(This started out as a Facebook status but felt like it was getting too long, so to the blog it goes )
I’ve tossed around the idea of posting some general update or commentary or something for a week or more, maybe I’ll just take a crack at it and see how it turns out.
I should start by once again expressing my gratitude for all the prayers, concerns, friendship and love that has come our way. I could never say that enough to come close to covering it.
Aside from that, it’s mostly just one day at a time around here.
Progress on the million (and one) things that need to be done, handled, figured out, or otherwise dealt with is glacially slow at best. Among the countless realizations for me has been how little of those things I can tackle at one time before it becomes too much. Overwhelmed is a state that arrives easily and without much warning.
I’m doing the bare minimum — like, say, eating – a lot of days still. Occasional bursts of productivity seem to have a cost, in recovery time from the process of doing almost anything.
One of the real bitter realities that I’ve had to grasp is basically: This sucks. Horribly, unspeakably, indescribably. And there’s nothing to really DO about that. It’s just part of it. You can’t really make it NOT suck, all that’s possible is to find ways to endure and survive. And that’s a day at a time, or even just an hour or two at a time. And you do that over and over until another day has passed and the process starts over the next day.
Some of you may have heard me mention that, if I ever wrote a book about being the spouse of someone fighting an illness for over two years, it’d be titled “All The Shit I Wish I Didn’t Know”. “Know Thy Enemy” and all that, you learn medical stuff that you really don’t ever want to dive into unless you have to. I think the grief process for me is pretty similar. I’ve learned more than a few things in the past seven weeks, with the certainty that there are many more to come.
I’ve learned the hard way that you never know when something is going to jump out and bite you. An object, benign on the surface, brings forth a memory. The memory evokes emotion. And then you try to remember how to breath while you suddenly feel like you’re drowning. That happens often enough, then it’s really easy to start to try to anticipate it happening. And before long you’re walking on eggshells with yourself. I compare it to the “jump scares” that happen in a Halloween haunted house, you know something is surely coming but you never know what or when. It creates a constant tension, a trepidation, that varies between hindering and crippling. Nietzsche wrote “… if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” It feels very easy for the fear of “the next time” to become a monster in and of itself.
Will should be home for the summer in just over a week, that’ll be good for both of us I’m sure. We’re in slightly different boats (situations) but most assuredly traveling together. I recently allegorized it this way, seems as good a description as any.
These are unfamiliar waters we’re in and there are few maps available, so our boats mostly travel with the current. We maintain a watch and try to steer away from any icebergs or storms we see, we bail any water we happen to take on. But we’re still afloat when the sun rises … and for a while, maybe that’s really the best we can say or expect.
If you made it this far into my rambling, take away with you my gratitude for your interest and concern. And also my assurance that, however slow and faltering my steps, I’m still moving … though I do feel the need to line myself up with a fencepost now and then just to be sure about that.
Jon's Three Cents 