My Dirty Little Secret

July 24, 2012 — Pat Bertram

When my life mate/soul mate died two and a third years ago, something in me broke wide open, leaving me exposed and willing to talk about that great soul quake. As I heal and settle back into being me, I’m not sure I will have the courage to continue exposing myself, so I’m going to tell you my dirty little secret before I wimp out.

Part of me misses my grief.

Bizarre, isn’t it? For two years I’ve screamed my pain into the depths of the blogoshere, totally confused by the vastness of my agony and the enormity of my loss. I don’t miss the pain at all, it truly was almost more than I could handle, and I truly hate that he is gone, but I miss feeling as if I were on the edge of something important, something vital . . . something eternal.

It’s as if for the past few years, during his dying, his death, and my grief, I was on stage in the middle of a great tragedy. That it wasn’t my tragedy didn’t matter — I still had a major role, that of the chief mourner. Now, the curtain is down, the audience is gone, the lights are off, the stage is empty, and I, no longer a tragic figure, just an actor with no role left to play, am heading home alone down the dark empty streets.

If my grief had been supplanted with something else — a new love, a new focus, a new outlook even — I might not feel so
. . . diminished. But the truth is, my grief seems to have burned itself out, and since I have not yet rebuilt my life, I am in a sort of limbo. I still have moments of sadness, still have moments of tears, still miss him, still want to go home to him, but all of this is not the focus of my life as it has been for so long.

I suppose it’s just as well I don’t know what I want to do with my life alone since I still have obligations, and so could not act on any desires, but someday I will need to find a new focus. I am doing what I can to prepare. I take long walks, exercise, try to eat right. I’m even doing a bit of writing. And of course, I’m still doing a lot of thinking, though I’m trying to curtail the mental activity and simply be, and more specifically, simply be me. (I haven’t a clue what that means, but since I am the only me the universe has to offer, I might as well make use of the opportunity, right?)

A lot of the angst and questioning is dissipating along with my pain. Most recently I wondered “why something instead of nothing?” and found an answer I am satisfied with: because something is possible. Maybe in the end, that’s the whole point of life — possibility. When my current obligations come to an end, my whole life opens up into one huge possibility. I have no where to be, no one to be with, no task that needs to be done. Sounds to me as if my life will be opening up to endless possibilities. But until then, it’s just a matter of heading down those dark empty streets and seeing where I end up.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Grief Update: Going on Alone

July 22, 2012 — Pat Bertram

A week ago I mentioned that all of a sudden my grief seemed to have changed, and that change appears to be holding true.

After the second anniversary of the death of my life mate/soul mate I didn’t feel any different than I’d felt the previous year. I was still sad and weepy at times, and more recently I had a week-long grief upsurge starting on the fourth of July, but lately, as I’m nearing the two-and-a-third-year mark, I seem to have made some sort of accommodation with his death and my grief.

For most of the past twenty-eight months, I’ve felt bad for him, for the horror of his last years, and for all that he is missing out on, but I don’t feel bad for him any more. I’m glad he’s out of this life, glad he doesn’t have to deal with any of the political, financial, and medical changes that are coming our way, glad he no longer has to contend with growing old or to be fearful of ending up as a helpless invalid.

I’m sorry his life was cut short, but his death doesn’t shatter me any more. I take comfort in knowing that for the most part, he did it his way. He endured incredible pain, but he knew any drugs strong enough to end his suffering would also end him, and that proved to be true. When he finally had to start taking morphine, he became someone else, and I’m glad he didn’t have to endure living as that stranger for very long. I still miss him, will always miss him, but someday I will be dead, too. He just went first. It would have been nice if we’d had more good years together, but because of his illness, the good years were behind us. It would have been nice to have had more of our dreams come true and more of our hopes work out, but they no longer matter since our shared hopes and dreams died when he did.

I still have times of doubt and fears, sorrow and tears, still question the meaning of it all, but I’m getting used to the idea of going on alone, getting used to the idea of being alone.

Tomorrow, of course, I could be back in the depths of grief, feeling shattered beyond repair, but I don’t think so. The tears that come now are more nostalgic than agonizing. When I think about it, I still hate that he’s dead, but I don’t think about it much. I try to focus more on being me, on being here in this day. I still feel a disconnect, as if some of the tendons connecting me to life that ripped when he died have never healed, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. The disconnect reminds me that everything comes to an end sooner or later, even me.

Getting over the worst of the pain of grief is only the first step. Next comes rebuilding. Although I don’t believe in destiny and signs and things that are meant-to-be, part of me clings to the idea that he wouldn’t have left me if he hadn’t known I’ll be okay. I hold on to that thought because otherwise the idea of growing old alone scares me, as does the idea of creating a whole new life for myself.

I won’t say reconstructing my life will be easy in comparison to the agony and angst of losing the one person who connects me to the world since I don’t know what challenges lie before me. But I will say that after surviving such devastating grief, I have become stronger than I ever thought possible, and I will be able to handle whatever comes my way.

Posted in grief, life, relationships. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Ah, the Sacrifices We Make for the Sake of Art!

July 19, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I am writing a short story to be included in the next Second Wind anthology, which is a combination of holiday short stories and recipes. At the end of my story, the wife decides to stop poisoning her husband because she realizes that even though he is not giving her what she wants, he is giving her what she needs. This change in attitude is shown by her change of cookie recipes, from an unhealthy cookie to a healthy one.

The recipes we use are supposed to be uncopyrighted, which means that to be safe, they have to be old family recipes or something we created. Oh, the pressure!!

Well, today, I finally got down to the dirty job of creating my recipe. I dragged out oatmeal, honey, applesauce, walnuts, raisins, chocolate chips, coconut, and a few spices, mixed it all together, spooned the concoction out on a cookie sheet, stuck it in the oven, and waited.

When I took the cookies out twelve minutes later, I let them cool and then . . . drum roll, please . . . I took a bite.

Ah, the sacrifices we make for the sake of art!

As it turns out, it wasn’t such a sacrifice. I got the recipe right on the first try. The cookies actually taste great and the texture isn’t bad.

Now I have an even harder job — not eating all the cookies at once. Maybe I’ll save a few for you.

(Second Wind is running a short story contest, and the winner will be included in the anthology with me and other Second Wind authors. Please click here to Vote For Your Favorite Story!)

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Trying to Fill The Void Of His Absence With Remembered Joy

July 16, 2012 — Pat Bertram

All of a sudden, it seems, there have been changes in my life pertaining to my grief for my life mate/soul mate. For about a week after the Fourth of July, I endured a heavy upsurge in sorrow, but in its wake, I have found a semblance of peace midst the sadness.

Saturday was his birthday, and I started out the day feeling almost upbeat, gladder that he’d spent so many years with me than sadder that he is gone from my life. I’d never sung Happy Birthday to him when he was alive, so I sang to him out in the desert, where no one could hear. (Believe me, you do not want to hear me sing!) I planned to get a cake, too, but sometime that afternoon, the sadness returned. Next year, perhaps, I’ll bake a cake to celebrate his life.

I’ve also had some stray thoughts that indicate a shift in my perspective. A couple of days before his birthday, I found myself thinking, “He beat the system. He’s out of it now.” I don’t know where that idea came from because he didn’t beat the system. He didn’t have to grow elderly, but he was sick for so long it seemed as if he’d skipped a couple of decades of middle age and went straight to old age. But still, he is out of this life. He won’t have to worry about the coming changes in medical insurance or any other such foolishness, won’t have to watch himself age further, won’t have to continue suffering. Wherever he is (if he is) he is safe. And free.

To a great extent, our life together now seems unreal. I’ve been trying to live in the moment, and in the moment, he is not here. I’m still sad, still want to go home to him, still yearn to talk to him, but wanting such things seems to speak more of longing than of recollection, as if somewhere in the back of my mind I had conjured up a mate and a life and time of togetherness. But the truth is, if I had conjured up such a fantasy out of nothing but loneliness, I would have created happier memories. Too much of our life together was steeped in sickness and failure. Still, there were joys. The astonishing beginning of our relationship when he was radiant with youth and strength and health, the electricity of our long-lasting discussions, the sweetness of our final hug, the beauty of his smile, his wonderful gift of appreciation, his vast courage, and his determination to accomplish something each day despite his waning health.

I came across these words today from “Remembered Joy,” an Irish prayer:

I could not stay another day,
To love, to laugh, to work or play;
Tasks left undone must stay that way.
And if my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joy.

He stayed as long as he could, and it would pain him to know that his death brought me so much sorrow. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fill the void of his absence with only remembered joy, but I’m continuing with my life, filling it with new experiences, and for now that’s the best I can do.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Death Certificate Error

July 15, 2012 — Pat Bertram

My mother, far right, on her 60th wedding anniversary

I found out something today that shocked the heck out of me, and after the horrendous shock of my grief after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I’m not very shockable any more.

My mother died of lung cancer four and a half years ago. Her cause of death surprised me a bit since she’d never been a smoker, but at 85, one is susceptible to many forms of cancer, so I mostly found it ironic that a woman who’d never even been around second hand smoke (except for my father’s very occasional cigars) should die in such a manner. However, as I found out today, her death certificate says that she’d contributed to her death because she’d been a smoker for thirty years.

What???? How is that possible? She’d never smoked as long as I knew her, so if she’d been a smoker for thirty years, she would have had to start puffing away a couple of years before she was even a glint in her parents’ eyes, found a way to sneak smokes before she could crawl, and keep up the habit while enduring the privations of growing up in a coal mining town.

I hope this mistake on her death certificate was simply that — a mistake — rather than someone’s agenda to prove that smoking causes lung cancer. My sister doesn’t want to take a chance on upsetting my father during his final years, so she’s waiting until after he’s gone to get the death certificate changed. Until then, it’s a wonder my mother isn’t haunting us. My mother was a very exact and truthful woman, who believed in choosing the right words. (I can’t tell you how often we argued with her about “almost exactly.” She insisted things were either almost or exactly, while we were just as insistent that there were gradations of almost.) And this error on her death certificate is a more grievous transgression than a simple misuse of words.

To be honest, I doubt she cares any more what her death certificate says, but it will be good for the rest of us when the record is set straight. It isn’t only smokers who die of lung cancer. Non-smokers die of the disease, too, and their deaths should not be dismissed because of errors on their death certificates. Nor should non-smokers smugly go on about their lives feeling secure in the belief that they will never get lung cancer. They can, and they do.

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: , , . 2 Comments »

Thursday the 12th — A Day of Bad Luck

July 13, 2012 — Pat Bertram

After yesterday, Friday the 13th holds no horrors. I started the day at an outdated dentist’s office that seemed like something from the inquisition rather than a modern tool of torture. It wasn’t so bad since I was not the patient, though I did have to be patient to sit through his political diatribes. (He’s British and thinks there are so few USA-born doctors because Americans are lazy, and he thinks our schools should be based on the British model, but he came here to dentistry school because he wanted a first-rate education and stayed because he couldn’t make money in Britain as a dentist.) I’ll stick with my Vietnamese dentist. At least he keeps the torturous chatter to a minimum.

Next, when I went online and checked Facebook, I discovered that someone had plagiarized me. I pointed out the word-for-word passages she used. She apologized, agreed to comply, since I was “so obviously offended.” Offended? You think? Then, after she finally removed the plagiarized bits, she said, “I assure you that this won’t be discussed with anyone.” Why would I need that assurance? I did nothing wrong. I don’t care who knows that she’s a plagiarist. I unfriended her, of course, since obviously, she was no friend. (She’s an author I only knew through Facebook, so I’m not losing a real friend.)

And then the real horror began. Something happened to my blog. The right sidebar with my covers sank to the bottom of the page, and the admin bar, the black bar across the top that takes me from the blog page to the dashboard and back again, stopped working. It turns out WordPress offers support only to those who pay for upgrades, which I don’t, so I spent all day on the WordPress Forums looking for a solution. One person suggested, Go to Settings > Writing and select “ ___ WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” and then scroll down and click “Save Changes.” Now, starting with your latest post, open it in the editor, make one minor change such as adding a space and then deleting it, and then click “Update Post.” Check your blog and see if it is back to normal.

The problem is on all five of my blogs that use the same theme, so the problem couldn’t have stemmed from anything I did. Still, I followed their instructions on the off-chance that it would help. It didn’t help me, but if you have a wordpress blog, I would suggest changing the setting. Any stray bit of html can wreak havoc on your blog.

Another person had me disable “infinite scrolling.” It used to be that you could choose how many posts would be displayed when people came to your blog, but now, when you reach the bottom of the page, you get more blog posts. In other words, there is no bottom of the page. If you want to dismantle infinite scrolling, here are the instructions: http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/disabling-infinite-scrolling/

Dismantling infinite scrolling did not correct the problem, so the next task they had me do was change all the images in the right sidebar (which of course you can’t see if you are using IE9) to smaller ones that fit the width of the sidebar. Supposedly, IE9 doesn’t make the conversions from larger images to smaller ones very easily, though until yesterday, I never had a problem. But even going through all that trouble didn’t make a difference.

I hoped that things would miraculously be back to normal today, but alas, the blog is still broken. So . . . Friday the 13th? It doesn’t scare me. But Thursday the 12th? Yikes.

Posted in blogging, culture, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Is Facebook Still Cool?

July 12, 2012 — Pat Bertram

For years now, writers have been told that to promote their books, they need to sign up for Facebook, mostly because when Facebook was new, very few authors used social networking sites to engage with readers so those who did found a goldmine. Ever since then, authors by the hundreds of thousands have joined Facebook to find readers and found only other writers. Why? Unless you are a known writer, readers aren’t searching you out. Writers try to connect with everyone FB suggests or anyone they come in contact with, but readers don’t. They have no reason to connect because they have nothing to gain by it.

Because of the peculiarities of Facebook, I am connected to very few people outside the writer’s community (and those few non-writer connections are mostly family or real life friends). It’s hard to believe that with over 900 million users, I can’t break out of this tight enclave into the mainstream of Facebook, but I have nothing to say to anyone besides what every other author says, “Buy my books,” and even I know that doesn’t sell books. Mostly what I do is use Facebook as a bulletin board to post links to my blog posts. I also scan my feed to see if anything interesting is going on, (so-and-so’s book is being given away free on Amazon, such-and-such a book is on sale for 99¢ . . . yawn) and finally check in with my writing discussion group.

Shouldn’t there be more to such a vast network than a writer’s group? But then, I have made a lot of online friends through Facebook, I keep up with many of my fellow Second Wind authors on Facebook, and I try to get to know the people I am connected with. Considering that joining Facebook used to be a coming-of-age ritual for thirteen-year-olds, it’s amazing I’ve found anything to do on the site! I mean really, what could I possibly have in common with such new and untried persons?

Along with all the other problems Facebook is having (such as not finding enough ways to gouge money out of us via ads), they now have to contend with the loss of their youngest members. Among some young teens, it’s no longer considered cool to join facebook — they prefer to text or to join sites where they are not pressured to connect to everyone in their class. No wonder there are so many offline traumas instigated by online life. The unpopular kids can never get away from their unpopularity. And anyway, why would they join a network that is aging? Facebook is eight years old, which in online years has to be closing in on 57. (Assuming web years are equivalent to dog years.) Even worse, from the point of view of a young teen, is that more than one-fourth of FB users are 50 to 64 years old.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this post. It started out as a light-hearted commentary about the whole Facebook phenomena, and I planned to end up with saying that there are worst things that joining Facebook to connect with readers and finding only writers of a certain age, but I’ve since discovered a fb author friend plagiarized something I posted on Facebook, which is so not cool. So now I have no end to this post. Except maybe to say that I need to stop spending so much time online.

Posted in culture, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 9 Comments »

Upsurges in Sadness Are Like Shortness of Breath After Exercise

July 11, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I’m fine. Truly I am. For all of you who have expressed concern over my current upsurge in grief, I just want to tell you there is nothing to worry about. Upsurges in sadness do not in any way affect my life or my dealings with other people. They are just there, a fact of my life like shortness of breath after exercise. If I didn’t write about my feelings, no one would know about my times of sadness. There is so much bad advice given to people about grief, such as acceptable durations and ways of grieving, that I want to provide a counterpoint, and I wouldn’t do much good if I kept silent about what I happened to be feeling at any given moment.

Many people have told me that after the death of their husband, they never found happiness until they married again. People have told me that even after they got married, they still experienced upsurges in grief, sometimes years afterward. People tell me they never got over grief at the loss of a life mate, it just got different. The death of a cousin or even a brother doesn’t affect us the same way as the loss of a child or a soul mate, so the severity of the loss has to be taken into affect before you start wondering if someone is grieving inappropriately. Some people do fall in a pit of depression and cannot get out without help, but I am not one of them. Nor am I ruining my health by riding out the sadness. That’s what tears are for — to release the stress. Walking, exercising, and blogging also relieve the stress of trying to create a new life for myself out of the embers of the old one.

For me, an upsurge in grief usually comes right before or right after a new level of acceptance or a greater understanding. This latest upsurge began on Independence Day. It’s a day for families to get together, to have fun, to do whatever it is that families do when they get together, and I was alone. I understood that this could be the way holidays will be for the rest of my life, and I found it difficult dealing with the unwelcome understanding. Also, while walking in the desert recently, I’ve had several revelations that are helping me with my search to find a new focus for my life, and such forward motions bring on an upsurge of sadness because they take me further away from the past I shared with my deceased life mate/soul mate.

And anyway, even though I am no longer a child in the world of grief, I’ve not yet achieved full growth, either. Therapists who have studied grief and grievers admit that it takes three to five years to find your way back to life, and I am just past two years. I still have a long way to go. Besides, what’s a few tears among friends?

The truth is, though, I am more exhausted than sad. I’m tired of living in an alien world, tired of having to figure out where to go from here, tired of not feeling like me, but mostly, I’m tired of his being dead. Whether I continue to be sad or find happiness, whether I continue floundering of find new focus, he will still be dead. And absolutely nothing I do or say or feel will ever change that.

Posted in blogging, culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , . 6 Comments »

Grief and the Double Standard of Love

July 10, 2012 — Pat Bertram

It seems as if our whole culture revolves around and reveres couplehood. Most songs, novels, movies, are either about people looking for someone, finding someone, losing someone, or getting a second chance at love. A large percentage of non-fiction books are written to help people find a mate or help them stay mated. Hundreds of websites are devoted to matching people with their true love or a reasonable facsimile. Many holidays are geared toward love — Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, kissing your love at midnight on New Year’s day.

Clichés about love abound, mostly because they are true (or feel true). When you meet the right person, your life suddenly make sense. Whatever has been missing now is found. Love fulfills you. Love makes the world go round. All you need is him/her. Love is all that matters. Two hearts beating as one. Soul mates. Everlasting love.

It’s so inbred in us, this need for true love, that few people question it. In movies (and maybe even life) when someone has an affair and ends their marriage to be with the new love, all they ever feel the need to say is, “I fell in love,” and that explains everything.

But . . .

When you lose your one true love to death, all of a sudden you are supposed to be able to slough it off as if love didn’t matter, and go on with your life. Everyone else is celebrating their love, but you are supposed to accept that yours is over and you are supposed to have a good attitude so you inconvenience others as little as possible.

This double standard is hard to deal with. Not only do we bereft have to contend with the effects of suddenly being deprived of love, companionship, fulfillment, not only do we have to contend with being alone in a coupled world, we have to deal with our culture’s belief that love is all important. Other people can continue to have the benefits of a living love, but somehow we bereft are supposed to be able to make do with memories.

My life mate/soul mate and I didn’t have an easy life, in large part because of his illness and other setbacks beyond our control, but like most couples, we hoped for a payoff sometime in our golden years, and his death killed our hopes.

I’m finally to the point where seeing couples doesn’t bother me, but for many months, just the sight of two people, middle-aged or older, holding hands brought me to tears. I realize some people never find anyone to love, but others have been married for forty, fifty, even sixty years. I try not to compare, try to accept my situation, but the truth is he was my home, and now I am homeless. When I was with him, I had a sense of belonging, but now I belong nowhere, especially not in this coupled world.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 9 Comments »

Floundering in a Sea of Sorrow

July 9, 2012 — Pat Bertram

A friend sent me a link to website describing grief as walking a tightrope back to life, which is an interesting metaphor, but doesn’t fit with what I’ve been feeling lately. Mostly it seems as if I am bobbing on a sea of sadness, going with the flow, accepting what has happened to both me and my deceased life mate/soul mate, then suddenly I start floundering and, occasionally, I feel as if I am foundering.

The verb flounder means to struggle, to make clumsy efforts to move or regain one’s balance, much like a fish out of water. The verb founder means to fail utterly, to collapse, and comes from a Latin word meaning “bottom.”

I seldom feel as if I am reaching bottom any more, though sometimes, grief catches me unaware and I feel as if I am once again drowning in the sea of sadness. Those times confuse me, because after two years and three months, I feel as if I shouldn’t still become so submerged in sadness. Luckily, though, my times of feeling as if I am foundering don’t last long. My times of floundering, however, are still fairly frequent. A few days can pass without an up swell of grief, and then for no reason I can fathom, I begin floundering again, and have to try to regain my balance.

Even though I’m becoming used to his absence, his goneness still confuses me at times. How can such a vital human being be gone from my life, gone from this earth, just . . . gone? And why do I still miss him? Shouldn’t I be over him? Accept that he is gone and get on with my life? But grief doesn’t work that way, or at least, my grief doesn’t.

He was a big part of my life for more than half my years. Almost everything I own belonged to the two of us. I have a few things that predate his appearance in my life — my car, some household goods — but everything else reminds me of him. He was my best friend, the one person to whom I could say anything, no matter how shocking the rest of the world would find my musings. Oddly, he is still the only person I can talk to, though I do find it pathetic at times that the only one I have to converse with on a regular basis is a dead guy, especially since he doesn’t keep up his end of the conversation.

I am getting on with my life, though I seem to be missing something — verve perhaps, or buoyancy. Even when things were going wrong, our togetherness brought lightness to my life, and I don’t know how to find that in myself. I feel heavy-hearted and lead-footed, as if every movement takes more effort than it should. I suppose it’s just a matter of getting used to this weightiness as well as his goneness and my loneliness and everything else I have to get used to.

And I will get used to it all. My good days, my days of going with the flow show me that it’s possible. And then I flounder, and I wonder how I ever managed to get as far as I have without foundering.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , . 12 Comments »
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