Don't you love it when you learn something in a work setting and then discover that it also applies to other aspects of your life? When I was in the Education program in BC, one of the terms we learned was "spiral curriculum". In a spiral curriculum a topic within a subject is repeated from grade to grade, even through to Grade 12, adding more complexity each year. For example, the topic of "community" might be part of the social studies curriculum in every grade. In Kindergarten the kids learn the basics about what a community is and about neighbourhood workers such as doctor, fire fighter, store clerk; in later grades the topic is examined again, expanding to include citizenship, how geography affects community development, economy, and law. When we learned this term, I found it interesting, but not particularly relevant outside of the school setting.
But over the past 17 years, this term has come to mind often in my personal life. Where it has been significant to me is in the realm of life lessons and character development. You go through any experience once, and you learn something (or lots of things). You go through it again, and you carry that new knowledge with you and build on it and end up with a different level of understanding. Each experience will be slightly different, even if they happen in the same setting or with the same people, partly because you are different.
As I've come into the beginning of the second year after Ramsy's death, I've been surprised to find myself in the middle of another spiral curriculum. (Go figure- you'd think that by now I'd stop being surprised by anything....) Around the middle of October I noticed a return of the mental fog, nausea, dizziness and weeping that set in last October, right after Ramsy died. I had expected, certainly, to feel emotional this October as we approached his birthday, the anniversary of when he had first noticed troublesome symptoms, and the date of his resignation from church; but I was absolutely not expecting those physical symptoms of grief to revisit me. The good thing about having covered this "topic" before in my experience last year was that this time I didn't have to wonder if the dizziness and nausea were signs of something wrong, and I knew that these things would eventually pass in their own time. This time around, they are an expression of the understanding I have of the wider implications of the loss of my husband, rather than the first bewildered shock of being here without him. It's the same thing, but with wider meanings this time around the spiral.
Now we're on to November, the month of his first seizure and trip to emergency and biopsy and diagnosis and all I know to do is remind myself to expect the unexpected.
