Personal Journal

Letter to a near-stranger

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn

Met a woman who is a widow at Match.com. Had some casual conversation - she lives in NC, and I'm not remotely serious about getting involved in something like that. But I wrote this e-mail today, which has all the pertinent details about my day.

Something tells me I'll never hear back from her again.
I'm crazy this way - soliciting near-strangers for an opinion. I only saw one damn typo in the thing, at least.

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I think it’s cool you work in genetics. My best friend from college was a molecular biologist. I was a journalism major, a fact of which I am now ashamed (which is another story), but my forte and interest was really the humanities. That’s something I might pursue an M.A. in soon, in the near future (yet another story). We learned a lot from one another in sharing our interests in such opposite areas. His explanation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics probably changed my life forever, and my understanding of it has shaped my spirituality and my conception of a universe in which there is also a God.

But really that’s not what made me sit down and write. This would have been a private journal entry, but in a way I’m soliciting your opinion on these other thoughts – the ones which cause me to write (if you have an opinion; you’re in no way obliged to have or share one).

Since I read your e-mail, I’ve been thinking about what it means for feelings to be “raw.” A variety of people say that. A week ago, I fell off my mountain bike going about 20 m.p.h. on a gravel path. I have a gaping wound in the elbow that’s required debreeding every other day. We were talking about it while they were cleaning it the other day, and 100 years ago before anti-biotics, the infection that would have set into something like this would have required amputation, or it would have killed me. It’s “raw” right now. Open, and constant. It aches incessantly.

That’s “raw” and of course a part of my thoughts on this are a matter of personal lexicons of a general nature and my own unique one. Nevertheless, I don’t know what it means to have “raw” feelings. My memories of Jean, good or bad, healthy or dying, doing nothing but causing me pain, lasted from December until March. In March my memories started bringing me comfort again, and things have gotten more common in my emotional and intellectual life – not necessarily better, but I started making progress again in all facets of my life, even if I was visited by the gamut of emotions one in our position experiences.

What causes me consternation now is how I perceive the personified nature of my feelings. They defy customary adjectives, and I can’t put “raw” upon them. I think of “cunning” and “stealthful”’ “cruel,” and “sadistic” (that last one was one I had been searching for since my yardwork today).

Before I forget, this was where I wondered if you have an opinion:
I recently, in fact a week ago Friday, told my grief therapist that I wasn’t rescheduling any more regular visits. I had reached a point where I felt like I could go forward from here without her. Because the feelings I have are repetitive, and I think I know how to cope with and manage them. I have never done group therapy, despite several respected friends’ gentle urges in that direction, and their personal accounts of how helpful it was. I am not an emotionally unavailable man. I have a tremendous ability to examine my feelings, sometimes detached if necessary, sometimes deeply entrenched in them when necessary (like now), and I reconcile my feelings with my god (when possible), with my personal understanding of my universe, and with my soul. I would hope this e-mail is testament to this capability.

I am weary of telling people how I feel, for the simple reason that the cycles are basically repetitive, and familiar. Even when I feel as though I might need help to cope, I never actually do. I cry, I assess, I integrate, I move forward again. And thus, I’m starting to act on my suspicion, now a hypothesis in testing, that I can do just as well on my own as I have in being open in any kind of therapy. Even writing such sentiments as these is cumbersome to me, because aside from your first-hand common experience shared in the lass of your husband, you’re a stranger of two e-mails.

I am a man of few friends, and I have kept a journal for many many years in which to self-assess. I’m not done mourning Jean (nor do I think such a thing ever truly ceases, even if the methods of mourning grow more subtle to the outside world). But I feel ready to be done talking about it.

That’s where I wondered if you had any kind of opinion.

And since I’m rambling on and on, and you’re already past burdened by my request for you to perhaps think about my life (again, if you simply never respond, I won’t take it as a slight, and I won’t trouble you again), I’ll continue with the emergence of today’s down-cycle of grief.

Jean was diagnosed in January 04. By April her allowable radiation regimen was complete, and she was on Temodar (somewhat new brain tumor chemo drug, but you may know that), losing her hair, etc. By May, she wanted to be outside in the sun, planting her annuals again, and just like last year, I had my “honeydo” list to perform. But last year, it was a joy, because more than her just wanting to share her hobby of gardening, she needed me. I have the type of soul that excels when I am needed. Last year’s flowers were the best on the neighborhood, without compare, and it was my handiwork, and her brain-power. I thought we would have a couple more springs such as that (GBM patients typically die within 1 year, a bulk living up to 3, and a rare few living up to 5). Jean of course thought there would be a cure.

Today, in her honor, I had our spring planting session, part 1. There will be several more. And this is where the stalker that is my “feelings” caught up with me. It was strange, because everything went so smoothly in my heart as I worked for 5 hours in the yard. I listened to music, and tried to remember what Jean taught me, and I said my prayers to her to help my first solo garden grow.

When I was finished, I decided to take a picture of my efforts. Our efforts, actually. We planted petunias last fall, a few weeks before Jean died, and those are in full bloom, and the annuals I planted today. Some of the best pictures of Jean are of her sitting behind her blossoming garden. And so when I got the camera, I was struck by the realization that she wasn’t there to be photo’d, as the last two years. That is what triggered my crying episode today (of which I am not ashamed). I thought I was done crying, then when I showered, something triggered the shrieking kind of crying, the soul-wrenching stuff. The shower is a good catalyst for that. So I cried, and I let my thoughts out, and the mood passed to where I can now sit here and record it in this kind of objectivity.

It was one of those things where you do something for the first time without her, and you realize all over again that there are dreams you have that are now amputees sending phantom pain. I suppose it’s not phantom. There’s one for spiritual analysis, eh? Anyhow, I’m well acquainted with that type of cycle, and I knew it would pass once the ultimate trigger thought was touched upon. There will be these kinds of things heavily over the course of the first year, then less so, I’m sure. I embrace them, because they are the real attachments of love I made to that beautiful woman from my soul. I understand the pain’s source. I know it leaves when it’s had it’s due.

And I don’t feel I need to go into any kind of therapy, or tell these things to anyone, in order to continue to make progress in my life again. This all could have been recorded in my personal journal, between god and I, which certainly avoids someone interpreting my introspection as self-aggrandizement.

Thank you for reading,