Progress

It is a little over five months now, and I can feel myself moving ahead. I still often cannot grasp or accept that Kirk is gone, but the rawness of it all has largely dissipated, and the grief and sadness is not as wrenching. Instead, it has become something normal that I carry with me all the time. It is quieter and no longer shocking. And although I still never seem to feel truly happy, there are moments, usually when I see someone I really like, when my smile feels like it is getting closer to being a REAL smile. Closer to being a smile with my eyes as well as my mouth. Closer to being an inside smile, not just an outside smile.

This often does not feel like a relief. I don’t think I like that the emotional extremes have worn off, because it makes me feel further away from him. In some ways I would prefer to still be overcome with pain, just so I won’t be moving through life without him. You will notice that in the first sentence of this entry I said I was moving AHEAD, not moving ON. I don’t know what the difference is, but I guess to me, “moving on” sounds like a choice, whereas “moving ahead” feels unbidden. Whatever it is, it is definitely not a choice – this “progress” is just happening to me. I don’t understand it, but it is not in my control and I cannot change it.

Are you shocked? That I am beginning to progress? I am. Shocked, I mean. I could accept ADJUSTMENT after five months, but PROGRESS? How can I be doing better so soon? How can only five months be enough for me to feel even a tiny bit better, after 30 years of truly loving him? It doesn’t make sense to me, and I feel kind of guilty and sad and uncomfortable about it.

I just read the last paragraph and looked hard at the word “better.” Am I actually a little bit “better?” That’s the word that comes out of my fingers when I type, but is it the right word? I’m not sure it is. I don’t necessarily feel better, but I do know that I am different than I have been, and I’m not worse, and that this is easier than it has been, so I can’t find another word for it.

I finally took the sheets off the bed last night. Remember, the ones I have not washed or changed since he died? Sounds disgusting, I know, and in my other life, I would have thought so too. Five months on the same sheets? Inconceivable. But when you have forever lost the person who shared those sheets with you, changing them is what becomes unthinkable. I have long since accepted that they do not smell like him, the way I had hoped they would. But he died while I was at work, and when I left that morning, he was in bed, barely awake. That means those sheets are the last place we were together. And that the last time I ever saw him, or heard his voice, he was wrapped in them. "I love you. Drive carefully. Take a banana." The same thing he said every day.

Taking the sheets off is the closest thing to a religious experience I have had in a long time – maybe ever. I literally mean I felt reverent, even spiritual, as I did it, like the sheets were a symbol of worship, of something big and important. I didn’t just pull them off like I normally would. I handled them with care, like a priest with an altar cloth. I stroked them, smelled them, inspected them. I looked to see if maybe there was a piece of his hair somewhere. I didn’t find one. I saw that the fitted sheet is starting to fray in one spot, and I knew instantly what it was – the place where his feet touched every night, wearing thin because he always rubbed them over and over on the same spot as he fell asleep. He would rub them so hard against the sheet I could hear it. The sound sometimes kept me awake and I’d have to ask him to stop. I tried to ignore it usually though, because somehow the feeling was soothing to him, like a baby stroking a blanket while drifting off.

In the section where my head goes, the sheets have water spots – big ones. My first thought was drool – do I drool?! Then I realized – no, not drool. It’s tears. Five months and ten days worth of tears. I cried again taking those sheets off. I kept going though, not because I am grossed out by sleeping on them, but because I am as ready as I will ever be to take this step. I folded them carefully, and placed them, unwashed, in the drawer that has been dedicated to the only piece of clothing I have that smells like him – the shirt he wore the day before. The one with the hair clippings inside the neck from the haircut he had the day he wore it. The one I take out and hold when things are really really tough. I held it again last night, then closed the drawer, put the new sheets on the bed, and crawled in for the night. Baby steps.

I’m kind of scared to post this entry. Mainly because of the kids and his parents. What will they think? Will they be hurt? Because I have inched forward a little bit, so soon? Will they think less of me? Will they think I’m “getting over” losing him? I don’t think they will. I think they will be glad. I know I want them to be inching forward too, and would not see their progress as a lack of love or commitment to him. I would not think it would mean they are okay with the loss of him.

But maybe my progress will be hurtful to them. I am his wife, his partner. I am the only one of us who CHOSE him, who made a promise to him. I know the vow was “until death do us part.” How bizarre that vow sounds to me now – as if when someone dies, their spouse is instantly off the hook, no longer committed, free to walk away. Ridiculous. So as our family watches me, how do they reconcile the promise I made to him with seeing me moving ahead? Aren’t I the one who is supposed to show the most commitment? Shouldn’t I be the slow one? The one who should move ahead last? Or NEVER? I am struggling with these questions – why wouldn’t they? I hope they can tell that my vow – to love, to cherish, to honor - still lives. It is not eliminated by death, nor is it diminished by my progress.

I had expected that this journey would take me from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other – that over a long period of time, I would move from extreme sadness back to real happiness again. I thought that when I got “there” (wherever in the future “there” is) I would sometimes feel happy, and sometimes feel sad, but that the happy moments would eventually come to be much more frequent than the sad. And that the happy and sad would be discrete – one or the other at any given time. But I am beginning to think I was wrong, and that this is not about moving along one emotional line, or having one feeling at a time. I think it may turn out to be parallel lines, and that where I will end up is carrying both feelings with me all the time. That I will eventually come to be happy even though I am also still sad.

I guess that’s okay. Maybe even good. Maybe if the moving ahead does not include fully giving up the sadness, it will make it more okay to keep going.