The Hazen-Johnstons are having their annual Summer Retreat this week. We’ve just spent four days at Jellystone Park Camping Resort and will spend the remainder of the week at home with our children, spouses, and grandchildren.
Check back next week.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Ejection Fraction
Two Years Ago
Friday, August 15th, David has an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart). His ejection fraction (EF), the percentage of blood that is ejected from the heart chamber at each heartbeat, is 43%. That’s an improvement from the end of May, but not the 58% expected in a 26-year-old Army medic. Daunorubicin, one of the very toxic chemo drugs David was given at Walter Reed, probably caused the heart damage. David’s been on heart medicine since his first echocardiogram at the end of May, when the EF was 36%. All spring he walked stooped over, like an 85-year-old heart patient.
Dr. Amir Fathi, the 'leukemia doctor', spends a long time discussing David’s situation with the three of us. It’s very serious that the leukemia has returned. Because of David’s young age, Dr. Fathi will consider aggressive treatments and investigate clinical trials and see if David qualifies for any of them. The heart damage may disqualify him.
Many months ago, before the leukemia, we rented a vacation house on the Long Island Sound, in Clinton, Connecticut, for our week-long Summer Retreat with our children (and grandchild!). We’ll drive there tomorrow. David can’t be out in public, but he can ride in a car and be with family in the house and yard.
August 12, 2016
For David’s first death anniversary Jim and I get up early and visit his grave. The grass has grown in and matches the color of the lawn; there's a freshly-dug grave nearby.
With temperatures forecast for the 90s, we close up our house against the heat, retreat into Jim’s office coachhouse, and turn the air conditioning on. During the day, five different friends bring flowers. In the afternoon my friend, Cami, helps me move David’s bed into the girls’ old room and reattach it as the top of a bunkbed. I set up a double bed in David’s room in preparation for our Summer Retreat next week. Although we’ve moved David’s bed, I will always call it ‘David’s room’. I’ve hung a photo of him on the wall: the portrait of him looking ‘extremely presentable’ at Peter’s and Xiomara’s wedding in 2011. Matt had it printed on glass as a gift to us; Annie held it for our family wedding pictures in June.
Oh, and just to make the day memorable, we discover a skunk sleeping under our kitchen porch. I leave the gate open and do internet research on skunks. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) they are one of the five "wild reservoirs of rabies", but this critter doesn't seem rabid. They rarely spray unless very frightened and cornered. Somewhat comforting, but what if this skunk didn't get the memo?
By nightfall the skunk has left. I move the extra recycling bins, the ones the skunk was napping behind, into the basement and hope the area doesn't become its den.
And thus begins our second year.
Friday, August 15th, David has an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart). His ejection fraction (EF), the percentage of blood that is ejected from the heart chamber at each heartbeat, is 43%. That’s an improvement from the end of May, but not the 58% expected in a 26-year-old Army medic. Daunorubicin, one of the very toxic chemo drugs David was given at Walter Reed, probably caused the heart damage. David’s been on heart medicine since his first echocardiogram at the end of May, when the EF was 36%. All spring he walked stooped over, like an 85-year-old heart patient.
Dr. Amir Fathi, the 'leukemia doctor', spends a long time discussing David’s situation with the three of us. It’s very serious that the leukemia has returned. Because of David’s young age, Dr. Fathi will consider aggressive treatments and investigate clinical trials and see if David qualifies for any of them. The heart damage may disqualify him.
Many months ago, before the leukemia, we rented a vacation house on the Long Island Sound, in Clinton, Connecticut, for our week-long Summer Retreat with our children (and grandchild!). We’ll drive there tomorrow. David can’t be out in public, but he can ride in a car and be with family in the house and yard.
August 12, 2016
For David’s first death anniversary Jim and I get up early and visit his grave. The grass has grown in and matches the color of the lawn; there's a freshly-dug grave nearby.
With temperatures forecast for the 90s, we close up our house against the heat, retreat into Jim’s office coachhouse, and turn the air conditioning on. During the day, five different friends bring flowers. In the afternoon my friend, Cami, helps me move David’s bed into the girls’ old room and reattach it as the top of a bunkbed. I set up a double bed in David’s room in preparation for our Summer Retreat next week. Although we’ve moved David’s bed, I will always call it ‘David’s room’. I’ve hung a photo of him on the wall: the portrait of him looking ‘extremely presentable’ at Peter’s and Xiomara’s wedding in 2011. Matt had it printed on glass as a gift to us; Annie held it for our family wedding pictures in June.
Oh, and just to make the day memorable, we discover a skunk sleeping under our kitchen porch. I leave the gate open and do internet research on skunks. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) they are one of the five "wild reservoirs of rabies", but this critter doesn't seem rabid. They rarely spray unless very frightened and cornered. Somewhat comforting, but what if this skunk didn't get the memo?
By nightfall the skunk has left. I move the extra recycling bins, the ones the skunk was napping behind, into the basement and hope the area doesn't become its den.
And thus begins our second year.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Blasts Are Back
Two Years Ago
On Thursday, August 7, 2014, I post in my blog: it's Day 51 of the 100-day quarantine. That Sunday, Day 54, someone at church, (I'm grateful I don't remember who it was, so I harbor no ill will towards anyone specifically), tells me to cheer up: we're more than halfway through.
On Tuesday, August 12th, the blood work looks good: the white blood cell count has risen from 2 to 3.7. But that evening the transplant doctor, Dr. Chen, phones after hours (always a bad sign). 30% of the cells are leukemic blasts. (Spoiler alert: exactly one year later, to the day, David will be dead.)
August 9, 2016
Dreary, slow morning. Mourning. I’m not conscious of thinking about David as I wake up. Even when I think, “oh, this is grief”, it’s diffuse. It seems like the flu, like a physical illness that has no emotional cause; it just is.
Yesterday I added David’s obituary to FamilySearch, the online family history website, as well as his May 6, 2011 photo, taken at Peter’s and Xiomara’s NYC wedding, where he pronounced himself “extremely presentable”. When I get on my computer this morning, there’s his face, smiling directly at me. I have to close the file; he looks too alive.
Last evening someone asked me, “How are you doing?” I sense that she doesn’t really want an emotional weather report; she has major concerns of her own. But I decide to give voice to my feelings, or at least my situation. “Well, David’s death anniversary is this Friday.” She says she’s sorry, and I’m sure she is, but I feel awkward, revealing my wounds.
August 1st, I go to a Compassionate Friends support group. In July, just before David’s 11th monthiversary, I google grief support groups. When I see that they meet only once a month, I’m relieved: they won’t expect me to be ‘over it’ after the first year.
The small group is intimate and comforting. There’s a range of experience. (I won’t give specifics, since all that is said in the meeting is confidential, but suffice to say, there are parents who aren’t ‘over it’ years after the death and feel no shame in that. Really, how do you get over a life cut short?)
I had read, in the grief literature the Good Shepherd Hospice has sent over the months, that there is a desire to speak the loved one’s name, tell his story. I haven’t felt the urge around other people, but it feels good to tell some of our story as a man across the wide table pushes the box of tissues across to me.
Today I take the T to Harvard Square and have lunch at Uno with my good friend, Anna. It’s only 90 degrees (it’s been a hot summer), so I walk home. Not a half marathon, but 9 miles. The bike path is primarily leafy and pleasant and I remember to bring a kitchen towel to wipe my face from time to time. Good honest sweat.
Humorous postscript: I email my family to be sure and quote David accurately. Yes, he pronounced himself extremely presentable back in 2011. Matt writes: "While we're on the subject of funny things Dvu said, I believe he described the marrow biopsy as "the worst pain in America." You had a blog entry last month with it as "the worst pain in the world," which it may well have been, but David was not one to talk up his pain, yes? [ed. note: July 13, Eleven Months In]
On Thursday, August 7, 2014, I post in my blog: it's Day 51 of the 100-day quarantine. That Sunday, Day 54, someone at church, (I'm grateful I don't remember who it was, so I harbor no ill will towards anyone specifically), tells me to cheer up: we're more than halfway through.
On Tuesday, August 12th, the blood work looks good: the white blood cell count has risen from 2 to 3.7. But that evening the transplant doctor, Dr. Chen, phones after hours (always a bad sign). 30% of the cells are leukemic blasts. (Spoiler alert: exactly one year later, to the day, David will be dead.)
August 9, 2016
Dreary, slow morning. Mourning. I’m not conscious of thinking about David as I wake up. Even when I think, “oh, this is grief”, it’s diffuse. It seems like the flu, like a physical illness that has no emotional cause; it just is.
Yesterday I added David’s obituary to FamilySearch, the online family history website, as well as his May 6, 2011 photo, taken at Peter’s and Xiomara’s NYC wedding, where he pronounced himself “extremely presentable”. When I get on my computer this morning, there’s his face, smiling directly at me. I have to close the file; he looks too alive.
Last evening someone asked me, “How are you doing?” I sense that she doesn’t really want an emotional weather report; she has major concerns of her own. But I decide to give voice to my feelings, or at least my situation. “Well, David’s death anniversary is this Friday.” She says she’s sorry, and I’m sure she is, but I feel awkward, revealing my wounds.
August 1st, I go to a Compassionate Friends support group. In July, just before David’s 11th monthiversary, I google grief support groups. When I see that they meet only once a month, I’m relieved: they won’t expect me to be ‘over it’ after the first year.
The small group is intimate and comforting. There’s a range of experience. (I won’t give specifics, since all that is said in the meeting is confidential, but suffice to say, there are parents who aren’t ‘over it’ years after the death and feel no shame in that. Really, how do you get over a life cut short?)
I had read, in the grief literature the Good Shepherd Hospice has sent over the months, that there is a desire to speak the loved one’s name, tell his story. I haven’t felt the urge around other people, but it feels good to tell some of our story as a man across the wide table pushes the box of tissues across to me.
Today I take the T to Harvard Square and have lunch at Uno with my good friend, Anna. It’s only 90 degrees (it’s been a hot summer), so I walk home. Not a half marathon, but 9 miles. The bike path is primarily leafy and pleasant and I remember to bring a kitchen towel to wipe my face from time to time. Good honest sweat.
Humorous postscript: I email my family to be sure and quote David accurately. Yes, he pronounced himself extremely presentable back in 2011. Matt writes: "While we're on the subject of funny things Dvu said, I believe he described the marrow biopsy as "the worst pain in America." You had a blog entry last month with it as "the worst pain in the world," which it may well have been, but David was not one to talk up his pain, yes? [ed. note: July 13, Eleven Months In]
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Rollercoasters
Two Years Ago
We flew back home on July 30, 2014, from our Montana-Idaho trip.
From my blog:
It’s been a good trip and we are grateful David is doing well enough to be on his own. Thank you to our friends in Massachusetts for visiting him, taking the sacrament on Sundays, and driving him to doctors’ appointments.
And thank you to all our Western family who have expressed their love and support, and have kept us in their prayers.
Last of July, First of August, 2016
On July 22 I drive to the Good Shepherd Hospice in Newton, about 20 minutes away. Jaye, the grief counselor there, listens with empathy and gives wise counsel. Nine years ago her mother died,in her 50s. Jaye knows about grief first hand.
I pour out my heart to her and she listens. Then she gives me an analogy: the first year of grief is like a roller coaster ride in the dark. It can be scary, terrifying at times, but once you are on it there’s no getting off in the middle. You can’t see far ahead of you, you just have to endure it as it comes. During the second year, you’re on the same ride, but parts have a familiarity to them. From time to time the bottom may still drop out, but you’ve survived this ride before, so it’s easier the second time around. As the years pass, the roller coaster never goes completely away, but you may choose to get off for a while. A jarring experience or memory may unexpectedly pull you back onto it, as intense as ever, but later you can get off again.
Day-to-day I’m calm and I certainly manage. I’m certainly feeling an anticipatory dread as the days rise towards August 12th. Will it be as bad as I fear, the next drop? I’ll let you know in ten days.
We flew back home on July 30, 2014, from our Montana-Idaho trip.
From my blog:
It’s been a good trip and we are grateful David is doing well enough to be on his own. Thank you to our friends in Massachusetts for visiting him, taking the sacrament on Sundays, and driving him to doctors’ appointments.
And thank you to all our Western family who have expressed their love and support, and have kept us in their prayers.
Last of July, First of August, 2016
On July 22 I drive to the Good Shepherd Hospice in Newton, about 20 minutes away. Jaye, the grief counselor there, listens with empathy and gives wise counsel. Nine years ago her mother died,in her 50s. Jaye knows about grief first hand.
I pour out my heart to her and she listens. Then she gives me an analogy: the first year of grief is like a roller coaster ride in the dark. It can be scary, terrifying at times, but once you are on it there’s no getting off in the middle. You can’t see far ahead of you, you just have to endure it as it comes. During the second year, you’re on the same ride, but parts have a familiarity to them. From time to time the bottom may still drop out, but you’ve survived this ride before, so it’s easier the second time around. As the years pass, the roller coaster never goes completely away, but you may choose to get off for a while. A jarring experience or memory may unexpectedly pull you back onto it, as intense as ever, but later you can get off again.
Day-to-day I’m calm and I certainly manage. I’m certainly feeling an anticipatory dread as the days rise towards August 12th. Will it be as bad as I fear, the next drop? I’ll let you know in ten days.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Chimerism
Two Years Ago
After our Hazen reunion in Fort Benton, Montana, we head down to Yellowstone, then on to Island Park, Idaho, for a Johnston reunion of Jim’s siblings and families. We spend Sunday in Shelley, Idaho, where Jim’s mom summers and several aunts, uncles, and cousins live. We’re in Charlotte’s living room when we speak with David on Jim’s cell phone. He reports the latest chimerism testing of his blood shows that 80% of the blood cells are Sam’s and only 20% David’s. We’re relieved and thrilled.
Late July 2016
We have multiple days of 90 plus weather, and a brief hailstorm on Saturday. The storm cools things off for the night. Each night I open all the windows and close them in the morning against the heat of the day.
I’m still thinking about the upcoming twelfth of August. I’m not sure what to name it: ‘David’s Anniversary’ sounds so wrong. That word conjures up happiness: a remembered wedding, first romantic date, first day of sobriety, day we bought the house. He’ll never have those happy events to commemorate. And saying ‘David’s Death Anniversary’ is such a downer. In this American culture of positive thinking, the mention of death feels morbid. I don’t want to be the conversation killer.
Sunday evening we have our Weekly Gathering: twenty people around the two supper tables, including a beloved missionary whose parents have come from Arizona to tour New England before taking him home. It was a shock to me when, several months ago, he immediately knew what acute myeloid leukemia was. He developed it when he was 15 years old and had a successful stem cell transplant from his younger brother. Now he’s completed a successful two-year mission in New England. His parents come to supper and afterwards I talk with his mom. We share the experience of a loved son going through cancer. The helplessness of learning that just one mutant cell can multiply uncontrollably and cause such havoc. The sorrow of watching a son go through both the illness and the treatments. Their journey isn't over: the transplant has caused graft versus host disease. It's never easy. It’s comforting to talk.
It’s been a good week.
After our Hazen reunion in Fort Benton, Montana, we head down to Yellowstone, then on to Island Park, Idaho, for a Johnston reunion of Jim’s siblings and families. We spend Sunday in Shelley, Idaho, where Jim’s mom summers and several aunts, uncles, and cousins live. We’re in Charlotte’s living room when we speak with David on Jim’s cell phone. He reports the latest chimerism testing of his blood shows that 80% of the blood cells are Sam’s and only 20% David’s. We’re relieved and thrilled.
Late July 2016
We have multiple days of 90 plus weather, and a brief hailstorm on Saturday. The storm cools things off for the night. Each night I open all the windows and close them in the morning against the heat of the day.
I’m still thinking about the upcoming twelfth of August. I’m not sure what to name it: ‘David’s Anniversary’ sounds so wrong. That word conjures up happiness: a remembered wedding, first romantic date, first day of sobriety, day we bought the house. He’ll never have those happy events to commemorate. And saying ‘David’s Death Anniversary’ is such a downer. In this American culture of positive thinking, the mention of death feels morbid. I don’t want to be the conversation killer.
Sunday evening we have our Weekly Gathering: twenty people around the two supper tables, including a beloved missionary whose parents have come from Arizona to tour New England before taking him home. It was a shock to me when, several months ago, he immediately knew what acute myeloid leukemia was. He developed it when he was 15 years old and had a successful stem cell transplant from his younger brother. Now he’s completed a successful two-year mission in New England. His parents come to supper and afterwards I talk with his mom. We share the experience of a loved son going through cancer. The helplessness of learning that just one mutant cell can multiply uncontrollably and cause such havoc. The sorrow of watching a son go through both the illness and the treatments. Their journey isn't over: the transplant has caused graft versus host disease. It's never easy. It’s comforting to talk.
It’s been a good week.
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Memories of Montana
Two Years Ago
On Day 27 of David’s stem cell transplant, Jim and I fly west to attend a Hazen reunion in Fort Benton, Montana. It’s the 80th birthday of both my Uncle Herb and his wife, Judy, as well as their 60th wedding anniversary. My 91-year-old dad, my brother Timothy, sister Maggie, and her husband John stay in the charming Grand Union Hotel, while Jim and I rent a two bedroom apartment and host Peter, Xiomara, 15-month-old Andrew, and Sam. I’m thrilled to share the experience, meeting Montana relatives and visiting the places where my dad and uncle grew up, so different from Metro Boston.
We drive out to the abandoned ranch house where my dad was raised, and trudge up a prickly-stubble pickup-truck trail through the wheat field that surrounds the old homestead.
The ranch's abandoned outhouse
We crawl through a window and gingerly walk the old, creaky floors. I find three composition books: travel journals of Grampa’s. Inside there is no text, just lists of highway numbers he drove on in each state. For many years he roamed the country during the farmer's quiet season of winter.
July 2016
I finish Rare Bird, a memoir by Anna Whiston-Donaldson, describing her experience of losing her 12-year-old son in a freak drowning accident, and also read Letter to My Husband, a grief book written by Jill Truman in the year following her husband's death.
On Day 27 of David’s stem cell transplant, Jim and I fly west to attend a Hazen reunion in Fort Benton, Montana. It’s the 80th birthday of both my Uncle Herb and his wife, Judy, as well as their 60th wedding anniversary. My 91-year-old dad, my brother Timothy, sister Maggie, and her husband John stay in the charming Grand Union Hotel, while Jim and I rent a two bedroom apartment and host Peter, Xiomara, 15-month-old Andrew, and Sam. I’m thrilled to share the experience, meeting Montana relatives and visiting the places where my dad and uncle grew up, so different from Metro Boston.
We drive out to the abandoned ranch house where my dad was raised, and trudge up a prickly-stubble pickup-truck trail through the wheat field that surrounds the old homestead.
We crawl through a window and gingerly walk the old, creaky floors. I find three composition books: travel journals of Grampa’s. Inside there is no text, just lists of highway numbers he drove on in each state. For many years he roamed the country during the farmer's quiet season of winter.
July 2016
I finish Rare Bird, a memoir by Anna Whiston-Donaldson, describing her experience of losing her 12-year-old son in a freak drowning accident, and also read Letter to My Husband, a grief book written by Jill Truman in the year following her husband's death.
While repairing a cracked plastic cake carrier, I get superglue all over my fingertips, making accurate typing on my laptop impossible for the evening. Next day I teach a Sunday School class and make our famous mac & cheese for our Weekly Gathering.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Eleven Months In
Two Years Ago
Tuesday, 9 July 2014
Day 22 of the stem cell transplant
David’s white blood cell count is down to 1.9 (reference range is 4.5 to 11), but the nurse practitioner isn’t concerned; fluctuations are to be expected. She does another bone marrow biopsy: David’s fifth. It goes better than the fourth, which David described to R’el as “the worst pain in America”.
And so we wait. Seventy-eight days of quarantine to go.
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
11 months since David's death
I take the T into Kendall Square and have a basil limeade with a new friend. I plan to take the T back, but decide to walk to the Harvard Square T station instead. Before I get there I decide to walk farther, to Porter. Before I get there, Alewife Station becomes my new goal. At the firehouse on Garden St, I bear left. Wrong! Instead of Alewife I end up near the Fresh Pond rotary. Cutting through the mall parking lot I take a steep dusty slope to cross over some railroad tracks. The extra sweat drips right into my eyes. They sting intensely for several minutes and it is an effort to keep them open. I pass by the station, having now walked four and a half miles, and resolve to continue to Arlington Center. Once there I eschew one bus stop after another and continue on to Lexington. I stay on the bike path for a mile past our house in order to complete a half marathon: 13.1 miles.
A half marathon on the eleventh monthiversary of David’s death. A tribute to his life.
Sunday, 3 July 2016
My friend, Deb, sits next to me in Relief Society and says she finds her body needs 9 hours of sleep to heal. (She had hip surgery 7 ½ months ago.) She expresses mild frustration at that, but says it is what it is.
So, am I taking my body’s cue on healing as I sleep without an alarm or am I being lazy and self-indulgent? For today I’m going to go with the healing theory.
I return home from my three week vacation on Wednesday, June 30. Next day I’m ambitious, but by the end of the day frantic to tears with what I haven’t accomplished. Friday, my therapist guides me to realize that I have put my grief on hold for the three weeks and now yet another day with my overly-ambitious reentry plan.
I want to mourn. I’m scared to mourn. I’m in a more relaxed, calm place than eleven months ago; I fear going back into that very sad, helpless, painful place. The tears spring up while reading my current grief book: Rare Bird, by Anna Whiston-Donaldson. I feel relief in the tears.
My experience with Rare Bird is similar to my experience with An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (a bipolar memoir: I collect them). Neither woman’s biography is anything like mine, but there is a fundamental resonance.
At eleven months into this, reading Anna’s description of the early days after the loss of her son helps me process mine.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
I’ve decided to take July and August off. What does that mean? I’m not even sure; I’ll discover that day-by-day. What I’m looking for is the expansiveness in my life that I’ve felt in the last four days. The luxury of reading and writing, of being comfortable spending time, hours of it, nurturing my creativity. I want to take a break and really experience the grief in this last month before David’s first death anniversary. I want to give myself permission to grieve, to feel, to move more slowly and live more deliberately.
Friday, 8 July 2016
What does healthy grief feel like? In Rare Bird, Anna Whitston-Donaldson suggests leaning towards grief rather than away from it.
Saturday, 9 July 2016
As I cook for our weekly Sunday supper (we usually have about twenty people here), I listen, for about the twentieth time, to the second act of the new Broadway musical Hamilton. When the Hamiltons’ son, Phillip, dies and the company sings “Going Through the Unimaginable”, I cry every time. Grief at losing our son. Grief at losing a young adult son, cutting off what could have been a long and bright future.
I listen to the CD twice more. The third time, I move from the kitchen and sit in the family room, letting my body shake with sobs.
Is it wrong for me to play that song over and over? In a month we’ll experience the difficult first anniversary of his death. I want those feelings out in the open, to face them, embrace them. It’s an internal battle for me. I’m the one who is still expecting me to be ‘over it’ and ‘stop wallowing’ by the first year mark. Lean toward it, Mary.
Tuesday, 9 July 2014
Day 22 of the stem cell transplant
David’s white blood cell count is down to 1.9 (reference range is 4.5 to 11), but the nurse practitioner isn’t concerned; fluctuations are to be expected. She does another bone marrow biopsy: David’s fifth. It goes better than the fourth, which David described to R’el as “the worst pain in America”.
And so we wait. Seventy-eight days of quarantine to go.
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
11 months since David's death
I take the T into Kendall Square and have a basil limeade with a new friend. I plan to take the T back, but decide to walk to the Harvard Square T station instead. Before I get there I decide to walk farther, to Porter. Before I get there, Alewife Station becomes my new goal. At the firehouse on Garden St, I bear left. Wrong! Instead of Alewife I end up near the Fresh Pond rotary. Cutting through the mall parking lot I take a steep dusty slope to cross over some railroad tracks. The extra sweat drips right into my eyes. They sting intensely for several minutes and it is an effort to keep them open. I pass by the station, having now walked four and a half miles, and resolve to continue to Arlington Center. Once there I eschew one bus stop after another and continue on to Lexington. I stay on the bike path for a mile past our house in order to complete a half marathon: 13.1 miles.
A half marathon on the eleventh monthiversary of David’s death. A tribute to his life.
Sunday, 3 July 2016
My friend, Deb, sits next to me in Relief Society and says she finds her body needs 9 hours of sleep to heal. (She had hip surgery 7 ½ months ago.) She expresses mild frustration at that, but says it is what it is.
So, am I taking my body’s cue on healing as I sleep without an alarm or am I being lazy and self-indulgent? For today I’m going to go with the healing theory.
I return home from my three week vacation on Wednesday, June 30. Next day I’m ambitious, but by the end of the day frantic to tears with what I haven’t accomplished. Friday, my therapist guides me to realize that I have put my grief on hold for the three weeks and now yet another day with my overly-ambitious reentry plan.
I want to mourn. I’m scared to mourn. I’m in a more relaxed, calm place than eleven months ago; I fear going back into that very sad, helpless, painful place. The tears spring up while reading my current grief book: Rare Bird, by Anna Whiston-Donaldson. I feel relief in the tears.
My experience with Rare Bird is similar to my experience with An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (a bipolar memoir: I collect them). Neither woman’s biography is anything like mine, but there is a fundamental resonance.
At eleven months into this, reading Anna’s description of the early days after the loss of her son helps me process mine.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
I’ve decided to take July and August off. What does that mean? I’m not even sure; I’ll discover that day-by-day. What I’m looking for is the expansiveness in my life that I’ve felt in the last four days. The luxury of reading and writing, of being comfortable spending time, hours of it, nurturing my creativity. I want to take a break and really experience the grief in this last month before David’s first death anniversary. I want to give myself permission to grieve, to feel, to move more slowly and live more deliberately.
Friday, 8 July 2016
What does healthy grief feel like? In Rare Bird, Anna Whitston-Donaldson suggests leaning towards grief rather than away from it.
Saturday, 9 July 2016
As I cook for our weekly Sunday supper (we usually have about twenty people here), I listen, for about the twentieth time, to the second act of the new Broadway musical Hamilton. When the Hamiltons’ son, Phillip, dies and the company sings “Going Through the Unimaginable”, I cry every time. Grief at losing our son. Grief at losing a young adult son, cutting off what could have been a long and bright future.
I listen to the CD twice more. The third time, I move from the kitchen and sit in the family room, letting my body shake with sobs.
Is it wrong for me to play that song over and over? In a month we’ll experience the difficult first anniversary of his death. I want those feelings out in the open, to face them, embrace them. It’s an internal battle for me. I’m the one who is still expecting me to be ‘over it’ and ‘stop wallowing’ by the first year mark. Lean toward it, Mary.
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