The Stages: Anger

A few nights ago, Sophie woke up in the middle of the night.  She often does, but I am usually able to get her back to sleep reasonably quickly with a pacifier, and sometimes a bit of cuddling in the rocking chair.  Overall, she is an incredibly good sleeper, but on the few nights that she doesn't sleep well, I have a hard time remembering it.

That's what happened the other night.  It was a bad night - I had to wake up extra early the next day, and could have really used an uninterrupted sleep.  So naturally, Sophie woke up crying.  I did the usual routine, but every time I put her back into the crib, she'd wake up screaming again right away.  After four or five times, I felt a little like I was going insane.  Most mothers probably know the feeling.  I walked away from the crib, went into the bathroom, and paced back and forth, trying to figure out how to get her to stay asleep, so that I could sleep, so that I could make it through the work day.  She was screaming the whole time.  I tried diligently to figure out a game plan before I went to comfort her again.  After a few minutes of rambling to myself, asking the empty bathroom how I could get her to sleep, I turned to my own reflection in the mirror and quietly cried out the thing I've screamed at the air so many times before.  I want my husband BACK!

Anger

I've struggled for months about how to write about the anger.  The deep down, gut wrenching fury that comes from loss.  I thought that I didn't feel it very often anymore, and I've been trying to find words for how it felt when I was angry all of the time.  The other night though, when I cried for Ryan in the night while Sophie wouldn't sleep, I realized that I  probably still feel angry nearly every day.  I feel anger when I'm lonely and there's no one I can turn to who could adequately comfort me.  I feel anger when I can't do things I want to do because I'm a single mom, which I never bargained or planned for.  Every time I'm jealous of someone else's life, or bitter about the loss of my own future, that comes from anger too.  I'm angry that Ryan was taken from me, and I'm angry that he hasn't found a way to come back.  I'm angry that he can't help me in my darkest hour, and I'm angry that he doesn't get to share in my joys.  Anger is the second "stage" of grief, but more than any other stage, I've found it to have some permanence in my life.  It's not something I've passed through once, but over and over again, sometimes only lightly, and sometimes like a hurricane.  It's not here all of the time, but it cycles back, often.

Right after Ryan died, I think I was in far too much shock to feel it.  I felt misery, but I didn't understand the permanence of the situation, nor the longevity of the grieving process I was about to face.  And nothing felt real.  People often told me that sooner or later, I would be angry about what happened.

And I remember it clearly, the first time I was angry.  It was a week after Ryan's funeral, and the college held a memorial service for him.  It was lovely, and I was and continue to be unspeakably grateful that my husband's colleagues cared so much about him that they would put together such a moving event.  But about halfway through it, I felt fury begin to boil in my stomach.  I don't know what caused it, but I had an incredibly vivid picture in my head of standing up in the middle of a speech, taking off my high heeled shoe, and throwing it through the glass window in the front of the room.  It would have been a ridiculous thing to do, I realize.  But I just wanted to damage something, and a shoe was all I had on me.

Why did I have that reaction?  I'm not entirely sure - except that I felt, all at once, the insane unfairness of it all.  I was having to, for the second week in a row, sit through an extremely emotional tribute to my husband's all too short life.  I had to put on a nice dress, makeup (but no mascara, because I'd probably be crying, and it might run), sit in the front row, hide a six week old pregnancy, take care of myself, and accept condolences.  Don't get me wrong, the condolences were appreciated, but why was I having to do any of this?  This was ridiculous!  It didn't make sense!  It still doesn't.  In that moment, the shock was dulling a bit, and I was beginning to feel the reality of my situation.  It wasn't fair.  It wasn't fair what happened to Ryan, it wasn't fair that he couldn't finish the life he started, it wasn't fair to me, to his unborn child, to his family.  It wasn't fair.  It isn't fair.  I was, and am, angry.

Blame

Furious.  And where do I put it?  Who will accept my rage?  I have no one to blame for this.  Ryan wasn't murdered, he wasn't take away by negligence, he didn't do this to himself, and I didn't cause it either.  It just happened, without warning.  And I have no one to blame.  The universe has stolen from me, and I can do nothing about it.  It feels helpless.  I want to blame someone.  The truth is that having someone to blame probably wouldn't help at all, but it feels like it would.  It feels like without someone to blame, the anger just flies about in all directions.

At first, I blamed myself for what happened.  I must have done something wrong.  I spent months being mad at myself for not taking it seriously when Ryan had a dizzy spell two days before he died.  I ignored him, figured he was overreacting.  I still get nauseated when I think about the look on his face when he told me how he was feeling- he was worried, and I thought he was being a hypochondriac.  I was so stupid.  Why didn't we go to the doctor that day?  Why didn't I make him get a flu shot earlier that year?  Why didn't I dial 911 faster the night he died?  The blame spiraled inward.

Somewhere along the line, I started blaming the universe, and by proxy, God.  How could he do this?  What purpose does it serve?  I've spent nights screaming at him, tears streaming down my face, demanding that he give back what he'd taken.  To an almighty force, I must have seemed like a petulant child, a mouse throwing pebbles at a lion.  And then I'd get scared - maybe if he really took Ryan away, there was more he would take unless I was good.  I don't believe in a vengeful God, but in those moments I'm terrified of what he could do if he wanted to.  I back down, and say I'm sorry.  I thank him for letting me have a baby, and my parents, and the rest of my family, and oh please don't take any more away from me.  And then I ask for him to ease the anger by helping me to understand why this happened.  I still don't understand.

Eventually, I started being angry with Ryan for leaving me behind.  This is the silliest anger of all, because surely he didn't choose this.  But in my intense sadness, Ryan would be my comfort.  He would put his arms around me, and be my rock.  And now he can't, he never can again.  And I'm pissed.  I want him to hold onto me, and tell me everything's okay.  I had to sell our house, I had to go through a pregnancy and labor alone, I've had to make countless difficult decisions alone, I'm having to decide what to do now with my life - and he isn't here for any of it.  I've had to deal with the four lifetimes worth of crap that he accumulated in his 32 years, and with bad decisions that he made.  There have been moments when I've screamed at him to get the hell back down here and help me.  No answer, again.  He's probably up there smiling sheepishly at me, wishing he could distract me by showing me pictures of baby polar bears or something, like he used to do when I was mad.  Nice try, buddy, I'm still pissed.

And there's nothing to be done for it.  I could tell probably a hundred stories about my experiences with anger in grief.  Here I am going on 1500 words, and  there's a lot more I could say.  It all probably sounds terribly unhealthy, bitter, like a person who's not coping.  But anger, like every other part of grief, is important.  As I said, it's ugly, but I think it's cleansing.  On a morning after I've yelled at Ryan, or at God, I feel exhausted.  But then as the day goes on, my soul feels a little lighter - I've let go of part of my burden.  The bad thing would be to let the anger stay inside and fester, to push it down and pretend it's not there, or try to suppress it altogether.  Better to let it out, and let it do its work.  A minister I know told my family that "God can take it".  I hope he's right - I think he is.  The rages have grown fewer, farther between, and less violent, but I can't pretend that they're altogether gone. 

Haunted Places

In a year and a half of mourning, I have traveled to many haunted places.  Places soaked with memories and feelings from a life gone by.  Places where in my mind's eye, I can vividly see living movies of Ryan and I walking together, holding hands, laughing.  Places like the the grocery store, the mall, Target, our favorite restaurants.  The bookstore where we met where we met (even though it's now a Sports Authority).  The entire town of Phoenixville.  My brother's backyard.  The ocean.  The globe is littered with these places, full of ghosts and relics.

For a long while, it seemed that everywhere I went carried some great emotional burden.  Over time, this has faded; I've re-entered almost every place of any importance many times over at this point.  The places are still haunted to me, but I'm used to it now.  When I walk through Macy's, for instance, and think how nice Ryan would look in a particular shirt, I have a dull ache and lingering sadness still that I won't get to buy it for him for his birthday.  It's not as sharp of a hurt as it used to be.  But every once in a while, I walk into a place to which I haven't yet returned, and it reopens a deep wound.

Yesterday, I had a business lunch at Maggiano's.  Ryan and I used to go there all of the time - we both loved the food and the ambiance.  I took Ryan to the Center City Philadelphia location for his birthday one year, and after that we returned often.  It quickly became one of our staples for date night- Ryan would usually order the gnocchi and a beer, and then complain about having eaten too much.  We actually stopped there the day before he died, to pick up catering I had ordered for his graduation party.

This was a haunted place I'd returned to several times already; I'd stared at the catering counter, and felt hollow and sick.  I'd started playing the butterfly effect out in my head - how could I have let him carry all of those heavy trays of food to the car?  Maybe it was the final strain on his heart!  If he hadn't exerted himself like that, or if I'd have helped even a little, maybe he wouldn't have had the arrhythmia in his sleep the next night.  Maybe he would have been okay.  I play this "what if" game out a lot - it's never satisfying, but always impossible to avoid.

So, having been back to Maggiano's many times, I didn't think going there yesterday would be a problem for me.  Until I got there, that is, and they directed me upstairs and to the left, to the banquet rooms.  My heart sank.  I walked up the stairs (past the aforementioned catering counter), and past the second level seating in the restaurant.  There was the table where Ryan and I had eaten once, and decided that it was our favorite spot to eat because it was quieter than the rest of the restaurant.  I kept going up, passed the restrooms on the right, and turned to the left, and the movie started to play in my head.  I was wearing a blue Calvin Klein dress, which later became on of Ryan's favorites.  He was wearing a nice suit, and about 40 of our friends and family were with us in the first banquet room on the left.  It was the night before our wedding - our rehearsal dinner.  One of the happiest days of my life.

I could see Ryan and I sitting at the table in the center, listening to toasts and talking to the people who loved us most.  I could feel his hand holding mine.  I could feel a shadow of the memory of excitement and happiness, thinking of the next day.  Everything was ready and perfect, the weather looked like it was going to be good, and all of the stress of wedding planning was over.  That night I could relax and enjoy myself - and I did.  My biggest concern was trying to not drink too much - I didn't want to oversleep, or have puffy eyes in the morning.  It didn't matter - when I went home to my parents' house that night, I couldn't sleep anyway - I had butterflies.  Ryan was incredibly happy too - he was the calmest groom-to-be I could have hoped for, solid as a rock.  He was enjoying himself immensely.  It was a night when we believed that we had a long life of happiness in front of us, and the possibilities were endless.  The next day we got married, and never knew how briefly it would last.

Walking past the room yesterday afternoon, I wanted to bail on the meeting.  I didn't want to sit there, trying to focus and pretend that I wasn't going through an emotional turmoil, which, of course, I was.  My stomach felt sick, and I didn't think I'd be able to eat.  For the beginning of the meeting, I felt like I wasn't present, my mind kept drifting back four years.  But I pulled it together, and compartmentalized as best as I could.  And before I knew it, I had ripped off the band aid, and now I will never have to go to that place for the first time again.

A lot of my life since Ryan died probably would have been a lot easier if I had bailed on everything.  Years ago, I told myself that if my life ever totally fell apart, I would leave everything behind an start new.  My "last resort" plan included quitting my job, buying a plane ticket across the Atlantic, and making my way however I could - with no baggage.  In a lot of ways, that still sounds good.  But I'll never, ever do it.  Not anymore.  Because the thing that truly makes all of this marginally tolerable is my daughter.  While tiny in size, she serves as a great big anchor to my current location - I'm not going anywhere.  I can't and I honestly don't want to anymore, as romantic as it sounds.  But forgoing a clean slate means that I have to live in the world I lived in before Ryan died - I'll have to return again and again to these places that used to mean so much to our lives.  As hard as it can be to walk in our footsteps, I guess I probably prefer it this way.  It's a lifeline - a tangible connection to memories that I don't want to lose.  While dealing with the hauntings can be emotionally exhausting, it's better than having nothing to remember.  

Fleeting

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying
-Excerpt from "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", by Robert Herrick
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's funny the way that memory works.  I, for example, am not always that great at remembering a person's name right after meeting them, memorizing lists of data, or remembering dates.  I'm better with songs and verses - I know all of the words to every song on my iPod.  And I did memorize the above poem after hearing it just once in Dead Poets Society.  I have also always had a fantastic memory for stories, and that includes the story of my own life.  I remember things no one else does, about an event, or a location, what a person wore, or the order in which something happened.  I remember senses, colors, feelings, all with vivid detail.  I remember what feels like every moment of my life with my husband.  But, in truth, I'm finding that there are things I'm already beginning to forget.

Like last night.  My Dad was flipping through the channels, and landed on the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movie Hot Fuzz.  It's probably an obscure flick, I don't know.  I know it quite well though, because Ryan and I went to see it at the Regal Cinemas in Warrington the year we moved in together.  The movie is ridiculous, a parody of buddy cop action movies, and ends in a blaze of insane, almost cartoony, violence.  By the end of the movie, Ryan and I were both in tears laughing because it was so cleverly stupid.  So when my Dad had it on for a moment, I told him what a great movie it was.  Clearly, I use the term 'great' very loosely.  With my recommendation, he left it on.

As we reached the over-the-top climax of the movie, I very briefly had a clear as day vision of Ryan, doubled over with laughter, a huge smile on his face, trying to catch his breath and wiping tears from his eyes.  Ryan did this every so often, and it was one of my favorite things - when he would totally lose it in laughter, usually over something pretty stupid.  And in this moment, I remembered it so clear; what he looked like, what he sounded like, and how funny it was to me to see him laugh like that.  And then, a second later, it flitted away, and I struggled to pull the image back into view.  I had forgotten, until that moment, the joy I got from watching Ryan crack up laughing.  For the moment thinking of it, my heart became so full, and then deflated again just as quickly.

Like so many things since Ryan died, this vivid image presented itself only briefly, and then sank back into my brain.  It was like when there's a word on the tip of the tongue, so close yet so far away.  It's not that after that moment I couldn't recall the memory at all - the specific event is locked in my mind, as is the fact that Ryan had an incredibly vulnerable funny bone.  What I lose is the incredibly vivid, visceral memories where all of my senses are involved.  These are full color, 3D, tactile memories.  They have smell, texture, temperature.  They come along only every once in a while - the other day it was a vivid memory of what it was like when Ryan would walk up to me from across the room and casually kiss me hello.  The image is there, as though it happened yesterday, as though I'm living it again for a moment, and then so quickly gone again, as though twenty years have gone by.  I can't seem to pull it forward at will - not those full sensory images.  They attack as they like, and slink away with equal speed.

And what's most frustrating is that these memories keep getting farther and farther away, without new Ryan experiences to replace them.  And I'm the only one around who can remember these details of our story.  There is no one else to talk to about it, no one who would remember.  As the memories start to fade from my head, will they still exist anywhere?  It's like that old tree falling in the forest again.  Did it make a sound?  It did to me, but not to anyone else who's around to talk about it.  Maybe I'm not even remembering the sound correctly - maybe it made a different sound.  There's no one with whom to cross-reference.

Then there's the other gut wrenching truth - that as much as these pictures in my head ease the grief for a moment, they cannot compare to reality.  And the reality is just gone.  I'm never going to see Ryan laughing like that again.  Not ever.  The finality of it is crushing.  The moment I have these flashes, all I want is to experience the real thing again, and I know I never will.  I ache for it.

Maybe I'll always continue to have these flashes of clear, lucid memory of my life with Ryan.  I hope they'll always flit back into my head when I'm least expecting it.  It catches me off guard and takes my breath away, sometimes brings tears to my eyes, but unlocking that portion of my brain even for a second makes me know for sure that it did all happen - the great love of my life was real, and I can always keep that.  I can hold it even if I don't have him to share it with anymore.  I hope.  But, even if that's true, maybe this is all a good reminder of an undeniable truth:  much in life is fleeting.  Nothing can last forever, and most of the good stuff will end before we want it to.  It comes quickly, and then is gone, without our being able to control it.

Gather ye rosebuds.