Tears

The tears are coming more often these days.  Maybe it is planning the unveiling.  Maybe it is memories of last year and the last weeks of his life. 

I miss the physical and emotional intimacy we shared.  I could be myself - with no masks, no pretense.  I could tell  him anything.  Now there is nobody that I can talk to about anything.  Nobody with whom I can share certain thoughts and feelings.  While I have so many great friends, that makes me feel so alone and isolated.

This is my life now, and I don't like it.  I miss my Brian.  I miss my life.

I miss my life

I'm approaching the first anniversary of Brian's death and many feel that I should be done mourning.  It doesn't work that way.  I have accepted Brian's death, but that doesn't mean that I have come to terms with it.

I'm not just mourning the end of his life; I'm mourning the end of my own.  The best of my life died with Brian.  My marriage is over.  My best friend is gone.  The person I spent the most time with, my confidant, my sounding board, my lover - all gone.  The person that I could laugh and cry with, the only one who could bring comfort, the only one who knew me completely  - gone.  I

I have turned towards life.  I'm not tucked away from the world wallowing in my grief, but I miss love, joy and fun.  There is no joy left.  Life is bleak.

Mourning doesn't end by a mark on the calendar.  I am still deeply mourning.  I miss my life.

V62.82 Adding Insult to Injury

Working in a healthcare field, I am all too familiar with diagnosis codes and how they effect the care that insurance companies will cover.

I remember several years ago, when Brian was healthy and we looked forward to growing old together, hearing that grief and bereavement would become a recognized mental health diagnosis code.  I was opposed to this. This was during a time when pre-existing conditions were still a debilitating ball and chain that could cost people their health coverage.  Why would grief, a normal reaction to a substantial loss be considered a mental health diagnosis?  Brian took the opposite view.  He felt that a diagnosis would allow the bereaved access to councelling and support that they might otherwise not be able to afford.

Baby, you weren't wrong often, but I fear you might have been wrong about this.

V62.82 is the ICD-9 diagnosis code for bereavement.

"Most people can navigate the bereavement process with the help of family, friends and their faith based community if you have a particular faith. We expect you to think about the departed person, be sad and have some physical symptoms. Crying, loss of appetite poor sleep and even some weight loss are common in the early stages of bereavement. You may experience more or less of these symptoms. Some people can express this outwardly and some keep the pain inside.

You will probably never completely get over the loss and you are sure to always remember the loved one but at some point you will begin to be able to return to your life as it was before they passed. You should still be able to work, be close to others among your family and friends and find some things pleasurable to do.

If the symptoms go on too long they begin to look more like depression than normal grief. How long the bereavement process may take you depend on you and your culture. In American and most of “western” culture we expect this process to take 60 days or less. If it goes beyond that we need to look at how this loss is affecting you."

Wow.  I think that these codes were defined by someone who never lost more than the carnival goldfish won in the 2nd grade.  60 days or less?  This framework would imply that all loss is the same.  I think perhaps the loss of a young child might take longer to process than the loss of a 98 year old grandparent.  I think perhaps the loss of a loved one with whom you live may take longer than the loss of a loved one that you see once or twice a year.

I'm not done grieving the cruel and unexpected death of my 48 year old husband.  I go to work, have relationships with others, and even find pleasure in some activities, but how can I ever "return to my life as it was before he passed?"  Before he passed, I lived with Brian.  We shared everything.  We supported each other.  We were best friends, lovers, two halves of a whole.  I can never return to that, and it is taking me much longer than two months to deal with this horrific loss and everything it means about my life and my future.

I am working with a councillor to help me process my grief, and while I am in a much better place now than I was nine months ago, I am still experiencing debilitating pain.  

When I first returned home after spending four months with Brian in the hospital and hospice, I was inconsolable, sleep deprived, and experiencing unbeleavable pain.  Any time I layed down to try and rest, I experienced anxiety attacks.  My doctor had me on an antidepressant, an anti-anxiety drug, and a drug to help me sleep.  In addition, I was on narcotic pain medication for a medical condition.  I was concerned about taking all these drugs and how they might interact.  After discussing this with my councillor we agreed that I should consult a psychiatrist to manage my medications.

Let's skip over the hoops I had to jump through to get access to a psychiatrist.  When I met with the doctor - let's call him Dr. Pompous to protect his identity, I told him that I was concerned with being on so many meds.  I explained that I had a relationship with a councillor, and was just seeing him for drug management.  He changed the anti-depressant that I was on (which seems to have been a good decision), and immediately pushed me to stop seeing my councillor because she did not provide the cognitive therapy that was so "crucial" to my mental health.  When I told him that I had no intention of changing therapists he kindly let me know that I was making a poor choice.

Because it had already been more than two months since Brian's death, he didn't give me a V62.82 diagnosis, but diagnosed me as having an acute major-depressive episode.

Yes, I probably should have stopped seeing him immediately, but I didn't.  Dr. Pompous, in his all-knowing wisdom then raised my dosage of the anti-deppresant to the highest available dose.  We'll skip over the fact that my previous $9.00 copay jumped to over $200, it was the required therapeutic dose.  

As time went on my grief did not dissipate, but some of the sharp edges smoothed.  I told Dr. Pompous that I wanted to start to lower the dosage.  I wasn't surprised when he objected to the idea.  He insisted that the doseage worked and asked why would I stop taking it.  I suggested that since I was grieving the death of my husband one would expect that I would start to feel better with time.  I also said that my work with my councillor is helping me a lot, an idea he completely dismissed.  He asked if I had ever been depressed before, and I admitted that I had when my first husband, an addict who abused prescription drugs, was out of control and making my life a living nightmare.  This solidified his stance.  I've had multiple episodes of acute depression and therefore must remain on the highest dose of medication for the rest of my life.

What?!  Grief is not a mental illness!  It is an unbearably painful reaction to a horrible loss.  There is no timeline for dealing with grief - it is as individual as our fingerprints.  Instead of viewing me as a human being in pain, Dr. Pompous viewed me as an organism with a label.  

A bereavement diagnosis, and all of the ridiculous assumptions that go with it, is not helpful or realistic.  My grief does not make me mentally ill; it makes me human.  

I will be ending my doctor/patient relationship with Dr. Pompous.  I will be working with another doctor to safely reduce my doseage.  I will refuse to be labeled by a diagnosis code.

I know I will never return to the life that I had before Brian died.  I don't know if I will ever stop grieving.  I do know that with time and patience I will find a new normal that is OK, that brings me joy, that allows me to feel alive.

Normal people don't view others through the context of diagnosis codes, but they often have established ideas of how others "should" react, cope, and heal.  Please don't paint everyone with the same brush.  If you have friends and loved ones who are grieving, be supportive and allow them to work through it in their own time and way.  They may need help in navigating through their grief, but ultimately nobody can say what the "correct" path through grief is.  Be supportive without expectations or defined frameworks; like diagnosis codes, those frameworks simply add insult to injury.

The End.

I was sleeping.  Dreaming. Then suddenly I woke.  I looked at the clock and it was almost 5am.  Just like that day eleven months ago.  I woke just in time to hold you as you left.  I held you in my arms, you squeezed my hand, took two breathes, and then you were gone.  5am Saturday April 20, 2013.

A change in course

Eleven months ago tonight was the worst night of my life.  Eleven months ago tomorrow morning my beloved Brian died.

I knew he was going to die soon, but there is something unbearably painful in switching from giving morphine to make living easier to giving morphine to make dying easier.  That night I knew that the morphine was for managing his death and not his life.  That knowledge ate me up alive.

Eleven months have passed and the sharp edges of my pain have smoothed somewhat, but not when it comes to certain memories - like this one.  My pain tonight is not as bad as it was then, but it still hurts so much to remember and to process those memories.

Questions with No Answers

It is a waste of time to obsess about questions for which there are no answers, but over the past eleven months I've struggled with that sort of question.  This morning it all kind of exploded.

Was I there for Brian in the way he needed as he dealt with his illness and mortality.  If I were to ask my friends, they would answer that of course I was.  I was by his side from the time of his diagnosis until his death.  He died in my loving arms.  But that doesn't mean that I was there in the way he needed.

Did I give him the opportunity to explore his relationship with his own dying?  He insisted he was OK with it all, but I can't understand how that could be.  Was I so wrapped up in my own pain and grief, that I wasn't truly there to help him with his?

I can't know.  That is a question that might haunt me for the rest of my life.  Was I there for him?

I'm not dying.  I don't have a serious health problem, but I do have a health problem that causes me chronic physical pain, and when that pain becomes extreme, I miss him even more.  He was he only one who could comfort me when the pain was too much to bear.  Just a hug from him made it OK.

He was the only person who knew me and loved me uncondiotionally.  He was the first person ever to respect me.  He was my everything, and without him I am so desperately alone.  Not lonely - I have amazing friends - but alone.  What worth do I have if I'm no longer Brian's wife?

So when I think back to those last months, when I was still his wife, and he was my everything, I can't help but wonder if I failed him by allowing my grief to overwhelm me while he was still alive.  I know how much he loved me, and I know he would forgive me if I was lost in my own pain, but can I forgive myself?

Living with the pain

Considering everything, I'm doing really well.  I'm working and actually enjoying my new responsibilities.  I'm exercising, losing weight, and toning up.  I'm making plans with friends and keeping busy.  Things could be a lot worse.  That doesn't mean, though, that things are good.

I miss Brian every day.  His absence is always felt.  I feel like I have lost some internal force of gravity.  He kept me grounded.  He held me together.  He made me whole.  Without him, I'm functioning, but I feel disjointed, dismembered.  I feel like parts of me are floating in various directions, and his force field is no longer here to hold it all together. 

On an ok day I go to work, come home, take care of our dog and cat, exercise, shower, eat dinner, relax and go to bed.  It's a full day, and I manage.  But on those days when things aren't so ok - when I'm stressed, anxious, angry, or in pain - on those days I come home to an empty house and the emptiness strangles me.  There is nobody that I can call that knows me like he did.  There is nobody that can hug me, say the perfect Brian thing to make it ok, nobody so central to my being who can make that bad day less important just by breathing, smiling, being there. 

In so many ways, things are so much better than they were even a few months ago, but that doesn't mean that things are good.  That doesn't mean that I'm not still mourning.  That doesn't mean that the pain isn't still overwhelming.  It just means that I'm learning to live with it better.

Most Days

Most days I do really well.  Lately I've felt Brian in my heart, and I see him in me.  My thinking is different - I'm able to see things through his eyes, to process things with his wisdom, to try to honor him by living without fear.

Some days, though, life becomes too stressful.  The weight of living, working, or meeting responsibilities become to heavy too bear; or someone is cruel; or circumstance is unfair.  On those days I might feel overwhelmed, and when I do I turn to look for him, but he is never there.  On those days the pain of his death descends upon me like a storm and tears through me like lightening.

Today was one of those days.  A day when nothing and no one on earth could bring me comfort.  When the sadness and loneliness rise up and choke me, and as I gasp for air, I question "what's the point?"

I would like to think that I was whole before I met Brian. That I was a self-actualized individual - strong, confident and ready to share my life with another.  I know that isn't true though.  Brian and I were two halves of one magnificent whole.  He brought me safety, respect, and unequivocal trust.  I brought him laughter, and joy, and the gift of silliness.  We brought each other unconditional love - something I hadn't believed in before Brian.

So his death was more than the loss of my husband, lover, best friend, and confidant.  His death was the loss of the best in me - the part of me that believed that anything was possible and that good things happen to good people.  His death was a reminder that not only is life unfair, it is cruel.  His death was proof that I, as an individual, am still incomplete, and needy, and hopelessly in love with a man that I will never again see, hear, or touch.

Most days, I can focus elsewhere.  Not on the pain of the loss, but on the amazing gift that Brian and I shared in love.  Most days I am now able to feel gratitude.  But on those days when I can't, the pain is one hundred fold.  The loss is too profound to find comfort anywhere but in Brian's arms.

Beauty

I've never been beautiful.  When I was younger I was awfully cute, but I've never fit into a definition of beauty.  In fact, the only two people who ever thought I was beautiful were Brian and my Grandmother, may they rest in peace.

Lately, I feel different.  I've stopped focusing on my loss, and started focusing on the amazing gift I had with Brian.  A relationship built on love, absolute trust, mutual admiration, and respect.  We had it all.  And since I started focusing on that gift, I've been able to see just how much knowing and loving Brian has changed me.  I'm stronger, smarter, more confident and more trusting.  I'm able to see myself through his eyes.  To stop focusing on all my faults and flaws, and to focus on what is right about me.  In doing so, I feel him alive and well in my heart.

And that makes me feel incredibly beautiful.

Missing you, feeling you

Baby, I miss you so very much. Nothing is the same without you here to share it. But everyday I have reminders of you, and I know that you are in me. I'm not the person I was before I met you. You made me better, stronger. You live in my heart, and everyday I feel your presence in my life. I've reached the point where thinking of you can make me smile before it makes me cry. What a gift we had. What a life we shared. What an amazing love story. Because of you I truly am The Luckiest.