Was just thinking, I’m catching up with Hillary Clinton.

Since 1992 I’ve had 3 members of my immediate family die by suicide. In December I lost my Stepmother and her husband to natural causes.

In January I lost my husband of 34 years.

I bring you all up to date because there have been some of his friends who keep telling me they know how I feel.

In short, they don’t!

These folks are trying to be kind and supportive. They wax on and on about how difficult it was for them to lose a sibling or a parent. Then they start telling me how I should live my life now.

My friends, those who really know me, have been very supportive and kind. They’ve taken a step back and responded instantly when I’ve asked for help. They’ve done what I asked, maybe made a suggestion or two to make things go smoother and then butted out.

They’re the ones, who like my brothers are concerned, but respect me enough to let me work through this gut punch in my own way. They’ll text or call just randomly to ask how I’m doing and that tells me I’m in their thoughts. They’ve lost parents and siblings, but they’re not banging on about their trauma. They’re providing a wall of strength, occasional guidance when asked, and staunch solid support.

The only people who know how I feel, are those who’ve lost their spouses. There have been a couple of folks who’ve come to me privately offering support or a shoulder. Some of them, I didn’t even know had lost their spouse. I thought they’d been through the more common event of divorce and were single by choice.

I appreciate their support and kindness. I think that them putting themselves in a position where my spouse’s death could reopen their old wounds takes a lot of courage. Maybe someday I’ll have that same courage, but I don’t see that in my immediate future.

To the people that would tell me, “I know just what you’re feeling…

I say this.

Until you’ve bagged up shirts, pants, suits, ties, and shoes that you saw your spouse wear often, into garbage bags to go to a donation site. You have no fucking idea what I’m feeling.

Until you’ve occupied a house where the grim reaper’s handiwork is laying on your bedroom floor for 9 hours, You don’t know shit.

Until you’ve cried yourself to sleep out of guilt and loneliness after masturbation. No words, anecdotes, or over sharing of your personal drama even compares.

Until the future you’ll have to forge into alone yawns before you, almost everything you think you know is absolute and complete bullshit.

Nothing prepares anyone for losing a spouse that you’ve spent almost your entire adult life with. It’s massive! It’s a kick to the balls and the kicking just doesn’t stop.

Telling me “You’ll have to sell object X, Y, or Z,” to keep the lights on, mentioning a person’s name over and over but not providing a phone number after repeatedly being asked to do so isn’t helpful.

It’s cruel! Especially when the person you mentioned is hidden behind multiple websites with no fucking phone number on any of them. It’s also not helpful at all to keep saying that the objects in question are valuable. Duhhhh! I fucking paid for them! The objects in question are also not the kind of things that sell like hotcakes, especially in this economy. Which means these objects are not instant income streams. Despite what you think.

So for those of you who keep saying, “I know just how you feel,” shut the hell up!

You’re not being supportive. You’re not helping, all you’re doing is ripping the bandage off again and again and pissing me off. I’ve got better things to do right now than listen to you blather on about your trauma and attempting to use me as a free psychologist.

You deal with your own shit and leave me to deal with mine.

Yeah… There are some phone calls you just let go to voicemail!

I’m getting better at that every freakin day.

Life Events

We’re all getting older.

Deny it all you will, it’s a fact.  Currently, on my mantle is an urn. It’s a nice simple shape.

It contains the cremains of my Significant Other. We had 34 years together; some good, some bad, but the important thing is we endured the hard times and celebrated the good times.

There’s a finality to that urn. It’s like a stake in the ground that says, “From here you go on alone.”

Now, there’s all the paperwork and complications. There’s the digging through documents and trying to find accounts and pay for this, that, and the other thing. There are originals and copies of proof of death to be sent to various organizations. It’s complicated, litigious, and annoying.

There’s cleaning, and organizing of all the little bits of stuff that my S.O. considered important enough to keep and deciding the validity of each thing. Should the silly coffee mug from some professional conference be kept? It means nothing to me. But it was a cup that frequently was on the breakfast table. I suppose, in that, some objects have attained sentimental value, but are they important enough to keep?

How do you decide? What merits an object’s inclusion in a cabinet when everything in the house is something you remember picking out together? When your home is full of memories, how do you weight one item over the rest?

There are items that should be returned to my S.O.s family. I’ve been collecting those because these items have historical significance to the family and should be passed on. Like other objects they have little significance to me personally, but to the family they are bits and pieces of their history. The family should have the opportunity to accept or reject these items.

Our home is full of memories. These memories come unbidden at random times and they can be paralyzing.

Then there are all the good people who don’t know what to say or do. There’s really nothing they can say or do, this pain is mine. I appreciate their well wishes and concern. But really there’s little they can do to help, short of standing with me.

There are those among the friends of my S.O. for whom drama seems to be necessary. For them, sharing their trauma of losing a parent or sibling is supposed to be helpful. In reality their repetitive oversharing is just ripping the bandage off the wound.

It’s not that they mean to be cruel. They just don’t understand that grieving a spouse seems to be a private affair. Losing a spouse is very different from losing a parent or sibling. I’ve experienced all three now. The spouse, is a completely different experience.

When you’re growing up, you come to understand that death is part of life. You understand there’s an order to things. You eventually realize that your parents will one day, not be there, and you usually have a long time to come to grips with that concept. Often, your parents, realizing their own mortality, provide you with guidelines and instruction. It’s not overt, but you see your grandparents pass on and by observation you learn how to come to grips with that inevitably.

When your parents pass on, you grieve following your parent’s example of grieving their parents.

When your spouse passes on, you have some rudimentary coping mechanisms but those don’t really fit. You’re in uncharted waters and each day brings new and different pain.

You see something that your spouse left behind. For example, a mess, and your first thought is to be irritated by it, then you remember your spouse is gone. That’s when you feel guilt about being irritated with them, and grief washes over you. Then you wonder if you were good enough to them, were you petty when you expressed your irritation about them leaving messes in their wake.

Should you have been more patient and loving? Then you’re back to guilt.

You don’t really have time to process your feelings because there are plans and decisions to be made.

The love of your life may be at peace, but you’re anything but…

I’ve found myself losing hours of a day over something trivial. I’ve been awakened by the dog in the night because unbeknownst to me I was crying in my sleep. It’s a strange feeling to be awakened by your dog kissing tears away. In the dim moonlight I can see the dog’s concerned eyes. Once I’m awake, he lays down next to me with one paw on my arm, as if to say, “I’m here Dad, it’s going to be alright.”

I’m anthropomorphizing the dog. He doesn’t really understand, but he’s aware something fundamental has changed in our home.

Grief appears to be a journey. It’s not one that I’m prepared for, and not one that any of us have a choice in undertaking.

I’m getting the feeling that this is also a long journey.

All of which is to say, I’m likely to be writing intermittently at best.