Rocky Climb

If you are a regular reader, you know that I lost my sister to ALS on November 5th, a little less than four months ago.

People ask me how my sister’s kids are doing. How her husband is doing. How my parents are doing, and how I am doing. I appreciate this more than I can express, but I realize that it’s almost like I can’t climb down into how I feel without some sort of engraved invitation. It’s not that I don’t want to. I do want to. But I can’t, or at the very least, there is a delayed reaction. And so I usually think that I am ok, really, that things are good.

The truth is that so many things were so bad for so long that yes, things are better and we are not worrying about the stupid day to day ALS crap like, does she still have enough mouth control to eat, what if she chokes, what effect is this having on her kids. So yes, things are good in a certain way.

And then suddenly I’ll stop for a coffee while grocery shopping and I’ll be putting half and half in my coffee, and think about how much I love half and half and how cozy it is to get a coffee while out, and then I think, “Sure, I love half and half and coffee, but Beth really loved half and half and the coziness of getting a coffee while out,” and then like a flash I am up against the completely normal fact that I had a sister, and quickly followed by the need to re-digest the forced fact that my sister died, that she basically just died, and what the hell am I doing having coffee at Fairway when she is dead, and then this progression of thought is quickly followed up by oh, crap, where is Henry. Only about a second has passed, and he’s looking at the cow on the milk dispenser. Moo.

Friday, which is what I just described, is sort of a normal day. But then on days like today, I realize that I just don’t even know how I am.

For the last month I’ve done little other than make and eat cake for various events. I am drawn to cake like a moth to a flame, and that may be why my wings are melting.

I haven’t been writing, or doing yoga, or driving in the car and listening to music that sparks me to emotion, or laughing with friends, or doing any of the things that clean me out and let me emote or keep me centered. Another big mistake, I see today, when I woke up splattered with doubt and negativity and uncontrollable emotion.

I spent some time yesterday with the wife of one of my husband’s great life friends. I like this wife very much. She is a bit older than I am, and she has three children, and lots of great advice. She’s confident, self-deprecating, an MD, a Catholic, and hilarious. They live out of town but one time we went there for dinner, and she made us really good steaks. She’s also quite compassionate, though I don’t know her terribly well. My impression is that she is careful about what is important.

This wife lost her dad when she was young, and has spoken to me a few times about Beth, who she met at our wedding. That night, we all sat at the head table together. Beth had been diagnosed less than 3 months before, but her speech was awful, and she’d broken her leg really badly. If you didn’t know Beth before the wedding and you met her there, you might not understand that she was a normal person to whom a bad series of things were happening. Because you might not want to think that you were also a person to whom a series of seriously bad things could happen, you might be inclined to disassociate with her. I think that a lot of people don’t understand, when confronted with a health problem, that there aren’t sick people and healthy people, but rather just a pile of people, and let’s just hope you continue to have good days.

But I do think that the wife understood that. And yesterday, she asked me if I knew what grief would look like if you drew it. She explained that if grief looks like waves, and that at first the amplitude is large, and the periodicity is frequent. And that then the periodicity is less frequent, and but the amplitude of the waves that do appear is still large. And that finally, the amplitude shrinks.

As I walk through these winter days sisterless, I realize again and again that loss is a rocky climb up and down these damn amplitudic waves, with the bobbing and floating and dragging. But the worst is not even doing the grieving, and I feel like I’ve been irritable and anxious and overwhelmed, but that I haven’t managed to do the things that help with the grieving. I have felt more than once that spending time with someone compassionate who isn’t part of my every day is actually just the engraved invitation I need to climb down into how I feel. It happens when people ask, even if it doesn’t happen in that exact moment.

I’ve been doing TV and cake and dirty snow and the elliptical and wine in a box. Sugar, booze, and staring at screens are just like Tylenol — they may distract from the issue but they don’t get to the root of it. I need to be doing fresh air and laughing or crying and working out my thoughts and connecting with people. I need less cake.

I’ve started about a thousand posts and just haven’t managed to finish. One is an advice column, another is about Beth, another is about recipes. Don’t worry, I may be down on life and down on cake, but I still intend to share my marshmallow filling recipe with you.

These will come, hopefully this week.