tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-115985182024-03-13T16:46:58.276-04:00Full Shneed AheadA Young Widow's Journey on the Road to Peace.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger448125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-72487921839851139412016-04-25T11:40:00.003-04:002016-04-25T11:40:57.316-04:00Eleven Years.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I dreamed about Chris last night for the first time in a
very long time.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I was just getting
home to my apartment. I opened the door, entered, and walked over to the
telephone when I saw Chris on the couch. He rose up, approached me, placed each
of his hands on my upper arms, smiled and said, “So…It’s okay for me to go now.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He immediately grabbed his own side, his
cheeks turning red from a sudden cramp. My tears flowed instantly, warm on my
face, and I felt the crushing, defeating sadness I felt in life after we all
knew his doctors were discontinuing his chemo treatments. I said, “How?” and
he said, “Iodine.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Then I woke up. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I have to admit, I’m a bit teary today because of my dream,
but I love dreaming about him because it’s like seeing him, again, even if it
is eleven years later and I have been happily remarried for the past five
years. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Here’s to Chris. You are within me always and forever. And I will love you for the duration.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-81120493651688682232012-03-22T13:18:00.001-04:002012-03-22T13:20:54.548-04:001:17My and Jonathan’s one-year wedding anniversary is coming up on March 27. It’s hard to believe we’ve already been married for one year. Chris and I didn’t make it to the one-year mark. This is all new territory for me. In a way, It’s a separation from the past and from how things had gone…up until now. Every new thing Jonathan and I share, that Chris and I hadn’t shared, allows me a large, refreshing step backwards, away from the Chris(Creej) and Robin(Shneed) chronicles of yester-decade. And of course every step backwards begins with the sound of my white-knuckled grip ripping away from the past’s hold on me. <br /><br />Jonathan has been away on business this week. Every time he goes away it feels like he died because I’m used to my husband either being with me, or being dead. There has really been no in-between for me for a few years. But my sweet Jonathan is not dead. He’s very much alive and he’s here to stay, thankfully…hopefully. <br /><br />Last night, I went out for dinner with a dear friend of mine. We enjoyed Thai food in Coolidge Corner, then went to a bar and had another drink to cap off an evening of hysterical laughter, affection and sweet friendship. This man was a friend of Chris’ and the two of us talked about how much we both loved him. I love that he remembers all of the same things I do about Chris and talking with him made me feel warm and happy for what I had, what we both had. We hugged, kissed and said good bye before he walked home to JP, and I got into my car and drove home. <br /><br />Later on, after I crawled into bed, I whispered, “I miss you Jonathan,” and as I began drifting off to sleep, I whispered, “I miss you Creej.” I thought about how Chris never visits me anymore in my dreams, and in spirit, and I felt sad about that. Then I fell asleep. <br /><br />I awoke in the middle of the night, rolled over and glanced at the digital clock on my nightstand and the time displayed 1:17. January 17 was my and Chris’ wedding anniversary. Was that a coincidence or a sweet visit -- the first one in a long time -- from my sweet Chris, reminding me that he’s here and watching over me? <br /><br />I already know what I believe, and the warmth still permeates my soul.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-63354935991438994012011-12-29T21:28:00.001-05:002011-12-29T21:28:58.179-05:00And for the Record...I still hate that it happened.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-47472280920828973712011-12-29T21:21:00.007-05:002011-12-29T21:39:13.433-05:00I'm Not Sure<p class="MsoNormal">Jonathan has given me the most magical, most wonderful holiday season imaginable. Just being in love again is a very powerful gift for me. Being with a man like Jonathan, who sees so much good in me, who loves me, who helps me and whom I love back makes an immeasurable difference in my life. This is my life, now. Complete and utter happiness with a man I love.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I will likely say this for the rest of my life, but I can't believe seven years have just about passed. In some bizarre way, when I think back to my seven years of grief, I romanticize them, feeling as though I was somehow happy, which is ludicrous, because I was nothing but heart-broken. I think what I am remembering and feeling and holding onto is the growth I experienced during those years, especially the three years I lived in Cambridge. I loved how I healed, I loved how I learned to walk again, to feel again. I loved who I blossomed into...I think. The thoughts are so convoluted, that I'm having a difficult time deciphering them.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I skipped October and November this year, unaware that I had gone two months without writing. I forgot to write on Chris' birthday for the first time, this year. I posted a happy birthday message on FaceBook, but this is the first time I didn't record how I felt on his birthday in my blog.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I have been on vacation since December 23, and I will be on vacation until January 2. Jonathan has taken the time off, as well. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">For the first time in seven years, I can truly say that I have had a joyous holiday season. Truly joyous. The mere thought of Jonathan fills me with feelings of joy, security and safety. I have laughed more in the past two weeks than I have probably laughed in the seven years prior. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m aware that the seven-year anniversary of Chris’ death is days away, and I have become teary-eyed over the past couple of weeks, here and there. I’m going to spend that day with my family, the family I gained through Chris; Me, Bonnie, Beth, Bryan, and the girls. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I haven’t been to Chris’ grave since the day of his memorial service in 2005. His family, friends, and I dropped a cherished piece of history of our own in with his urn of ashes, left before the hole was filled in, and I never went back. I might like to visit it this year and maybe take a photo of it. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is that about closure? I’m not sure.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-90107280459542357262011-09-16T10:19:00.002-04:002011-09-16T19:05:07.449-04:00Reflection on the WaterOf course the changing of the seasons is causing me to reflect on what happened to Chris. Trepidation of reflection and contemplation is the aftermath of my experience of Chris’ encounter with cancer.<br /><br />Autumn has ever been my favorite season, full of new beginnings, the end of the 90-degree heat, and the start of my annual pride in my fashion choices. Added to that is a sense of melancholy, probably because Chris’ diagnosis occurred during the fall. I find that during the change in seasons, I just need a little more time in solitude to really remember all of the things that led up to Chris’ demise. I often surprise myself when I think about all of the dimensions of my memories in new light, and from new angles.<br /><br />Chris’ diagnosis, his fear, my fear, my ignorance regarding the face of what I didn’t know at the time to be a diagnosis of terminal illness, are all topics that I still sift through the corridors of my mind. Hospitals, hospital gowns, helplessness, wishing to extents of which I had never wished before, profound sadness, and being thrown into autopilot as a form of denial, are all pieces of the vignette, the dance of grief caused by the cancer and death of Chris that claimed that span of my life.<br /><br />After this past week of 80+ degree temperatures, I have decided to gift myself. Noticing the forecasted temperature for Friday (today) was 62 (well within my favorite range of temperatures), I looked at my calendar and, much to my chagrin, there was a meeting scheduled from 1:00-3:00. Still, I daydreamed about taking half a vacation day and kayaking on the Charles River, if only the meeting would get canceled. Then, lo and behold, the cancellation noticed arrived in my inbox and I jumped on the opportunity, scheduled my vacation time, and today I’m off at 1:00 to kayak from the Elliot Bridge to Kendall Square where I will then exit my boat and run 6 miles along the river back to my car. This afternoon has the makings of perfection, with just me, the water, the sun and my thoughts, and most importantly, renewed peace of mind.<br /><br />Just thinking about it instills nirvana throughout my mind and soul.<br /><br />Life was happy. Life was sad. And life is happy once again, and rich with reflection.<br /><br />-ShneedUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-29054504389068545832011-06-30T08:24:00.000-04:002011-07-10T18:25:05.932-04:00'Unstucking' Myself<span style="font-family:arial;">For the past couple of weeks, even though I haven’t been 100% aware that I have been feeling differently, I have been vaguely aware of another change in the winds. The most accurate way for me to describe this latest forward movement is for me to say that things around me ‘look’ different. My perception has changed. <br /><br />When Chris first died, I experienced something similar with regard to the way the world around me looked. Back then, things seemed to have a ‘toy’ essence for me. For example, I remember walking over the Mass Ave bridge in Cambridge thinking that the city and everything around me looked like a model, made of plastic, and like nothing was real. I suppose I was experiencing a form of detachment. I remember how I felt during those first few months, very transparent, like a ghost visible to none floating through the masses as if undetectable to others. And I remember describing that to my then therapist (whom I did not respect), the first in a small list of grief therapists I saw during those first weeks. She raised her voice, telling me I was getting too depressed, and ordered me to throw away all of my books about the spirit world. Those books are the ones that helped me the most. Sometimes it pays to listen to our own voices and tend to our own needs.<br /><br />The same switch that altered my life view then has been recently re-flicked, and now things look different again, in a different way – like a rebirth, or like the cell door has been opened and I’m walking out of prison for the first time in 7 years. I feel like I am back in shock, but this time the shock is from the realization (even though I cannot admit it with 100% lack of guilt) that my life is finally a happy one once again. When I walked out the door this morning, the sun was shining and there was a beautiful breeze, and I really, really wanted to keep walking past my car, and down to Mass Ave. I wanted to sit in Arlington Center with a cup of coffee, and relax all day. I haven’t felt that way in a very long time. In fact, I have spent the better part of the past few years rushing around, filling up my time with anything I could stuff into it. <br /><br />While all of this is quite positive and uplifting, my unconscious brain has been waging war on my subconscious brain on the ‘moving forward’ process, so I have been experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance – a push/pull effect, which is maintaining a certain level of anxiety within my body and mind at all times. Now that I am ‘out’ I’m feeling like running back in where it’s safe.<br /><br />Because the two parts of my mind have been in conflict, I have been feeling paralyzed with respect to almost everything. <br /><br />- I haven’t been practicing singing enough, so I feel unprepared<br />- I haven’t been thinking about or planning my own show, so I feel pressured<br />- I haven’t been spending enough time learning about my profession, web development, so I feel stuck<br /> <br />Unprepared, pressured and stuck does not make for a relaxed state of mind. My next order of business is to ‘unstuck’ myself. <br /> <br />Otherwise, I’m feeling very blessed and very lucky to be Jonathan’s wife, and I have just recently been allowing myself to feel and soak in his support. I could not have asked for a better husband and a better friend. <br /> <br />I'm certain that I'm not able to convey exactly what transpires in my brain and in my daily life with 100% accuracy – I’m not sure I even know how to -- but I do believe I have begun the process of popping the lid onto Chapter Grief of my life book.<br /><br />The time has now come for me to accept my life as it is today, and to begin remapping my courses of action to try to put myself in line with my most recent healing stage. <br /><br />There’s a lot of fun to be had. I haven’t felt this way in a very long time.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-19491725896313201632011-05-08T19:38:00.007-04:002011-05-08T19:40:36.607-04:00The Journey of a Lifetime<span style="font-family:arial;">The biggest difference I notice, these days, is that I’m not depressed. I’m finally not depressed. I guess on some base level, I had come to believe that I would always feel sad, that “sad” had taken over the neutral span on my emotional spectrum, that “neutral” had shrunken to a mere splinter of what it once was, and that happiness was at the tippity-top, still just as active as it always was, except not as often.<br /><br />Marrying Jonathan closed the door on my active grief, finally, and now grief is as it should be, dormant in the most personal, private corner of my mind. I am in love, truly in love, with my husband, my living husband, and Chris has become a very cherished memory of a very cherished first husband. I feel sadness for him for all that he had to endure, but I know from the deepest part of my soul that all is as it should be. Everything is as it was always meant to be. I can see more clearly than ever that I was supposed to meet Chris, I was supposed to fall in love with him and marry him, we were supposed to learn a great lesson by moving 6,000 miles away and experiencing financial hardship and loneliness together, that we were supposed to come to the realization that love was all that mattered, that he was supposed to get cancer and die, and that I was supposed to grieve the great loss I suffered in losing all of the many wonderful aspects he encompassed. That was the journey that was always meant to be ours.<br /><br />My journey is not new, and it’s not over. I’m on the same journey I have always been on. Me and Jonathan, Jonathan and me are what’s meant to be, now. <br /><br />I find myself periodically terrified that Jonathan could die, too. I try not to think about it. How ironic would it be if I thought I learned all of my lessons about death, only to…oh, nevermind. Thoughts like that are a waste of time that could be spent enjoying his company and our love. <br /><br />Our wedding was lovely. Our ceremony, even lovelier. The premise was “The Second Time Around” since I had lost my husband to cancer and Jonathan had experienced a divorce. We openly acknowledged our losses on our wedding day in front of our loved ones, admitting that neither of us would be the people we are today without our own personal past experiences. In fact, without our experiences, we may not have ever fallen in love with each other, at all. <br /><br />Life is a beautiful, sometimes extremely trying journey during which we meet others who change us, others from whom we learn valuable lessons. The most beautiful part of life is that it’s not over until it’s over. We get chance after chance after chance to be happy. Past sadness only gives us the capacity to achieve more future happiness. The two, sadness and happiness, work in tandem.<br /><br />I’m here. I never thought I would ever again feel as happy as I do now. Six and half years is a long time to grieve, but now that I’m through the hardest parts, I can see how much I have gained and grown from the experience of losing a spouse. I can now say the word “husband” and know that I mean Jonathan. And I can now also say that same word and know when I’m talking about Chris. <br /><br />And most importantly, I can now know that both of those scenarios are okay.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-88249369011147135822011-03-16T04:53:00.003-04:002011-03-16T09:04:13.477-04:00Back to Bed<span style="font-family:arial;">It’s 4:00 AM. I’m used to being kept awake in the wee hours, needled by thoughts of how Chris’ death changed my life. The storm has passed, and my thoughts about the reality of death, and the chaos that followed, blow around in my mind like the last few leaves at the end of a crisp, windy autumn afternoon.<br /><br />I still don’t fully believe that I was a happy single woman who met a happy single man, dated him for five years, moved across the country with and for him, married him, dreamed dreams with him, lost him and grieved my loss of him for six years. I no longer actively grieve my loss of his life. I do, however, still grieve the parts of my own life I lost as a result.<br /><br />After everything I have been through, I know that overcoming my loss of enthusiasm for my passions (musical theater, singing and acting) lies entirely in my own hands. I tend to think I lost six years of time, and work that could have been spent honing my skills. But after the intensity of emotion brought on by the ending of two lives, one life together, I am left with the knowledge that my dream isn’t over unless I decide to allow poisonous, counter-productive thoughts and memories to constrict the door to my future happiness and to my dreams. I know many people who regularly follow their dreams. I must become and then remain one of them in order to preserve my authentic being and all sense of who I am. I am no longer the widow. I have experienced fourteen months of horror followed by six years of intense grief and anxiety, and now, standing at the finish line, I find myself evaluating some “much-needed-at-the-time”, albeit “not-needed-anymore” attachments to places, things and people who were there when it happened, attachments that hinder some of my forward movement today. Letting go is no easy task. Habits of hanging on have been burned into my soul for so long that I am in need of extensive mental reconstruction. <br /><br />I miss my former therapist, Clay, this morning. I no longer need his services, and I haven’t seen him for almost a year. But he is one of the people who was there shortly after I hit bottom. He carried me along from week to week, giving me a reason for being, and even though that was just business, it felt like love and care. I sometimes feel like seeing him again because I miss him, but he’s not my friend. He’s just a therapist I pulled out of my health insurance database. Without Clay, my mind would have snapped more violently than it did, and I might not have regained and retained some very basic, vital parts of myself. <br /><br />I’m frightened by how much time has passed since Chris died. In general, I have become frightened by the passing of time, by how old my own mother is now, by the realization that I met Chris twelve years ago, which doesn’t seem possible, because how could he be dead for six years? Where did those six years go? Where did the 32-year-old, naïve woman who met Chris go? How did I suddenly look up and see a 43-year-old woman in her place? If I place the old me in the past with Chris, can there now exist a brand new me in the present and in the future who walks forward holding hands with Jonathan? I’m still not quite sure where or how to put the old me in the past where she belongs.<br /><br />If I could have one wish right now, it would be to lose the nagging, relentless anxiety with which I have been saddled, and walk, worry-free into my future with Jonathan. I’m not going to drone on about how much I love Jonathan. I do, but that’s for future posts, should I decide to continue writing here, or in a new blog. Maybe our wedding, which is now in just two weeks, will be the major life event, the marker that allows me to fearlessly and without anxiety walk into a brighter, promising future. It’s my choice, and I’m hoping I’ll have the courage to let go of the security blanket I wove from grief.<br /><br />It’s time to move on. And it’s time to go back to bed.<br /><br />Shneed<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-23188473643263430222011-02-24T10:57:00.003-05:002011-02-24T11:00:56.433-05:00My Best Enemy and My Worst Friend<span style="font-family:arial;">Maybe it’s because I’m about to be remarried (more on that when I'm feeling better), or maybe it’s all the extra time on my hands now that I have joined (temporarily, I hope) the ranks of the unemployed, but I have been experiencing my emotions with reckless abandon, these past few days. <br /><br />Time, you know (if you have been reading this blog from the start), is something I have been running from since Chris fell ill way back in 2003. I haven’t really allowed myself to stop running from quiet moments alone in a very long time. Such moments used to stand for breathing, regrouping, imagining, fostering creativity, and the like. Post Chris’ death, quiet moments fill me with dread, depression, feelings of lack of control, and tears. Now, faced with unemployment and days spent alone at home, job-searching, job training and thinking, I am aware that I need to place a new definition of what it means to be faced with nothing but time. I can’t spend my days crying. I can’t spend each moment overwrought with seven-year-old anxiety. It’s time to make a permanent change, if I can. <br /><br />There are people from the past I shared with Chris with whom I am still friendly, today. Those people are very, very special people in my life whose presence means a great deal to me. I love them like I loved Chris, and I would love to be able to embrace them without bubbling over with tears in the private moments after we interact. <br /><br />I don’t want to be the new me, anymore. I want to be the old me, again. When I was the old me, I took time to be alone. I demanded time alone to be with myself, and create my world. It’s hard to keep running. I’m tired, and even though I am an optimistic, happy person in many ways, I am still quite traumatized by Chris’ death, and still angry that he left me, even though I’m in love again…even though I’m in love again. <br /><br />The great divide is very, very wide. Life is strange when you can’t talk to a person with whom you once shared everything. It’s like a mute person trying to speak. It’s like the scream in your nightmares that never quite makes it past your lips. I can’t tell Chris I love him. I can’t tell him I hate him. I can’t ask him what the name of that Red Sox player was who lost all confidence in his throw, or what it was like to take the bus to Oak Square when he first moved to Boston. We can’t rehash how we felt about moving to Los Angeles, or discuss Ellis Paul’s new single. <br /><br />In the large scheme, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m getting busy with new memories, now. I have let go of a lot of things, and there is still much more to let go. <br /><br />Time is both my best enemy and my worst friend.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-78977012557510599842011-01-22T17:28:00.004-05:002011-01-22T17:35:55.808-05:00Addendum to "Happy 7th annivesary, Creej."<span style="font-family:arial;">"Chris loved audio production, and had just been hired by Car Talk, on National Public Radio, one week before he died. He got to work there once before he became too ill to hold a job. Even though this job was a breakthrough achievement for Chris, he was no stranger to the inner workings of the radio business. He had been producing and performing his own show on Allston/Brighton Free Radio, once a week, for a little over a year. That show was one of his proudest accomplishments. He fully acknowledged that he probably had one, if any, listener, but that didn’t matter to Chris. Talking on the radio, playing the songs of his choice, made him beam.<br /><br />The other morning, I left to drive myself to the train station where I catch the red line to Kendall Square, which is where I work. I have been taking this particular routine commute since I moved in with Jonathan, five months ago. I plugged my iPod into the adapter, as I always do, scrolled through my song lists until I found my last voice lesson, and began to play back my vocalizations, practicing on my way to work. My brief daily car rehearsals make a huge difference in my voice quality, and help me to steadily improve. <br /><br />Suddenly, through my car speakers, I heard, “You’re listening to Allston/Brighton Free Radio!” <br /><br />I was confused. I wasn’t listening to the radio, at all. And even if I was, my radio is regularly tuned to NPR, not Allston/Brighton Free Radio. <br /><br />I stared at the LCD panel, trying to figure out what was happening. My iPod began to play songs in random order. My confusion lingered for a mere moment before I realized that Chris was saying hello to me, the day after our wedding anniversary, and on the birthday of his beloved deceased grandmother, Edna. <br /><br />Tears of joy came quickly, and my entire being filled up as it always does when Chris reminds me that he’s still with me, that he always will be. <br /><br />I have only one explanation for how my radio took over my iPod, only one time since I have owned the car, broadcasting a show I don’t even listen to, a show that isn’t even available in my city, on which Chris broadcast his own personal program back when we shared a life together. <br /><br />He’s here. I rarely have doubts about his continuing presence in my life, and whenever I do have doubts, something spectacular happens to assuage them. <br /><br />How lucky am to have one husband across the veil, and one soon-to-be husband right here with me on earth? <br /><br />There is love on every side of me. I know it, because I feel it coursing through my veins. <br /><br />Shneed.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-76134379379738359492011-01-17T09:38:00.003-05:002011-01-17T09:39:25.595-05:00Happy 7th annivesary, Creej.<span style="font-family:arial;">"I do believe the soul cannot die." <br />-Tom Tom Club</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-79002173311863111452011-01-01T12:43:00.006-05:002011-01-01T15:19:01.944-05:00New Year's Day, 6 A.C. (after Chris)<span style="font-family:arial;">I remember the last week of 2004 through a series of ominous vignettes. Waking up, Christmas Day, to Chris sitting on the bed, telling me he thought it was time for me to take him to the hospital, the pain in his stomach finally too much for him to bear. I remember him telling me to relax and have some coffee first, his way of denying what he probably knew, that the end was near. I remember Chris in the passenger seat of my 1996 electric blue Pontiac Sunfire screaming every time I rolled over the slightest of bumps, and I remember how guilty I felt for not being able to avoid them. I remember the orderly at Brigham and Womens Hospital taking him away in a wheel chair telling me not to worry, that he would take good care of Chris.<br /><br />We spent Christmas day in the ER where Chris was given Ativan and pain killer, and I remember him saying how great he felt, that the pain was completely gone. We felt hopeful, thinking maybe the pain really was just caused by adhesion, scar tissue from his surgery the month before. <br /><br />I remember calling my family, who had gathered at my father's house for our annual Christmas Day dinner. Nobody understood what was happening. My father suggested that I come by alone for a while to get my mind off of what was happening. He didn't understand. My husband was dying. How could I leave the hospital and join my family in celebration? I think everyone was in denial to some extent. <br /><br />Chris was admitted to the hospital that day, Christmas Day, 2004, where Bonnie, Chris's mother, and my friends, Carol and Robby, joined us. Chris' regular doctor was on Christmas vacation. We sat with Chris as he slid in and out of sleep. I tried to believe the other doctors when they said Chris had only a blood clot, but believing was difficult when doctor after doctor walked into the room, looked at Chris, and shook his head in pity. My Chris was dying. They knew it, and they weren't telling us. <br /><br />I don’t remember what day the doctors, Bonnie, and I gathered around Chris' bed to tell him his treatment for cancer was being stopped. I kept the poker face I had become so good at maintaining for Chris’ benefit. I never wanted to cause him any feelings of guilt by crying. He looked at me and I smiled at him. Then he said, “You’re taking it well.” And I smiled again and said, “I’ve known.” <br /><br />At the urging of a social worker I tried to involve Chris in his own funeral planning, but when I asked him if he wanted to be involved, he said, “In what?” I whispered, “Your funeral.” Chris recoiled, a twisted expression on his face, not ready to believe what was happening, himself. I remember feeling as though I had delivered the final insult to a man who had already been delivered a life sentence, and I had to leave the room and try to forgive myself. <br /><br />Even though we remained at the hospital until Chris’ discharge three days later, I don’t remember much else. I remember he thanked me for always looking out for him, and although I can’t remember when, I smiled at him and said, “We had a good run.” <br /><br />At some point, I entered the hospital chapel, fell to the floor and lay there sobbing, uncontrollably, kicking chairs and rolling around on the floor. I called my mother in the middle of it all, for some grounding. <br /><br />We left Brigham and Womens Hospital on December 28, Chris and me in the ambulance, and Carol and Robby in my car. My sister, Teri, who had been washing my clothes all week, brought me some fresh ones because I had been wearing the same ones for four days. I still remember the smell when I removed my hiking boots. <br /><br />I rode home in the ambulance with a very thin, very gaunt Chris who, although under the gracious influence of morphine, still could not get comfortable. He pulled at the blankets and at the fastened bands holding him in place on the gurney. I joked with the EMTs, as the first real feelings of finality began to seep into my consciousness.<br /><br />I didn’t know that the Tsunami had hit, or that a horrendous snow storm had taken Boston during those few days we spent enclosed in Chris’ hospital room. All I knew was my own bubble of fear and sadness. <br /><br />Once home, Chris tried to jump off of the gurney, not realizing how high up he was. The EMTs caught him and helped him over to the couch, where he rolled over, his face in the back of the sofa, and fell asleep. <br /><br />The rest of the week Bonnie and I remained on high alert, Bonnie feeding Chris morphine to control his pain, and both of us trying to keep him safe from falling, as he wandered around the apartment in a haze.<br /><br />I invited all of Chris' friends and family to come be with him, offering everyone a moment alone to talk with him privately. We laughed with him, teased him, and recalled the past with him. He knew he was dying. He told one of his friends so. <br />January 1, 2005, Chris got out of bed and stated, “I want to sit in my chair.” We helped him move from the bed to the futon chair and sat with him until his breath changed, a tell tale sign that it was time for us to gather and say goodbye. <br /><br />Chris' family, some friends, and I sat with him as his skin cooled, holding onto him until the undertakers came with their big black SUV. I watched as the two black clad gentlemen wheeled carried Chris out, loaded him into the truck, and drove away. I stood on the sidewalk, which was iced over from the snowstorm, and stared.<br /><br />It was over. Our Chris was gone.<br /><br />Six years has passed. Today is the dreaded anniversary, New Year’s Day. My Chris knew how to go out in style. <br /><br />I’m sitting at my computer writing this as Jonathan practices his newest Mozart sonata on the piano upstairs, and I know I have come about as full circle as I’ll ever come. I still cry. I will always cry. Jonathan will always understand, and he’ll always love me, hold me and tell me it’s okay, that Chris loved me very much. He allows room for me to grieve. <br /><br />Despite my best efforts to love like I'll never get hurt (Ellis Paul), I now know that husbands die before their time, but I try not to think about that too much. I just enjoy the time Jonathan and I have together, and I tell myself how lucky I am to have fought the good fight and to have rebuilt a life I never saw coming. <br /><br />I’m as happy as I can be and, truth be told, that's pretty darned happy. I am eternally grateful for my ability to be resilient.<br /><br />Happy New Year.<br /><br />Shneed<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-44168413291423677012010-11-23T10:08:00.002-05:002010-11-29T16:25:05.815-05:00Happy 40th Birthday, Creej.<span style="font-family:arial;">Today would have been Chris’ 40th birthday. His 34th was the last one I got to celebrate with him, although I suppose I have celebrated each of his birthday’s since in my own way. <br /><br />Deciding that his birthday is a happy day is a matter of flipping the switch in my head. I could easily collapse and cry all day about his absence from my life, or I can celebrate his birth, which provided him with life, and enabled us to meet. <br /><br />My newest miracle is that I have not cried over Chris, at all, in almost one month, and that has opened wide the door into my future with Jonathan. My lack of tears is a direct result of leveling with Jonathan about my emotions surrounding Chris’ death. I had been unsure about just how much it was fair to share with him. I don’t want to hurt him, or make him think I loved Chris more than I love him. It’s a sticky situation, one that many men might not be able to handle. Not for my Jonathan, though. He’s tough. I fall a little more in love with him each time I trust him enough to be honest about the effects Chris’ death have had and still have on me. Jonathan just reminds me that I loved Chris very much, and reassures me that Chris loved me very much, too. Then he tells me that he’s thankful for how Chris’ presence in my life has shaped me and made the person I am, today. Then he tells me he loves me and wants to be with me forever. Sweet. My rock.<br /><br />I joked with Jonathan this morning about how I am eternally thankful for Chris’ life and how he’s probably eternally thankful for Chris’ death. He was shocked, of course, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m a shock-jock when it comes to death, now. Society takes it all too seriously. <br /><br />Today, on Chris’ 40th birthday, I give him the gift of continuing to let go and move forward in my life together with Jonathan. After all, Chris gave him to me. <br /><br />You can read more about that at <a href="http://creejnshneed.blogspot.com/2008/10/his-eye-is-on-sparrow-and-i-know-he.html">http://creejnshneed.blogspot.com/2008/10/his-eye-is-on-sparrow-and-i-know-he.html</a>.<br /><br />Happy birthday, sweet Creej.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-83005106552612698352010-10-01T22:27:00.008-04:002010-10-03T09:56:47.911-04:00The Rock<span style="font-family:arial;">My perception has always painted my grief a monstrous, ominous, seemingly insurmountable sharp-edged mountain, surrounded in black clouds, towering in front of me, growing ever larger and ever darker, each time I have attempted to climb up and over. But that perception has never stopped me from trying, again and again, succeeding a little bit more with each try.<br /><br />I think I may have had as close to a real major depressive episode as I am capable of having this past week. Generally, I’m a pretty sane person, and I’m aware that depressive episodes are very serious, which is why I provide this disclaimer. Because I listened to myself, and figured out what I needed, I was able to smash away a huge portion of Grief Mountain with my pick axe, and watch it separate from the rest of the rock, and fall to the ground where it disintegrated into a harmless cloud of dust. <br /><br />I don’t know how my thoughts became so twisted. I doubted my future, calling my engagement and eventual marriage to Jonathan into question, along with my ability to laugh, to sing, to be my own person, and to feel free from the heaviness I had allowed to encompass my heart. I was ambushed, once again, drowning in my horror of what happened to Chris. I cried at work, at school, at home, all the while finding ways to masquerade as a happy and healthy fiancée to Jonathan. By mid week this past, I had convinced myself that I was better off not being anyone’s fiancée, and seriously began to think about jumping off the relationship ledge. I had returned to a place of great pain, and in doing so, forgot that people who have experienced loss can be happy, again. Each and every one of us deserves to be happy, again. And the people whose lives we touch, merely by existing, also deserve to have us in their lives.<br /><br />I took two personal days off of work this past Thursday and Friday. Most of Thursday, I spent in indecisive turmoil, lamenting over my loss of almost six years ago. My pain over the occurrences of Chris’ illness and death returned full-force…no, more than full force, a flashback of sorts…wrapping around my ankles, tripping me up, and sending me crashing to the ground. I wanted out of my new life and back into my old life with Chris so badly that for the first time in a long time, I felt incapable of handling the intensity.<br /><br />During my two-day sabbatical, I did things only for myself. I returned to singing. I ran. I cooked. I tried to breathe, although I wasn’t very successful. <br /><br />During the late afternoon, this Thursday past, I drove to the boxing gym, which now takes over thirty minutes, lifted weights, and took a 5-mile run. When I was finished, I grabbed my stuff from the locker room and left. On my drive home, I had an epiphany: I no longer need to go there. I don’t box, anymore, I never really did, anyway. I just needed to release my anger, anguish and shock. Boxing provided me a most effective method of doing just that. I had thought about joining a new gym for a while, but never really could let go of my old gym, which had become a surrogate husband to me. In a sense, the gym became my handle to Chris, his hand, a way for me to hold onto him, which is why the thought of leaving the gym, in the past, had sent me into mother-bear mode, protecting my right to hold on to my husband, the boxing gym. The mind's ability to make sense where there isn't any is very powerful.<br /><br />My decision to leave the gym empowered me. I began to spring back into existence, the Robin I used to know began returning to this stage we call life. <br /><br />Last week, I explained to Jonathan, my difficulty in moving forward with him, reassuring him that I would eventually be able to do so with ease. I described my vision to him, which is a vision of Chris dangling off of a cliff, holding onto my hand as I try to pull him to safety. In my vision, my grip weakens, and I try with all of my might to hold onto him, but he slips, my eyes widen, and I scream, “Nooooooooooo!” as he plummets to the bottom of the mountain. I fail in that vision, as in life, to save him. The thought takes my breath from me. Jonathan identified survivor’s guilt in my vision, and he was right. Even though it’s not possible for one human being to give another human being cancer, I carry a secret stash of guilt and responsibility for Chris’ demise.<br /><br />Tonight, I shared my new epiphany with Jonathan, explaining how the black piece of rock cracked, broke from the mountain of grief, and fell to the bottom of the ravine. I shared another vision of mine with him, one of the boxing gym becoming dim, gray and covered with cobwebs immediately followed by a vision of Jonathan's house, our home, lighting up and filling with warmth. <br /><br />After six weeks of living here in my new home, six weeks of fighting forward movement, feeling alienated, and wanting to run home to Cambridge, the city I love, but really wanting to run back to Chris, to my life alone, where I was free to indulge in my past. I am free. The gear has turned. I’m here by choice. My new gym is a five-minute walk from home, and I’m ready to let go of the blanket I knitted out of the grief I expended at the boxing gym these past three years. I feel ready to knit a new one, now, out of happiness, hope and my new love.<br /><br />This event is a huge one. I can see the sun, once hidden by the giant piece of rock that broke away, peaking over the mountain, and the mountain keeps getting smaller.<br /><br />Shneed.<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-53548328693037594642010-09-24T09:53:00.003-04:002010-09-24T10:00:09.263-04:00Holding out for Eleven<span style="font-family:arial;">I have begun 2010’s descent into the mucky mire of grief, ever-present even at almost six years, even after welcoming a new love into my life, even after everything I have accomplished since Chris’ death...even after anything...ever...perhaps for the rest of my life. My annual slip-slide into the black hole arrives like clockwork. Mood swings and anger-spells seem to be the main ingredients in my emotional soup du jour as of late. <br /><br />This year, navigating through the symptoms is trickier. I can’t just cry whenever I need to because I live with Jonathan now, and my engaging in a nightly 6:00 tear-fest would not be fair to him. But the truth is that I still miss Chris, I still love him, and I still wish he didn’t die. Those truths are sturdy enough to build a roadblock to my future if I let them, and if I don’t find/create yet another method of dealing with them, I will surely risk living my life in the past, possibly alone.<br /><br />No matter what, Chris is gone, whether or not I cry, whether or not I run, whether or not I continue to (try to) move forward, and right about now I’m wishing I could forget he ever existed. If I never met him, I wouldn’t be hurting, right now. But if I never met him, I also wouldn’t be the person I am, today. There’s no erasing Chris. He either lived, loved me, and changed me for the better, or he didn’t exist, and I never learned how to love. His existence was pivotal for me.<br /><br />Today is going to be a difficult one for me, I can feel it. Once again, I have become tripped up in the minefield of sorrow. Usually, a simple choice to be happy is all I need, but today, I’m fighting making that choice.<br /> <br />All things considered, today is just a day. This particular hour is just one of many potential happy ones. <br /><br />Maybe I’ll feel better at 11:00.<br /><br />Shneed<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-2176072078915273732010-08-25T07:52:00.003-04:002010-08-25T07:54:16.996-04:00Here.<span style="font-family:arial;">I have a hard time believing that the spirits of those who have passed are not walking beside us or, at the very least, peeking in on us and helping us during our dark moments. <br /><br />Yesterday was a tough day for me. I knew that moving in with Jonathan would initiate a grief backdraft, and that I would need to remain alert and aware in order to navigate through the smoke, but all day yesterday I was suffocating, lost in the fog. Anxiety and panic from the past two weeks, my first two weeks sharing a home with Jonathan, collected within my mind and body, and I found myself crying, off and on, over my loneliness for Chris, and my anger over the differences between my interactions with him, and my interactions with Jonathan. Like I said, I knew it was coming. It was just a question of when.<br /><br />Jonathan and I had dinner plans, last night, so although I fell apart all day (I worked from home), I knew from experience, that I would be able to pull myself together and enjoy my and Jonathan’s evening together. <br /><br />During one of several breakdowns, yesterday, I spoke to Chris. “You have to help me. I need to stop crying over you. I can’t do this anymore. Please help me.” <br /><br />Jonathan and I had a wonderful time at dinner. We talked, laughed, and shared our entrees, sans the growing pains of our past two weeks of figuring out where we fall together, as a couple living together. Not that we’ve had any problems, but moving in together for anyone, male or female, takes a fair amount of adjusting on each side in order to create a smooth and easy existence together. Being a person who panics when things don’t go as smoothly as I want them to, I have found that over the past two weeks, every time we hit a snag, I wanted to run back into Chris’ arms, again, to the safety of a time before I knew cancer.<br /><br />After dinner, Jonathan and I went our separate ways within the confines of our home, fed our separate interests, and decided to turn in for the night. Even though I spent the day in turmoil over the events of the past almost six years, I went to sleep hoping I could hold on to exactly the way Jonathan and I got along all evening. It was perfect.<br /><br />I fell asleep quickly for the first time since moving in, and I dreamed that Chris was dying and that we (?) were all waiting for the phone call to tell us (?) when to arrive at the hospital. I was primping, styling my hair so I could look beautiful for him. The call came. I went to the hospital. Chris died. My floodgates opened immediately and I cried just the way I cried when I was told he only had 4 days to live. <br /><br />I can’t remember whether or not I actually woke up crying hysterically, or whether I dreamed that I woke up crying hysterically. Jonathan said he didn’t hear a thing. <br />I went back to sleep, and awoke a couple hours later feeling happy and free from grief. <br /><br />I believe my Chris stepped in, as he always does when I really need him, and infiltrated my dreams in a symbolic attempt to kill himself for me, so I could experience the reality that he is gone and move past yesterday’s snag, which wasn’t the first snag, and which won’t be the last. <br /><br />He’s here. He’s with me, and he helps me let go and move on. Today, I feel light and happy, and I can see my future possibilities.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-15884404439821608542010-08-13T22:24:00.001-04:002010-08-13T22:27:25.610-04:00Chair<span style="font-family:arial;">The night before I moved, I caught myself thinking, “Maybe I can let go of the Chris-chair.” The salvation army was coming the following Wednesday and I was just thinking about how easy it would be not to have to move the chair. Chris’ chair was really my chair. It had been for a couple of years before we even met. It only became his chair after his cancer surgery. I set it up for him, without the footrest, so he could be comfortable while he recovered. There was so little I could do to make any part of the ordeal easier for him, but when he came home and saw it set up, he smiled and thanked me. <br /><br />Jonathan and I tried to make the chair work at home, but it just wouldn’t. Single futon chairs are quite large and no matter what layout we tried, the chair didn’t work. I decided I was ready to let it go, especially since it was tied to a memory of Chris that was bad. The chair came to symbolize great sadness for me, an empty chair, the chair in which my husband took his last breath. I didn’t want it anymore. Not now. Not when I’m really taking huge strides pushing myself forward. <br /><br />The salvation army came on Wednesday. They began loading up the truck with all of the boxes and furniture we had stored in the garage. When they took the chair, I lost my breath. I turned to Jonathan and said, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get through this without crying.” I try not to cry about Chris in front of Jonathan. Hell, I try not to cry in front of him, at all. But when the chair went, I did. <br /><br />Jonathan held me and said, “It’s okay. You can cry if you need to. It’s okay. You loved him. You loved him very much. And he loved you. He still does. He always will.” <br /><br />How did I get so lucky? Twice.<br /><br />Shneed.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-59283497433535450882010-08-03T19:49:00.001-04:002010-08-03T19:51:51.359-04:00A Huge Part of Who I Am<span style="font-family:arial;">I’m just about finished packing up my stuff for my move in with Jonathan, who, by the way, I got engaged to two weeks ago. <br /><br />Even though I love Jonathan, this major life change has not been an easy one to prepare for. There are things of Chris’ I had been holding onto for the past five-plus years, that had been buried in the crawl space of my current apartment. I sifted through the rubble of “used to be” and surprised myself with how much stuff no longer held meaning for me. On the flip side, I melted down again and again over the stuff that still does hold quite a bit of meaning for me, and placed it into a brand new waterproof storage box to store at Jonathan’s house. Everything I have left that once belonged to Chris now fits into one plastic box, a time capsule of a part of my life that held immense joy…followed by immense dread, anguish, and five years and eight months (and counting) of grief-induced loneliness for my lost love.<br /><br />I often talk about the magical (and fictitious) “one year of firsts” that everyone seems to think follows the death of a loved one. The firsts never end, unless life ends. I’m about to move in with a man I love for the first time since Chris died, a fact I have been simultaneously celebrating and grieving. My apartment has become an asylum of sorts, a place for me to cry, laugh, fall, get back up and scream. I’m happy every time I think about Jonathan and depressed every time I think about Chris. I wear a brilliant diamond engagement ring on the ring finger of my left hand, the hand closest to my heart. I wear my engagement ring from Chris, and both of our wedding bands which I had soldered together on my right hand. I think about both rings and I sometimes feel handcuffed by them. I haven’t decided yet whether or not to keep my right-hand rings on. Jonathan is a very generous, supportive, sweet man who tells me I should keep both of my rings, since Chris was such a huge part of who I am, today. Then he tells me he loves me because of who I am, today. Brings tears, doesn’t it? That kind of patience and understanding is just what I need.<br /><br />I’m ready, Jonathan. I’m ready for something. And I don’t have to be ready for a lifetime of love. I only have to be ready to step outside my door.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-39742227523312062922010-07-05T14:40:00.001-04:002010-07-05T14:41:34.656-04:00Gone.<span style="font-family:arial;">I began packing up my belongings for my move in with Jonathan. I’m very happy I finally unfroze and started the process of breaking down the apartment in which I have resided for the past three years. Three years is the longest I have spent living in any one place since I left my family home twenty-one years ago. <br /><br />Each place I have lived since Chris died has acted as a third-way house for me. <br /><br />First I lived alone in the apartment we shared at the time of Chris’ death, where I went through the motions, simulating a life from which I was so far removed that I may as well have occupied a chair looking out onto the green at the nearest sanitarium. That was back when sitting on the sofa, warm and protected, wrapped tightly in my comforter was all I could do to keep the thoughts of killing myself from becoming actions. <br /><br />Eight months after that, I occupied a third-floor loft apartment in Malden, where, despite the fact that I wasn’t ready at all, and I didn’t believe I ever would be, I began dating again, only one year after Chris died. I resented that I had returned to a place where I had to date, bitter that marriage hadn’t ended that roller-coaster for me.<br /><br />Lastly, I moved into my current apartment, a charming third-floor cottage-like abode featuring Charles Dickens, twelve-pane cozy criss-cross molding. I thought the apartment would be enough for me for the rest of my life, that I’d never need, or want, to share my life with another man. I was proud of my home, proud of the independence I had inherited, and I viewed my being able to reside, on my own, in Cambridge as a huge accomplishment I never thought I’d be able to afford on my own. I did it. I rose from the ashes and showed myself inner strength I would never have guessed I possessed. I would much rather have had Chris. Inner strength is overrated.<br /><br />So, today, even though I’m supposed to be heading over to Best Buy to unload three old Macintosh computers I no longer need (They belonged to Chris. We regularly engaged in the MAC/PC war), the heat is causing me to hide, in air-conditioned comfort in my living room, and pack up stuff I plan to donate. <br /><br />The further away my life with Chris becomes, the more the entire six years feels like something I dreamed. That thought hurts. We met. I lived with him. I married him. We meshed. <br /><br />And now it’s gone, and at the moment, I don’t feel like sweeping it under the rug by boasting about how happy I am to be moving in with my new love. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-74180605429906661032010-06-29T20:10:00.003-04:002010-06-29T20:13:55.315-04:00The Dance in the Middle<span style="font-family:arial;">I just gave my 60-day notice to my landlords. I’m moving in with Jonathan in August.<br /> <br />Jonathan and I looked at engagement rings on Saturday. We have been talking about marriage for almost the entire “just-about-two-years” that we’ve been together. We’ve also been talking about having a baby. <br /><br />The past two years has had its share of sadness, anxiety and anger, all of which have been nicely tempered with happiness, feelings of good fortune, and a sense that I can begin (the starting line keeps moving ahead on me) to relax and try to let go of the tears that still plague me. <br /><br />I really do wonder how long getting used to the death of a spouse takes. Spouse isn’t really the right word for who I lost. Chris was a soul-mate, a teacher, and a best friend and a savior. From experience, I know that grief lingers for at least five-and-a-half years. Reemergence happens alongside grief, both traveling in opposite directions, intersecting in the middle right smack where positive change begins. I’m ready for that change, now. I don’t believe I have ever been ready before now. <br /><br />My landlords like to remind me that, when I moved in three years ago, I told them I was done with dating and love and all of that stuff. They joke and say, “Oh, she was done dating…no men for her…she liked being by herself.” It’s not a joke in which I find humor. It’s a joke that makes me want to say, “Well, when one of YOU dies, the other one will see how much fun it is to be widowed.” I know. It’s mean. Like I said, I’m still a work in progress. <br /><br />I’m not sure if I can paint an accurate mental picture of how I see this pivotal scene in my head. Grief comes from the west, and reemergence approaches from the east. They meet, but don’t pass each other right away. The two circle one another at the point of intersection for hundreds of years (less in real-time). Grief ponders being on its way. Reemergence ponders resuming the joys of a life interrupted by a cancer diagnosis seven years ago. The dance continues until the time is right and then maybe grief leaves, taking chest-crushing anxiety and depression with it. And maybe reemergence finds itself standing on the ground with nothing but sky in view. <br /><br />I want to sing. I want to act. I want to run. I want to exercise. I want to eat delicious foods. I want to bask in the sun. I want to cry less often. I want to spend hours engaged in frivolous activities with my friends. I want the eclipse to go away. I want the sun back. <br /><br />There’s an upcoming audition for a musical I have loved most of my adult life. I began to prepare to compete for one of the two leading roles, both of which are played by women in their twenties. I wanted it seven years ago, and I wanted it as recently as this morning. On my way home, on the train, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the subway window, and even though I look much younger than my years, I took a breath and admitted to myself that I’m not going to snag either one of those roles. That time has passed. Perhaps ten years ago, when I looked twenty years younger than I do now, I might have stood a chance. I shudder to think of how many sweet, beautiful twenty-somethings are going to show up with the same desire to sing those roles, each more talented than I am. The time is theirs, now, not mine. It’s okay. There are plenty of roles that call for forty-three-year-old women. Plenty. <br /><br />In admitting that to myself, I think I may have entered a very early stage of working grief and reemergence apart, loosening the knot that keeps them intertwined and sending them on two separate journeys into the future.<br /><br />I was young once. I’m not old yet, but I’m not twenty, either. I spent my thirties falling deeply in love and then losing that love. Ten years gone. More. <br /><br />But Jonathan’s here, now, and I learned that I can love very deeply again, even though the thought chokes me when it’s not filing me with joy and wonder. There’s that dance in the middle, again. <br /><br />Sometimes I feel desperately tired and unable to cope with everyday occurrences. Sometimes I still feel the need to stay in and cry. Sometimes my head is full of negative existential thoughts. And sometimes I’m the luckiest woman in the world and I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. <br /><br />I’m just dancing, right now, and it's nice to know I have moved from the beginning to the middle. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-41421194249865326642010-04-19T21:58:00.004-04:002010-04-19T22:04:19.304-04:00The Gift Came in a Box.............ing Gym<span style="font-family:arial;">I don’t box, anymore. I sustained a concussion in January and had to take a 4-month break, and even though I thought I’d come back to continue honing my boxing skills, I spent those 4 months thinking about myself, Jonathan and the baby we might still have the chance to bring into our life. <br /><br />The boxing gym was extremely important in my journey towards peace and wellness after Chris died. I only went there because I wanted to punch things, and what I ended up with is a sense of inclusion and warmth among a group of people who are just as goofy as I am. I have never belonged to a gym that gave me that kind of payback before. <br /><br />I was walking on shaky ground when I noticed the first signs of my breaking away from the boxing gym. In one sense, I felt very sad, like I was once again losing something special to me. In another sense, my lack of excitement about punching and exercising myself into utter exhaustion is a very clear sign that I’m feeling better…less angry, less like hitting things and less like placing myself in front of someone who can hurt me and assuage the guilt I felt surrounding Chris’ death. <br /><br />I once equated my intense workouts at the gym (which used to consist of a 3-hour cardio, strength training and boxing routine, 3 times a week) to cutting, as in razor blades and inability to deal with pain in a constructive manner. Not allowing myself to quit before every last rep and every last set of way too many workouts all wrapped up in one was completed was my way of dealing with my pain. I also felt as though I deserved nothing better than pain and exhaustion for what happened to Chris. <br /><br />Times have changed. I do like to run long distances now, but it’s different. I do it because I like it. And those crazy boxing drills on the wall that I used to love to do – I still love them, but I skimp. I cut out entire sets, reps and I leave just because I’m tired. I can do that now. I no longer feel compelled to punish myself.<br /> <br />All things considered, a person who wishes to inflict pain upon herself could have chosen many, much worse ways of doing so. I got fit in the process of working through my pain.<br /> <br />So now what? I don’t want to leave the gym. The boxing gym is my friendly neighborhood bar, where everybody knows each other. We see each other at boxing events, we have a beer together, we like each other. I don’t have to leave just because I’m not interested in boxing, anymore. I’m a little interested...I mean, I haven’t yet donated my headgears. Maybe I’ll keep one for some light sparring. Getting in the ring, although harrowing for me, filled me with excitement and adrenaline. <br /><br />Nobody there would think it strange that a person who has all but lost interest in the sport would still come in to work out in a more traditional way. And if they did, it wouldn’t matter to me. I spend much of my life looking for environments void of pretense, and I found a good one. It’s my gift to myself for weathering a storm I thought couldn’t be weathered<br /><br />And I get to keep it. <br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-42191559588945137732010-04-06T21:40:00.006-04:002010-04-06T21:48:17.931-04:00All That and a Load of Laundry<span style="font-family:arial;">Tonight I brought home the new futon cover I bought for Chris’ chair, the one he sat in right before he died. I remember him, in his morphine haze, saying, “I wanna sit in the chair,” and getting up from the hospital bed the ambulance drivers had pushed into our bedroom for Chris’ safety during the last four days of his life. There was no way Chris was going down in a hospital bed. Although he was incredibly weak, he got up and, with our help, walked over to the chair so he could sit upright and go out in style. I still remember him in that chair, finding me among his friends and family and locking his eyes on me. I talked him through his departure, because I knew it was best for him to go with as much guilt-free ease, and as little fear as possible. He did a good job. <br /><br />I have sat in that chair a few times since his death, but the one single time that haunts me still is the night I realized, for the first time, that Chris was really gone forever. I can’t describe the pain, other than remembering how much I needed him. The pain was searing, like my skin being ripped off of my body, a hollowing feeling like screaming into an abyss. Nobody could hear me because I couldn’t make sound. I could just hold onto the futon chair and hope and pray that I could open my eyes and find that it was him I was holding, and not some stupid chair. I almost lost my mind that night. I had never before felt on the brink of snapping…really snapping…and never since. <br /><br />Thinking about that night puts me back there, and I know I shouldn’t be doing that, but sometimes, that’s really all I want to do with a quiet evening at home. <br /><br />I remember that even though Chris was dead, I still thought he was coming home. I still remember the piles and piles of unopened sympathy cards I came home to after being away for a time, the length of which I still can’t remember. I hated those cards. They were anything but a comfort to me. I grabbed them up and threw them, as forcefully as I could, into the trash without opening them, threw away all of the food from the days preceding his death, and emptied all of his toiletries out of the bathroom cabinets with one sweep of an arm. I couldn’t get away from his stuff, and that’s all I wanted to do.<br /><br />Everybody felt sorry for me, and I wanted to die and I wanted everything to stop, and I wondered how long I was going to remain in the state of shock I was in, and I just wanted to be able to breathe again.<br /><br />I still wonder where he is, and if he’s okay, and if he still knows me.<br /><br />Last week, I took the old futon cover, the one on which Chris died, folded it up, and placed it into my little Chris-box of his stuff I keep for myself. There are only a few things in the box, but they’re important things that remind me that he was here, and that we met. <br /><br />Tonight, before I left the futon store, I asked the salesman behind the counter if it would be okay for me to share a story with him. I told him about how Chris died in my chair, and how after five years I was giving my chair a makeover and giving myself hope for a brighter future. I said all that without crying. He smiled, God-blessed me, and wished me luck. <br /><br />When I got home, I put the new cover on the chair. It’s Chris’ chair, the one I set up for him when he returned home from having surgery, so he could be comfortable while he recovered. Now, it has a new face, a brighter face, a face of the future, my future together with Jonathan, and it has a chance to become my and Jonathan’s chair.<br /><br />I just don’t know how long that will take. <br /><br />Shneed<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-2662355822625994142010-03-07T21:00:00.004-05:002010-03-07T21:18:05.799-05:00Nobody<span style="font-family:arial;">I no longer have a reason to feel crushed, yet that's exactly how I feel every Sunday when Jonathan and I part. <br /><br />I don't feel slightly down, or moderately lonely. I go right back to the month, or so, I stayed out of work after Chris died, where I sat on my sofa, wrapped tightly in a comforter feeling as though the colorful quilt was the the only thing holding me together. I was safe inside the cocoon I had crafted, and reality could not reach me within. <br /><br />I didn't know that the death of my spouse could leave me feeling as though my spouse has died every single time I am by myself; every Friday evening after work, when it seems that nobody is available to pass some time with me, every Sunday evening after Jonathan leaves, every night after the lights are out and all of my friends are sleeping, as I should be. <br /><br />The pain of losing Chris is never going away, and although I feel much better in general, these days, I still have to fight to choke back tears on a regular basis. <br /><br />Passing time opens me up like a meat hook tearing through flesh and I still don't want the day to come when I wake up and realize he's been gone for ten years. It has already been five years. <br /><br />I don't really know whether or not I am still traumatized, but I cannot come up with an explanation for why I still have flashbacks, intrusive memories and sudden tearful breakdowns. Clay thinks I'm afraid that Jonathan will die, too, and since he has twenty years of experience in the field of psychology, to my B.S. in Psychology and about zero experience in the field, I feel inclined to believe him. I don't always believe I deserve to be with somebody I love and who loves me. If that were true...oh forget it.<br /><br />Our society treats death as though it was a broken leg. Nobody expects me to still cry and fear loss and remain affected by what I witnessed Chris endure. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-29479353522035697762010-03-05T20:51:00.002-05:002010-03-05T20:53:50.137-05:00And I Do<span style="font-family:arial;">So many changes, so many changes. <br /><br />I haven’t written in such a long time that I’m having trouble deciding where to begin. <br /><br />I have been feeling sad, lately, which isn’t surprising considering my systematic, gradual weaning off of Zoloft. I don’t want it, anymore. I don’t need it. My Z-tox is going well. I have decreased from two 50mg pills/day to one-quarter of one 50mg pill/day. By this time next week, I will have successfully kicked the habit. <br /><br />Going off of Z has not been without discomfort in the form of withdrawals. I decreased nice and slowly, though, to keep the after-effects to all-time low. <br /><br />I’m moving in with Jonathan in September. We love each other and I’m ready, even though there really isn’t any such thing as ‘ready.’ One of the things I love about him is that he knows everything about how I’m feeling. He doesn’t ever expect me to give up Chris in any way. He makes it known that anything I give up is entirely my decision and that he’d never ask me to give anything up until I’m ready. The load that takes off of my shoulders, my soul really, is worth everything to me. <br /><br />I don’t like us living apart. I miss him when we’re not together, but I strike a nice balance between wanting to be with him, and wanting to make sure I respect his time and needs. Living together will be easier because we’ll get to be together even when we don’t have plans.<br /><br />There’s a fight night at the boxing gym tonight and I have been thinking about how I don’t want to be there. Not wanting to be there is new for me. For more than two years I exercised myself to exhaustion to keep my grief in check, to cope and to have somewhere to be when I felt alone, which was all the time. I liked that the members were mostly men because I felt like maybe I would find someone there and even when I didn’t, I liked feeling like a desirable woman in a room full of men, even if that was only my mind. <br /><br />The gym took on a surrogate meaning for me. For the past two years, I got to feel safe, and I got to work though so much of my fear, sadness and loneliness. This particular gym promotes a culture of camaraderie and support. There, I got to feel like somebody cared about me, and I really needed to feel like somebody cared after <br />Chris died. Now I have Jonathan, so instead of going out to fight night tonight just to be around people, I can be home knowing that Jonathan loves me.<br /><br />I have never been comfortable with change, and feeling myself separate from the gym is no exception. Time keeps marching on and my life keeps changing and find myself fighting change just slightly more than I welcome it. <br /><br />Tonight I’m left wondering if the boxing gym has served its purpose and if I will notice myself backing away now. I’m proud of the fact that I boxed for a while. I’m proud of the concussion I sustained. I’m totally, ever-proud of the changes in my body since the day I first walked through the door. I walked in wearing size 10-12 jeans and today my size 6 jeans are getting loose. I wonder how long I’ll be enjoying my new self before Jonathan and I try to have a baby. We both want to, but we also both realize that I’m 42. It’s in God’s hands. <br /><br />Anyway…most of the time, because of the changes I am experiencing, I can’t collect my thoughts well enough to write about them. Like I said, I spend a bit more time fighting them than accepting them. <br /><br />Chris is forever in my mind and in my heart, and instead of having to get rid of my memories of him, I get to nudge them over a little so my memories of me and Jonathan can fit, too. <br /><br />And I do. <br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11598518.post-10801577084459366042010-01-14T15:25:00.001-05:002010-01-14T15:26:40.800-05:005 Down.<span style="font-family:arial;">This coming Sunday, January 17, Chris and I would have been married for 6 years. After Sunday, I will have made it through yet another concentrated anniversary season crammed into its usual 3-month span:<br /><br />Nov. 23 – Chris’ Birthday<br />Thanksgiving – Chris’ favorite holiday<br />Christmas – The last time I rushed Chris to the hospital<br />New Years Day – Chris’ last day<br />January 17 – Our wedding anniversary<br /><br />Even at the 5-year mark, I had a rough go of it this year. I fell a couple of times, cried more that I wanted to, hurt from a place inside that I just can’t reach. <br /><br />The big difference this year is that I am in love with Jonathan. While our lovely relationship doesn’t obliterate my grief, it helps me to move forward, to realize that I am now living in the present, possibly for the first time in five years. <br /><br />I will always miss my Chris and I am so thankful that so much of him now resides in me, because he was such a great, fun, sweet, creative and kind man, and I get to keep all of that positive energy within myself, and give it to others in my life.<br /><br />5 years feels different. Chris has become a distant memory; a happy one and a sad one. I have placed him where he belongs, in my past, even though I have carried his beliefs, mannerisms and values into my present. We’ll see each other again…and again…and again…and again… and I’ll get to introduce Jonathan and Chris, if they haven’t already met before…and before…and before. <br /><br />Cheers,<br />Shneed</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0