Another Grief Observed

 

 And grief still feels ... like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. --C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed Even five months out, my subconscious does not catch up. In my practical life, I know what I must do. I am in a pretty consistent problem-solving mode. And I am not bad at it. There are times when I am overwhelmed, but I have worked out a system with the kids on how to signify that to them, and what to do about it (another example of, well, problem-solving). I also have many helping me, many who care for me. In the midst of the active days, I sometimes catch myself and realize that what inspires me in this problem-solving mode is the awareness that has got me through similar seasons in life: the awareness of finitude. Intense times are temporary. There are sabbath rests at the end. So far so good. But I have also realized that I still expect this season to end with Heidi coming back and telling...

16 years ago, I began the day unbetrothed. By the end of the day, I was engaged to Heidi. I had hoped today to write a record of that whole day 16 years ago. (And it was a whole day. I had a plan). But I do not have the time or the will to write tonight. I hope I will do so later, when I can, so that memories do not continue to fade. I will use the time I have this evening in recollection and memory of that day. It is what I crave right now. The only part I will share is what Heidi said when I asked her. I had planned to propose at a specific spot in the Villa Borghese. But May 1 in Italy is a holiday--their Labor Day. And the park of the Villa was full . The spot I had picked was crowded with families enjoying a slow evening outdoors, as is the custom in Italy every Sunday and holiday. So I had to find another spot. I led Heidi in many different directions, apparently aimlessly. She told me later that she knew what was probably coming. In fact, she said she had a good guess ever since...

Before going back to work, I decided, rather impromptu, to take the remnants of my family on a roadtrip. We went to South Dakota. Why South Dakota? Before the decision to go, I was not sure why. I think the main reason for the choice was that I wanted to go somewhere relatively close and familiar ... and isolated from normal life. I mainly just wanted to drive. The journey was important, not the destination. The wonderful simplicity of knowing what you are supposed to do for the next nine and half hours is liberating. No matter what happens in the back seats, you gotta keep driving. (That being said, there was no trouble from the back seats. Monica and Bastian were excellent helpers, and Margaret travels exceedingly well. It's really quite amazing.) We stayed in the Black Hills. I'm not a fan, but the kids are, and so is Uncle Geoff. They enjoyed them. No, I'm a fan of plains and deserts. I like seeing my horizon, unblocked by mountains or trees. (Rolling hills, such as are...

possibilitas est metaphysica, vel physica, vel moralis   I can't move on, and I can't stay here. I can't be excited about God, but I can't not cling to Him. I can't see— really see—how the hope we believe in surpasses what I had, yet I can't abandon hope. I can't let go of the suffering, and I can't be thankful for it. I can't go back into society, yet I can't be an island. I can't talk, and I can't be silent. I can't live in the past, and I can't care much about the present or the future. I can't see much reason for daily action beyond duty, but I can't abandon duty. I can't find—or seek—joy of any depth, but I can't refuse the surface presentation of it. I can't focus on this all the time, but I can't not want to focus on this all the time. I can't be without Heidi, and I can't be with Heidi. I can't imagine life without her, but I can't be with her in life. I can't remember our days w...

Hi, Heidi. How are you doing? Are you... happy? In the fullest sense of that term? If I knew you were happy, that would make it easier for me to bear your absence. For a time at least. I miss you. I wish we could talk one last time—together, that is, with both of us talking: me hearing your voice. I also wish it could have happened at the hospital, one last time. But our actual last conversation, before you were intubated, was as good as can be. Peaceful and pleasant. Looking back now, it doesn't make sense that it was so. Of course, we were still hopeful then. But you had also received the last sacraments. We knew this was a possibility. How did we hold it together so peacefully and pleasantly then? I don't understand it. Then, you slipped away into unconsciousness. Then you were intubated, which required being sedated. As far as conversation goes, I guess we quit while we were ahead. The kids and I are managing, as far as everyday practical matters go. It is my guess that you...

In these days, I have, for the most part, been unable to formulate words of prayer to God. This is not to say that I don't think of Him sometimes. It's just that I have nothing to say. Just as He seems to have nothing to say to me. "What about petition?" Well, what can I ask for? I did a lot of petition, before. We all did. I'm exhausted asking for things. And even if " it is lawful to pray for whatever it is lawful to desire ," what is there to desire? The thing I want—to go back to the past, to have Heidi not to have died—is among the things that even omnipotence cannot do , a "thing" without thingitude. Should I then ask for something else? Should I ask to get through the grief? To feel joy again? To "move on"? You all know I cannot do that yet. In my widower's brain, I cannot yet understand getting through the grief as anything other than abandoning Heidi—and that I cannot do. Lewis speaks about this: ...we want something else...

 Note: Feel free to skip this one. I imagine most posts in the future will be not as "in the thick of it."   I did not know that some things would be worse after the first month. I guess I see why Lewis started writing then. I expected that, eventually, the mornings would become like the evenings , losing their special sadness as we reached our new normal. I did not expect that it would work the other way around. No matter how normalized the evenings have become, I guess I am suffering shock at the fact that Heidi still does not come back. My instincts seemed to be working under the impression that she would return if we just made things right at home. I also expected not to feel angry this time around. That was just hasty. It can be a dangerous thing to allow expression to one's anger. Angry people know they are right, and, as one wise person put it to me, "One is never so eloquent as when he is angry." Thus, I will be intentional in trying to keep this short....

Well, looks like we're in full "wrestle" mode now. Am I angry at God? Many have told me that it's OK to express my anger at God. The Psalms, Jeremiah, perhaps even Job, furnish us with inspired examples. And I know that God knows the frame he gave us; that anger itself is an indifferent, even if risky, emotion. I also know that Lewis allowed himself some anger. Those were the most moving parts of his book, bringing me to tears: Meanwhile, where is God?... When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him,... if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows....

Today is Valentine's Day. A day that meant more to Heidi than I think most who knew her would expect. It is also this day that marks one month since her death. So it shall be at 5:28 PM. It is possible that some of you, reading what I have written, imagine a soul in a state of paralysis or constant gloom. No need to worry. In fact, one blessing of this exercise is that I can more freely move on to necessary or unnecessary activity. I can isolate, package up, and save my more somber thoughts, and thus be delivered from the need to cycle through them constantly, lest they dissipate forever. Those who see me know better. I am able, for better of for worse, to laugh and smile and do stuff. Over the past five weeks, I have had at least three people tell me that they know I am "strong." That was the word they used. Now, make no mistake: it helped to hear it. In my life dealing with young people, I know the principle that affirmation tends to supply or multiply its object, as a ...

I looked back at my last post. I noticed the strange reversal of these days, a reversal of all the symbolism that literature and liturgy make of the rotations of this, our planet. For normally, mornings mean hope, and the evening is the harbinger of the "terrors of the night." But for me in these days, the evenings are tinged with hope, and the mornings are when I feel the most powerless. There is a good reason for this. Unreality. Unreality scares us. Most of the time, the dreams of sleep are more unreal than our daily lives. And so there can be a dark foreboding as we are forced to enter a state where we lose much control of our thought and sensation. " Procul recedant somnia, et noctium phantasmata ." But for the bereaved—or at least for Lewis and myself—the day feels more unreal than the dreams of night. Lewis makes the connection when speaks of his experience as a "nightmare unreality." His lived experience is comparable to a fearful dream. Similarly,...

 Then Heidi died. A new phase began. I did not expect that. From the time came when I knew she was going to die, I thought I was already experiencing all that I would experience. But while Heidi was in the hospital, there was still the chance to be with her, physically, next to each other in space. In spite of all pain, thanks to the generosity of work and family, there was at least one joy I had each day: coming back to her every dawn. It was with a spring in my step each day that I got out of the parking structure, hastened to the elevator, and walked speedily, but softly, into her room on floor 7. I was home. All in spite of her apparent lack of consciousness. All in spite of the prospects for the future. For these days, there was only the present. Being at my wife's side was, I am quite sure, the most living-in-the-present-moment that I have ever done in my life. She was present. I was able to hold her in her last minutes. Then it all changed. My life's mission that had gon...

Then there was—is—the sorrow for Heidi herself, for her own sufferings. In his own work, CS Lewis says the following: And I can believe He is a vet when I think of my own suffering. It is harder when I think of hers. What is grief compared with physical pain? Whatever fools may say, the body can suffer twenty times more than the mind... What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? I think Lewis is being hard on himself. It is quite evident to me that, at least in the beginning, his own wife's sufferings were topmost in his mind. The same was true for me. Sorrow for myself only came later. As Heidi approached death, my pain, my intense pain was about her suffering. It is true that she was sedated and on medications. But we really don't know what she experienced. And I guess it wasn't just her physical pain that caused us so much grief. It was really... everything, everything this rather horrible disease was doing to her body. I...

Thanks for your helpful comments. Some of you have said that it is ok for me to be a little more honest, to "wrestle with God" a little. Oh, don't worry: that's coming. In these records, I am basically proceeding in a sort of chronological order. Time for writing is scarce, but, in reality, the thoughts cycle continuously. And yet there are stages of predominant thoughts. And I am recording those stages in the approximate order that they happened, even though they are not the stage I am in now. The exercise, perhaps, could be what St. John of the Cross would call a purgation of memory, as much as it is anything else. I am, as Lewis said, recording "one thought in a hundred", one at a time. Before the wrestling with God, and after the gratitude for the good that so many were doing for me, I would say what came next was an outward-turned sorrow. I felt sorry for other people. (My brother and my sister pointed this out to me). I have already expressed how sorr...