What is the Point of Being Me?

July 6, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I walked in the desert today, talking to my deceased life mate/soul mate. (Or maybe I was talking to myself. I’m still not sure to whom I think I’m talking when I’m out there, but it does help me to talk aloud at times — I don’t feel quite so alone.) I was trying to understand my latest upsurge in grief. It doesn’t seem to be tied into an anniversary or a holiday, though it did start on the 4th. Nor does it seem to have resulted from any new or renewed experience. Anyway, there I was, walking, talking aloud, feeling sorry for myself, and I heard myself say, “I’m not much good to anyone, so what is the point of being me?” I stopped in my tracks, arrested by the simple question. What is the point of being me?

For the past two years, ever since his death, I’ve been haunted by the hard questions: Who are we? Why are here? Is this all there is? Where did our loved ones go? Will we see them again? What is the meaning of life, and probably most haunting of all, what is the meaning of death? In all this time, I have never asked: What is the point of being me.

It seems such a simple question, doesn’t it? But here is the truth of it:

Billions of years ago, the universe was born. Through untold eons it learned how to create various life forms, and finally, it created a semblance of a human being. A million years later, our present species came into being, and many thousands of years after that, I was born. I learned to walk and talk, and as I grew, I learned how to communicate ideas rather than just simple needs and wants. Later, I learned how to read, and because of that one skill, I learned way more than I ever could by merely observing. Along the way I learned about love and finally, during the past six years, I learned about dying through watching loved ones struggle with the end of their lives. (I won’t really know about dying until I have the experience, but it does seem as if I have been steeped in death for too many years.)

Here I am today, the culmination of billions of years of learning — a unique individual. So, what is the point of being me?

I’m not sure why the question has caught my imagination, but I’ve found myself smiling at odd moments today. It seems as if finding the right question is as important as finding the right answer, and this appears to be the right question. The meaning of life and especially death is too immense for my mind to grasp, and anyway, finding the answer can’t really help me figure out how I am supposed to live the rest of my life alone or what I am supposed to be doing. Yet suddenly, there it was, my guide to the future — a simple question, specific to me, that no one else can answer.

What is the point of being me?

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Waiting. Always Waiting.

July 5, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I am waiting. Always waiting.

I’ve had this sense of waiting for a very long time, but didn’t realize until yesterday how much energy I put into waiting. I wait for the phone to ring. I wait for the mail to come. I check each of my email accounts several times a day, waiting for . . . hoping for . . . I don’t know what. Perhaps a few words that will make sense of my life? Maybe a sense of connection to another person or to life itself?

This pervasive sense of waiting started years ago when my life mate/soul mate first got sick. I used to wait for him to get better, and then, during that final, terrible year, I waited for him to die. After his death, I waited for the worst of my grief to pass. I waited for him to call and tell me I can come home — he never did, of course, and I understand now. . . I feel it . . . that he never will. I also waited for something wonderful to happen, because only something extraordinarily good could balance such a trauma as his death. Since life does not keep a balance sheet and does not seem to care that we need to believe in balance and fairness, I gave up that particular notion.

But still I wait.

When we are happy, we are automatically in the moment. We are where we want to be, so there is no more waiting — we have arrived. But when we are not particularly happy, it’s hard to accept the truth of the present, and we wait for something else.

I need to get past this sense of waiting and realize that however empty and lonely, this is my life at the moment. This is what I have to deal with. This is where I am. (And yet, at the same time, I have to allow for the possibility of something wonderful happening.)

Sometimes when I finish writing a blog post, I’ve figured out the answer to that day’s conundrum, but not this time. I haven’t a clue how to deal with this sense of waiting. Maybe I need to live more in the real world? Stay away from the internet with its siren song of expectation? That will be difficult. Offline, not much occurs in my life, but online there always seems to be something to do. Writing this essay for example. Clicking on facebook to see what is happening in my online world. Checking my email accounts, waiting for . . . hoping for . . .

Posted in blogging, grief, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Celebrating My Independence

July 4, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I woke in tears this morning, and I have no idea why. This was not an especially festive day for me my life mate/soul mate, and I don’t remember having an upsurge in grief on either of the previous July 4ths since his death. It’s possible the emphasis on family this holiday is making me more aware that he is no longer here with me. It’s also possible the stresses of dealing with his being gone have been building up again, and as you know, tears are my way of relieving the stress. I have been doing very well lately adapting to life without him, but still, I’m tired of having to adapt, tired of trying to put the best light on the situation.

Despite this day not having a special meaning for me and my mate, I have a hunch the holiday itself brought on the tears, but for an unexpected reason. This is the day to celebrate independence, and I am not yet ready to celebrate my independence as a single woman.

Being alone has its advantages, or so they say, but I miss him. Miss feeling that life was special because he was in it. Miss feeling as if I belonged to something bigger than me — our life together did seem greater than the sum of the two of us. Part of me thinks I should be beyond these feelings by now, but the truth is, I’m not sure I will ever be beyond missing him.

The truth is also that he is gone and I am alone. Maybe I should turn off the computer, fix a festive meal, and celebrate my two plus years of independence, as unwelcome as they might be.

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Putting Grief into Perspective

July 2, 2012 — Pat Bertram

In light of all the horrors going on the world today — massive fires, floods, ghastly diseases — talking about my grief seems a bit self-indulgent. In my favor, my intent was never to get people to feel sorry for me, but merely to chronicle one woman’s journey through grief. I wanted to tell what it felt like to lose a life mate/soul mate since I’d never experienced such a massive onslaught of pain, both physical and psychical. In fact, I never even knew such hurt was possible.

Now that my pain has subsided to irritation and sensitivity, mood swings and easily hurt feelings, continuing to blog about my grief does seem a bit over the top as if I’m trying to dramatize myself. But again, that is not my intention. Grief lasts a long time and can cause much damage to the souls of the bereft if not allowed to follow a natural healing cycle, and these more petty side effects of grief are still part of the grieving process. Even when I’m mostly healed and grief assimilated into my life, there will still be the second half of the process to deal with — finding new meaning, new joy, perhaps even a new identity. And all those steps are worth chronicling.

I write this blog mostly for me (and also to show writers the truth about grief since many get it wrong), so any help other grievers glean from my writing is an added blessing. In other words, what I’m writing here in this post today is a reminder for myself of what I am trying to accomplish with these posts as well as trying to put my grieving into perspective.

Sometimes now, I am far removed from the initial pain, and I look back and wonder what the big deal was. So I lost my life mate/soul mate — others have endured such losses and not screamed their pain to the blogosphere. Was it really so hard? Um . . . yeah. It was excruciatingly difficult.

At the same time I marvel that I made such a big deal of my grief, I marvel that within two months of his death I managed to get his funerary arrangements made, his finances tied up, his “effects” and belonging disposed of, the house cleaned, our remaining possessions packed and stored, a new bank account set up, my driver’s license renewed, and make my way 1000 miles from home to look after my 95-year-old father. That’s a lot of work even for a person who isn’t grieving to do by herself. I have no idea how I managed to get all that done within such a short time, especially since I was reeling from a tsunami of agony and anger and angst.

In the two years and three months since his death, others have lost their spouses, their children, their parents, their health, their houses and all they hold dear, and my grief seems pale in comparison, but the truth is, all we can do is travel our own path. What might seem rosier in another’s life or what might seem more horrific, doesn’t change the truth of our own journey. And this is my path — following grief wherever it might lead me.

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Lingering Effects of Grief

July 1, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Even as my pain subsides, even as my memories of a coupled life fade, the effects of grief linger.

When the significant person in your life dies, the tearing away of their presence from your soul creates ripples of changes in your life. In my case, after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I relocated a thousand miles from our home, exchanging a mountainous climate for a desert one. As difficult as that change was, it turned out to be the easiest, probably because my long walks in the desert help me feel connected to the earth. Other changes are harder to deal with, such as loneliness and sorrow, a heightened sense of mortality, and mood swings.

During most of my life, I tried to keep my emotions on an even keel in the belief that what goes up must come down, but now such control seems beyond me.

At the beginning of my grief, I got a newsletter from hospice warning about mood swings and explaining that euphoria followed by despair is common. I didn’t pay much attention to the article because I was not prone to euphoria. I was grief-stricken, heartbroken, and soul-shattered, and I stayed that way for months on end.

Now, though, I can laugh one minute and cry the next. I succumb to irritability more often than I would like. And I am overly sensitive. Things that once I could have taken in stride now bring me to tears, as if something in me, an equalizer, perhaps, is broken. The bloody stump where he was ripped from my psyche is healing, but I am still very tender and sore, and that makes me subject to the vagaries of emotion. (Though I still haven’t experienced any euphoria.)

I don’t like this part of the process. Well, of course not. No part of the grieving process is fun, but there is a big difference between the agony of a soul crying out, “Where are you? Can you hear me?” and the pettiness of a woman upset because someone who promised to call didn’t.

Apparently, part of me believes that I paid my dues with my great loss, and now I deserve to have everything go my way. But life is not like that. Life does not keep a balance sheet.

I know that as I continue to assimilate my grief, I will eventually regain my equilibrium and find a way to deal with the minor heartaches and setbacks of life. But for now, all I can do is cling to the wildly swinging pendulum and hope I can manage to hang on until I find peace once again.

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Life, Grief, and Entropy

June 30, 2012 — Pat Bertram

For just a moment yesterday, while I was walking in the desert, all seemed clear to me. Well, all as related to my grief that is. I could see that things happened the way they needed to. My life mate/soul mate and I could not continue the life we’d been living. We were trapped in an untenable situation, not just because of his health and our finances, but because the place we were living was stifling us. There was nowhere to walk except a 600-yard-long road, nothing to do we hadn’t already done a hundred times, nothing to see that we hadn’t seen a thousand times, but we couldn’t leave. He was too sick to survive a move. Besides, he was comfortable where he was.

Those years of entrapment seemed to go on forever, the only changes being a continual worsening of his health, a continual increasing of his pain, and a continual deadening of my senses.

We were living a classic example of entropy. Entropy is a measure of the amount of energy that is unavailable to do work, and it tends to increase in closed systems. In other words, in a closed system, things break down and stop working. Because of his health, we could not do anything to stop the entropy of our lives. We could only endure.

And then one day, he was set free from his pain-wracked body and cancer-ridden brain. And I was set free from the horror of entropy.

It seemed to me, yesterday, that our lives worked out as they should have. That in a terrible way, we both got what we needed.

I felt at peace most of the day, but the feeling didn’t hold. Last night, the thought “But he’s dead!” hit me. And so sorrow descended once more.

I can see, though, that such moments of clarity will increase until I can finally accept that yes, he is dead, but so what? Someday, I will be dead, too. Meantime, I live to battle entropy another day.

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Grief: The Twenty-Seventh Twenty-Seventh

June 27, 2012 — Pat Bertram

My life mate/soul mate died of inoperable kidney cancer on the 27th of March, 2010, and today is the twenty-seventh twenty-seventh I have managed to survive. Some such dates are fading — I no longer count the days or weeks, no longer count my sad Saturdays (he died on a Saturday, and always on Saturday, I feel an upsurge of sorrow), but I am still very aware of the day of the month he died.

This twenty-seventh month marks a big change. For the first time in my long odyssey, I am more grateful for what I had with him than I am sorrowful for what I didn’t have. I can even smile when I think of him, though I don’t think of him as often as I used to. For the first two years of my grief, he consumed my thoughts. It was as if I were afraid to stop thinking of him, lest he disappear completely from life and memory. Despite that vigilance, my memories of him are fading, and while I still feel the sorrow, still feel the immense hole in my life, I am forgetting the particulars. Forgetting, even, what he looked like.

This forgetting seems like a death in itself, but I can’t keep him here by thinking of him. Though I wish with all my being that he were strong and healthy and living, he is gone. And I am not.

In recognition of this, I have put away the only two photos I have of him. I could not bear to look at the pictures for the first fifteen months after he died, but I gradually inured myself to the sight of them. For a while, the images brought me comfort, but now they only remind me of my sadness. Maybe someday I will set out the photos again; meantime, I am learning to survive without this crutch. The photos might not be a crutch so much as a reminder, or maybe simply something to talk to, but whatever these pieces of paper are, they are not him.

I am still beset by tears and fears, and there’s a chance I always will be. His death seemed to open a crack in the EveryThing, and I could almost feel the winds of eternity. Some of the wildness of my grief and the accompanying panic came from this contact with a truth I am not yet capable of understanding. I don’t know what I will become because of the experience, but even though I don’t feel any different, I know I have changed in some fundamental way.

I am weary of trying to find my way, weary of trying to work around the immense hole he left behind, weary of trying to emphasize the good in my life. Perhaps one day, I won’t have to expend so much effort to find ways and reasons to live. I will simply . . . live.

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Grief: Finally Grateful

June 26, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Two years and three months after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I am finally beginning to understand that this is my life and my life alone.

Sharing a life with someone might shroud the basic aloneness for a while, but after the person dies, it eventually becomes apparent that your destiny belongs only to you. (Because, obviously, if it belonged to both of you, he would still be here.)

Surviving a mate is hard on many counts. The sheer agony of his being ripped from your life leaving you feeling amputated. The bewilderment and angst that come with confronting death. The collateral losses that go along with losing a mate, such as the loss of one’s connection to the world, the loss of one’s best friend, the loss of someone to share the burden of decisions and chores. But beyond the obvious hardships are the more subtle problems of loving someone who is no longer alive, of continuing to worry about their wellbeing, of feeling bad for them that their life was cut short. (Much of my grief was for him, a posthumous empathy for his suffering and for his dreams that never came to fruition.)

I do not know the truth of his death — perhaps he is sunning himself on some cosmic beach or playing with a couple of galactic cats. Perhaps he is glad to be dead, assuming he even knows that he is. The corollary to this being my life and my life alone is that his life is his alone. Despite all that we did together, all that we shared, all that we were together, I am no longer part of his life.

In some ways, his death set me free. Our lives had become so constrained because of his illness and our financial concerns, that it trapped both of us in a world that was barely tolerable. (I was going to say that it was unbearable, but we did bear it.) His death brought an end to that world for both of us, though losing him catapulted me into the world of grief.

I am not over my grief — I never will be — but my sorrow is being assimilated into my life, and I am coming closer to an acceptance of the gift of freedom he gave me. I am still prone to tears and fears, but finally, after all these months, I am able to think of him and smile, and be grateful that he shared his life with me.

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I Am Crying, Forever Dying

June 23, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I had a grief upsurge yesterday, probably because I haven’t been grieving much and it’s been building up, but the upsurge itself was instigated by a song.

It started with my session of dance therapy (I call it that, but all I do is prance around for two or three songs in an effort to add a bit of lightness to my step and my life). The first song was “Cry Cry Cry” by Highway 101.

I wonder if he knows what he’s done to me
I’m gonna love that boy till the day I die
Till the day I do I’m gonna cry cry cry.

What a mood brightener! But I managed to get through that song dry-eyed. I even managed to get through the second song without tearing up — “You’re in My Heart” by Rod Stewart

You’re in my heart, you’re in my soul
You’ll be my breath should I grow old
You are my lover, you’re my best friend
You’re in my soul

Yikes. Not the song to cheer up a woman who has lost her mate. But the third one did me in — “Sailing” by Rod Stewart.

Can you hear me, can you hear me
Through the dark night far away?
I am dying, forever crying
To be with you, who can say.

Even worse, I found myself haunted by those words all day yesterday and into today. Oddly, though, I transposed the words, and what went around and around in my head was “I am crying, forever dying.”

Out walking in the desert today, I had a bit of a mystical revelation. (Or sunstroke. It was hot out there.) What if that’s the truth of it? We are forever dying? Not just now in this lifetime, but forever? What if life is the aberration, and dying (not death) the norm?

Some scientists say the universe is dying, that there are more stars dying out than being born. Maybe someday, when it’s all over, there will be another big bang, and the whole cycle will start again. Perhaps each cycle is a single breath of “The EveryThing.”

I guess what I’m saying is maybe life as we know it is more of a static state than dying is. With dying comes transformation.

Did I mention that it was very HOT in the desert?

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Dreaming of the Dead

June 20, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I don’t often dream about my deceased life mate/soul mate, but last night was an exception. Perhaps my bloggerie yesterday, where I mentioned a revelation I had while walking in the desert, instigated the dream. The revelation — that having a sign from him wouldn’t change my life, that I’m already doing the best I can to be the best person I can be — was a pivotal point for me. Or perhaps it was because I’ve been going through the movies he taped and have thrown away some I know I will never watch. Whatever the reason, it was good being with him again for a few minutes.

I don’t think the dream was a sign from him, nor do I think he actually visited me. In fact, I knew it was a dream while dreaming.

In the dream, we were going somewhere on foot, and I realized that it would be cold before we got back, so I went inside to get a coat. In my closet were two of his coats — a jacket and a trench coat, which I have in fact kept. As I was pulling the jacket off the hangar, I remembered that I had gotten rid of most of his things after he died, and I panicked, wondering how to tell him that his stuff was gone. I left the room, and met one of the moderators of the grief group I had attended. He asked how I was, so I explained the situation, then I added, “It’s a good thing this is a dream, otherwise he would be really angry.”

In the dream, I was glad not to have to tell him his things were gone, and I’m glad I don’t have to tell him in real life. Even though he told me what to do with most things, he never told me what to do with his tape collection, and I don’t know what he would think of my throwing any of them away. But he is beyond caring about such things now.

Part of me wants to get rid of everything that reminds me of him — which would mean getting rid of everything I own. But part of me thinks there might come a day when having our things around me might help connect the disparate parts of my life — the years with him and the future years without him.

It still seems bizarre to me that a person’s things outlast him. In this age of obsolescence, you’d think it would be the other way around. Besides our household goods, his tape collection, and various things I have not been able to get rid of yet, I have a great many papers  in his handwriting — recipes, the list of video tapes, a foot-high stack of notes from his studies into health and nutrition, and various other notes I come across from time to time. Oddly, for something so personal, an unexpected glimpse of his handwriting doesn’t sadden me, which is a good thing. I’m sad enough as it is.

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