Not Better

In order to be healthy and to stay rooted in reality, I have to remember certain things that are painful to retain and simpler to forget.  Chief among those things is this.  I am not getting better, yet.  Anne died twenty days ago.  I may have many cheerful, resilient and even happy moments.  I can imagine that there will be a future some day.  I can do what I need to do to get through today, the holidays, whatever.  Yes, yes, yes--that is how it appears.  And that is how it appears to me.  But I am not getting better.

"Better" is a long ways off.  I am so sorely tempted to go around the process, to seek a short-circuit, to cheat the system and dodge the pain.  There are so many ways to do that for a hour or even a day.  But the reality of my life will not be denied.  At some point, the blues kick in and I know that my efforts at self-delusion have failed again.  I am also, however, not getting worse, crashing and burning, wigging out, buying a condo in Rio and booking the next flight south.  This is going to be bad for a long time.  But Anne died. I didn't.  And I'm doing my best to find moments of joy in the midst of the pain, without taking that wild and crazy South American trip.

A few special people are wonderful companions in those brief moments of joy and hope--family and a few friends.  I am so grateful I'd weep for joy if I weren't parched from weeping for sorrow.

A second thing to remember comes as a reminder some time ago from a wise therapist.  Suffering is pain plus resistance (it was the Buddha with the original, I think).  It is when I resist the pain that I suffer the most.  The pain hurts, but it works best for me if I can feel it, cry, and then go on.  It is when I exercise such herculean strength as to hold it at arm's length for a moment or two that I scream in agony.  The pain indicates that something terrible has happened to me and that my body, mind and spirit are working overtime to survive and to heal.  The more I resist, the less energy there is for the healing.

A third thing I must tell myself over and over is that time is my companion in this journey, not my enemy.  Sometimes minutes seem like days.  Part of that is that I'm not working and time slows naturally when one is less busy.  Part of it is the lethargy of grief.  Part of it is sitting through the pain episodes, waiting for them to end.  But time is also the space available for prayer, meditation, deep breathing, exercise, reflection, story telling and picture sorting.  Time is my friend in this process.  Anne is in the timeless realm.  I will join her soon enough, but not yet.  Another friend reminded me that it is Advent, after all--the time of waiting and watching and wondering.  That is what I do.

I must remind myself that no one else can give me what Anne gave me.  She is irreplaceable (which in the long run is different from un-succeedable, but that is a conversation for two years from now).  Efforts to fill in the void somewhow are vain.  Those needs must give way naturally, and that takes us back to time.  On the other hand, I can begin to look for other sources of hope, joy, love and companionship--but only when the previous things have become more resolved.  For now, I am not better.  But I am also not unconscious.

Thus...I am grateful.