It's Back

The quiet sadness is gone – instead I’m back to the raw gut wrenching sadness. The every day sobbing crying hiccupping so many tears I can’t even see. I hurt hurt hurt. Before now, I wanted him back for good – I wanted it all to not have happened. I still want that desperately. But now, I am overwhelmed with my willingness to settle for having him back for just a little while – a day, even an hour. I think I’m in the bargaining stage. All I can think of is just give him back to me for a little while, and in exchange I will take the pain of losing him again. If I really could make it happen, I wouldn’t even hesitate.

In a much worse way it’s kind of like the bad breakup you had with whoever you loved in the past. Even those who are happily married now probably remember what I’m talking about. Remember how you felt when things didn’t work out with whoever you loved before? Regardless who ended it, you probably yearned for one more conversation, one more touch. That’s what this is, multiplied a million times over. All I can think about is how much I want to touch him one more time, kiss him one more time, feel him hold me one more time. It would be worth it, no matter how horrendous losing him a second time would be.

Up until recently, what I wanted more than anything was to be able to talk to him, to say goodbye, to have one last conversation in which I could try to cram everything that I want to say. But now, I do not feel such a powerful need to talk – instead, I want to touch him. He has the softest hair, and I want to feel it again. We fit perfectly together in his big recliner – I want to sit snuggled with him in it one more time. I want to hold his hand, with my thumb tucked into his palm, which was always our way. I want to lie down quietly next to him – not with me on top of the earth and him under it, like I have to now. I want to just lie next to him and feel the length of him warm against me. I would not fall asleep there, like I always did in the past – I would stay awake and feel every second of him next to me – his smell, the firmness of his arm around me, the sound of him breathing, the feeling of his hand on my hair. Most of all, I want to hold him, kiss him – even more than I want to feel him do the same to me.

The sadness was even worse this last weekend because last night was the last meeting of my grief support group. I was shocked at how gut wrenching it was for me. Part of my distress was that I have come to count on being able to talk to these people every Sunday night – they are grieving too, so they understand, but they are not grieving for him, nor do they really know me, which makes them a good fit for my madness. They get it, without bringing anything personal to the relationship. They also are my only social life. My once a week “visit with people and get to know them” time. The only people here that I can talk to about him without ever feeling I am making them uncomfortable.

The other part of last night that was hard was that we did a balloon release. I know it sounds kind of corny, but it was actually good in a sad but therapeutic kind of way. We all wrote a note to the person we lost, tied it to a balloon string, and then we let them go together. Everyone else wrote their note right before the release. I, of course, wrote three drafts yesterday afternoon to be sure I got it right, and brought the final finished version with me. I wrote in tiny letters so the paper could be small and lightweight, yet I could still say a lot. I had a terrible time letting the note go with the balloon. It was like losing something all over again – I cried and cried.

My sadness is accompanied by absolutely crazy thoughts. I find myself obsessed with Buick LeSabres – the make and model of Kirk’s car. Recently I saw one the same color as his. It was in the right lane, I was in the left, and it was slightly ahead of me. I could barely see the driver from the rear, but it was a man. I was overwhelmed with the thought that it was him, and he was driving away from me. I sped up to catch him, trying desperately to see him from the side, to see that it was really him. I knew logically it wasn’t, but what if it was?? - if I could just catch up with him maybe it would all change. Traffic did not cooperate, and I couldn’t pull up next to him, and he eventually got away without me ever getting a better look at him. It made me cry.

I saw another LeSabre last week that was the wrong color. It was coming toward me, but turned in another direction before I got there. Again I felt compelled to try to see the driver, even though the car wasn’t even the right color – I had to stop myself from turning down a road I didn’t even need to go down just to follow it and be sure.

Another day I was in a meeting at work when suddenly there were sirens nearby. I panicked – I felt like I was going to hyperventilate, or maybe like all the air had been sucked out of me, I’m not sure which. I was sure those sirens were for someone I loved. Then it hit me that it couldn’t be. There is no one I love here. That relaxed me, and made me sad at the same time – what an awful thing to live somewhere where sirens cannot possibly be for someone you love, because no one you love is there.

And the craziest thing of all? I was feeling so sad in the car the other day – I was drowning in the feeling of needing to escape the sadness – to feel good again, to have life be okay again. The radio was on, and suddenly I heard an old song, and the words “seems it never rains in southern California…” came out of the radio. Instantly I thought, “I’ll move to Southern California.” I really thought it – no, DECIDED it. For that split second, that actually seemed like a perfectly logical, rational solution to my sadness. Move to Southern California, and I get my life, my husband, my complete lack of sadness back. Truly crazy.

I still cannot believe he is really gone. For good.