1 NOT-Frequently-Asked Question

In my last post (earlier today- read that one first) I listed a few questions that people ask often, and which I am happy to answer.  And here I also want to answer a question that does not get asked: What is it like?  What is it like to be without him now, to still be here but not have him with you?  This is a question that we don't vocalize because we are tactful or kind or afraid, but which is in our minds whenever we encounter a person who has lost someone, isn't it?  This is a question that, when I lived in the "Before" picture, I imagined would have one consistent answer.  The "After" picture shows me that the answer is composed of many realities, many facets, like a terrible flashing diamond, and that my particular answer is unique to me because I am different from that lady over there, and Ramsy was different from her husband.  This is a question that I still frequently ask myself, in attempts to describe to myself or to another person what grieving a spouse feels like; because, frankly, "I miss him" just doesn't cut it.  That's like a desperate, starving person saying, "I guess I wouldn't mind a little snack."  When I say, "I miss him," it makes me snaky inside because those limp, colourless words in no way reflect the enormous scope or the complex detail of what I feel.  So I keep trying, and I come up with various descriptions depending on the day, and each of them is only one facet.  These are some of them:

1.  It's like being in labour.  As the onset of contractions is unpredictable, and the length and intensity of them, so is the onset of a wave of sadness.  Sometimes it's a quick stab of pain, and sometimes it's a long, deep searing that requires me to actually stand still and hold on to the doorpost and clench my teeth and breathe.  It's an actual physical sensation.  And then it's gone, and who knows when or how the next one will wave through?

2.  It's like having a headache.  I don't know if everybody is like this, but I sometimes have a headache for a couple of hours before I realize it, and then I know what has been bothering me all that time.  A lot of days I will be going about my business but feeling in the back of my mind that something is wrong, that I am uncomfortable and maybe in some pain, and finally I become aware that the thing that is wrong is that Ramsy is not here.  Ah.

3.  It's like being restless.  Sometimes I have trouble concentrating, or finding anything to settle down to.  I feel like there's something nagging at the back of my mind that I've forgotten, or like I'm looking for something.  Then all of a sudden it clicks that I'm actually looking for Rams.  A few days ago I caught myself wanting the kids to get off the computer so I could see if he'd sent me an email.  Another case of "I didn't forget he's dead, my mind just entered a time warp."

4.  It's like being at the other end of a tunnel from everything else, maybe like being on Demerol.  I am sometimes dizzy, as I get when I have been up far too long- squinting at things, taking a long time to register incoming information, concentrating to formulate a response and send it back down the tunnel to whoever is on the other end.

5. It's like a long-distance relationship.  For most of the time that Ramsy and I were dating, we lived 2 1/2 hours apart and saw each other once or maybe twice a month during the school year, and much less often when he was touring with school groups.  There was no texting, no email, not even any decent long-distance phone plans, for Pete's sake, and he was kind of a crappy letter-writer.  (That is, the letters he wrote were wonderful, it's just that there weren't that many of them over the year and a half.)  So, as my journals from those days remind me, I missed him All.  The.  Time.  He was constantly on my mind; everything reminded me of something he/we had done or said, or made me wish I could share it with him or tell him; nothing I did felt in any way interesting or exciting or engaging or meaningful; basically, I was suspended in a permanent state of waiting to see him or talk to him again.  Guess what?

6.  It's like looking at the Grand Canyon.  In 2009 I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time.  I thought I would be immediately overwhelmed by, well, the grandeur of the place.  In fact, my eyes and mind were kind of boggled by the scope of it.  The Grand Canyon, seen in person, looks at first like a painted movie backdrop of itself.  It is extremely difficult to get a grasp on the size and distances because my eyes are simply not used to processing anything that big.  I had to look for something smaller, something that I commonly see, like a person or a tree or a car, which I could use as a standard for comparison.  Same with this loss: it's just too monumental to be absorbed at first, and my mind has to keep finding small experiences to measure it against, and so...

7.  ...it is like learning the longest, hardest lesson ever.  Maybe I'll go through a good day or two, just be minding my own business and then- whap! I didn't know that losing him meant that particular thing! Like:  I see the breakfast sausages in Sobeys and there he is standing at our stove cooking them up; there the five of us are on sabbatical in Nanaimo, eating the sausages as part of the Sabbath "feast" tradition we started while we lived there.  And then I have to learn that him dying means him not being here to cook breakfast ever again, him never coming up with one of his many, many ideas for ritual or fun or adventure.  It means that I never get to bring him a treat from Starbucks again when I have spent the day in Winnipeg.  It means him not putting his feet in my lap while we watch a Miss Marple movie on the couch.  It means me never being irritated again by him telling me it was time to get up (hey, you're not the boss of me, was always my super-mature inner response), and realizing that being irritated occasionally is one of the privileges of living together intimately.  His death means literally thousands of big and small things, and I have to learn them one by one.

All of these horrible little surprise lessons are having this effect on me (and I knew this was coming):  I was prepared (as far as I could be) to let go of the Ramsy of September 2011, the one who could not speak or stand or hold a spoon or swallow very easily.  I loved that man, and would have kept him and cared for him longer if I had been allowed; but it was hard for him to be like that, and I am happy for that Ramsy to be released to where he is so alive right now. But the other Ramsy, the one who acted like a gleeful little boy when he brought me my favourite chocolate bar, the one who always wrote lists of goals on napkins on our lunch dates, the one who could figure out how to reupholster a chair, the one who took our kids camping, the one who suddenly started walking like a gorilla in Lee Valley just to make me laugh out loud, the one who was the moderator of our provincial church conference, who loved hockey and brought home hitch-hikers and spoke pidgin German with me and wrote songs... that guy I am not prepared to let go.  But the change from well-Ramsy to dying-Ramsy happened so gradually yet so inexorably that there was no time to feel the weight of what I was losing.  I knew it, and I knew I would feel it later on, but that does not make it one single bit easier now.

8.  And yet.  I have talked about this before: the extremely bizarre fact that being without my sweetheart is, at bottom, more okay more often than I imagined it would be.  It turns out that being without him is not impossible, only monumentally hard.  The diamond turns slightly and one facet is illuminated, but it doesn't stay that way.  There are more facets, and some that I have not seen yet, and the reality is constantly shifting.  Thank God that he understands this complexity.  Thank God that he is also multi-faceted, and that his brilliance often outshines the other.