Life after life
It has been twenty-eight months since my wife, Jamie, died. It feels like twenty-eight years ago often, twenty-eight hours at other times.
I have a dear friend who, like me, is part of the widows/widowers club. This friend has saved me time after time with her humor, her ability to call me on my shit, and her wisdom that has been hard earned. I will never forget her sense of humor in those early months when few people could break through the darkness that had enveloped my life.
I can still recall playing the game Cornhole with a group in the backyard on July 4th. We were getting beat badly, when she cracked, “Why can’t y’all ease up a little bit? You do remember we are part of the Widows Club, right? We need some happiness in our life.”
I laughed till I cried at a time when laughter felt like a betrayal, but I was reminded of the famous Abraham Lincoln quote in the aftermath. Lincoln, meeting with his cabinet at a particularly low point of the Civil War, cracked a joke that engendered virtually no response to which he declared, “Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die.”
So, yes, this friend made me laugh when few others could, but she also had several years of surviving the unsurvivable to lean upon when granting advice and feedback.
Life after loss
Life after you lose the person that you loved more than anyone else feels really damn heavy. If you run, you might consider those muggy summer mornings where your legs feel like they are stuck in concrete as the closest example to the way that you feel every day after loss.
For those who have read the Harry Potter series, I compare it to the way that characters feel when Dementors are released. As J.K. Rowling wrote, “Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself — soul-less and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.”
Life post-loss kind of feels like a Dementor is following you around. The peace, the hope, the happiness are gone. The good memories are more likely to generate tears than laughter, because you feel like the possibility of good memories died with the person that you love. After all, you can’t even call your loved one up to tell them about something that just happened, let alone experience it with them. Writer Anne Lamott once said that following the loss of her father that she felt as if she were performing in front of an empty auditorium — no matter how well she did, who would be present to applaud?
I have lifted the phrase, “life after life,” to describe the way that I felt — and I think the way many people feel post-loss.
The realization
Last week, my dear friend and I were having lunch. Within moments of taking her seat, she told me that I looked better than I had in years — and certainly better than I had in June when she saw me last.
At first, I assumed she meant that I had lost weight, or that my new haircut made me look dashing, or perhaps that my 560th polo shirt was just the one I had been looking for all of these years.
THEN I realized that she meant that I looked happier.
Lighter even.
Over our mediocre salads, my friend told me that she was glad to see the smile on my face, but she warned me that grief comes like a wave — a wave that you often are not suspecting. At first, it is a huge wave that threatens to pull you into the undertow, and then later the waves become smaller, but they still come for her now — nearly ten years later.
It was a stark reminder for me, but also a hopeful one. This spring was the second most difficult period of my life as the person who attacked my wife and I stood trial for his crimes and was ultimately convicted. In the aftermath, I felt some relief, but it was short lived, because as Jamie’s mother reminded me the day of his conviction — it actually changed very little. Jamie was gone. We were left behind to find a way to live. In the weeks, and months, that followed I faced the second darkest period of my life. At the time, I didn’t realize quite how dark it was, but it was as if a Dementor was present again. The peace, hope, and happiness that I sought was gone. The light was dim. I was not myself in April, May, June.
And, yet, my friend could tell that I was beginning to find happiness, hope, and peace again. And I’ve felt that too.
For someone as anxious as I am, I do wonder if this is bringing bad juju on me for even saying it out loud, but I do believe that it is important to share, because I know that people are out there who wonder if they will ever find a way out of the darkness that their life has become. I know that I felt as if I would never find my way, because it was so damn dispiriting to have the light go out of your life completely.
How does one begin to find their way? I say begin, because this is a journey that has only begun.
What helped me?
Reading, for one. I read Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, Joyce Carol Oates, Rod Dreher, and Emily St. John Mandel.
Running helped, as it often does. Long walks too. Eating great food with friends. Being there for others. Service to my community. Beginning to pray again — my own version of prayer which is more of an ongoing conversation. Meeting new people. Being open to new experiences. Spending more time alone. Listening to my own conscience more. Being present to my feelings and not always drowning them out. Finding work that gives me joy. Taking on challenges that I have bypassed. Recognizing my own mistakes and trying to account for them. Resolving to live my life with honor and dignity. Family. Attending a wedding by myself, which is pretty awful for anyone, and when I felt the breakdown coming it was new friends that made me smile and saved me in that moment.
But more than anything what has helped might well have been the hardest thing of all — realizing that my old life would never return. My dear friend told me that she thinks of it as life before loss and life after loss. BC/AD if you will.
Recognizing that I could not cross the bridge back to my old life was, I think, the source of much of the darkness this spring. I was, I realize now, truly depressed, and at a loss. I didn’t care about much anymore, so why even try?
Over time, however, this recognition became an admonition. A reminder that I can’t go back, so I must move forward. So I’ve tried my best.
I attended a wedding recently where I quoted Joan Didion during my reading. Didion said, “I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
So, in my new life, I have tried to resolve to live in it. To really live. To take chances, to take pride in my work, to move forward with honor and dignity, to seize the moment, and to make the best of the life I never asked for. That is what I’ve learned.
For all of us, shit will fall into our life. Terrible things that we never ask for, nor deserve. All we can do in that moment is pour a strong drink, of gin or espresso as the case may be, call upon our good friends, soak in the warmth of friendship and the sun if you have it, and understand that even though we can’t go back, we do have the opportunity to move forward as long as we are breathing on this Earth.
