Grief is Exhausting

I am simply exhausted. Physically. Emotionally. I spent the weekend immersed in the sea of grief that has become my life. I worked nonstop, all hours of the day and night...sleep did not bring more energy or restore my physical stamina. Grieving is exhausting work. My shoulders feel very heavy.

I spent the weekend with the girls at Camp Carousel at the Heartland Presbyterian Center in Parkville. This event was put on by Kansas City Hospice. I consider myself and the girls very blessed to have found this resource, this outlet. We all enjoyed our weekend, filled with laughter and tears and grieving and healing.

I've realized I need to not be so hard on myself. Some days I look around my home and am flabbergasted at the disorganization. Then I realized this weekend that disorganization is such a common way that grief manifests itself. Sometimes when I'm cleaning, I'm all over the place. There is no order. I am easily distracted. My mind wanders.

There were several things I learned this weekend. One that keeps popping in my mind is, the fastest way to the light is through the darkness. I realize there is no getting around the pain. I asked the social workers what I should do about the memories that haunt me...the ones that just keep coming to the surface at quite inopportune times.

Like what?

Like reliving the feeling of Brian dying in my arms, of hearing his last breaths escape from his throat, of laying my head on his dead body and feeling relieved that he still felt warm, of kissing his mouth and getting no response, or seeing the look on Denise's face when she knew he was gone, seeing the horror on Rachel's face as she stood at our door and looked in at Brian, how both girls looked at me and I felt helpless because I couldn't fix this, or the last time I gently opened his eyes and he did not look back at me.

I could go on...

But I wanted to know if I am crazy to let those thoughts run through my head. They come at crazy times, out of nowhere. Sometimes it is a happy thought that turns into one of these memories. Sometimes it is something a bit similar that reminds me, like a look on a face or a sound. Other times it just shows up as a thought. I could be anywhere, at the grocery store, teaching, driving, cooking, exercising...my mind is not safe from anywhere it tries to go.

What I learned is that I can't push down any thoughts or feelings. I have to allow my brain to wrap itself around what I have experience, what I have witnessed. It is the same theory as the fact that I had to keep telling Tye over and over that Daddy was not coming back before he finally started agreeing or accepting that. It is the fact that I will still have to tell Tye again and again as he grows and matures, because his brain needs that reminder. His brain wants the answer to be different. Just the same, my brain subconsciously is trying to get used to all of this. To do so, it sometimes wanders to the darkest spots, flashing moments in front of me that bring great pain and sadness. Lately I try to shake it off or ignore it. Other times I just let my mind go wherever it needs to for my heart and mind to begin to heal.

I think of Brian at least a 100 times a day. I have come to realize that our society doesn't know how to grieve, not really. All we know is what we personally know, so we have limited beliefs on what grief should look like. If I'm not crying, it looks like I'm doing well. If I can talk about Brian, it must be getting easier. If I am having a rough day, then things must be terrible. If I laugh, then I must now be happy again. If I don't have bags under my eyes, then the crying maybe has stopped.

The truth is, my grief is my own. I only truly understood this when I lost my mom. I am spending a lot of my time right now, grieving for her as well, as my mind has not allowed my heart to heal from this loss before experiencing the loss of Brian. One loss always brings up the feelings of another, so I expected this, regardless. Grief has so many layers. This weekend it was described as this...

Grief is like having a baby. Early on it is very demanding and exhausting, needs lots of attention and can totally interrupt the flow of life, the ability to get anything done, the chance to have anything other than this. As time passes, that grief grows and changes. For quite a while it is still very demanding and needy. Eventually it starts to stand on its own, still needing a lot of attention, but the griever can function. Grief is always on their mind and there is always a worry, but eventually it begins to take care of itself. Then someday it is all grown up. Hopefully it isn't as needy and the responsibility of the griever has lessened. It still steps in and needs attention now and then.

Interesting analogy, but I have thought of it all weekend since I heard it. Grief for me will never be gone. I don't think I would want it to be gone because it would mean that what I have been through is gone. And it won't ever be gone because it is a part of me now, it has become who I am. I can only hope my heart and mind will grow as my grief changes and grows.

I also feel guilty. For still being here. For getting to see Tye and the girls grow up and change. For being so glad to not have cancer running our lives. I feel guilty for being happy that I don't have to change Brian's leg bandages anymore, and relieved that I don't have to empty a catheter bag or dress him or do any of the other things. I am happy to not have to keep track of his medicine or research more and more melanoma treatments that never ended up mattering. I am relieved not to be living the nightmare of the last few years, of him being healthy one day and deathly sick the next. I felt so much like death was being dangled in front of us. He's going to die...oh, no, he's fine now, bouncing back...nope, there's the fever again.

Yet I don't completely feel guilty about all that. Those feelings of relief are really directed at the melanoma. I am so relieved that it can no longer hurt us. I would have done all that for the rest of my life if I could have kept melanoma from hurting Brian. But I couldn't. So for the last several months, he would gripe and complain about what melanoma was doing to him. And in my mind I would work hard not to be rundown by it to. I have always said that when someone has cancer, everyone around him/her does too. I had melanoma, so did my kids. We do continue to be hurt by melanoma, even after Brian has conquered the beast with a trip to Heaven. The pain of melanoma continues to be very real. But I know in my heart how Brian would be so thankful right now that he and I both don't have to deal with the physical demands of the disease itself. I know how he would feel about that, so that keeps me from feeling heartless. I do battle feelings of thinking I'm the one that got the raw end of the deal.

I know, I know, that sounds terrible and selfish too. Again, it is my own grief. I want to be here with my kids, to have my life. But I knew what would come after death for Brian. My own faith dictates that, the belief in eternity in Heaven. So the moments as his breathing stopped, he joined the angels in peace, and I started a future of uncertainty, alone and sad. I worry that my life will be full of sadness, that someday you all will see me out and tell your kids about me...that Old Lady Halley, she's been a widow for 50 years now....she's hunched over like that because the grief just weighed too heavy on her shoulders.

Sunday was one year since we went to the Omaha Zoo. We knew because we took a picture of Brian and the kids with us to share on the memory table, and it had been taken on 9-14-07. It seemed odd that we were enjoying family time together a year ago, and now we were grieving the death of someone we love very much, and he is missing from our family. Yet there was that feeling nagging inside me...the one that reminded me that I knew the day we were at the zoo that he would probably be dead in year....little did I really know that it would only be 6 months.

What I've really come to realize is that this is the life I thought I was going to have, this is how I thought it was going to be. This is what I cried about when Brian would put his arms around me and tell me it was going to be ok, but I would have that gut feeling that it was not. It was almost like having a premonition, since I knew ahead of time. I met several families this weekend who did not have any warning, and that brings its own set of feelings...I know with the loss of my mom. No loss is any worse really, just different. In a sense, I lost Brian over and over again, as the disease took over. Our relationship changed. I am blessed that his mind was still as always, so we could still be close. Not everyone gets that in a situation like mine. So am I supposed to feel blessed because of that? Am I supposed to be thrilled that I got the chance to tell him goodbye and say all the things I would want to say? The truth is, I didn't get to say everything. I had a lifetime of things I wanted to say and share. Even so, in some way, I cherish having the moments of his death, somewhat rehearsed in my mind, so that I might be able to take it all in, that I might be able to participate in someway of the passing of Brian from this life to the next, that I was able to love him out of this dimension and into the next, that I could have my arms around him at one moment, and the Lord took over the next.

As angry as I am about all of this, I am coming to a point of realizing that even though I didn't want Brian to suffer, I don't think I could have survived losing him suddenly. So when my minds runs over the events leading up to his death, the moments of being in our room with him, with his body, making clay fingerprints and icing his eyes so they could be donated, those horrors sometimes toggle between being terrifying and devastating to instead being a moment in the life of Brian Halley that I was once again priviledged to be so intimately involved in.

Loving someone isn't always such a pretty picture. I've been reading the blog of Brian and Cassie, parents of baby Elli who passed away at about 20 days old. In all their grief, they are so grateful to have been Elli's parents, to have had the moments to love her. I guess we take that chance when we love someone. What Brian and Cassie gained from loving Elli can never be measured, even with the shroud of grief. Maybe that is how I'm feeling now, like I want to erase this whole entry and just say how blessed I am to have been loved by Brian, and that none of that other really matters.