Living Grief

For weeks, I’ve been putting off writing three stories for a magazine. I’ve done the interviews, I just need to transcribe them, and put words into the computer, but I can’t do it.

It’s not because I have writer’s block — I’ve never had writer’s block — and I’m not the type to put things like this off until the last minute. The stories should have been written by now, but they sit there on my digital recorder just waiting to be realized.

It’s the first sign that there is something terribly wrong going on in my life, the first signal that I have turned inward in an effort to keep things together while Scott and I process the fact that he has ALS. Right now, we’re in a holding pattern waiting for an important meeting with his team at the end of the month.

In the meantime, we’ve both been keeping busy. I got Scott a Zelda game on the Switch, and he’s really into it right now. For those of you who have never tried playing these games, I highly recommend them as terrific time wasters and a way to suspend the imagination for several hours a day.

He can’t do much else, can’t even make himself breakfast, can’t even take out the dog, or sit in the backyard and smoke a joint. He’s almost in a trance, only half listening to my ramblings, choosing to focus on crap movies on Netflix, and now the heroic adventures of Link.

This has left me to my own devices, so I have kept myself busy going through the motions of an old lady’s life: shopping for sales at the Independent, traipsing around doing errands and sorting and tossing video tapes, electronics, and photo albums that Scott had stored in a cubby in my office. Occasionally, I bring him an album and he looks at it, then signals for me to put it in the garbage. Once in a while, he will perk up and ask me to put a remembrance aside for his sister.

He seems to have little interest in the past, is trying to stay in the present, and is terrified of the future. There is no upside to ALS, no heroic acts that can be performed on his behalf, only a certainty that his life in whatever form it takes will be short.

I am already grieving for our marriage, already having regrets that we hadn’t met sooner, and already feeling that I am losing the only person who I ever felt was home to me. We used to do everything together, and I now mostly do everything alone, as I struggle to make sense of this new purgatory in which I am living.

The grief burbles up at 2 a.m. then 4 a.m. as I struggle with my thoughts and feelings. Night time is the time my consciousness screams at me to face the reality that I am now living. I try to drown it out with music or meditation but grief and despair are shouting at me and my anger gets caught in my throat.

I sleep alone in the basement, leaving the dog to meander around the house and occasionally jump on the bed with Scott. I meet Viggo at the door at 6 a.m. and take him out in the backyard. The sunrises are pretty, the roads are quiet, and the world is peaceful. Soon, the cars will be roaring down the streets, people will be walking past me or waiting for a bus across from my house.

When it’s busy, I go in. I don’t want to be in the world right now. I don’t want to feel the energy emanating from a city in full flight. I just want everything to go back as it was the day before my 70th birthday, before everything changed.

I know these feelings. I’ve been held in the hands of grief before. It’s not a thing you get past, it’s a thing you have to feel with every fiber until you find a new path. This time is different. I am grieving for a husband and marriage that is still very much here. Not much has changed in a month and half, but everything has changed.

I can’t force myself to go back in time and remember all the wonderful memories we’ve built together. It’s simply too painful.

So I find my solace here, with the darkness still surrounding me, as I get ready to start my day. Today, I will make breakfast and take Scott to the hospital for some blood work, then we’ll come home and go about our separate activities, as small as they now are.

I want to write, I want to be in the world, I want to laugh again. But it’s getting harder by the day. I live in the place that I cannot share with friends or family; it is place where God is supposed to be but I don’t feel any hands reaching out to me from the spiritual world.

It’s just me. The dog. And my wonderful husband sitting in a chair trying to figure out how to live before he dies.

I’ll know when I’m past this hump.

I will write my stories and send them out to the world. I will venture out for playtime, perhaps a meal with friends, perhaps to visit the gym.

But until then I will continue to look for the light.

I know it’s here somewhere.