A year on

Tomorrow will mark a year since Jay died. That makes today the last day of my "official" year of mourning.

Of course, I know that doesn't mean that I'm done with grief. This month has shown me just how much grief work I have left to do. May has been a tough month, with my subconscious dragging me back through all the time in Maryland last year for the clinical trial and our time here in Portland after we came back from the trial. My dreams have been dark and weird, and I haven't had a good night's sleep in at least a month.

So a tough month to bookend a tough year, grief-wise.

I've spent this week reading my posts on his blog, finally having the time and emotional energy to read all the wonderful comments people left at the time.

I don't know where I go from here, except that every day I'm living my life and enjoying it. The act of moving out of Jay's house has freed something inside of me that was still locked down.

I will never stop missing Jay, and as I wander through his house packing my things, I constantly apologize to him for leaving him so completely.  I had a rare crying jag the other day when I discovered a necklace I'd forgotten I'd given him on my first visit to Portland, that he had tied to the side of his night table so it was near him always.

Tomorrow, the actual anniversary of Jay's death, I'll be heading to the coast for some time with a friend at Jay's favorite beach. It seems appropriate. Write the last chapter of that book, and move on.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

We're rapidly coming up on the year anniversary of Jay's death, and I'm in the process of making one major change.

I'm moving out of Jay's house.

In retrospect, I've seen this change coming for a while. I'm been increasingly unhappy in that house, where he died and where I haven't quite been able to make a life for myself.  That space has just become the place I hide when I'm too tired to do anything else.

That's not healthy.

And I've never quite gotten over seeing Jay dead in what is now my living room.  That memory is not as fresh and painful as it was in the early days after his death, but even now it is difficult for me to walk through the door and not remember seeing him there dead.

I've wanted to move out almost since the day he died, but any number of things have kept me from fulfilling that desire. Now that my lease is almost up and I have a good place to land, I'm on my way out the door.

To hike through dangerous weather you need twilight eyes

So today it’s been eleven months since Jay died.

On the one hand, I’m far enough past the worst of the first of the grief that my life is mostly my own again. I’m deeply in love with a wonderful man. I’m taking a little time off before looking for a new job. I’m spending this weekend getting my addiction recovery program back on track, being re-inspired and renewed.

On the other hand, not a single day goes by that I don’t miss Jay. The grief isn’t sharp and new anymore, but it’s still present in my body, like a dull ache that simply will not go away. Every night in my dreams, I’m reliving the days of the clinical trial and the days after we brought him home. Needless to say, this means I’m not sleeping well.

The most concrete expression of this endless grief is that I’m consciously going through the house and removing the remaining bits of Jay’s life. 

Sometimes this activity ends in amusement and bemusement. I was cleaning out the bathroom a couple of weeks ago, and discovered that when I did the bathroom clean-out right after he died, I was apparently completely convinced that he was coming back. I saved his toothbrush and his shaver, along with a bunch of other things he would need when he came back.  That was something of a shock, to realize just how disconnected my thinking was from reality, in that time of strong grief.

Sometimes this activity ends in a room that simply works better than it did. I moved Jay’s work desk out of the boundary between the living and dining rooms and into what is now my creative space.  That took the last ghost of Jay out of those rooms and made them into much more livable space.

It’s a relief to be living in a physical expression of my emotionally moving on. The more it becomes my house, the less it hurts to live there. It’s still not a good place for me to be - nothing will change the fact that he died in my living room - but every change makes it more livable.

Now to get through the year anniversary. I have no expectations of that day - it may be exquisitely painful, or anticlimactic. Won’t know til we get there, like all the rest of life.

Moving on

Today, I sent back the paperwork in which I accept the voluntary buyout that was offered at work.

This means that come the middle of April, I'll be unemployed for the first time since I was laid off in 2001, which led me to the job I'm leaving.

It's a big scary thing to walk away from a job with nothing lined up. But I know this is the right thing for me to do, even as scary as it is.

My life has been out of balance since the end of 2013, when we made the decision to try to find a clinical trial for Jay. I need to find my own balance now, without him and without this job that I long ago lost my joy for.

I'm still in the process of updating my resume and my LinkedIn, but very soon I'll be actively looking for local employment.

I'm hoping for a little bit of time off between leaving my current job and finding a new one, but not so much that I start to get panicky about money.

This change means I'm not going to get do to a lot of things I was hoping to do this year, like buying a convertible, and doing a lot of travel. I'm going to be in the position of having a lot of time and no spare money.

Let's see what I can do with all that time ...

Don't write me no more letters, my mailbox is full of bombs

Back at the beginning of the month, I ended one of the final rituals connected to the last year or so of Jay's life.

For anyone who doesn't already know, Jay used to have waist-length blond hair. You can get the idea from this picture of him:

This was long before I knew him, but it made me angry at the universe that chemo took his beautiful hair.

So somewhere along the line in 2013, I decided I was going to stick a finger in the eye of the universe and let my hair grow until he was either dead or had his hair back. At its longest in May, a few days before he died, it looked like this:

I got a trim then, which took a little bit of length off, enough to make me less crazy.

I didn't get it cut again until January 2nd, when it looked like this:

It was long enough again to make me crazy, and the whole purpose in keeping it long was utterly over. So I got it cut much shorter:

So the last visible bit of my grief is gone, the last sign in the world of my fight against the wishes of the universe is finally gone.

I'm glad to have my hair shorter, but it makes me sad, too, that my bit of magical thinking had no effect on the world.

Hope, and hope

I'm feeling like I should write one of those year-in-summary posts. Don't ask me why - I'm not completely sure.

But I think this year can be summed up like this:
hope
worry
fear fear fear
loving
letting go
pain grief pain grief pain pain pain
acceptance
love
hope

A friend said last night in chat that he wants to kick 2015's ass. I agreed. 2014 so thoroughly kicked my ass that I'd really like to be on the giving end of a year-long ass-kicking instead.

Onwards ...

I'm not looking back, but I want to look around me now

Jay has been gone six months today. It seems like he’s been gone forever, but there are still times when the grief is fresh and strong enough that it seems like only yesterday.

The grief still catches me off-guard from time to time, a punch in the gut that leaves me sobbing. Any sight of his life mask will do that, a song lyric, a picture on the digital frame. It happens infrequently, and generally passes quickly, but the grief is always there, like a pool just under the surface of my life, sometimes quiet, sometimes stormy.

I realized sometime recently that I’m in the ultimate long-distance relationship with Jay, albeit with somewhat less communication than might be desired.

I also realized that he’s been gone a quarter as long as we knew each other. That is sobering.

On the positive side, the universe has surprised me by showing me the face of love again. I honestly didn’t know whether I would ever be able to open my heart to love after Jay died. He and I talked about that a lot, with him worrying that I would purposely close myself off, which he surely didn’t want. And I wasn't so much afraid of closing myself off, but of having a heart that wouldn't open again.

So to find love again so soon and so strongly - what a gift.

And to realize that I have a life I love, full of laughter and friends and fun - this is what I wanted for myself when my husband left me almost four years ago, but that I couldn’t find either where I was living or because of who I was there. Now I have it, and what a blessing it is. It’s not without its challenges, but I’m learning and adjusting and figuring out how to make it all work.

This will likely be the last of my monthly updates on my grief process, unless something significant happens. No doubt I will post on the year anniversary of Jay’s death - that will be a hard day.

But for now, life goes on, and the dance is lively and lovely.

Safe on the shore I've been sleeping, faced by the thoughts I've been keeping

Five months on

Here we are again, at the turning of the month, another anniversary of Jay's death.

I think this is the first anniversary where I don't know what I'm feeling. Less pain, less overwhelming grief, yes - those things are true. A greater sense of moving forward, of moving away from our life together and into my life - this is true, too.

I'm in an in-between place, neither here nor there, unsure of what comes next. But for the first time, I'm feeling confident about not knowing.

I suppose it's possible I've just dug myself a comfortable rut, but this doesn't feel like that.

Still miss him, every single day.

And yes, this first-of-the-month thing continues to be difficult. Last night, I had the first genuine crying jag I've had in quite a while.

But life goes on.

Catching up

I know I've been quiet here lately. I've been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of processing, and haven't really come to any conclusions, hence my not being here talking about it all.

There are so many things that have changed for me in the wake of Jay's death, and so many of them are things I had given absolutely no thought to before he died. A lot of them are related to whatever relationships I'm going to have as time passes. Another lot of them are related to what I want my life to look like, whether I'm single or in the middle of a passel of lovers. A surprising number of them are about where I want to physically be in Portland.

I'm trying to remind myself that this is an unprecedented opportunity to remake my life pretty much how ever I want to, within my financial and emotional limits, although those latter may be able to be challenged and stretched a bit.

It's all still a jumble in my head, as you can tell from the ramble I'm having here.

But just know that I'm still around, still thinking, still grieving, but still also moving on into whatever the next phase of my life will be.

I'm still moving step by step, but it's less "one foot in front of the other" and more "slowly learning this new dance step". That's a vast improvement.

Knowing the name of the portal

I finally figured out which portal I walked through recently.

I'm starting to move on.

It feels profoundly wrong to be doing this so soon after Jay's death. I apologize every day to the pictures of him on my dresser. Even though I know it's what he would have wanted for me, I feel guilty.

But the process has begun. I set my relationship status to single on OKCupid (and then went on a fantastic first date). I haven't quite yet felt the need to change my relationship status on Facebook, but then all my friends there know me and know what I'm going through, and the truth is I am still in a complicated relationship with Jay.

As I said to a friend at lunch yesterday, in my heart of hearts, I'm still waiting for Jay to come back. But knowing how my life works, as long as I'm waiting for him to come back, he won't - but the moment I stop waiting, he will.

I know that sounds crazy, but that's how my bargaining/denial/disbelief is expressing itself these days.

All the usual disclaimers apply, especially the one that watches for the changing of the month.

But I've taken that first big step into the rest of my life.