Robins and Spring Breezes
Posted on March 21, 2012
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Anyone who used to follow this site, back in the days when I actually made regular posts, has at least a least a brief idea of the darkness I suffered following the loss of my wife.
I recently made a comment on a post on another blog, a post made by a writer I’ve known for sometime, a writer who, six years ago, in the first days after my wife’s death, took an interest in providing me with brief points of lights during those dark days. She lost her husband last year. The post I commented on, while less than 75 words long, spoke volumes of the kind of the darkness I felt in those months after losing my wife. Although our circumstances were different in many ways, they are also similar in so many as well. My comment – a few simple words of encouragement: it does get better. Unfortunately, another commenter, Robyn, with no idea of the background from which I speak, took it upon herself to label my comment as lame and claim, instead, that the pain flares up even more excruciating than before.
Robyn also claims to have suffered a recent loss. I can only assume that she is still in that dark place that true grief tosses you into and has yet to experience the relief that can only come with time.
I have no desire to turn my friend’s blog into a forum for explaining myself to someone who chooses not to understand, so I decided to explain it here. While I doubt the likelihood Robyn will ever run across this, I’ll put it out for anyone to read on the off chance that it will offer someone a little bit of hope. I understand all too well that despair and hopelessness that things will ever get any better. I also now understand how wrong I was.
My wife died when she was just 39 years old. Five months before she had suffered a heart attack and stroke. One day after being told she was on the road to a full recovery, a second heart attack took her life. We had been married for 18 years and together for 6 years before that. For well over half of my life she had been my best friend, my partner, my true love. We were supposed to have decades more to grow old together. Instead, I found myself alone, trying to raise two children who suddenly found themselves without a mother. I was lost and alone, angry and scared. I spent my days trying to be strong for children, my sleepless nights wishing those were my ashes in the urn on the little table in the other room. The days blurred into months and I lost all hope that I would ever find my way out of the nightmare. (Of course, anyone who followed this site before knows all that). In those dark days, during a moment of extreme weakness, I even tried to end it all. A mechanical failure gave me a stay of my self-inflicted execution. After that it took pictures of the one reason I could think of for living, my children, strategically taped anywhere I might be able to make that rash decision – the dash of my car, the bathroom mirror, the kitchen, even my tool box. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remember convincing myself that it was just until the kids were grown.
Eventually the desire to end it all faded and the reminders came down. The constant pain became an ebb and flow. And finally, things began to seem bright and I found I could still enjoy life.
It’s not say that there will ever be a time when I don’t miss my dear wife. She is part of who I am. The memories now are mostly those of our happiness together. The songs that she loved, that once made me turn off the radio (or even send it flying across the room), now make me smile as I remember the sound of her voice and the way she used to dance around the living room with our kids. The flower beds she so loved planting and tending, that I once couldn’t bear to touch and even considered paving over, now get filled with all of her favorite flowers every spring. And the nights of broken sleep, or no sleep at all, are now, for the most part, replaced by a pleasant and restful slumber.
I would be lying if I were to say that all of the pain is gone, never to return. There are still times when I ache for her. Sometimes, after a day at work, I expect to hear her voice greeting me as I walk through the door, only to find and empty house or some mornings, in that half-awake state, I’ll roll over expecting to feel her next to me, only to find that side of the bed unoccupied and cold. But those moments don’t last and come less frequently.
Some people may still think I’m lame. So be it, but I stand by what I said before. It does get better. I never said the hurt goes away completely, and I’m not sure I’d want it too, but it does get better if you give it a chance. I only care that someone (you know who you are) stumbles across this and finds that it brings them a brief point of light and little hope that something better is to come.
50/50
Posted on November 22, 2011
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Toss a coin into the air. Will it come down heads? Or will it be tails? It is generally understood that tossing a coin is 50/50 odds – an equal chance for heads or tails, a truly random outcome. But in reality, there is most likely a slight advantage for one or the other unless the coin is perfectly balanced. Slight variations in weight can cause a coin to show a slight favor to landing on one particular side. Certainly, the first toss appears to be random because the sample size is too small to identify a pattern, but as the number of tosses increases a pattern becomes more apparent. The same holds true for other supposedly truly random selection methods. Some dozen or so years ago, lottery officials in several states faced off with an odds anomaly; the weekly payouts consistently exceeded the odds. It turned out that the drawing method – numbered ping pong balls mixed with forced air and selected by opening an exit vent – was not the truly random method they initially believed. Variations in the weight of the ping pong balls, caused by both the manufacturing process and the additional mask of the ink that created the numbers, were giving certain balls an advantage over others. The result: over time people were able to recognize a pattern and predict with an increased degree of accuracy the numbers that would most likely be drawn. Lottery officials responded by frequently changing the numbered balls. While this doesn’t eliminate the weight advantage, it does return the system to what appears to be closer to a true random drawing since there are never enough samples with a given set of balls to establish a pattern.
Living with depression and anxiety can be a lot like tossing that coin or playing the lottery. At first it seems like you never know on which side your next day will land, but given a large enough sample, you can predict rather reliably what the next toss will bring. At least until somebody changes the balls. Since last Spring I’ve been generally unhappy and battling episodes of deeper depression and anxiety. I haven’t been able to figure out if I’m unhappy because of the depression and anxiety attacks or if I’m battling my depression and suffering anxiety attacks because I’m generally unhappy. I thought it was because the balls kept changing. Coming out of last winter, a time that I normally find myself battling a little harder to keep my mood up, I’ve faced a series of stressful events. Ball changes, if you will. It started with being laid up – first by surgery to remove some benign tumors, then by a broken ankle. Those gave me a late start to my Spring projects (and sapped away some of the cash I had stowed away for those projects). Following being laid up, I built a new shop and remodeled some of the rooms in my house (projects that were started two months later than planned). Other projects were tabled until next year, simply because there wouldn’t be time or I no longer had the cash. All of this took place while I helped my daughter plan her wedding – a bash that I also catered so that she would have more for her limited budget. (A word of advice – don’t try to cater your child’s wedding, you’ll miss too much while you’re trying to make sure the salmon is cooked just right). With all the stress of these events it seemed only a natural place to lay the blame for my diminished mood. But all of the stress has passed and I’m no better off. Worse in some ways. I still haven’t managed a single night of uninterrupted sleep. Without the distraction of those big and stressful projects, I can’t seem to find the motivation to do much of anything. It’s starting to become clear; the balls didn’t change, I was just watching the wrong drawing. I’ve come to realize that there is one constant over the past year, a constant that generates anxiety, frustration and even a bit of anger. I think I’ve known it all along, but I’ve just ignored in hopes that it would get better. It’s never easy to admit failure.
To Be Continued
Posted on November 4, 2011
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From time to time I contemplate deleting this blog. It has, after all, been a full year since I last wrote anything that I actually published. I have, on a number of occasions, logged into the control panel and found myself a single click of the OK button from making the site go away forever. But in the end, I chicken out and press the cancel button. I might, after all, become suddenly inspired and start posting again.
It’s not that I never have inspiration to write. I’ve sat down and started many posts, enough that I found that I had 27 different unfinished drafts in my WordPress editor when I logged in tonight. The problem is a combination of indecision and undervaluation. On the side of indecision I’ve found that there are so many things I want to share that I can’t seem to sit down and complete a single idea. All too often I found myself bouncing back and forth between several ideas, each one being distracted by another to the point that none get completed. And when I do finally get an idea expressed into words I end up filing it away, convinced that it is of no interest to anybody.
Indecision and undervaluation. Unfortunately, those conditions don’t just affect my writing. I’m finding more and more that they rule many aspects of my life. More on that later. It’s time I learned to accept the true value of who I am and what I do, both for myself and others.
More to come.
déjà vu – with a different ending
Posted on October 27, 2010
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It’s been some time since I’ve written. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write or haven’t had anything to write about. No, that’s not it at all. More than lack of desire or subject, it is lack of time and a continued struggle with writer’s block which drives my absence. When I do sit down to write I find myself editing, then re-editing, even the simplest of text, extending a post that would normally take me a few minutes into several hours. And life keeps me too busy to afford that much time. But I do still feel the desire to write, so I keep my blog active so that I will be able to write when life sparks a passion.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been experiencing a case of déjà vu.
My daughter and her boyfriend have been dating for a little over a year. I met him for the first time last fall and we clicked right away. Since then we’ve become good friends. He very much reminds me of myself, or at least the better parts of myself, and it turns out that we really do have a lot in common. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised since they (whoever “they” are) say that a girl will seek out a man like her father.
As it turns out, we share more than just a bunch of common interests. Most of it became evident last summer. He spent most of the summer at my house (not surprising since going home would put a 300 mile separation between him and my daughter), so I took advantage of some cheap labor and used his help to build a greenhouse and raised garden. On this particularly hot day, I had him hauling wheelbarrow loads of gravel to level the greenhouse area. He was working his ass off, and it wasn’t just a “get it done” kind of hard work, it was more like an “I’m pissed and need to work it off” kind of hard work. When I finally bribed him into a break with a couple of cold beers, he confessed that he’d rather spend a day with me working his butt off than spend a day of recreation with his father. It turns out that, as I did at that age, he has some rather serious father issues. Fortunately, his father has never been physically abusive, but he does hold unrealistically high standards and appears to offer no support. Personally, if that is the alternative, I’ll keep the random beatings.
All of this is starting to feel a little familiar. When I was in my late teens and early 20’s, I chose to spend time with my late wife’s father over my own father. It didn’t matter if we were fishing, watching a football game, or splitting firewood. For over two decades my father-in-law was not only one of my best friends, but someone I looked up to like a father. But when my wife died that ended. I guess he looked as our relationship as more of an obligation resulting from my relationship with his daughter and less as a friendship. It was unfortunate to learn that just at a time we both could have used the support of a good friend.
Last week my daughter’s boyfriend came to me and asked for permission to propose. He’s a hard working young man, treats my daughter very well, and is somebody I consider to be a good friend. I’ll be honored to have him as part of my family. But it has left me thinking. Have I become friends with him because of an obligation created by his relationship with my daughter? Am I also destined to abandon him should that obligation end?
There’s an old axiom that says those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. While I’m not sure that repeating history is always a bad thing, I do believe that learning from the mistakes of the past can help you reshape the future.
Statistically speaking, I will likely never have to see my friend and future son-in-law experience the same loss as me. But, in the event the unspeakable does happen, I’d like to believe that he really is my friend and not just an obligation.
No Need For A Title
Posted on July 23, 2010
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It has been a rather long time, just over five months, since I last posted anything to this site. Five months without a word. And nearly as long since I’ve visited any other sites. I’m guessing there isn’t anybody left who even remembers this site exists.
The reasons for my extended absence are both simple and complicated. When I launched this site it was with the idea that I would remain anonymous and I could be free to write about those subjects that are best kept from the eyes of those close to me. I thought writing about those subjects would be therapeutic, but my family, employer, friends, and certainly my rivals, don’t really need to read about my mood disorder or my sex life on some blog. But writing anonymously is full of pitfalls. You have to be careful not to give away your identity. And I’m not just talking about taking care not to give out your name, address, and social security number. You can give away your identity through seemingly innocent details. I’ve seen it happen on anonymous blogs before, a series of small and seemingly innocent details appear in a post or over several posts. Each detail in and of itself is fairly ambiguous, but the combination of details begins to form an unique fingerprint. Keeping anonymous is not as easy as you might think. Couple that with the truth that writing about those subjects just didn’t provide the therapeutic release I had hoped. Writing about my mood disorder caused me to be more focused on the condition and, more often than not, provided the opposite effect I was hoping to achieve.
So I’m left to decide the fate of my anonymous blog. I can, of course delete that. I’ve done that before and always ultimately end up back and my keyboard, trying to create a successful site. A bit of retooling sounds to be the better option. So I’ll make it quasi-anonymous. I’m not going to make a point of telling everyone my true identity, but I’m not going to go through great lengths to hide it either. I’ll write about things that interest me, and keep in mind that there is a possibility people I know will know who I am. I’ll self-censor to not give away any secrets I don’t want made public.
Yes, I think retooling is worth a try. I’m leaving in the morning for my first long vacation in years. There should be plenty to write about. It is a three week road trip that, if all goes well, should have me seeing sights, family and old friends in 22 US states. The only issue will be finding time to write. I’ll be logging lots of hours behind the steering wheel to accomplish this 6500 mile journey, and much of the time spent not driving will be in the company of family and friends. But I’m sure I’ll find time.
Stay tuned.