Mattering

my daughter Pallas (2nd from the left) and her friends

She says to me “Kim, you’re important. Other widows want to meet you. They ask if you will be there.”

I was talking to Michelle, the founder of this blog, Camp Widow, Widow’s Village and Soaring Spirits Foundation.

She was trying to convince me to come to widow camp.

I wasn’t going. Even though I live just two hours away.
I wasn’t going.

I’m important, I whispered to myself. I’m important.
I matter to other people.
I had not felt that way since…
Art died.

The moment Art died I felt like I mattered less.
Like the space I took up in this world was not nearly as important as the space others take up.

I was not a wife anymore.
As a wife I knew I mattered to one other adult. I mattered a lot to him.

As a widow there is no one to call to say “I’m on my way home.”
There is no one to worry about me, or worry with about the kids.
My day doesn’t matter to other people.
They guy who cut me off matters less.
The great deal I got on a dress doesn’t really matter either.
My life and all it’s little insignificant happenings does not matter to anyone else.
It would take days for anyone to realize that the kids and I were gone…or dead.
Without a husband I questioned my matterness.

And it was not until Michelle spoke the opposite of what I believed that I saw how I carried around that little belief. I carried it around as sure as I carry around my kids were born from me, that Obama is our president and that I will wake up tomorrow and it will be Sunday.

I don’t matter as much now that I don’t have some to matter to.

That belief just sits there,
quietly,
solidly.
I matter less with no one else to share my life with.

And the thing is I didn’t realize that was my belief until I spoke with Michelle.

“I matter,” I whisper again, this time just a little bit louder.
The funny thing is:
if I take a really close look at my life.
if I am honest about who I have become since Art gave me the gift of his death
if I really look at it, I matter more
now
than I did when he was alive.

And if this is true for me, then it is true for many of us widow’s too.

We matter.
We matter to each other.
Every blog that is discovered at 3:23 am, when a widow is terrified of what has happened to her or him,
matters.

The comments that widows leave, the open, honest, "me too" comments that are left and read by THOUSANDS
matter.

The visitors, lurkers, outsiders
matter.

We all matter! It just doesn’t look the same way it did before our partners died.
Heck it doesn’t look the way we were taught it was supposed to look, dead partner or not.

I matter
You matter.

So when you see me at Camp Widow, or out and about in LA, come up and give me a hug.

I need it. I need to be reminded that I matter.
And my guess is you need to be reminded that
you
matter
too.

I think we all do.

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Grief from A Child

This is what Ezra has to say about grief. He wants you to pay attention. He's nine. He was 7 by three weeks when Art died. M=Mom, aka Kim

E: It's scary whenever I go to sleep because I’m afraid I will be dreaming about daddy.

M: Why do you not like that?

E: Cause then every morning I wake up and I realize that he’s never coming back and it’s really hard for me.

M: What do you miss about your dad?

E: I miss that everyone would say, “Oh your dad is so tall. I wish I had a dad like him!” and stuff like that.

M: What do you think about our new lives without him?

E: Everyone says that everything that happens on earth has a reason. And it’s really hard to believe that this has a reason.

M: What do you like about our lives now that you don’t have Daddy?

E: Come to think of it, I’m having a lot of new experience that I wouldn’t have if my dad was alive.

M: Like what?

E: One of the biggest experiences is not having dad.

M: What are your good days like?

E: I don’t know. I think about him. I have my mind on other stuff.

M: Do you have any advice for people who are grieving, adult or child?

E: If people say that they are in worse grief than you are, just say, "You know I don’t think you are." because there are different kinds of grief. So it may be they are in bigger grief than me but in a different way.

When people say that to me, I just think you don’t know how I feel, so how can you compare something when you don’t know what it is?

M: What is it like to watch me cry when I miss Daddy?

E: I have different feelings. Sometimes I feel like I let you down somehow. Sometimes I feel like I should just leave you alone because I’m not in too good a shape myself.

M: When you comfort me, how does that make you feel?

E: When I comfort you, it kind of comforts me. And also that’s why I like to play the piano sometimes. It’s another way to express myself without getting mad. It comforts me.

E: slyly. That’s why you should let me get on the piano more often.

M: Do you have any tips for widowed mothers?

E: When the kids say, “Leave me alone” the mother should. Cause a lot of times when we say, "Leave me alone." it’s just better to be left alone because it feels good to let your feelings out when you’re not with other people.

M: Ezra can I post this for other widow’s to read?

E: Well that’s why you’re writing it all down, isn’t it?

I love you Ezra. Thank you for teaching me what it's like to be you.

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How Did He Die?

I’m at the bank, not my usual branch.
Comments are made about how tall my youngest is.
“He’s only 9?”
I nod.
What I want to do is roll my eyes, and hand her a card that says:

“Thank you for noticing that my child is tall. Hopefully he will be a tall man some day. I have trained him to smile and say “Thank you,” even though he has nothing to do with how tall he is or how tall he will be. Now kindly stop ogling and either lets finish our business or be on your way.”

That’s what the card would say.

But I haven’t printed it up yet so instead I say:

“Yes, he is tall. My husband was 6’6.”

I use past tense easily now, forgetting how ominous it sounds. When their eyes go wide, I assume, for an instant that it’s in response to my husband’s height. Silly me.

The conversational tone changes from light to tragic. Their realization that in front of them is a woman whose life truly is tragic. “Did you say your husband ‘was’?”

Here we go.

“Yes. I did. My husband died.” And depending on the situation I sometimes add ‘recently.’

And then it comes, the stupidest question ever…

“How did he die?”
Or if they have a modicum of politeness, it’s:
“Do you mind me asking how he died?”

Now here is my quandary.

I do mind. Now I do.

When he first died, I would recount the story in detail. Somehow telling it over and over again and getting the same reactions over and over again put more and more earth beneath my feet, a place where I could say “this is where I stand now, without a husband.”

Then right around the second year, I noticed that telling my story began to feel old. I felt like my piece of earth was fairly solid. I had tamped it down and built it up. It was called “my new life: the expected bad, ugly and the surprisingly good.”

As I stepped into my third year, (OMG my third year….. I remember in the beginning not being able to imagine what it would be like to live that long without him!) Wow.

As I stepped into my third year, I find the question intrusive. And voyeuristic and well, like I’m adding to their gossip mill.

Isn’t it enough that my husband died? If I tell them he died of cancer, unless they have experienced loosing someone to cancer, they will have a way-not-accurate-image of his last moments on this earth that will probably include him looking deeply into my eyes and him saying a few final words before his last breath is taken. Or something that is so, so far from the truth!

I have to admit. It’s the kind of question I would have asked before I was on this side of death. It’s the kind of thing I would have listened intently too, shaken my head. Then later, maybe months later, I would have shared with an authoritative tone in my voice “I met this woman who lost her husband to cancer and she said…….”

That would have been me. Missing the whole point. Because it’s not how he died that matters. It’s the fact that he’s dead that matters.

And this is what I want to tell someone when they ask.

“Its not about what killed him. What makes it so difficult is that he’s dead.”

So I resolve to use that line. I resolve to not tell anyone how he died.
From here on out, when someone asks me “how” I will reply:

“It’s not what killed him that matters, it’s the fact that he is dead that is so difficult.”

And in that resolution, I leave the house the next day.
And I find myself in a random conversation with a random person in line at the grocery store.

Out slips “He was … “

“Oh!” she says “Is your husband dead? “

“Yes.” I reply

“Was he shot?”

I give up.

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Widow vs. Widow

She said “Well, at least you got to say good-bye.”

Anger rises in me because I see her comment as one of those my-situation-is-worse-than-yours comments.

Anger because she wants to beat me to the bottom, to claim more grief, more anger, more despondency than me.

Anger because really? Do we have to have this conversation? I’ve had it before but about skin color with a white friend who was saying that my “blackness” was different from the “poor people’s blackness.” And I had to explain that the store clerk doesn’t thing so. I still get “watched,” and treated with suspicion even with a platinum American Express in my purse.

This widow assumes that Art’s cancer gave me time to prepare. I am disappointed at the magical death image she holds. You know the one from t.v.? The one where the person looks like themselves, opens their eyes, says a few last dying but meaningful words with the last exhale.

She thinks that expecting that your husband will die is some how easier. As if I could “prepare” for the impending grief by filling up sandbags to line my life. The more sandbag the less pain.

As I go to open my mouth, to tell her my last memories of my husband are of a withered 6’6" man who went from 235 to 154, his sunken, hollow face, unconscious, mouth open emanating that foul sweet smell of his dying innards. A smell that even in thought, makes me wretch.

Before I can tell her about the relief that came over me when he died that was quickly followed with shame of being relieved. Before I can tell her any of that…

I float
into her head
and see her own
devastation.

I see her need to tell her story over and over and over again, to compare it to others because in her world, right now, there is no firm footing. Nothing makes sense. She doesn’t know how to get to point B because not only is she standing on completely new territory, she doesn’t even know which direction to head in to find that second point. Comparing her story to mine at least provides her with walls, something familiar, something firm, a shelter of sorts.

And it is not till I recognize all this, I back down. She can have the bottom. She can have the grief and the despondency. I no longer need it to stand on.

I am surprised for my love for her, for the way I want to hold her in my arms and let her know it will truly, truly be okay. I want to tell her that she will find her place in this world. That she will slowly learn to lean into, and live, decently, without him.

The love comes out of my right arm, through my fingertips as I take her hand. I say to her after a moments silence, “Wow, I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to loose him so suddenly. I hear you.”

Because I know she simply wants
to be
heard.

Exactly what I wanted and
still want.

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Happy Father's Day

July 2008, Malibu

So I was gonna try and ignore Father’s Day.
It’s Father’s Day and my kids don’t have one.

I was gonna just treat it like every other Sunday only….
Well last time I tried to run from one of the “big” days,
like his anniversary death date,
like his birthday,
like random days when his loss seems to be around every corner,
I get slammed,
Emotionally beat up,
eaten and then spewed out.

It took days for me to recover.
My whole body, my mind, just like in the beginning,
unable to focus, skittish,
in a sluggish way.

So this time, instead of running from his loss,
I turn into it.

Not out of bravery.
Not out of “I’ll show it whose boss!”

I turn into it out of the idea that facing the monster diminishes its power.
I’m not afraid anymore (or well just not afraid TODAY )

Cause what I have learned on this 792 day since his death is:

the loss won’t kill me.

Its unpredictability, won’t make my heart stop.
Its depth won’t suffocate me.
Its “holy-shit-this-hurtness” won’t be with me every single moment of every single day.
I have learned that all that pain that often brings me to my knees in random places like the kitchen, outside the car and yes, once in Whole Foods,
washes over me and then goes away.
And while I don’t like it, (I will never like the feeling of being left, abandoned and vulnerability),
every time, every fucking time afterward,
a rainbow appears.
And at the end of that rainbow is the new, better me!

It was a gift to have him even if he did stink up the bathroom (Cannonization of Art)
It was a gift to loose him (Dancing)

I am standing here, not just stronger, but wiser, more open, more sensitive than I have ever been.

I am standing here alive.
And alive means feeling all of it but knowing that “all” passes. The joy all and the yucky all, it passes.

Now as for the kids, cause really, the day is more about them, than about me.

This year I watched the grief and hopelessness catch up with Langston and flip him, and for moments, pin him to the floor. I have watched him look for relief in food, in friends and in video games. I have stood beside him, nodding my head, rubbing his back, curling me 128lb frame around his 251lb one.

He is walking his own journey and it is not for me to dictate it, fix it or say “No, no don’t go that way!” because he has to find his own place of strength. I have to remind myself that it is not one I can create for him.

His blessing through this? It seems that it is dawning on him (slowly) that the outside things bring him only temporary relief. He’s learning to turn into the loss, too. (That’s more awakening most adults 3, 4 and 5 times as old as he is!)

For Pallas, I still worry. I’m not sure where she is. I watch her float around with her friends, and with me seemingly content. I worry but as the saying goes, “Worry is putting a negative spin on the future.

For Ezra, I watch him fear the fear of his loss, hold it in till he turns blue with it and then let it out because he doesn’t have the strength (who does?) to keep it all pent up! And then worry what we will think him less than when it comes tumbling out. I am waiting for him to discover, like his brother, to run from it, gives it more power.

They lost a father, a man that cannot be replaced. I lost a husband who frankly, can be replaced. (I don’t believe there’s only one soul mate per lifetime.)

And the journeys my kids travel are their journeys. Not mine, I have to be careful not to confuse the two.

No doubt Father’s Day will mean different things to them as they grow up, as they discover and acknowledge their own courage and growth as it spills out of them in this life.

This year (cause next year may find me in completely different place!) Father’s Day is a day to give thanks to Art for being a decent dad and for mourning the kind of father he “could have been.” It’s also day for me to marvel at my children as they make their way in the world without a dad, something I didn’t have to do.

The one thing I hope for them for forever is that Father’s Day doesn’t scare them, doesn’t become a day to avoid.

I hope that Father’s Day becomes their independence day.

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Every Sunday

(Written 2/2011)

Every Sunday it happens.
I go into my office to print out the grocery list.
And find myself on the computer
Searching for……
a distraction,
a reason,
a gift,
something that will ease the unease.

I read the past week’s posts of the other widows.
I look at my emails.
I answer the ones that don’t take much out of me.
Finally, I refocus but not before I feel
Overwhelmed
by the emails
that require me to plan, to think, to notice that I have to do it again
alone.

I have to make lists that will get checked off
by
me.

Before I get stuck in overwhelm, I force myself to remember what I came in for.
I print out the grocery list and begin the routine.

Weeks meal plan
Three grocery stores
To Do List for the week

Every Sunday, I feel empty and alone.
Every Sunday I use my computer as a way to run from it
and every Sunday it doesn’t work.

This Sunday I went further
I tried ice cream, hoping the cold creaminess will make me
forget the
cold
emptiness.

It didn’t.

So I tried alcohol.
Hoping the gentle relaxation would allow me to weather the
insecurities, the fear, lesson the weight of the world that not only sits on my shoulders
but my spine,
my stomach and
my knees.

It doesn’t.

I call a neighbor. “Do you have anything?” I ask.
He runs me up a little something to smoke.
I look at it. I go to light it and I stop.
I know it won’t work either.

So I call this guy I know. This friend.
Strong hands, a comforting hug, a good kisser
I go to him.
I want to know that I matter to another man.
I want to feel his arms around me, to sink into the testosterone, the power
the protectiveness of him.

It works...
but only for a little while.

I get back into my car
And I am crying
And praying to God

“Please help me!
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take the weight, I cannot make one more decision on what we will eat this week by myself I can’t!”

And even as I say it, I know I am lying.
I’ve done it every Sunday for over 52 of them. I can do it for 100s more.

Every Sunday I wonder, is this it?
Is this what surviving grief looks like?
Is this what I worked so hard to get too?

Really?

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