Healing Doesn’t Mean Forgetting
I wrote this almost fourteen months after Rick left us.
I continue to feel grateful to be out of the pits of grief. Looking back with a healing heart, I see just what a dark place I was in over this last year. I understand now why my friends and family were so scared watching me as I moved through life. No longer the happy-go-lucky person I once was; now reduced to an empty shell. I was simply surviving; I didn’t know how to do anything different than to move through the weeks and months numb and overwhelmed by the loss of Rick. Survival mode is a surreal place to be.
The tears and sadness of grief still come in waves. But no longer is it the giant tsunami crushing my heart and soul against the sharp edges of grief. When Rick had been gone around 10 months, I hit rock bottom for the second time. It was a dark and ominous time. I didn't get out of bed for three weeks, Intrusive thoughts invaded my mind, and while I thought I was hiding it, I absolutely was not. My family was panicked as I continued to lay in bed day after day, wishing God would put me out of my misery for the last time.
This is the thing I want people to know about those of us in deep grief. We do not really want to die. We need a break from the all-consuming agony that has taken over our lives. That is all. No more pain. This is so much for one person to bear. No one can take it away or do this incredibly lonely journey for us. We must walk it alone, not because there’s no one who is willing to walk with us, but because our grief is ours alone to carry and heal from and frankly, its torture.
My favorite Aunt called me the day after Rick died. It seemed fitting she would be there for me in this moment too, since she always ended up being there for me during pivotal moments in my life. This was no exception. With her soft-spoken voice she spoke with authority and from the heart. She said, “Honey this will be an exceedingly long and lonely journey. There is no shortcutting grief, you have to GO through it to GET through it. If you fight it, you won’t be able to heal.”
A chill ran up and down my spine. Her words scared the hell out of me. But I am so thankful she had the courage to tell me the truth. Had she not, I think I would have reverted to old survival mechanisms to try and get through it. Instead, it prepared me and forced me to let things happen as they needed to. I find myself sharing Aunt Sue’s wise words. I have three widows in my life right now in various stages of losing their partners. I see and hear the similarities within our grief. One of them lost her man about a month ago. When her mom posted it, my heart sank understanding all too well what was in store for her. I cried for her, because she was forced onto this path at such an early age in addition to children who needed her to care for them even though her heart was broken. I said a silent prayer asking for a miracle that her grief journey could be easier than it was on me. I knew all too well the heaviness of grief and the toll it had taken on me. I can’t imagine having young children that depended on me. I shuddered at the thought.
Rick's cousin, Mike (our son Cody is his namesake) died five short months after Rick. At nine months, his widow posted, “I thought this was supposed to get easier, not harder.” It wasn’t that long ago I remembered thinking and saying the same thing at ten months when I was beginning to hit that dark place, I called the “rabbit hole.” I didn’t understand how it could get any worse, I was a year into my grief journey. For ten months I moved through the days numb and apathetic except when the waves of grief would hit me. I was still not eating, not sleeping, suffering from acute PTSD and night terrors, anxiety and foreboding followed me everywhere, I was overwhelmed by all the sensations and emotions I was feeling, and somehow it was going to get worse? Yet I was determined to go through it now so I wouldn’t have too later. I was hoping for a one and done kind of grief journey.
While it may seem depression and sorrow go hand in hand, I don’t think it does for everyone. In my mind, the first ten months I was too numb, my brain still didn’t want to accept it. I was in survival mode, for others their survival mode looks completely different. I wished many times I could drink or do drugs to numb the pain. Unfortunately, or fortunately depends on how you view it; I have always believed in feeling all the feels in life and not numbing them with drugs or alcohol. This was the first time in my life, I wished I could climb into a bottle. That seemed easier, somehow. I experienced depression three times in the almost three years since his death, one bout for each year. That being said, I thought one bout of depression was too much.
My adult children were my rocks. I leaned on them heavily, and when I climbed out of pits of grief, and told myself I had to do something different, because this wasn’t working for me. They trusted me when I said I needed to take a solo journey to Montana to revisit all of the places where our young love began. They supported me 100% and I realized I am a lucky Mama to have such amazing kiddos. I love that he is in them. It has always given me great comfort to see that he is a part of each of them. We keep his legacy alive and all we do. We tell funny stories and talk about him every time we are together. I love talking about him. He was one of the good ones and he was all mine.
His death changed me. I will always carry the sting of regret that I couldn't save him. I will never forget that feeling of dread that washed over me when I looked into his eyes, and they were empty. I died in that moment with him. I am irrevocably changed by the events in his shop. Every day when I wake up, I long to hold him and hug him. Every part of me misses him so much it hurts. My whole-body aches to feel his hugs, to kiss his lips.
My solo road trip was healing for my heart and good for my soul. I came back feeling a renewed sense of hope that I would indeed survive the darkest night of my soul. My happy, energetic self comes back once in a while and for that I'm so grateful. In my mind's eye I see him smiling and I feel his love from wherever he is now. He is thrilled to see me doing better and trying to live life again. I can't wait until the day I can say it and mean it, “I love my Life!” Unfortunately, it didn’t stop two more times that I succumbed to depression even while managing to heal. Someone said grief isn’t linear and I couldn’t agree more.
This next piece. Has taken me a little while to get the courage to write about this. But here goes. First, I had to forgive myself, and then I had to make room for understanding and compassion. You know, the things we do for our friends but somehow find it difficult to extend to ourselves. The 24th of June marked 13 months. It came and went without me noticing! When I realized what had happened on the 27th, the feeling of guilt and shame washed over me. And the negative self-talk began. Then exploded in my head. But also, fear and panic were scratching under the surface too. How could I forget about the man that I loved so deeply? The father of my children! The quiet, strong leader of the Curtis clan! Was I moving on already? After spending 41 years with this man? I can forget about it all in 13 months. I was horrified. I felt such deep guilt and shame. He deserves so much more than a mere year of grief and sadness from me. I was the apple of his eye. I called each one of the kids and asked them if they remembered that day?
It was a lovely day that we spent together, like always, we had a BBQ, great food, friends from work came over. So did our good friends, the Bryans with their adorable kiddos. We swam, we played and had a really fun day. They all gave me similar replies. Yes, they remembered. But they chose not to say a word because it had been such a long time since I'd laughed and seemed happy. So, they enjoyed watching their mom, who had been a shell of herself, act more like the mom they remembered and missed so much instead of watching my face fall with their gentle reminders.
I spent a few weeks hating myself and scared that I was forgetting all about him. The love of my life. The shame and guilt continued to pick my heart like vultures. That gray cloud was turning dark as despair settled in when suddenly it dawned on me! I was healing! I was healing from the trauma of the 12 minutes in the shop while I tried desperately to breathe life back into Rick. My body experienced the trauma every single Monday and every single 24th of the month. My heart would feel so heavy, and as 834 approached, so did the intense panic. My heart would race, I would sweat, my fight or flight would kick in, and those adrenaline rushes would make me nauseous. It didn't matter what I was doing. Having fun with my family, shopping, working, having an adventure with the grandkids. My body would be reacting and when I wondered what my deal was, I would look at the date and sure enough, it was the dreaded Monday or the 24th. And I was wrecked. I was shoved back in time into the shop and those torturous memories, smells, and images invaded my thoughts. Once again, I realized that my solo trip to Montana had healed some of those traumatic memories by flooding my memory with nothing, but our love story told through “our songs” on my drive to Montana to heal my broken heart.
June was the month that the trauma responses didn't rear their ugly faces, forcing me to relive a time when I didn’t want to remember. When I realized this, I was so happy. Relief washed over me as I realized what a blessing this really was! I gasped and then laughed out loud when I realized I wasn't forgetting him. I was healing!