone else get over the throat clenching grief; the searing head pain; the bloody remains of a heart slashed to shreds. And so I stopped because it was fiction, not really what was happening to me.

But now I need to begin again. It is time to write my story. Our story. But I have to go back to do that. I need to re-open the wounds and examine the pain in all its concrete sensory detail. And I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of the pain that must accompany this trek. I'm afraid of how I'll be with my family while I'm excavating my memories. Who will care for my children while I'm in the past? Who will be a companion to the man I'm married to now? How will me going back to Before affect my relationships in Now? Won't it hurt my new man to see me crying over the old? Will it threaten the serenity and happiness we have?

My two year old is nine now. She's in two choirs, loves Hannah Montana, "High School Musical", and horses. She's in gymnastics class and tries to ignore her brother when he doesn't keep to himself.

The baby I found out I was pregnant with the night before my husband died is six and three quarters now. Be sure to include the 3/4. He's particular about that. He whoops when he walks and is an expert scientist.

The man my children call "Dad" fed my son formula in bottles, changed his diapers and plays "Tickle Monster" with him now. He cradled my daughter in his lap when she was little and reads to her at night still and they both call him "Big Hairy Guy" for laughs.

So, is it worth it to go back? Could it shatter the Now?

This is perhaps why I have not written the story before now. The potential for hurting the people that I care about is so monumentally in front of me.

Because what happens is this: I remember a flash of memory and go to write it down. While I'm there I fester and cling to shards of recollection and agonize over not the way things used to be but the things that will never be.

And this is where the present gets tricky. How do I stay pleased with the current shape of marital bliss while I'm lamenting over my dead husband never walking my daughter down the aisle at her wedding?

And then digressions bleed through that have nothing to do with anything. Like, I struggled over saying "my" daughter. I wanted to say "his" daughter. But then flashed to "our" daughter. But that couldn't be right because the man I'm with now -- the one that has raised her since she was three years old -- has adopted her. So she's our daughter -- his and mine. Not my late husband's. Not anymore. But how can I say that?!

Where does he go in my life now? Where can he fit? He must be allowed to stay in some form.

Sometimes the children and I light a candle on his birthday and sing for him, but I glance over at my current husband and wonder what he's thinking when we do this.

And so I am afraid to go back.

But I must.