My dear friend is in the early months of widowhood. When we spoke this weekend she mentioned how relieved she was to get home after work. She turns on the television to something mindless and watches, but not the screen, the hours pass. It's her relief.
I wanted to say it would get better, but for me it hasn't. It's been nearly seven years since Al died and I have a full, busy life, but I still need my solitary and, yes, mindless hours. I wish I could say that I use the time to meditate or reflect, but it isn't that. It's more like needing a recharge for my run-down battery.
I can't speak for my friend, but for me one of the reasons for this need for sanctuary might be an intimate knowledge of bereavement. As the years go by I tend to forget that most of the people I spend my days with are innocents. They haven't had their minds and spirits altered by the early death of a partner or child. We all look the same and carry out the same tasks at work, but we aren't. We're sure of different things. We're influenced by different beliefs. Living along side those invisible differences takes a lot out of a person.
And there's the high alert state that preceded our loved one's death and which never fully dissipated after he died. I long for refuge from that. I still find myself agitated by the most petty events, those I believe I can control and those I can't. Will the Time Warner cable guy stand me up again and waste another day of my life? Will the melting mountain of snow at the top of the driveway flood my basement? Will I accomplish the week's tasks (the ones Al used to do plus the ones I always did) that need doing and which I forgot to write down? Which ones are critical? Which ones are not? I can't always seem to distinguish between the two. They can all feel like issues of life and death to me.
Not everyone copes with bereavement in the same way. Some keep super busy, finding forgetfulness in ultra multi-tasking. Some take to drink, drugs, or the internet. Some are quick to superimpose new loves or child substitutes over the ones they lost. But I only see their activities from the outside and can't know if they serve to satisfy, distract, or further sicken the spirit.
It's a lousy position to be in, anyway. Whatever gets us through our dark night or decade of the soul is what our instincts lead us to do. My self-imposed inactivity is no better or worse. No, I can't tell my friend that it will pass. It lessens, but then sometimes it reappears in its full force, brought on by who knows what? Anniversaries. Holidays. Memories. Dreams.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Monday, March 3, 2014
Sidetracked
I lost last week to a head cold. I ignored it as well as I could. Tried writing entries, but my words made no sense to me. I couldn't tell whether my writing was off or my reading of it, but it didn't matter. I believed I couldn't post what I myself couldn't follow.
My mind wasn't working right. My higher mind, I should say. I couldn't follow myself in the ways that I've trained and practiced. By which I mean a sort of witnessing, somewhat objective, but leaning towards encouragement and positive critiques--like a good coach. When my developed consciousness is functioning on that level, I'm discerning, yet kind. I get out of my own way.
But I was sick. My spaciness stressed me. When I am stressed I retreat. When I retreat I regress. (Note the eternal present. It's a pattern it's taken me a mere 64 years to recognize, sometimes.)
When I regress, I don't want to be too visible to the outside world. It isn't safe when I don't have my wits about me. I fall back into my parents' beliefs that the world is never safe, not for an instant, that one must live defensively. This means in private and invisibly.
My parents were first-generation Americans. They shared a perspective developed by hearing their parents remember the violence of pogroms and conscriptions back in the Ukraine at the turn of the twentieth century. My parents' beliefs were reinforced by their experience of the Depression, their understanding of the Holocaust, and decades of overt prejudice against Jews right here in the United States. I shudder as I write the word. Jews. I hear my mother's loud whisper, "Sh-h! Don't tell!" As if our origins weren't apparent through our name--Letofsky. It always was apparent, and what she and my father wished for wasn't really invisibility. Their highest hope was to be ignored, left alone to live in peace.
This is not an optimum background for a writer, for this writer, anyway. For some writers, this very same family friction enhances their creativity and productivity. But my temperament made me fiercely loyal to my family's world view, at my own expense. "Be quiet! Don't say a word!" Refocusing my loyalty towards my work has been a major challenge in my life. It's almost second nature now. Maybe second and a half nature.
But when I'm "not myself" because of sickness or other stressful situations (like what's happening right now in Kiev, near where my grandparents lived), I fall back into the old ways. Don't look at me. Don't read my words. Leave me alone. Let me live in peace.
The thing is, living in peace could mean keeping out of everybody else's way, like my parents thought. Or it could mean living how I need to live--visibly and verbally--in trust, even when I'm not sure that I'm making sense.
My mind wasn't working right. My higher mind, I should say. I couldn't follow myself in the ways that I've trained and practiced. By which I mean a sort of witnessing, somewhat objective, but leaning towards encouragement and positive critiques--like a good coach. When my developed consciousness is functioning on that level, I'm discerning, yet kind. I get out of my own way.
But I was sick. My spaciness stressed me. When I am stressed I retreat. When I retreat I regress. (Note the eternal present. It's a pattern it's taken me a mere 64 years to recognize, sometimes.)
When I regress, I don't want to be too visible to the outside world. It isn't safe when I don't have my wits about me. I fall back into my parents' beliefs that the world is never safe, not for an instant, that one must live defensively. This means in private and invisibly.
My parents were first-generation Americans. They shared a perspective developed by hearing their parents remember the violence of pogroms and conscriptions back in the Ukraine at the turn of the twentieth century. My parents' beliefs were reinforced by their experience of the Depression, their understanding of the Holocaust, and decades of overt prejudice against Jews right here in the United States. I shudder as I write the word. Jews. I hear my mother's loud whisper, "Sh-h! Don't tell!" As if our origins weren't apparent through our name--Letofsky. It always was apparent, and what she and my father wished for wasn't really invisibility. Their highest hope was to be ignored, left alone to live in peace.
This is not an optimum background for a writer, for this writer, anyway. For some writers, this very same family friction enhances their creativity and productivity. But my temperament made me fiercely loyal to my family's world view, at my own expense. "Be quiet! Don't say a word!" Refocusing my loyalty towards my work has been a major challenge in my life. It's almost second nature now. Maybe second and a half nature.
But when I'm "not myself" because of sickness or other stressful situations (like what's happening right now in Kiev, near where my grandparents lived), I fall back into the old ways. Don't look at me. Don't read my words. Leave me alone. Let me live in peace.
The thing is, living in peace could mean keeping out of everybody else's way, like my parents thought. Or it could mean living how I need to live--visibly and verbally--in trust, even when I'm not sure that I'm making sense.
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