I’ve been having a rough couple of days and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the
approach of Thanksgiving, or the Holidays in general, or the formless feeling
that I need to make some sort of substantial change to my life to move it along.
Maybe take control of it? Anything, but spinning my wheels mired in this
numbness. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Joann and where she is in my
life, how she relates to my life. This all has to do with putting her somewhere
else in my continuum so I can start to move on.
General Assistance Check Arrives
The General Assistance check arrived today and it was a great relief to be
able to look forward to paying my own way for little things—like medications,
smoking tablets, bath soap and my mailbox—that make life more bearable. Now I
have a chance to stop begging Bill and Rose for the extra fifty or sixty dollars
I always need to get through the end of the month.
I received two checks, one for the month of October and a partial one for the
last ten days of September starting on the date I applied. These will cover a
large number of personal necessities I couldn’t get with Food Stamps and have
had to put off for lack of actual cash. This takes a little pressure off my
otherwise stressed-out life.
Joann and I Discuss Her Situation
I know this sounds a bit crazy, but here goes …
For the past two days, Joann and I have been talking. Now, I talk to Joann
quite a bit in my normal, daily routine, I’ve simply replaced talking to myself
with her as the object of my rambling conversations. I find that it helps solve
me problems if I can hear my thinking on them. Getting the auditory feedback is
an important part of my being able to visualize a problem, or remember events,
places and people. In fact, roaming around the house muttering to myself is a
major component of my ability to write—by "hearing" the things I put on paper, I
edit what I’ve written. I’ve always been this way.
Since Joann passed away though, I’ve started talking to her aloud in aware
ways. I tell her "good morning" when I get up and "good night" when I finally go
to bed. Occasionally I’ll sit and hold a one-sided conversation with her to sort
through some kind of problem I’m dealing with—more of a "seeking to maintain
connection" with her memory than anything else. Never, though, has she answered
back, nor would I have though to expect it.
Until two days ago. Recently I’ve been going through a period of frustration
with my inability to move my life forward. Periodically I find myself tangled in
webs of annoyance when I surface from my life and take stock of where I am in
the moment. For eight months, from what I can see, I haven’t moved an inch from
where I was emotionally—or financially—when Joann died.
In those eight months I have tried to live up to the promises I made her and
feel that I have accomplished most of them. I am taking care of myself both
physically (by seeing a doctor and taking what medications I can) and
economically (I might be broke all the time but at least I show up for work
every day, tolerate my bottom-of-the-barrel job, and keep Bill safe). Although
things haven’t improved much in terms of quality-of-life, I also have avoided
making things worse. I’ve heard stories from several other people about a sudden
escapist flirtation with drugs, alcohol and homelessness as the result of losing
their spouses. Thankfully, I managed to dodge that bullet with only a minor
foray into binging on beer for a couple of weeks after Joann left.
I didn’t realize what the real problem was until I had a dream about Joann
that seemed so real I couldn’t deny that she was trying to tell me something.
She was trying (so I believe) to tell me that it was time to get my life
back—and that she was "tired of living in a box."
The box is her urn, the place where her ashes reside. After she came home
from the mortuary, I constructed a memorial for her ashes next to her side of
our bed, the urn surrounded with teddy bears that she loved and her hospital
icon—a sleeping, white teddy bear with golden wings and her head on a pink
pillow—that she called her "Angel."
The "Angle" is a battery powered, stuffed animal that snores whenever it is
moved or there is the slightest vibration in the room. Every time Joann went
into the hospital over the three years she fought her disease, the "Angel" went
with her. She believed in the mystique that she would always come home so long
as the "Angel" was with her.
She did always come home with her "Angel."
Bill and I called it the "snoring thingy," because of its level of annoyance
when it was home. It turned out that the batteries kept the bear’s motion sensor
going for over a year, and even stuffing it in the hallway closet didn’t buy us
any surcease. Even Joann would get tired of the "Angel" interrupting when she
wasn’t supposed to.
Sorry, I got a little off track there.
Anyhow, I became obsessed with this dream and the message I felt it
represented. The message paralleled the subconscious fears I have had about my
promise to Joann about keeping her ashes until I was, eventually, cremated and
spread with her. In the back of my mind I suppose I feared that I would lose her
urn somewhere along the path of my life and never be able to spread her
properly, creating a sort of catch-22, afraid to move on for fear of losing her
tangibility. The dream seemed to be giving me a way out of this dilemma.
Unfortunately though, I wasn’t ready to turn lose of any part of my grieving,
certainly not her ashes in the wind. In long, rambling, beer-stoked discussions
with her over the next couple of days, I kept telling her that I wasn’t ready
yet. She kept telling me that it was time to move on and that would only be
accomplished by taking her to the Bixby bridge and doing the deed. Anyway, she
assured me, it was what she wanted; so long as I guaranteed her that I would
join her there, at the same spot, when my time came.
To me, that rationale seemed only a minute modification to my original pledge
to her. As soon as I emotionally accepted the new undertaking, and by that time,
I would have done anything to get this cyclic conversation over with, I started
to feel less anxiety and depression. Finally, I thought to myself (not aloud),
there is a way to move on; merely by reducing the intense stress I was feeling
by attempting to fulfill a promise I believed I wouldn’t be able to keep.
Marriage is a compromise and, regardless of her condition, I’m still very
much married to Joann.
After things settled down, I reviewed where in my life Joann is, compared to
where she should be. I don’t think there is ever a good answer to that question,
because she will always be central to my being. She is, and will remain, one of
the central threads in my life’s fabric. The operant phrase here is "one of,"
and not the "only" thread in my existence.
Looking around the apartment, I decided that it was time to move her memorial
somewhere else, away from what once was her side of the bed. Not to put her urn
out of view, but to make a statement to myself that I was now the only one in
the bed. I felt I was taking the first step, a very necessary step, to reduce my
dependence on her memory. A reduction, I came to understand, sort of a weaning,
integral to shifting the balance of dependency from her back to myself.
There is a small hallway between the main apartment (remember, this is a
studio apartment) and the bathroom. Clearly visible from anywhere in the
apartment, it seemed like a good place to move Joann’s memorial. In a brief
return to fantasy, I also noted that she could watch me, unobstructed, from
there as well.
I made the move last night, carefully reconstructing everything as it had
been by her side of the bed. Afterward, a sense of accomplishment washed over me
as well as buoyant relief at having solved one of my greatest problems affecting
me about her death. I welcomed the responsibility she placed on me originally,
of being the keeper of her ashes, but in the end, I was more relieved of
transforming that specific responsibility of possession into the responsibility
of future mingling. I am doing everything she asked of me, now I can do this, in
order to continue building my life safely and productively. That way I can
guarantee I will return to her.
