Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
PR's new saga...
sKePTiKal:
I have started to wonder if the reason we fall in love with our opposites, is to round off our corners & edges a little more, mud.; if that's not what part of the attraction is?
Cleaning out Mike's closet wasn't emotional at all. He kept buying clothes & shoes, long after he stopped wearing all but a select few items. I'd been going through it and paring things down twice a year, anyway. I think going through the various little stashes of what he's pulled out of his pockets and saved will likely be worse. Found our concert tickets yesterday - including the 8th row at the Moody Blues w/ the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra. Our first "official" date.
The birthday card from this year is what I'll be saving in my treasure box, though. That was the beginning of the month and he could still write, though he was having difficulty. The girls & I had stayed up late the night before - blowing off steam. And since Mike was up all night, albeit in the hospital bed, the 3 of them decorated to surprise me. He was throwing crepe paper streamers up trying to get them across the blades of the ceiling fan. And smiling and laughing... thinking I'd be mad in the morning.
It has also occurred to me, that I really started losing him a couple of years ago. Just little things; the kinds of things all couples make space for each other to have in a relationship - his naps; excuses for not sleeping in bed or sharing a bathroom - things like that. I have FELT more alone in the last couple years, right up to these last two months of caring for him BECAUSE he couldn't do it himself. And it doesn't bother me now to be alone. There's no sudden change.
mudpuppy:
My girl wasn't my opposite. We were two peas in a pod.
I didn't get emotional about any of her clothes either except for the ones she wore often or that had particular memories of times or places attached to them.
But, yes the cards and the letters and the photos that reminded me of events or times together were more sentimental.
I don't know how old your girls are but I hope they are doing as well as they can and that the three of you can lean on one another.
I don't know if this will be similar for you, but about the first ten days, I felt a sense of relief that the two years of chemo were over and so was her suffering and I was so busy with preparing for her service that I actually felt better those first few days than I did before she died. It was only after her service that the aloneness changed and became more final and harder to take and the sorrow really hit.
mud
lighter:
sKep:
I'm relieved M doesn't have to endure more medical procedures too.
It was just too hard on him..... would have created more pain, not less.
Less was better, IME.
I'm so sorry, (((Amber.)))
Lighter
sKePTiKal:
Thank you all. I'm doing just fine, which is a bit of a surprise to me. I guess that's another one of things that I was told about myself that was wrong, at least in this particular case. My mom keeps calling to try to transfer her experience to me and get me to mirror it back to her. ;) I wasn't born yesterday. I let it go to voice-mail.
I went out to the store yesterday, took some trash out in the rain, picked up the mail - which amounted to another foot high stack of catalogs & magazines like the 5 bags worth I'd just trashed. Thanks Mike. Lots of mindless stuff "to-do"... LOL. Picked out a big fat book for myself to read on British history - The Plantagenets - and it's better than any Rx and will last the required time needed to reset myself into a new schedule and routine.
I find myself "bouncing" a lot - go here; oh! I have to do this... would you LOOK at that? I better do this right now. Kind of all over the space in the house that we actually lived in. The rest of the house is just storage or to be room for other people to come stay. It's because so much of my time and attention previously had been 100% at his beck & call; even before he was seriously sick, I found it conflicting to leave him alone for long periods of time because he was attached to me; my physical presence - like a tick. Sounds derogatory and maybe it is a dig, but most of the time I didn't stop or prevent that... although I did spend a very large amount of time trying to teach him where that line was.
So, I find I have to tell myself: it doesn't matter what time you go out to the store or run errands. If you want to write checks for bills first - do it. If you want to clean those two stacks of catalogs/magazines off the table and get them ready to take out later - do it. You can go to the store when ever YOU want to - not on someone's else's timetable. If you want to go to bed at 8:30... there isn't a single person here to raise an eyebrow about it... and if you want to sleep 10 hrs, that's fine too. It's a time of mental boundary freedom - tearing down the imaginary fences - and it's not scary at all. Little by little, I'll venture out to do some more things. My friend won't be able to be here until tomorrow but I have something important to do today anyway.
So, being around groups of people isn't a problem - even if they do wear me out with their energy and desire to "help". Good lord, my D is like I used to be at that age. Energizer bunny. But rattling around in this big old house isn't a problem either. I'm not "lonely" - I've always been good company for myself - and I'm not running around "doing" all the time to avoid thinking/feeling. I am removing the layers of stuff, that have hidden the bits of my life that I've carried around for years and years... saving them for myself for when I didn't have this person who needed me so entirely around. I actually bought myself a super-duper watercolor taboret before we moved here. I have 5 or 6 different sets of brushes for different kinds of things. My old buddies. Been thinking about buying myself a press.
So: at 2:30 am the night before... I woke and couldn't go back to sleep. Twiggy and I still commune for about 1/2 an hr to an hr every morning, I talk to God too, just in case he's tuned into my frequency... and well, it's like from outside of "me", I received the knowledge that Mike is OK; from Mike himself -- and he was giving me my life back. That our contract had been successfully completed. In my sorting and re-arranging, I found the receipt for my engagement ring. He'd kept it all these years. One of many millions of pieces of paper, or marbles or shells, each and every thing making up his "memory minder". I still have it; for now. The whole day went so much better than the day before. Just that sense of "comfort that surpasses all understanding" - it's a real thing. I know I "did good"... and I'm now free to explore the next chapter in the saga. No regrets; no mysteries to puzzle out and try to understand (except the password to our accounting software)... and I get to go bring what's left of Mike home today, so he can get ready for his party in the spring.
I am indulging a bit in the magical thinking side of things. Not in important ways - I'm moving faster on the business side than anyone else is ready for. It's a task I'd just like to get it over with; despise paperwork and bureaucracy. I'm just enjoying that lingering glow of love and life shared while I do all this sorting out, removing layers, and finding that other "me" again and redefining her "next mission".
lighter:
You're so strong, Amber.
You're Izzy strong.
Lighter
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