Maybe, I'm retrieving what it takes to be the me that I recognize.

For the past 3 days I have acted like the me I used to know. Preparing to send Jesse into the desert, pampering on a whim, planning food to meet my needs, dreaming unabashedly about my future, choosing the best thing for my soul when it wrestles with my sloth. I hesitate to make the announcement, but I think I might be returning from the jagged edge of deep indulgent temporary insanity. Now don't for a minute think that this insanity was something to be avoided, it isn't. It is something to be cultivated and even encouraged. I have been in the limbo land of the grief that all who experience a loss of any magnitude are invited into. As far as I can tell it is not an invitation that is acknowledged by the culture as a whole and from my own experience, it is not one that most are comfortable accepting or tolerant of. I have had the incredible bounty of having a few very loving friends who have been negotiating the terrain of this limbo land at the same time as I have. I also have the luck to have some people who have weathered the relentless storm years ago and who will speak freely of it's horrors and gifts.
I know that many books have been written about grief and the "right" things to do with it and that there are counselors and groups that are supposed to support the griever but none of that seemed helpful to me. Maybe I am just a spoiled brat about this most intimate of experiences but most of what I have received from society at large in this past year has been unhelpful and at times down right insulting. What has helped is crying with people in the same boat as myself and having folks listen to me as I said the same crazy things over and over again until the anger, joy and sadness morphed down to the right size to integrate into my life. Yes, I know that I should have a job by now, that he is in a better place, that what we had was invaluable and that life goes on. I know all that and it didn't make the pain and doubt any better. What helped was time, some of the hugs that I received and the unconditional love of a few people who had faced the fire themselves.
The past couple of years has been filled with "sneak-ups" of unbearable sadness and rage. If you don't know what I mean, just wait, you will get your turn someday, I hope that I am around for you when it happens, I know just what not to do for you. This time has also been filled with glimpses of the beauty of knowing that everything is unfolding as it should and that there is awe and wonder in even the most terrifying and horrific memories of the undoing of a loved ones life. I may see it differently later but for now this is my reality. I got to experience union with another beautiful and wonderfully flawed human, we grew from it and then he was gone before I could assimilate all the wisdom that could be gleaned from our association. It truly feels like Life Interrupted. I still am amazed and caught off guard by the mere fact that someone so alive and in my face is no longer present in this world or my life. I guess it will take more time for that confusing fact to become woven into my tapestry.
For now, I am struck with the feeling that most of me might be back from a long, lonely journey that I was unprepared for. I have probably told the story of my dog Beanie and her demise, for years I imagined that when her time came to leave the world that I would be basically Ok with her passing. After all she might have been a great dog, but she was also a big pain in the ass, stealing cookies, barking at inopportune moments, occasionally peeing where she wasn't supposed to and snoring so loudly that you could hear her in the next room- kinda like me. When the time came to help her along the way out of her earthly existence, I was shocked and dismayed by the wracking sobs and incredible sadness that I felt at her leaving, I couldn't stop crying and I couldn't eat for awhile from my sadness. As much as she was a pain and she was way past having a comfortable life, I had lost a companion who had been by side for 14 years, whether I wanted her there or not. We were all sad for a long time, a lot sadder than I had ever imagined possible at the loss of a naughty dog. I know that it may seem crass to compare that with the loss of a spouse but I have to say that her death should have prepared me somewhat for the loss of my dear, sweet, pain in the ass husband, but it didn't. Nothing did. I entered a uncharted land and am still finding my way back though the terrain is firmer under my feet today and the person that I was before the loss has been showing up more and more. For those who might be thinking "get over it already!" your turn will come, mine did and I thought I knew what to expect, I didn't and I didn't know that I didn't.
So with the knowledge that I have from this tributary crossing and the precious return of some of the me that I recognize I will start my day of packing making plans and just being me. It feels strange but peaceful to have returned to the land of the living.