I’ve always embraced and will continue to accept the wound my grief created. It is the point of entry for all the light that fills me with knowledge, understanding, and a greater ability to love. My grief wound has guided me since Donna died. It's a pin drop on the horizon of my grief journey. It's the point I look toward with the hope that the grief I carry continues to help me and those I share my journey with.
I attacked my grief hard. I've walked with it, slept with it, and lived with it. The reality, it’s not rainbows and unicorns. It's an endless möbius strip. With all this knowledge comes harsh painful moments forcing me to look deeper and harder at myself and the world around me.
Being alone after Donna’s death never really bugged me. Never weighed on me. It was there. I accepted it. I would do all that we did without much pain. I had a somewhat active friend zone life. I wrote a book “Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss”, posted here, and shared my story in grief communities: Hot Young Widows Club, Canadian Virtual Hospice, and Widowed Village. Those places of sharing and love helped me navigate the alone time. It kept close to me what Donna early on said about being alone. "If you can’t be alone and love yourself you cannot love another."
Loving myself has always been the bur under the saddle of self-worth. It was there poking at me and making my ride forward problematic. It was largely kept in check though sheer will and that I didn’t have to look at myself in relation to others. That damn do I measure up syndrome. This year set up a whole new exercise in being alone and self-worth. UGH
I joined another volunteer organization and became a crisis counselor. More on that here. Forty hours of training doing something I never did before. Learning new tricks for a very old dog forced me to look at myself in new ways or maybe old ways long forgotten. "Learning is hard and I wonder if I have the IQ to do it.”
Then the pandemic and isolation. Being alone sans isolation was always moderated by seeing neighbors for dinner, walks, leaving the house are random times with no purpose, and just looking out the windows at people. Oh fuck you COVID. What was a given was taken away. The slow erosion of my emotional life by the drip of silence and my own thoughts. New routines set in. Routines of alone.
The crisis counselor gig was a place for me to go for hours at a time. It was a safe place for me to avoid me and put myself into others. To help, heal, and escape my mirror. With in that was just this wonderful loving and supportive community. They heard me. Cared for me deeply. Showed me love. Huh? I still wonder why me. The helping others in need was the single mission critical for me as a counselor. The community became an addiction to my failing self-worth. Those who befriended me unlocked a great fear. They were crutches for my self-worth. They carried me
Being in that community and doing the work to support and help others laid out amazing knowledge and peace for me. Like type and art on a page I could see. I would learn. I would be more me. A better me. Of course. Isn’t there always an "of course".
On any page of type and art there's white space. That’s the space that helps the reader see what the message being shown is saying more clearly. The white space becomes the very place where I see what is not there when I am alone and bored. It is understandable to compare this to that. Up to down. Hot to cold. There and not there. That is my relation to the white space.
Looking out the widow at the building across the street there in living color and 3D are couples sitting under a blanket watching TV holding hands.
I make dinner and sit at the cafe table. It is perfectly set with napkins and all. I wonder if Donna would smile that I try to be who she loved into being and taking pride in even the little things. There may just be some hope in this sadness. Sure.
The morning (aka mourning) ritual. Open my eyes and say “Donna” not loud but in a soft plaintive voice so the neighbors won't hear and realize my inner self is a broken toy.
The twice annual changing of the comforter, duvet, shams, and pillow cases throws me into a fear of failure moment worrying my choices are not to Donna’s visual style.
Making a decision on what to wear at times finds me frozen in the amber of my grief. Oh how she would go, this, this, and this.Shut up and do it. Perfectly prepared to leave the house.
Making cookies on Sunday and just giving them to neighbors knowing Donna would’ve loved this recipe.
Those are the speed bumps slowing my Möbius Strip grief journey. I wonder. Is Donna waiting for me? Is she proud of me for staying alive and loving her everyday? Does she laugh at my design fuck ups?
Soon Donna soon, don’t give up. Please wait for me. When I see you I have so much love to give and share with you.