Hi guys, welcome back. There’s so much exciting news to share that I decided to update you all about what’s happening in my life right now and to hopefully tie it together with a post I had prepared about loneliness. Weird, right? Well I hope by the end it all makes sense, that you all can understand a little bit better, or maybe you will feel seen and heard through my words.
As most people that know me already know, one of the brightest lights I have in my life is my 3 year old grandson. He barged into the world 6 weeks early, all too eager to join in this crazy family. So with my daughter expecting baby #2, a little girl, due on September 3rd I can honestly say that I wasn’t all that shocked when my phone rang at nearly midnight just about a week and a half ago, also 6 weeks before her due date. It was just like my on call days, woken in the middle of the night to quickly dress and hop in the car. As much as I loved being called in for a good STEMI (yes, that really is true) I think I had something even better to be on call for, a new grand baby.
Little miss made quite the entrance the next day. Everyone is doing well. Baby girl just needs to get the hang of eating and gain some weight, which is in progress. She ended up being delivered about an hour away from home due to her gestational age which has added in to all the juggling of said adorable little family. Bub had a cold for the first few days of his little sister’s life which he has oh so graciously passed on to Nana now. Anyway, you get the idea. We’ve had a lot of moving parts, mostly amazing and incredible, which have kept me busy and distracted.
Here’s a little aside, family is really everything, guys. Everything. It’s also what you make of it. People don’t have to be blood to be your true family, the ones that you are bound to and meant to spend your life with. So if you have these people, your people, cling to them and never let go. Do whatever you can for them to help make this life a little easier.
So let’s get back to the original intent of this post, loneliness. This goes back to before Mister had passed away. It’s part of that long dragged out grief that I’ve talked about, when your loved one is slowly disappearing before your eyes. It’s the slow motion tragic accident that you’re forced to stare at as it happens but are powerless to stop. I know I’ve eluded to his change in mentation before. I honestly think it’s something better explained over time, small stories one at a time, rather than dropping the whole bomb on you all at once. It’s just too much.
Some time around May of 2020, about 3 months before he passed, I was in the kitchen and I heard him crying in the living room. I rushed in with my fight or flight in full swing thinking he was having a seizure. But there he was just sitting on the couch bawling his eyes out, tears streaming down his face. It still tears my heart out thinking about this whole thing. I rushed over to him, wrapping around him like I had done a million times before and asked what had happened, what was wrong. He could barely get it out through the tears but finally just said “I can’t remember your name.”
Now this was not the first instance that we had had with his memory but this was definitely the deepest cut as yet. I gently tried to comfort him, thinking that if I coaxed him a little, helped him a bit, gave him some clues, surely he was going to remember my name. I said “Mister, it’s okay if you can’t remember my name. You know who I am, right?” His response, “you love me and you take care of me.” How’s that for the saddest, shortest story you’ve read all day? I’ll unfortunately never forget those exact words. I expected “my wife”, “Ousseau”, something. What I got was correct but it was still like a dull rusty knife to the heart. All I could do was comfort him. Tell him that he was correct, I did in fact love him and took care of him.
There were good days and bad after that with his memory. Sometimes more like good minutes and bad minutes. But one thing was for sure, my husband was disappearing. As his level of care increased, the more he needed me, the less he was there if that makes sense. I missed him so much every single day even though he was right there in front of me. I felt lonely. Alone despite my amazing kids, their spouses, my grandson, and my few friends who showed up at the end. I had support and love but felt so utterly alone.
In the beginning of the after I know that I was in shock. That just made me laugh out loud as I typed it. I mean, DUH!, I knew it was coming but yet still couldn’t believe it. Even as the one year anniversary is rapidly approaching there are still times when it seems unreal. But especially back in the early after, I felt alone. There were people all around me all of the time and yet there I was, alone. The firsts started; my first birthday as a widow, my first Thanksgiving as a widow, my first everything as a widow. Again, my amazing support system was right there holding me up through all of it. So why did I feel so alone? And how do you explain to people that love you so much and are doing everything in their power to make you feel included and not lonely, how do you explain to them that you feel so alone literally all of the time?
I can honestly tell you exactly when the shift happened. Not the date or day of the week or anything like that. But the instance, that I can tell you. I was standing in the kitchen with my son. We were talking, well we were talking about the fact that I finally felt certain that they didn’t need to worry about me. That’s a whole conversation for another day. But as I talked about this with him, I decided to try to explain how lonely I felt all the time. As I talked and looked at this amazing, supportive, responsible adult that I’d like to think I had something to do with how he turned out; I realized that I wasn’t really lonely after all. I don’t think I ever was lonely. I just miss him. I miss him so much, all of the time, every single nanosecond of every single day. And I probably always will.
I think in the beginning, whenever that is for anyone’s grieving process whether it’s the day their loved one dies or the day they start to disappear, I think we’re so distracted by the loss that we can’t stop staring at the gaping hole left beside us. I think staring at the gaping hole is so consuming that you can actually feel it, this giant emptiness and it makes you feel a million miles away from everyone. That giant gaping hole creates an abyss between the grieving and life itself. As I’ve learned to navigate my grief I’ve learned that you can’t let that abyss stay between you and life. I’m trying to keep it beside me, knowing and acknowledge that it’s there but allowing people close to me maybe on the other side.
So now I can be in the NICU holding my newest grandbaby and not feel alone. I can have a sleepover with my #1, watch silly movies and sing songs and not feel alone. I can do pretty much anything and not feel so utterly alone anymore. There will always be days when I start to gaze a little longer than I should at the gaping abyss and I think that’s fine. I want to, really. Some days I need to feel it to remember the size and strength of our love. So for the time being my plan is to keep on keeping on with all of my loved ones on one side and the gaping hole, what is left of our great love is on the other.