Tom Sonday

Last week I would’ve said I was having a meltdown … except it was too doggone cold for that to happen!

“Torpedo’d” is a more apt description of what went on:  Like a boat in rough water, I was slowing moving forward (although sluggishly and often in a choppy seas), when out of nowhere something took me down.  That “something” was grief, coming at me in high velocity because some of the other defense mechanisms that may have slowed it down were not working. 

You see, one of the silver linings in death for those of us left behind is that life goes on.  We still get up, eat breakfast, laugh — and those all take on a joy in their simple normalcy as well as providing heightened enjoyment.  (Once I started actually tasting food again — a couple months after Tommy died, I was amazed at how good it tasted.  (And I haven’t stopped eating since!))

One of the downsides of death for those of us left behind is that life goes on.  We have to do the normal things like change the furnace filters and pay the bills, in addition to lots of non-normal things like retitle a car, decide it is time to stop smashing the coat closet door closed and finally sort (very sadly) Tommy’s winter boot collection, and change the furnace filters with no one to stand next to you holding the flashlight in that awkward, spider-filled space.  These little “life goes on” events — normally not waves that would knock me over — knocked me over when coupled with bigger waves.

The bigger waves included a lost cell phone, kids who were hurting because their Daddy is gone, car trouble, my own father’s health challenges.  Normally I could handle any of them (mainly because life doesn’t give you a choice), but when they all came at me at once, and all came at me the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, I was torpedo’d.

Why did I smack bottom on Valentine’s Day?  It wasn’t that I was missing Tom because it was the day of romance and chocolate.  (In fact, I didn’t miss his ranting about “it’s a made-up holiday for the greeting card companies and florists …”)  It’s because of historical events.

On February 6, 2008, Tom finally saw a doctor after years of putting it off (and nagging from many concerned people.)

On Friday, February 8, after reviewing the lab results, the doctor scheduled Tom for the first available colonoscopy on Monday.

That Monday the doctor performing the procedure said there was tissue of concern and to schedule an appointment with his office in a week.

Twenty-four hours later the doctor’s office called and said he needed to see Tom asap.

When I came home from work on February 14th, 2008, (Tom refused to let me go to the doctor with him), my husband “greeted” me with the news that he had stage IV colon cancer.  Happy F-ing Valentine’s Day.

So, of all the holidays and firsts that have passed since Tommy passed, why was I torpedo’d by the days leading up to February 14th ?  I think it is because Valentine’s Day marked the 2-year anniversary of when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the life Tom and I had envisioned would never be.   I have a girlfriend who lost her husband to a car accident.  The day of Joe’s death is when her life veered in an entirely different direction.  Valentine’s Day 2008 is when my did.  I very strongly suspected (and probably knew deep down) that Tom would never see our grandchildren,  take our niecelettes fishing, or haul that truckload of dirt he had dumped in our back driveway to the new garden spot.

But, I was hopeful and helpful following that news — and joined Tom in the fight.  Sometimes during those 18 months we were even optimistic.  But, that Valentine’s Day, 2008 — I knew life would never be the same.  I’d ridden the no-cure-for-this-cancer roller coaster for three years with my Mother.  The roller coaster can level out and you can coast from time to time, but — in Mom’s case, and in Tom’s case — you could never get off the ride and the seatbelt just kept getting tighter around your lungs.

So, after thinking about all this (and blobbing it, because blobbing helps) I understand why I’m grieving so much this time of year.  My grief therapist affirmed that this was all part of “getting through it,” and loaned me an awesome book (“Loving Grief”, by Paul Bennett) that noted that pain submerged is pain left to do “anonymous mischief.”  Pain has to work its way out somehow.  So, better tears than tension headaches, losing your car in the parking lot, punching a wall, and / or cracking your tail when you slip on ice in your driveway because you were too distracted to notice it.  (All things, except for punching a wall, that I did last week.)

The book also likened grief to an undertow.  You’re constantly fighting grief with emotional energy whether you realize it or not … and you can run out of energy before you realize how much you were expending.  Like fighting a rip current, only when you give in and go with it for a while can you gradually start to get out of it.

I’m swimming out of it now.  A trip to Ann Arbor helped — not only to see daughter Becca, but also because there’s a Baskin-Robbins (which I visited both upon arriving and as I drove out of town.)  Blobbing about it helps, as has curling up with the cat and vegging in front of the Olympics.

Anyway …  if you’re still reading this by now — please don’t worry.  It is all part of this my awesome grief therapist tells me, and I’m doing much better now.  I’m sharing this only because you might have wondered about me (if you were one of the people I cried all over last week), and in hopes that I can help someone else (sometimes you have to give in to the grief), and because … who knows?  Maybe Baskin-Robbins will read this and open a location in my living room.