I have been skating with an old pair of men’s figure skates I bought eleven years ago on sale at Target. I got them on a whim but ended up using them quite a bit those first two winters. There was an outdoor rink by the public library which was a 5 minute drive from where I was living. I used to head over there in the late afternoon when I got home from school and skate for an hour or so nearly everyday - especially that first winter. I skated by myself. I didn’t really know anyone who was interested in circling a frozen pond as the daylight hours dwindled away. I was at the point in my single life that I did pretty much whatever I felt inclined to and that meant that I very often was on my own, but I was used to it.
We started skating here as a family thing and because I thought it would be a nice skill for Katy to have. A child can’t possibly develop a healthy active lifestyle if it isn’t modeled for them and they can’t have favorite physical activities if they aren’t given a few to chose from at least. But the black skates just didn’t feel as right on my feet now that I am older and they are flatter from years more of running and wider, and tad bit longer, from childbearing, so Rob suggested that we get me a pair of hockey skates when they went on sale at Canadian Tire recently. I admit that I have been tempted by hockey style skates in the past. They look more comfortable. I have very flat feet. So flat that I avoid wearing anything but runners and hikers whenever I can. I don’t do sandals or flip-flops. Dress shoes of any kind are torture. Hockey skates are wider and have a large toe box than even male figure skates and they don’t constrict the ankle as high up, and I felt very comfortable in them from the first moment in the store.
On the ice, hockey skates are another matter. It feels for the first few moments as though you have never skated before because the figure skates have a longer blade that forces you to be more aware of where your foot is just to avoid catching one end or the other and face-planting on the ice. And they are fast. It’s like being freed from invisible restraints. Movement is so unrestricted by comparison. I felt at times as though I was barely skimming the ice surface which in fact I was technically as Rob tells me that when skating we are really not gliding on the ice at all but on the water that is melting beneath the skate’s blade.
The skating season lasts until April sometime and we may be gone by then, but I think the skates may make the cut for items that travel back to the states.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Optimistic Widow
My horoscope yesterday said that I would encounter many people who were looking at the down side of life and would do their best to turn me to the dark side. It reminded me that this is against my natural inclinations and that they would likely not succeed. I have not been buoyant like this my whole life though. Although I have always returned to the sunny-side, in the past it has taken me longer to rebound then it does these days. Which brings me to my current dilemma. How to give back without undoing my own progress or annoying others. And I have to admit the latter is the minor concern because I am really done apologizing for the road I have taken as a caregiver and a widow.
As we tooled around the city yesterday running errands, Rob and I discussed again the hospice group situation. He is in a place where he feels that he is not interested in adding any more widows to his acquaintance. I see his point. The newly widowed are draining because they dredge up all sorts of memories and emotions. Extra care must be taken when sharing with them to avoid making them feel as though they are grieving incorrectly or that encourages them to believe that grieving is an end in itself. On the other end there is the problem of widows close to or past your vintage who are mired by circumstances beyond their control, or by choice, and see you as a model of all that is *DGI about grieving and grief. I want to continue with the group. I think I have things to say and share that might be helpful as the woman who is leading the group is not a widow and their are things about grief that are specific to the loss. Perhaps Rob is right that this is not the time or place. We are finding our strides more and more and have a big move again and maybe not the energy to spare. What to do. What to do. Think on it and wait and see, I guess.
Personally, I am not sure why I feel like I need to give back anymore. My success with it so far has been decidedly mixed. Sandi, the founder of the WET grief group back in Iowa, thought I was pretty good at offering advice and empathy. She suggested that I think about starting a group of my own when I got to Canada (or maybe Texas now) but the idea is daunting. She is a very religious person which is why, I think, she was able to bring together such a diverse group of women without a lot of drama popping up. I am not sure that is me. My solution to diversity and drama when I was teaching was to simple suppress it like they did in the former Soviet Union. No drama allowed. And haven’t I given back enough? Another question to ponder.
Finally, reading sad posts on the YWBB (or flames) and blogs and listening to grief stories and experiences in group reminds me that I am not there anymore really and don’t want to be. I am somewhere else that is not back where I was before either and I don’t know how to explain to people who need to know the directions to this place how to get here. And on that completely incomprehensible note, I need to get dressed and on with my day as groceries need to be bought and a new pair of hockey skates need to be broken in later this afternoon. Priorities, people.
*DGI - Don’t Get Its is a derogatory term used to refer to the non-widowed when they make inadvertent statements about grief or timelines to the widowed. It is a reference to their insensitivity that is generally unwarranted.
As we tooled around the city yesterday running errands, Rob and I discussed again the hospice group situation. He is in a place where he feels that he is not interested in adding any more widows to his acquaintance. I see his point. The newly widowed are draining because they dredge up all sorts of memories and emotions. Extra care must be taken when sharing with them to avoid making them feel as though they are grieving incorrectly or that encourages them to believe that grieving is an end in itself. On the other end there is the problem of widows close to or past your vintage who are mired by circumstances beyond their control, or by choice, and see you as a model of all that is *DGI about grieving and grief. I want to continue with the group. I think I have things to say and share that might be helpful as the woman who is leading the group is not a widow and their are things about grief that are specific to the loss. Perhaps Rob is right that this is not the time or place. We are finding our strides more and more and have a big move again and maybe not the energy to spare. What to do. What to do. Think on it and wait and see, I guess.
Personally, I am not sure why I feel like I need to give back anymore. My success with it so far has been decidedly mixed. Sandi, the founder of the WET grief group back in Iowa, thought I was pretty good at offering advice and empathy. She suggested that I think about starting a group of my own when I got to Canada (or maybe Texas now) but the idea is daunting. She is a very religious person which is why, I think, she was able to bring together such a diverse group of women without a lot of drama popping up. I am not sure that is me. My solution to diversity and drama when I was teaching was to simple suppress it like they did in the former Soviet Union. No drama allowed. And haven’t I given back enough? Another question to ponder.
Finally, reading sad posts on the YWBB (or flames) and blogs and listening to grief stories and experiences in group reminds me that I am not there anymore really and don’t want to be. I am somewhere else that is not back where I was before either and I don’t know how to explain to people who need to know the directions to this place how to get here. And on that completely incomprehensible note, I need to get dressed and on with my day as groceries need to be bought and a new pair of hockey skates need to be broken in later this afternoon. Priorities, people.
*DGI - Don’t Get Its is a derogatory term used to refer to the non-widowed when they make inadvertent statements about grief or timelines to the widowed. It is a reference to their insensitivity that is generally unwarranted.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Photographic Memories
Last night I went through the totes with pictures. When we moved up here I had just tossed them all, most in the original packaging from the photo shop, into two pink totes and I haven’t looked at them since. Not that I looked at them much before anyway. I haven’t been one to document my life on film. Most of the time the camera was put away unless it was a holiday or a special occasion of some sort. I vowed to changed that after Katy was born. I didn’t want her to be one of those people who had scant evidence that she was ever a child. But despite my best efforts the pictures never made it to a scrapbook or photo album and now that I have a digital camera and computer - I am even worse about getting pictures out and on display.
I made rather quick work of the totes. I was surprised that I could identify and date the pictures by lot as easily as I could as I still have a difficult time with time frames. One thing that was striking was the fact that as time went on Will’s presence in the photos diminished and then disappeared completely even though he was still alive. But maybe that is why. He was just alive in the physical sense and no more than that. I do remember that I deliberately stopped taking pictures of him when he went into the nursing home. I think there is just one photograph of him there that was taken at a holiday dinner they had for the residents and family in very early December. He would have been there about two months at the time and the social worker there took the picture and gave me a copy later. My memories of that time and place are awful enough without photos and Katy, thankfully, can’t remember him there at all. It probably wasn’t the worst that nursing homes had to offer but it was typical of what most of those places are. Understaffed and full of demented seniors who are in various types of restraints and drugged more insensible than they would have been anyway. Will, unfortunately, had to be quite quite medicated as he was aggressive and combative due to the areas of his brain that were under attack from his immune system. It wasn’t until the last six months or so when he had lost completely the ability to move that it was safe to take him off some of those medications. It’s odd that I should be thinking of this kind of thing right now because Rob and I are putting the finishing touches on our wills and personal directives and we have this list of “what ifs” to plow through and decide upon. I am pretty sure I would not want to live the way Will did those last two years even if I was suffering from dementia as severely as he was and didn’t know what was going on - or at least couldn’t remember it from one moment to the next. Sometimes life is not worth living and I think a lot of what passes for respect for the sanctity of life is just the cowardice of family to do the right thing or the selfishness in wanting to preserve someone in a horrible existence to put off their own grief.
But not everything in the photo totes was about Will. Believe it or not I had a longer life without him than with him. There were pictures of students and events that took place at the various schools I have taught at. There were tons of photos of my oldest nephew who I borrowed quite a bit during my single days. I found all the family history stuff that my cousin, Anne, and I had worked on. I have a fairly intricate family tree map that I used for my own writing and it reminded me of the stories that I wanted to write up at some point.
And I found cards. Why did I save all these cards? What is the purpose? Rob says not to be too hard on myself in that respect as everyone does this. He has nearly every important card ever given to him. I suppose he is right but I am not overly sentimental in this respect and whenever I pull out this stuffed shoe-box, I am more annoyed than pleased that it exists. Perhaps though I would be upset if it didn’t turn up from time to time and maybe I will be glad of these cards someday. And then there were the bereavement cards. I did nothing with this aside from take money out of them which sounds awful but I needed that money to pay for the lot and the burial. My aunt paid for the wake. I was so broke and still had about six months to go on my masters - with the accompanying bills and nearly a year before I would see the corresponding pay raise that I so desperately needed already. I verbally thanked everyone at the time of the wake but I know this doesn’t clear me with Miss Manners. At the time I wasn’t up to sending out written acknowledgment and as time went on I came to resent more and more the idea that this was expected. A death isn’t like a wedding or baby shower. It’s not a party and the cards are not gifts. And I found no comfort from them and still don’t. By and large they are from people who abandoned us for over two years and I didn’t, still don’t, see any good reason to thank them for throwing me a bone and showing up after Will was gone especially since I never heard or saw all but a handful of these people again. And these were people that had stuck with us anyway and I still tell them how much that meant to me.
Today all these photos are labeled and packed into two much small, and easier to pack for moving, photo boxes - ready for scanning onto my computer at some later date. The most immediate plan I have for them is to gather up pictures for Katy to create a book telling her story. I have read, and the hospice grief program confirmed, that it’s good for young children to have a photo book that tells the story of their lost parent. It helps them remember and facilitates their grieving process by giving them something concrete to thumb through and read and remember. Aside from that I am content to have them in some sort of order at last.
Now it’s on to the last two boxes of papers to be sorted and then filed or shredded. A widow at the hospice group asked me if it was okay to have not gone through her husband’s things. She is barely a year out and I told her that it was fine. For me though, at almost two years, it is not okay anymore. I can’t string this out over the remaining decade and I don’t see the sense in that anyway. The photos, papers and miscellaneous items left will not lose their power over me through my delay and may indeed gain grief momentum if I set it up as something arduous rather than something that is necessary and, in my experience, spiritually cleansing. I can’t protect myself from memories by hiding or ignoring things.
I made rather quick work of the totes. I was surprised that I could identify and date the pictures by lot as easily as I could as I still have a difficult time with time frames. One thing that was striking was the fact that as time went on Will’s presence in the photos diminished and then disappeared completely even though he was still alive. But maybe that is why. He was just alive in the physical sense and no more than that. I do remember that I deliberately stopped taking pictures of him when he went into the nursing home. I think there is just one photograph of him there that was taken at a holiday dinner they had for the residents and family in very early December. He would have been there about two months at the time and the social worker there took the picture and gave me a copy later. My memories of that time and place are awful enough without photos and Katy, thankfully, can’t remember him there at all. It probably wasn’t the worst that nursing homes had to offer but it was typical of what most of those places are. Understaffed and full of demented seniors who are in various types of restraints and drugged more insensible than they would have been anyway. Will, unfortunately, had to be quite quite medicated as he was aggressive and combative due to the areas of his brain that were under attack from his immune system. It wasn’t until the last six months or so when he had lost completely the ability to move that it was safe to take him off some of those medications. It’s odd that I should be thinking of this kind of thing right now because Rob and I are putting the finishing touches on our wills and personal directives and we have this list of “what ifs” to plow through and decide upon. I am pretty sure I would not want to live the way Will did those last two years even if I was suffering from dementia as severely as he was and didn’t know what was going on - or at least couldn’t remember it from one moment to the next. Sometimes life is not worth living and I think a lot of what passes for respect for the sanctity of life is just the cowardice of family to do the right thing or the selfishness in wanting to preserve someone in a horrible existence to put off their own grief.
But not everything in the photo totes was about Will. Believe it or not I had a longer life without him than with him. There were pictures of students and events that took place at the various schools I have taught at. There were tons of photos of my oldest nephew who I borrowed quite a bit during my single days. I found all the family history stuff that my cousin, Anne, and I had worked on. I have a fairly intricate family tree map that I used for my own writing and it reminded me of the stories that I wanted to write up at some point.
And I found cards. Why did I save all these cards? What is the purpose? Rob says not to be too hard on myself in that respect as everyone does this. He has nearly every important card ever given to him. I suppose he is right but I am not overly sentimental in this respect and whenever I pull out this stuffed shoe-box, I am more annoyed than pleased that it exists. Perhaps though I would be upset if it didn’t turn up from time to time and maybe I will be glad of these cards someday. And then there were the bereavement cards. I did nothing with this aside from take money out of them which sounds awful but I needed that money to pay for the lot and the burial. My aunt paid for the wake. I was so broke and still had about six months to go on my masters - with the accompanying bills and nearly a year before I would see the corresponding pay raise that I so desperately needed already. I verbally thanked everyone at the time of the wake but I know this doesn’t clear me with Miss Manners. At the time I wasn’t up to sending out written acknowledgment and as time went on I came to resent more and more the idea that this was expected. A death isn’t like a wedding or baby shower. It’s not a party and the cards are not gifts. And I found no comfort from them and still don’t. By and large they are from people who abandoned us for over two years and I didn’t, still don’t, see any good reason to thank them for throwing me a bone and showing up after Will was gone especially since I never heard or saw all but a handful of these people again. And these were people that had stuck with us anyway and I still tell them how much that meant to me.
Today all these photos are labeled and packed into two much small, and easier to pack for moving, photo boxes - ready for scanning onto my computer at some later date. The most immediate plan I have for them is to gather up pictures for Katy to create a book telling her story. I have read, and the hospice grief program confirmed, that it’s good for young children to have a photo book that tells the story of their lost parent. It helps them remember and facilitates their grieving process by giving them something concrete to thumb through and read and remember. Aside from that I am content to have them in some sort of order at last.
Now it’s on to the last two boxes of papers to be sorted and then filed or shredded. A widow at the hospice group asked me if it was okay to have not gone through her husband’s things. She is barely a year out and I told her that it was fine. For me though, at almost two years, it is not okay anymore. I can’t string this out over the remaining decade and I don’t see the sense in that anyway. The photos, papers and miscellaneous items left will not lose their power over me through my delay and may indeed gain grief momentum if I set it up as something arduous rather than something that is necessary and, in my experience, spiritually cleansing. I can’t protect myself from memories by hiding or ignoring things.
Friday, January 11, 2008
The Pilgrim's Hospice
There are no free-standing hospices in the Edmonton area. I was a bit surprised by this because there are three and a fourth under construction back in Des Moines. Hospice care is in home here. Rob’s late wife, Shelley, received hospice in the house where we live. The Pilgrim’s Hospice trains volunteers, offers limited day time respite and runs a variety of bereavement programs. One the programs they offer is a creative arts group for children between 3 and 18 years of age. They have the children split into three different age groups and they meet to discuss their losses and feelings through song and art projects. The program even offers day camps over the summer months when Canadians typically don’t have any type of programs for kids at all because they are quite serious about their vacationing and family time. This last November, Katy was having some difficulties again and Rob and I decided to look into options for her and came up with this program. We realize this is going to be an on-going process for her because her perception of her dad and his death will change as she grows and her ability to understand and process matures. It’s ironic. One of the things that adults envy about children in the grief process is their seeming ability to grieve in short bursts rather than carry it around morning, noon and night, but the downside is that they will be burdened with reprocessing their parent’s death at every milestone along the way to adulthood and beyond.
While the children gather for their program, the adults meet in another room to do roughly the same thing the kids are doing minus the singing and paints. I think I might like to discuss my grief journey over a coloring book though or while making cookies or learning to dance. Somehow that doesn’t seem as daunting. The group is mixed. We were not all widowed though about half were. Others had lost small children or their own parents or grandparents. As I listened to one person describe losing a parent and grandparent with such visible distress I thought back to the numerous posts on the widow board where other widows would rant rabidly about the fact that this kind of loss is not equal to the loss of a spouse. Even Rob mentioned later that he couldn’t work up too much empathy for the person, and truthfully I couldn’t either, but I did feel sad for this person who obviously needed this lost parent so much that it was debilitating for them. A person expects their parents to die before them but our level of dependence on them varies so much from one of us to the next that I can easily see how someone whose adult life was integrally wrapped up in a parent’s could be as bereft as someone who losses a spouse. It’s very sad in another kind of way. The parents who lost children are the only grief victims that widows seem to be accepting of and often allow to trump their own grief cards. Rightly so, in my opinion. I was reading a blog entry the other day by a young woman who tragically lost her little girl over the summer and I just sat and bawled as I did so. The thought of losing Katy seizes me from time to time and it freezes my soul. I have an old friend in Iowa who is observing the sixth anniversary of the loss of her three year old later this month. He was murdered by her now ex-husband. I marvel still at how she carried on and put her life back together. Whenever I felt sorry for myself while Will was sick or after he died, I thought about her and kicked myself in the butt to do better.
The widows in the group last night were not as far out as Rob or I. Not even a year. Sudden deaths and they were grappling with the acceptance. There is a huge difference - a gulf maybe - between sudden widows and those of us who knew or had an inkling that it was coming. We don’t tend to wrestle with disbelief as much as mourn for the lost time. Time lost to the illness. Time in the future that won’t be. It is hard to listen to fresh grief. To see it. There is that look in the eyes. A tenseness to their frames, almost a full body clench. One widow talked about still not being able to sleep. I didn’t realize myself just how much I needed sleep until I was able to sleep again like a normal person does. During the three years leading up to Will’s death, I lived and breathed sleep debt, getting by on as little as three or four hours a night at times. One or two late nights now and I am near collapse. My body simply refuses to let me run a debt of any kind now. Smart body. The anger too is palpable in the freshly minted. I recoil even more from it now than I did during my time on the widow board though I had my anger then too. Anger is exhausting. After the meeting I felt compelled to speak to one widow whose first year is up just a few days after the coming second anniversary for Will. She asked if it gets better. And the answer is not that simple. It gets better only in that it begins to change. I could tell she was disappointed by that. I didn’t tell her that it never goes away and that she will carry it in some form or another always. I think she assumed because I was there with Rob that I was all better now. Everyone thinks that. I am certainly happy again. I am building a life with Rob that I love and I am so wonderfully blessed by his love and by the new family he has brought Katy and I into, but it doesn’t change the past in anyway. It transforms our now and our future.
The woman who lead our group got into grief counseling after losing her tow youngest children at birth. She felt better by giving back and eventually back a counselor. It was an interesting thing that I can relate to. I always felt good being able to share with newer widowed people on the YWBB. I was sad and a little angry when I had to leave there, but I knew I had to give that up - at least in that setting - because of the personal attacks I had experienced at fingertips of a few widowed who did not see me as a good example or as being someone who had anything of import to say about grief and the journey we were all on. Granted, I could be pointed - though I saved that for those of my own or greater vintage, but last night I thought perhaps I had found a new outlet for my still abiding need to share my experience and journey. Something I am going to give much thought to in the coming months. I knew after Will died that I someday would give back in the hospice. I am not quite ready to volunteer in that setting though. I am still a bit too raw. Maybe this type of group setting is more my answer.
While the children gather for their program, the adults meet in another room to do roughly the same thing the kids are doing minus the singing and paints. I think I might like to discuss my grief journey over a coloring book though or while making cookies or learning to dance. Somehow that doesn’t seem as daunting. The group is mixed. We were not all widowed though about half were. Others had lost small children or their own parents or grandparents. As I listened to one person describe losing a parent and grandparent with such visible distress I thought back to the numerous posts on the widow board where other widows would rant rabidly about the fact that this kind of loss is not equal to the loss of a spouse. Even Rob mentioned later that he couldn’t work up too much empathy for the person, and truthfully I couldn’t either, but I did feel sad for this person who obviously needed this lost parent so much that it was debilitating for them. A person expects their parents to die before them but our level of dependence on them varies so much from one of us to the next that I can easily see how someone whose adult life was integrally wrapped up in a parent’s could be as bereft as someone who losses a spouse. It’s very sad in another kind of way. The parents who lost children are the only grief victims that widows seem to be accepting of and often allow to trump their own grief cards. Rightly so, in my opinion. I was reading a blog entry the other day by a young woman who tragically lost her little girl over the summer and I just sat and bawled as I did so. The thought of losing Katy seizes me from time to time and it freezes my soul. I have an old friend in Iowa who is observing the sixth anniversary of the loss of her three year old later this month. He was murdered by her now ex-husband. I marvel still at how she carried on and put her life back together. Whenever I felt sorry for myself while Will was sick or after he died, I thought about her and kicked myself in the butt to do better.
The widows in the group last night were not as far out as Rob or I. Not even a year. Sudden deaths and they were grappling with the acceptance. There is a huge difference - a gulf maybe - between sudden widows and those of us who knew or had an inkling that it was coming. We don’t tend to wrestle with disbelief as much as mourn for the lost time. Time lost to the illness. Time in the future that won’t be. It is hard to listen to fresh grief. To see it. There is that look in the eyes. A tenseness to their frames, almost a full body clench. One widow talked about still not being able to sleep. I didn’t realize myself just how much I needed sleep until I was able to sleep again like a normal person does. During the three years leading up to Will’s death, I lived and breathed sleep debt, getting by on as little as three or four hours a night at times. One or two late nights now and I am near collapse. My body simply refuses to let me run a debt of any kind now. Smart body. The anger too is palpable in the freshly minted. I recoil even more from it now than I did during my time on the widow board though I had my anger then too. Anger is exhausting. After the meeting I felt compelled to speak to one widow whose first year is up just a few days after the coming second anniversary for Will. She asked if it gets better. And the answer is not that simple. It gets better only in that it begins to change. I could tell she was disappointed by that. I didn’t tell her that it never goes away and that she will carry it in some form or another always. I think she assumed because I was there with Rob that I was all better now. Everyone thinks that. I am certainly happy again. I am building a life with Rob that I love and I am so wonderfully blessed by his love and by the new family he has brought Katy and I into, but it doesn’t change the past in anyway. It transforms our now and our future.
The woman who lead our group got into grief counseling after losing her tow youngest children at birth. She felt better by giving back and eventually back a counselor. It was an interesting thing that I can relate to. I always felt good being able to share with newer widowed people on the YWBB. I was sad and a little angry when I had to leave there, but I knew I had to give that up - at least in that setting - because of the personal attacks I had experienced at fingertips of a few widowed who did not see me as a good example or as being someone who had anything of import to say about grief and the journey we were all on. Granted, I could be pointed - though I saved that for those of my own or greater vintage, but last night I thought perhaps I had found a new outlet for my still abiding need to share my experience and journey. Something I am going to give much thought to in the coming months. I knew after Will died that I someday would give back in the hospice. I am not quite ready to volunteer in that setting though. I am still a bit too raw. Maybe this type of group setting is more my answer.
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