My Grief 9: par·ox·ysm
par·ox·ysm /ˈperəkˌsizəm/ noun
a sudden attack or violent expression of a particular emotion or activity. "a paroxysm of weeping"
I think my post today may come across as an incoherent venting session. So much so I think I have no choice but to display it in the true daily journal format that most of the content originated from. Sorry in advance for the length, thanks for reading if you so choose.
1st Dec - First Day Back
This day sucked. Holy crap. It started out rough, just had a terrible knot in my stomach. I knew today was about to be really hard, then it just snowballed.
Today was my first day back at work after three weeks of leave for Sara’s time on hospice, and then seven weeks of bereavement leave. I started out with just a couple calls with coworkers and my supervisor. Getting briefly caught up on what’s been going on. It was a nice gradual way to start up again. But this knot of intense longing kind of kept building in me as the day went on. Hour by hour it got worse.
Late morning, my sister-in-law sent over a bunch of scanned pictures of Sara. I asked her to and I’m super thankful that she did. Honestly I’m always glad to see more photos of her, although the first couple times I see them I most surely need to expect to struggle and cry a bit. And most of these photos just triggered a smile, or an appreciation for who Sara was as a child. These images were not of the Sara I knew yet of course, but it was her building her foundation. So of course even these photos I will appreciate.
Then I saw a couple photos of her from either the Fall of 2003 or 2004. In either case, I wasn’t technically dating her yet. But in both years, I strongly desired to, and regardless, it was a period that was the leadup to some of the happiest moments in my life. And in these photos I’m reminded how astonishingly beautiful she was. I mean she was always beautiful. I do not want to downplay how much I have always felt that. I’m just bringing up this one, since these images apparently stirred up feelings that were sort of dormant in corners of my memory. This was a snapshot of the girl that I was yearning for, my dream girl. The girl that soon gave me that feeling like I was supposed to, going to, or needed to marry her someday.
So those emotions, I think mixed with the sharply real feeling that she is gone forever, juxtaposed in my emotions in an extremely profound and painful way. It left me breathless. I was panicking. This girl I love. This girl of my dreams. I can’t believe I actually got to be with her. This super cute girl, adorable young woman. She was my wife! Holy hell it’s amazing that my dreams could have come true like that. But now she’s gone? How can this be? How dare you do this to me God! It was like a new form of devastation. I was hyperventilating multiple times. I was realizing my dreams had become a nightmare.
Little did I know it was about to get worse.
2nd Dec - The weekend is near
Today started a little better than the day before. Later in the day I must have spent at least five hours working on the “How I Met Your Mother” journal that I’m writing for my kids. I love it, because it brings me back to such a special place in my memories. Such a profound high point in my life, and such a moment of intense pride. To take those first steps with the woman who was first just part of my dreams, and later became my soulmate. It was and is very special to me.
But it also brings me such pain. As it reminds me what I have lost. What can never be again. Even if there is an afterlife, and that I can be with Sara there. What guarantees are there that anything we think of in terms of emotions, feelings in general can be felt in the same way? And especially what guarantees that we can love and be loved in the same way? Sara gave me a sign recently which gave me some confidence in what the afterlife will bring in terms of us being together and being able love one another. And it should have been enough to calm my doubt. But it seems my skeptic side is trying to throw me off and already forget only days later everything she’s done for me and signs she’s shown me.
Ugh, I swear this suffocating pain is getting worse each day. Like the numbness that was part of my earlier pain is slowly but surely wearing off. The realness of what life is now like is digging into me in a sharper way, like an army of razor blades.
More and more during the day and evening I’ll find that I need to lay in bed for a couple hours. Either to weep, or to sleep. Or to just lay there frozen. None of this is super therapeutic. But I think I’m doing it as a way of letting myself give up on the moment. So, it is a momentary solace. I need to have the ability to find solace. Even if it isn’t therapy, it’s seemingly a safe place where I allow myself to freely feel my emotions. I cry there more effectively than anywhere else. And when I am exhausted from weeping, I guess I can just go back to sleep and rest up for the next round.
Friday the 3rd
OK… Starting to sound like a broken record…This day sucks. This is probably the closest I have ever been to suicidal ideation. Please know that I’m OK. But I’m also feeling so overwhelmed, I can’t breathe. I just cannot fathom a life without my Sara. How can this be? Ugh. I know these are all thoughts and statements I have made countless times since she passed. My brain just cannot comprehend this. It refuses. And every memory I allow myself to be engrossed in, no matter how big or small triggers a new round of this disbelief that needs to be worked through, and eventually accepted.
So of course, allowing myself to bathe in the memory of Friday, December 3rd of 2004 is significantly damaging. Traumatic even. This day represented the beginning. We weren’t official until 12-5, and in some ways maybe the weeks leading up to this day also maybe played a role, but no this was the big one. And the emotions I have, and the memories Sara and I always reminisced about were mostly about this particular day, more so than any other.
I feel like the pain today is even more physical than usual. It’s almost like the pain of fully allowing myself to think about these memories, while also fully embracing the grief became too much. So, my brain tried to shut things off for a bit. But that only led to this sort of build up in pressure - like my brain was going to explode. In some ways my only saving grace today was that this pain was so overwhelming, my body just became aggressively depressed. So I spent more time in bed today than any other day yet. Which is significant, as I think I have set a record for that every day this week.
In all of this there is always seemingly layer upon layer of emotions. If I steer clear of the grief, those layers can remain untouched, but sometimes it doesn’t take much to cut it open, and out comes bursts of anger, resentment, jealousy, fear, deep melancholy, or overwhelming sadness. It’s hard too, because if I don’t face those layers – that pressure builds up. And it seems to become physical. I guess that must be what was happening today, as I tried to just shut things out after a while. I guess I can’t do that. Some days I think there are more layers to the grief that have to be faced, maybe related to something obvious like a milestone, maybe sometimes unexplainable.
Oddly, there is this occasional sliver of resentment towards Sara. I can’t even believe I would type that. Trust me, it goes away REALLY fast. Like the instant I feel it, I’m like WTF dude, she didn’t want this!? She didn’t ask for this! Then I spend time hating myself. Being angry that I would think this way. And that I allowed this to happen to the one I love. I’m supposed to protect her. It makes me just feel like such a failure that I need to end it. I mean - again, I’m not really there. I don’t really want to kill myself. But I suppose I feel closer to that than I ever have. I just want to be with her so badly.
And then it sends me down a rabbit hole of twisting emotions and radical thoughts. For example, if I actually did hurt myself, would I even get to be with her? Or, if I actually did live through the entirety of this life, with someone else, or by myself, or whatever, would I even get to be with her in the end? That thought right there is the one that makes me lose it the most. If I really don’t ever get to be with her again - at all - what the hell is the point of this? I don’t want this life then!
Eventually I shake out of it. Sometimes just by convincing myself to keep moving forward. Even if it means laying in the bed in silence, second by second, minute by minute. We can get through this.
5th December – The day that made it official
17 years ago today, Sara and I started dating officially. OK finally we’re here. This day is the date - the thing that my mind has been so fixated on,
One thing is for certain, this is the hardest time of my life. Right now. It’s so hard that I feel like I need to run away from it or hide from it. I’m to the point where I start panicking if I think about anything too much, and if I let myself be swallowed up by the grief then I am completely overwhelmed, fearful, lost, bitter, and woeful. I can’t imagine how this life is fair. I feel like I need her in order to feel right. I need her in order to feel emotions correctly, to make decisions, and to know what we’re going to do with our lives. I need her in order to appropriately grieve my loss of her.
That’s a wonderful paradox, isn’t it? The person I need to truly help me grieve, is her? Only her sympathetic squeeze, playful joke or extended loving embrace could bring me the solace that I feel like I need.
So yes, this latest wave of grief is centered around that first weekend where Sara and I started dating - which of course is a wave that contains hundreds of smaller memories and special experiences all in one. I can’t possibly begin to explain all of the reasons this weekend is special to me, or detail all of the experiences that were a part of it, or in the leadup to it.
I wrote up a letter to my kids that has turned into a small book about this ‘story’ of my courtship with Sara. It’s currently over seven pages in length in a Word document, using small margins and small print. After writing about it, I realized just how many details I could recall. And yet, it doesn’t even begin to properly convey my emotions related to these events. I mean in a way they do for me when I read them, because I can provide the color commentary in my own mind that potentially isn’t elucidated in the text. But that’s just me… What about anyone else?
Why tell the story of Sara’s life?
I’ve been struggling with this concept a little. With these journals, and with some of my other Sara related projects, I am working on telling Sara’s story as accurately as I can, both in terms of its factuality, and in its emotionality. Both are difficult, but it is harder to convey the complexity of emotions involved than in simple factual representation of events. And even if I am somewhat successful in portraying these key events, does my text - which I have poured hours of love and devotion into – even come close to reality? It’s a difficult question to answer actually, because my reading back of these words will always have the underlying layers of my own real life experience accompanying them, and so it seems at a minimum to be an OK representation. But would it have remotely the same effect on readers who haven’t lived my life? In that I am not so certain.
And if the effect that I am looking to share is not absolutely felt by the reader, is it appropriate to even attempt to share those experiences? It’s a question that I hadn’t really properly considered until yesterday.
In some of my other Sara projects, I’m looking to enlist help of others to chronicle Sara’s life. To remember notable events, and small details. Build short stories around those events and tell her story. Advance her legacy and honor the uniquely special person she was. But do I see it this way because she just happened to be the person I consider to be my soulmate?
I am not sure if it works as well if you don’t have my life experience. I do objectively believe she was a unique person, who achieved profoundly special things. But do I see it as a story that needs to be told because of my specific experience with her? Or do I believe that the lives of others would be transformed in some way after hearing about it? I’m not sure, I mean I think so. But my perspective is biased.
See when I think of her, I’m inspired to live my life with courage. But she did that to me naturally. It wasn’t her life story, her overcoming of obstacles or facing fears that does that to me directly. Sure, those things make my courage swell even more. Would it have the same effect on others?
The other side of the coin in this is the balance between preservation of memory and privacy of life experiences. The other individuals in Sara’s life who I would most likely want to be a part of the chronicling of her time on earth, each had their own personal relationships with her, experiences with her, events and memories with her. Their grieving of Sara is uniquely their own, and their choice of interest or refusal in sharing those experiences with others is their own as well.
I am not sure I can or should attempt to tell Sara’s story, but I certainly couldn’t do it justice on my own. But is it fair of me to even consider asking others to share these personal moments, these memories that are theirs and theirs alone? At first it hadn’t really dawned on me that others would want to keep their own memories sacred and close to their chest. But the more I ponder it, the more I understand, at least in my own way.
Telling a story - without all the context, the layers of experience, and the background glow of your own love for the person or event that is your protagonist or beloved subject – can come across very empty. Or maybe you could say the subject matter is comparably muted and emotionally flattened. It simply won’t mean the same thing to the reader, viewer or listener that it does to you as the person with the memory. So it starts to beg the question of if it is a worthwhile effort, or not, to tell the world about these events in your loved one’s life?
It’s not a debate where I feel like I know the answer, at least not yet. But I do know a few things for me to keep pondering as I contemplate this:
Preservation of our memories of Sara is very important to me – and for my kids’ sake, I must continue to pursue at least some form of chronicling of who she was for their benefit.
The beauty of our life experiences with Sara are difficult to properly portray in a way that would help others feel the same things that we have felt. But that doesn't mean we can't try.
Some memories are our own. They are private, deeply personal moments that have too much meaning in our own lives to possibly share them with others. That's just reality.
All that being said, I’m not going to be sharing the story of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ with you tonight. Although I think I could leave you with one paragraph from this giant journal about my first weekend with Sara, that I think is amusing:
…Immediately after the concert I remember briefly meeting Sara’s parents. I recall they were very nice, but I also most vividly remember that her dad Bob had this full beard growing that year. Which, I know, is a weird detail that shouldn’t mean anything. But memories and emotions can be weird sometimes, haha.
And I remember his beard provoked these thoughts in my mind like I would have to live up to some high expectations if I wanted to be with his daughter. Not sure why his beard in particular gave me this impression, but damned if I wasn’t going to try to live up to those bearded expectations…
UPDATE:
Hey all – I just wanted to take a moment to make sure you know that I am doing OK. The above post was an intense one for sure. And it implied some things about my mental state that has raised some concerns.
I’ll admit that what I said here was real, and are the most accurate words I can come up with to represent how I’ve been feeling. But please also know that I have an amazing support system and I am taking the steps needed to make sure I have the help and resources I need to not end up in such a dark place in the future. To be honest there were a number of converging factors that led to these moments, and we’ll know how to watch out for this going forward.
It’s important to me that we don’t shy away from talking about mental health. After all, until someone says something about how they are feeling, it is commonly assumed that they are doing just fine.
I am past this particular wave of grief, but I also know that others are just around the corner. I’m so thankful for the support and love that has been shared with us over these challenging weeks. We’ll get through this!