Walk with me

Each of the people who knew and loved John is dealing with his death in their own way. I said in an earlier post, grieving is an individual sport. Yet our grief connects us. I visualize it as a modified yin and yang symbol, this one, divided in fourths.

At the circle’s core are the people most effected by his absence, and it radiates out from there. First to John’s closest friends, and on and on, out to the people who only knew John a little bit. Finally out to those who only feel sadness for the people closer to the center of the circle. The four of us in the center feel it the most strongly; similarly, differently, uniquely. Ying yang.
Paul and I share the parental part of the circle. We each gave John half of our DNA along with 7,640 days of love and support. We share a million memories of him. Only we know the loss of him in the context of a son.
Matt and Shelby share the youthful side of the inner circle. They are currently traveling in Southeast Asia together searching for their way. Their way is new experiences, contemplation, discovery, tattoos, music, joy and sadness in their own youthful context. I understand some of it, but it isn’t my way. It’s their way. It doesn’t belong to me.
Shelby and I share the female side of the inner grief circle. The female way is to cry, to rage and wonder, and to spend hours emersed in the emotion of it, processing it. As John’s mom, I was his first love. Shelby was his last. When Shelby and I are together, she will tell me a story about him and it will remind me of a story from when he was young. Tag team memories. We go back and forth with our stories. We cry. We laugh. We understand. In many ways I feel closest to her in this process. I miss her. She is a great comfort to me.
Paul and Matt are our male counterparts in the center of the grief circle. Their way is mysterious to me. Though they can be sad and emotional, their male way appears to include distraction, pragmatism, analysis, silence.
I am grateful for all the people in our grief circle, near and far. At the core and at the perimeter, we share a role in this mysterious process. We will need each other. We will help each other. We will deal with this in our own way and in our shared way. We will make it through together.

Paul and I are in Kauai. We planed it over a year ago, and decided not to cancel the trip just because John died. We would leave reminders of him at home. We didn’t expect to have many memories of him here. He was only here once, and it wasn’t his thing. Matt was interested in seeing volcanos, rain forests and sugar cane growing, so we booked a trip to the Big Island. We stayed in Volcanos National Park, but the “hot lava” wasn’t visible from any of the trails. The rainforest experience didn’t meet expectations either. Sugarcane plantations were shuttered long ago. It wasn’t a complete bust. We splurged on a helicopter tour over the barely visible lava. We were able to find some naturalized cane for Matt to hack down and taste, and we took a botanical garden tour that had a decent jungle section. But the real disappointment for John was when we arrived at the beach portion of the trip. He was too afraid of sharks to go in the ocean. Sand in his shorts made him cranky. But mostly, he couldn’t believe that I had picked a sedate hotel above the over-the-top-swim-with-dolphins-and-take-a-boat-to-dinner-Disneyland style hotel next door. The lame waterside at our hotel was a particular disappointment, with the angry pool shack guy yelling at the young hotel guests. After hearing about Hawaii from so many of their friends, both boys were convinced that our typical adventurous travel to more unique locations was far better.
I thought this trip to Hawaii would be a vacation from the pain of the past month, but grief doesn’t take vacations. I need a vacation from my sadness. I’m waiting for the day that I wake up and I feel just a tiny bit better than I did the day before. Every morning I hope that it will be the day, but it hasn’t happened yet. The stunning beauty here is accompanied by the incredulous realization that this is a world without John in it. No vacation from the sadness.

Every day in Kauai begins by walking to the end of the road where the Kalalau trailhead begins. Then up. A half mile straight up. Slippery rocks, lush foliage, a glimpse of ocean view. Fulfilling the pact that I made with myself a month ago in Boulder, each day, a hike. A portion of which has a steep enough pitch to take my breath away. Grief has had it’s way with my heart. Over the course of a day, the boulder crushing it gets heavier and heavier. My lungs ache. Throughout the day, it becomes increasingly difficult to breathe. Hiking straight uphill undoes that. It re-sets me. Getting my heart rate up to it’s max and my lungs full to capacity, the physical pain gets washed away, taking with it, the grief. While hiking, especially on a treacherous path like this, all I can think of is my next step. At the top, I am renewed. I can face the next step, the next moment, the rest of the day.

It happened on the way to the airport. A 7:00 departure requires a 5:15 AM taxi. Not at my best after a sleepless night, my abrupt replies and long pauses from the back seat should have discouraged the driver, but he was determined. Necessary questions first, asked in a thick Eastern European accent. “What airline?” “What time your flight?” “Where you going?” “You been there before?” Followed by predicable ones, “How long you live here?” “Where you work?” “You watch baseball?” “You like Giants?” Then, out of nowhere, the blindside. “How many kids you have?” A slap, a sting of tears, a choke of bile erupting from my throat. No answer. Only panic. I can’t answer that question. Paul stepped in. In the millisecond of time that I knew he was going to respond, I was still able to wonder what he would say. How would he answer? Only a month ago it was a different answer, an answer I thought would be the same for the rest of my life. “One” he said. “One son”. WWWHHHYYYY? Why would he ask that question in the dark on the way to the airport and send my day spiraling into a gloom that couldn’t be lifted with the most beautiful of vistas in Kauai? No warm breeze, soft ocean water, sip of Mai Tai could undo what he did to me on the way to the airport. But tomorrow is another day. And for the rest of my tomorrows I will need to have an answer ready. An answer when the blindside question comes.

I woke as a completely different person.  Dropped into a new phase of the grieving process.  A new trail on the map through the grieving journey.  I am overwrought with sadness.  I am as fragile as tissue.  Every one of my senses is tender and raw.  When music hits my ears, the notes draw in too much emotion. The sound goes straight to my heart.  Shards of glass are piercing and ripping my heart apart.   I am lightheaded with sorrow. Everything makes me cry.  My sense of touch is acute.  Petting the dog and the cat, feeling their fur, is as if I am touching it for the first time.  John will never snuggle up with these beloved animals again.  The tears won’t stop. Crisp Autumn air punctuating the warm afternoon.  John won’t smell that again.  Intellectualizing it, I Google “Stages of grief” to measure where I am in the process.  To gauge if this is the “right” time for this.  To see if this is “normal”. Grief and loss have been studied, dissected and analyzed but one size does not fit all. This is my own unpredictable journey and I will be tossed from one phase to another in my unique way.

Last Saturday Paul and I dealt with some property management tasks in Oakland together.  I was happy to be out in the world doing something constructive with Paul. When we finished, he ran into Piedmont Grocery while I swung into Peets.  Saturday. Game day. I was wearing my CAL tee shirt and “Big C” ball cap.  While waiting for my beans to be ground, a cheerful older woman approached me.  Slim, elegant haircut, dressed in youthful Lulu hiking capris, SPF blouse, groovy hiking shoes, classy hat, beaded bracelets reeking of “souvenir from a recent African safari”, iphone headphones tucked into her ears, she reminded me of my favorite neighbor or a could-have-been friend of my mom’s.  “Does Cal have a home game today?” she asked as if we were old friends.  “Are you going?”  I opened my mouth to speak, gulped, nothing came out. I nodded stupidly, shook my head, and eventually choked, “No. Not going.”

I am off my game.  If I were on my game, I would be chatting her up and connecting with her.  By the time I had my beans and she had her coffee, we might even linger on the sidewalk finishing our thoughts on a shared connection.

Inspired by a character in a recently read memoir, I have recently been pushing myself to be a more enthusiastic participant in the world.  My ventures to the drycleaner, the bank, the coffee shop have come with a genuine interest in creating a connection with people, with my community, with my world.  “My” world, turned “our” world.  It’s an appreciation for the person doing a thankless or boring job. Camaraderie with the person enduring the post office line. I would normally be like this woman.

But I’m not that person right now.  I could barely offer a panicked smile not to scare her when I gulped my feeble response. I am not ready for these interactions.  My behavior is unpredictable.  That is the main reason I am at Peet’s in Oakland, not Orinda, and at Piedmont Grocery, not Diablo Foods.  I don’t trust myself out in the world.  I am not myself out in the world.  I am not myself anywhere right now.  I caught myself wondering if I should tell her that we might have gone to the Cal game, but our son just died. That we almost went because John’s friends had come into town and were at the game together.  Multiple friends had invited us to their tailgates, the game.  Would this friendly woman be interested in hearing that the reason we weren’t going to the game is because I wasn’t ready yet?  Because I was still too sad and scared to do something like this?

I found myself thinking of her later.  She was of that age, that age where she most likely had lost a few friends.  She was alone, so maybe she had already lost her spouse.  Her parents most certainly were gone.  Maybe she had lost a sibling already, or a brother to war long ago.  She most likely would not have made it to her age without suffering some sort of loss.  It is going to happen.  And it is going to happen more frequently.  It’s going to happen to the people we love, not just to other people.

I am definitely off my game. I want my regular self back, but I think it’s going to be a while.

Shelby and Matt join us for dinner.  Delicious soup made by a friend.  They are going to a concert, one of John’s favorites…Kygo.  They preview the concert for us, music dancing through the speakers, filling the house as we sip our soup. I have it turned way up.  It’s happy.  It’s fun.  Kygo is a remix artist.  The next song is a remix of a Marvin Gaye song that I’ve always loved.  I want to move, to dance.  I picture John dancing and sliding around the kitchen as he always did when he found a new favorite song or artist.  He did it in August on his last visit home.  He had created a new Pandora station, “It’s SO GOOD mom.  You will love it!” Shelby shares more stories about John.  She had a video of John on her old phone, the one that was stolen. She wishes she could show us, but it’s gone with the phone.  He was dancing to this same Kygo song with his two roommates, using a shoe for a microphone.  Another song was on the playlist they used while driving her car from Alabama to Colorado.  It’s great driving music.  Zippy and lively.  I can picture John driving to this music, his head bobbing, his hand over the top of the wheel, looking over at the passenger seat with his big grin.

Their ride arrives and with a quick hug they are out the door.  The music goes with them on their phones, but it echoes between Paul and me as we hug each other.  “John should be going with them!” I sob.

Hours later, the image of Matt and Shelby leaving the house sticks with me.  They are full of life and excitement.  The music is bubbling out of them.  Happiness is bubbling out of them.  John’s music is bubbling out of them.  John is bubbling out of them.  John is going with them to the concert after all.

It’s Tuesday night.  I’m making a salad and listening to the Giant’s playoff game.  Matt has requested Zachary’s pizza.  I’m thinking I might have a glass of wine.  I feel normal. It is a typical night.

I wonder if John is watching the game, or if he’s at work.  Wait. No. Wait….  He’s not… Suddenly this is NOT a typical night.  Suddenly I feel sick.  Suddenly, nausea repels the idea of wine.  Suddenly, I am shaky, weak-kneed.  I must sit down.  On the couch, the game is completely uninteresting.  I am gone again.

This scenario repeats itself throughout my day.  Morning.  Awake.  Sick.  Can’t get out of bed.  Making coffee.  Better. Thinking about timing to get to today’s hike. Feeling almost normal again.  Into my closet. Hiking shirt. Hiking socks.  Sunscreen.  Where are my shorts?  Into the laundry room.  Wait…..what am I doing in the laundry room?  I can’t breathe.  There is a massive granite boulder on my chest.  Breathe.  In. Out.  In, so deep that the boulder presses on my heart and my lungs hurt.  Breathe a little shallower.   Better now.  Into the car. Buckling in, backing out, down the road, all automatic.  I’m in Orinda.  Wait.  How did I get to Orinda?  Should I be driving?  I don’t think I should be driving.  My friend is waiting for me.  An anxious look, a tentative smile.  Hug? What to say first?  Tears.  Deep breaths.  First steps, we are on our way.  A normal rhythm developing in our conversation, our pace.  Pause to admire the scenery, to complement the day, to appreciate this place, this moment.   I feel dull, but not sad, not mad, not sick.

I am wondering how long I will be operating like this.  When I’m sad and out-of-sorts, I try to talk myself out of it.  When I feel normal, I feel guilty. It’s only been a little over two weeks.  There is no way I should or could feel normal.

Matt used the term, “bi-polar” to describe where we are in our journey through the valley of grief.  It fits.  A manic episode; normal, almost happy even, regular and then in a flash, a memory pops in and a spiraling descent into despair and tears ensues.  When the emotion passes, logical thinking weaves its way in.  The logic tries to talk my brain out of thinking that thought.  It tries to talk my heart out of feeling so heavy and broken.

The scrawled notes taken when we spoke to the coroner hours after John’s death are garbled and illegible.  They don’t provide any meaningful information, so I called him back. I wanted an update and a recap of what he had told me when I was incapable of hearing what he was saying.  He is kind and soft spoken.  Understanding and patient.  “We can’t provide any information until all the test results are back”.  Sigh.  I think of all the possibilities, all the speculation, all of the “what if’s”.  I wonder what the coroner could tell me that would make this all OK,  something that would make it not true?  That’s what I want.  I want it to not be true. Focusing on how John died is not going to bring him back.  John is not coming back.  I need to focus on living in a world where John is no longer alive.  I need to focus on his life well lived, all of the good things.  Thinking of the good things makes me feel so much better than the “what happened” and “what if’s”.  I decide not to focus on what happened.  It doesn’t matter what happened.  What happened is that he had a too-short life that was well lived.  I am going to focus on that.

It’s been three weeks right about now.  Both a moment and an eternity ago.  I am remembering Shelby texting from another hemisphere, half a world away.   Three weeks ago.  It begins again. I start to feel lightheaded, nauseous and weak.  When I got her first text, I had a really bad feeling.  She hadn’t heard from him all day.  I called him.  I texted him.  Nothing.  I checked with Paul.  No, he hadn’t sent Paul his weekly football game picks.  As the hours wore on, and our concerns escalated, I tried so hard to think positively, but my heart knew.  Earlier in the day, mid-morning, probably right about the time John’s room mate, the EMT’s, the police, the coroner, were asking for our contact information, a random thought had popped into my head…. “We should have John’s room mate’s contact information”.  They didn’t have ours.

Shock protects the brain I guess.  The hours after that are jumbled, with a few sharp memories.  The FaceTime call from Shelby, screaming, hysterical, asking me “What do I do? What should I do?”  Me, staring at the screen, completely unable to speak, unable to move.  A call to Paul.  NO! NO! NO! NO!!! He was at home.  I was 180 miles away.  We conference-called John’s roommate. Matt called out of the blue with exciting news about his day at the career fair and the interviews set up for the next day. We had to tell him.  He was alone, 3,000 miles away.  How could we have hung up with Matt?  How could we leave him standing on the lawn in front of the Kresge Auditorium, all alone? So alone.  Another conference call.  This time with the coroner.  Spoken slowly, measured.  Doling out information gradually.  He must know that people can’t hear him, can’t understand what he’s saying, can’t process the information.  He is professional.  Kind, but all business.  Taking notes to remember what he said, I write his phone number on the piece of paper and as we closed, carefully folded the paper and tucked it safely in my notebook. Now I had to drive home from Tahoe.  Trying to keep it together.  I called my friend Ellen.  I needed her to get friends over to the house so Paul wasn’t alone.  She picked up on the first ring.  I couldn’t get the words out.  They were stuck right where my neck meets my body.  I choked, gagged, blurted, and the words came out in a horrific unending sob.  I can’t remember anything else, but I know she said she would take care of Paul.  I had to get home.  I had to get home to Paul.  Paul was so far away.  How could I get home as fast as I wanted to?  I was shaking.  My legs were lead.  I was walking through mud, mud that was chest deep.  I had to pack up the car.  I tried so hard to remember everything.  Somehow I made it into the car.  It was so hard with leaden legs and all that mud.  As soon as I closed the garage, I called Paul back.  We agreed to keep the phone on speaker and we would be together on the drive home.  We didn’t have to talk, but we needed to be connected.  It wasn’t long before the doorbell rang and he wasn’t alone.  Cruise control set at 65mph, I settled into the slow lane and focused on keeping myself between the lines.  Friend after friend called me and talked me home mile by mile.  When asked, “Where are you now?” I had to look up.  The road I know so well had become foreign.  I wasn’t sure where I was.  Only when I passed an exit sign could I tell.  Two hours into the drive I reached back and patted my dog’s head.  I wasn’t sure if she was in the car.  I remembered to pack my dog.

Three weeks.  A moment and an eternity ago.