Post-season slump

I know it's making its way through the widow blogwaves too--Jackie, Andrea--but I also find myself this week in a bit of a post-Christmas slump. I was riding the relief-in-the-immediate-aftermath wave the first day after Christmas--happy to be at home, doing nothing, getting to relax for a change this month--but it didn't take long until the expected low after the holiday hit. The next day, actually--on Sunday.

And all this week I've been in a cranky, short-tempered mood.

I wish that my reactions to things would take a form other than crabbiness. I wish it would be overt sadness, tears, an inability to cope with things. Instead I just turn into a prickly, irritable porcupine.

What I want to do is crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and cry. Except I know I never actually could or would (cry, that is). But the desire is certainly there. Can't the internal wish count for the real truth, rather than my actual outward behavior?

I assume this is grief, or at least the ennui that comes because of living through grief for so many years. I'm not sad for Charley or anything concrete; it's simply the usual underlying feelings that I lived with so often and for so long over the last four years. The desire to hide and cry, the crankiness, the feeling like I'm slowly unraveling, that I'm not doing as smoothly right now as I usually am when the grief/ennui/feelings aren't usually present. I don't know how else to interpret them except from a perspective of grief. I certainly never felt like this under "normal" circumstances post-Christmas, before I was widowed.

I know plenty of people--those not widowed nor grieving for or missing someone they love--get the "Christmas blues," as a friend of mine called it before Christmas. Slight sadness from decorations being packed away, from knowing that the holidays are over, that the reasons for regular, happy get-togethers with friends and family have ended for the month/year, Christmas not to come for another 11 months. I know it's not just widows and grievers who feel it. I suppose it's a comfort that my...whatever it is right now...could be considered normal without a filter of grief. Yet I still have to muddle through the next few days until it, I, go back to normal.

I've known for the last year or so that I do far better, that I'm much stabler and happier, when I'm on a regular, consistent routine. Getting Anna to preschool, schlepping us to our various weekly commitments or appointments, going to work in the first half of the year: it keeps me in a framework where I couldn't let my natural inclinations and bad habits--particularly those formed in the aftermath of grief--take a deep hold. But after two weeks of Christmas break now and two weeks without our usual routine (plus with the holidays thrown in there), the bad habits and old, unpleasant inclinations have seeped back in.

And there's still one more blasted holiday to make it through tonight. Bah. I rarely care about New Year's Eve at all--doing anything special or fun for it has been a rarity for many, many years, widowhood or not--and other than that first New Year's Eve after being widowed, they haven't really bothered me. And I didn't think NYE bothered me this year either, until the last day or two.

It's nothing specific. Just more grumpiness, and an overriding sense of weariness over all the things I need to get on right away, now that the new year will be upon us. Starting the job search in earnest, because I need an income as soon as I can find one; getting back to all the little things--a project for work, some last little checklist items for the kitchen remodel, new brakes, expensive car maintenance, dental appointments for both Anna and I that are a year (or more) overdue--that have been needing to get done for a long, long time; finishing unpacking my blasted house and getting it cleaned up...other things I'm probably forgetting. Aside from the whole job-search thing (and okay, the house cleanup part), they're not huge, overwhelming tasks, but the thought of having to summon up more energy and exert more forces of will is...saddening. Hence the desire to curl up under the covers and cry my eyes out.

Occasionally I miss the earlier days of widowhood. Yes, I know; call me crazy. I have no desire to have to feel that exquisite, biting pain again, but what I miss is that things were much more clearcut back in the "easy" days. By no means were they actually easy times, but it was pretty simple. The pain of missing Charley was fresh, swift, uncomplicated. When I felt awful, it was easy to know why. There were no avenues open to me except to hold my breath, give in to the tears when needed, and wake up the next morning. I knew eventually I'd have to feel better, that it would get easier...and they have, and I do...but I didn't realize that sometimes the bad days would still feel so complicated, more complex.

Is this grief? I assume so, in a less obvious way. The comfort is that "older" widows--those who've done this crap road as long as I have and longer--know intrinsically what I mean, know what to call it even if we can't quite give it a clearcut name.

But one big difference now versus the first years of widowhood is that I now know that I'll feel better to get out of my headspace, to get out of my house and go spend time around friends. In the earliest years of widowhood, trying to get out after feeling like this, forcing myself to put on a public face, generally just made me feel worse once I got home. I may or may not have enjoyed myself while out--it was always a 50-50 shot whether I'd be miserable on the inside, or simply not totally miserable--but I'd almost always feel worse in the aftermath, once I was back in my safe hidey hole at home. But now, those times out among friends who are wonderful, fun, and sympathetic really do help me feel better.

Like yesterday. I finally managed some extended kidless time and went and saw a movie (It's Complicated) with two of my wonderful widow friends, and we had a lovely time, both at the movie and getting a bite to eat afterward. I blankly drifted around suburbia after leaving my friends (and after buying the old pics of Anna), going in different stores and simply wandering the aisles, buying nothing but being relieved to not have to do anything, buy anything, parent. And I felt so much better to be out, to not be at home with the same old thoughts--unformed or not--wandering through my head the same as always.

But once I got back home again and once I sat in my kidless house all day so far today, the ennui creeps back in. As one of my widowed friends has said, for her it's a balancing act between being out and being social, and having time to recover at home. She's one of the most social, extroverted people I've ever met and her social calendar makes my head spin, but I can see the wisdom in her strategy. I'm nowhere near as extroverted as she is--I like curling up with my laptop, book, or camera at home too much--and I've often wished I was less solitary and introverted when coping with the grief over the years. I've wished that always being out and around people, sharing and airing my sadness when needed with them, would help heal me, help hold me together. But for me, I need more time at home alone to process my thoughts, inside my own head (or on my computer screen, or in my journal). Which ends up getting me in trouble sometimes. There are fewer distractions at home, fewer ways to break the cycle.

Which is why I'm glad I actually have plans tonight for New Year's Eve. A wonderful friend of mine from college (and one of my best friends these past four years of widowhood) has invited me over to her house, where various family members of hers and her husband's will be drinking and frolicking. I could bring Anna if I wanted (I'm not sad, though, that Anna begged for two nights at Grandma's house, leaving me kidless tonight), and since everyone has kids, I'll be in familiar, easy company. It'll be fun. Plus I like the symmetry that I spent New Year's Eve with this same friend ten years ago, drinking away and partying in the new millenium ten years ago as fresh-faced, brand-new college grads (or almost-grads, in my case). I'm glad to have plans with a friend.

And in the hours until then, I may just climb back into bed for a while. Possibly listen to my iPod while curled up under the covers, letting some whiny, angst-ridden songs flow through my cranky ears. Maybe I'll manage to squeeze out a tear or two. But I'll definitely relish in a kid-free afternoon, with nowhere to have to be til this evening.

Sounds lovely.

And on Monday, it'll be back to normal....Thank god.

Happy New Year, everyone!

The amnesia of earliest widowhood

I got a call last week from a portrait studio here in Portland, who did some of Anna's portrait sittings a few years ago. They're cleaning out their old archives and are offering CDs of old sittings for sale. I'd already bought the CD from a sitting four years ago--our first "family" photos after Charley died, for Christmas 2005--earlier this year, and being the picture whore that I am (and finding it a massive nuisance when I can't simply upload a photo online), I went in this afternoon to buy the CD (and the copyrights) from the next two sessions with Anna.

And I got a small punch in the gut, as an added bonus.

My little girl, this Anna that I've known and loved every second of the last five years, three months, and and twenty-six days, is as familiar to me as my own reflection staring at me in the mirror:

Probably more familiar to me than myself, actually.

She is who I know and remember. Five years old, four years old, starting sometime around three-and-a-half years old: she's looked quite the same, and once she finally got out of her Terrible Twos/Demonic Threes in early March 2008, I can remember everything about her.

Perhaps it's because I've taken so bloody many photos of her during that timeframe. My friend got me hooked on Flickr in late March 2008, and as I picked up my camera again for the first real time in over a year or two, I realized it was a better, more effective form of therapy for me than most other things I'd tried since Charley had died. For the first time in two years, Anna humored Mommy and her camera...and quickly I was hooked. Thousands of pictures later, it's pretty easy to remember all the little things about my child when I've captured them so frequently.

But I don't think it's any coincidence, either, that the time period I can remember is also once I was finally past the worst of my grief. Sadness and desolation no longer robbed me of sight, of any interest in the world or in hobbies, and once I started feeling better--and once Anna returned to an easy, manageable child again--I could look at my child again without the madness of toddlerhood, single parenthood, and acute pain marring my memory.

So as I sat down at the portrait studio today and got my first glimpse of all the photos I was getting on the CD, it was like a knife slicing through an impenetrable fog.

Some of the photos I recognized immediately. I'd bought prints of them or used them as Christmas cards, and some I'd even managed to get in picture frames and hung on my walls or displayed on tabletops:

But then there were the dozens of ones I never bought, didn't remember at all.

And this Anna is a complete stranger to me:

All I could think was how little she looked, how young, her face so round and infantile:

Who was this child? I thought to myself this afternoon.

Granted, I don't remember these photos because they were from a sitting we originally did in September, right after her second birthday, and which I had redone a few months later because I wasn't terribly thrilled with them. As a brand-new two-year-old, she was being an absolute shit to try to get pictures of. She simply would not cooperate, and I think I told the photographer to give up after several minutes of her bolting back to me, all grins and giggles, as soon as the photographer finished posing her and went back to her camera to take the picture. Every. Single. Friggin'. Time. We redid the photo sitting two months later, in November, and those were the ones I bought and gave as gifts at Christmastime. I haven't seen the rejected duds in over three years now.

But I've told people so many times: I don't remember much of anything of Anna as a toddler. From about 2 years old until 3 1/2, it's a big blank. There are few pictures of her because she wouldn't hold still long enough and she wouldn't cooperate...and it's also because I felt so awful once I past the first anniversary of Charley's death. I'd held it together for so long, but once I passed the first death anniversary and had to survive selling our house, moving out, once I finally began to realize that I couldn't outrun or outplan grief through a force of will? Then, the fog descended, and amnesia took its place.

So to see pictures of her, of us, from a timeframe that I don't remember?

It's weird...unsettling.

I'm glad I have the photos now, but at the same time, it gives me an ache in my gut...reminds me of a time that, most days, is better left unremembered....And it makes me angry that I was robbed of more than just a husband: I was robbed of memories of my child.

Damn you, grief....

(...But thank god it did finally get better, and I did finally get my sight, and memories, back. And thank you, camera of mine, for helping with that....)

---------------------------------

But on a distinctly Pollyanna/happier note, here are other pics to leave you--and me--with....

Baby Anna, as an 18-month-old. (Now this period, I can still remember. Her hair was finally just long enough for piggytails, as of a week or so before this photo session. And dang, I loved that little outfit, jean jacket, and Mary Jane sneakers. Sigh. Where has the time gone?!?)

Almost over/Christmas, in review

It's a huge relief this week that the month is almost over. Christmas ended, and the next day I was almost giddy that we could have a normal week for a change. Nothing to do, nowhere we have to be, a whole week to take it easy.

We had a nice Christmas. Went to church with my parents and middle sister on Christmas Eve (but had to listen to a horrible sermon; whatever happened to a traditional Christmas Eve service, with just readings, songs, and no attempts to convert people??), and then we went to my sister's house for dinner and dessert. But first we had to torture the kids with the obligatory fancy-dress-in-front-of-the-tree pictures:

Earlier in the day Anna had gone to a neighbor kid's house to bake cookies for an hour or two, and I did some cooking and baking in preparation for meals on Christmas Eve and Day. Nothing exciting. As I drove to church, though, I noted to myself that it didn't really feel much like Christmas Eve. But being widowed and with having only one Christmas with Charley, Anna, and I all together, I'm not sure anymore what a "real" Christmas should feel like anyway. It seems to change every year, unlike when I was a kid.

Sometimes I wonder/slightly struggle with the question of what Anna's and my "tradition" should be for Christmas each year, one for just us. Should we spend Christmas Eve with my family? Spend it alone, with just Anna and me? Spend it with friends? I want Anna's Christmas Eves to feel special, have a clear holiday tradition like I always had growing up...but with just the two of us, without a husband, multiple kids, father, or siblings, I don't know what it should or could ever be. So by default, each year I do nothing. Or at I suppose I should say that I don't intentionally create a set tradition for us; I simply go with whatever my family is doing.

It did feel more like Christmas--or at least more like a family holiday of some variety--once we got to my sister's house on Christmas Eve, and as it's been for the last two Christmases or so, I think very little of Charley. I have a nice time with my family, Anna has a blast romping around with her cousins, and I think very little of him consciously. When there are so many of us together at one time, there simply isn't much time or leftover head space to notice who is or isn't there...which is a huge--and welcome--change from the first widowed Christmas or two.

But that isn't to say that there weren't moments when something snuck up and stabbed me in the heart either. Like when I was wrapping all of Anna's presents two nights before Christmas Eve, and all I could write over and over on the tags was From Mommy, From Mommy. From Mommy, from Mommy, from Mommy. No Daddy to throw in there, no small packages from a brother or sister. None from Chase even. All I could do to pretend there were more people in our small little family was to put the cat's name on two small presents that seemed especially apropos: some tiny puppies and a house for them. The emptiness of the tags bothered me a lot, actually--something I'm not sure I've noticed in previous years.

Or when I had to stop at the grocery store in the late morning on Christmas Eve, to get an ingredient or two that I'd forgotten for our family dinners and to buy something special for just the two of us to eat for Christmas breakfast. The last four Christmases we've had a big family brunch at my house, but with us no longer living 2-15 minutes from two siblings and my parents, a big family brunch just wasn't an option this year. The thought of trying to make a Christmas breakfast, different enough from any other day with just the two of us, stung a little, let the sadness seep in some.

And despite that I hadn't even been thinking about Charley or any sad, pitying thoughts before I left the grocery store on Christmas Eve morning, I found myself blinking back unexpected tears after I cheerfully said "Have a merry Christmas!" to the elderly courtesy clerk at the checkout line. It was the first time I'd had to say it to someone, and though I meant it fully and happily when I said it, the long-buried grief part of me still welled up instantaneously. I always forget that that Grief Monster can still make an appearance when I least expect it.

Like when Anna and I left my sister's house late on Christmas Eve, to drive back to our house. I don't know what brought it up, but Anna asked how to spell "daddy." She's been obsessed for weeks (months?) now, wanting to know how everything is spelled--and I can't just spell the word; I have to sound out each letter so she can answer with the correct letter name--and hearing her sing-song D-A-D-D-Y! Daddy! Dadddd-deeee daddy dadddddd-eeeeee! in the car on Christmas Eve was yet another stab.

Every year I wonder if it's going to be a hard year to spend Christmas morning by ourselves, with no one else there. The first Christmas after Charley died, we stayed at Charley's parents' house; no need to be alone then. The second year, we'd just moved into our new house in Sandy and the thought of opening presents alone was horrifying; my parents and middle sister spent Christmas morning and all of Christmas Day at my house. The third year, we'd just gotten home in the early afternoon on Christmas Eve from a whirlwind, fast trip to Southern Oregon to spend a pre-Christmas with all of Charley's family (and I mean all of them on one side--all 20+-some of us in a rather small house), and I was so exhausted and peopled out that I had no energy to drag presents anywhere on Christmas morning; that year we ended up opening presents at home alone, just Anna and me, on Christmas morning...and it was strangely okay. Last year? It was back to a moderate don't-want-to-spend-it-alone mode. Using the two feet of snow and the forecast for more as a slight excuse, I asked my parents to spend the night at my house on Christmas Eve and Christmas night. And it was nice to have other people in our house on Christmas morning.

But this year...this year we went it alone on Christmas morning. Anna's been excited for the last eight months that we finally have a real chimney for Santa to come down, so there was no way I could have Christmas morning elsewhere...plus I didn't want to go elsewhere. I wanted to have Christmas morning at home, like we have the last three years, and I didn't want to have to lug presents to someone else's house or leave the house early in the morning. And we survived it fine, it turns out. Santa made an appearance shortly after we got home on Christmas Eve and put Anna to bed:

...and he cheerfully faked that he ate cookies that Anna didn't even remember to put out on Christmas Eve:

And once Anna finally woke up on Christmas morning (it just seems wrong to have to debate waking your child up for Christmas morning), she came out to see how she rated from Santa.

And apparently she was nice, not naughty, as Santa brought her what she'd asked for--a pink Build-a-Bear closet--and he threw in some outfits and a new stuffed cat for good measure:

Anna opened her presents, post-haste, on Christmas morning, in our customary 15-20 minute duration (a huge change from the hours-long process it was when I was growing up and all my siblings were present).

Afterward we ate our special little breakfast--sausage (which she said was too "sour"), orange rolls, and scrambled eggs (for me only; Anna hates eggs)--and then eventually made our way to my parents' house in the early afternoon. We all opened presents:

...I asked my oldest sister to take the usual photos of the two of us, because you simply never know when it might be the last ones you can ever take...

We ate together...

...and had a new way of having fun annihilating each other: air hockey, purchased by my mom as a gift for the whole family.

The grandkids had fun playing with it all day, but I think the adults may have had even more fun, taking sibling rivalry to a whole new level. ;o) My middle sister and I--who'd played on the air hockey table at church a bazillion times in elementary school--were especially boisterous and wild...but wine may have been a contributing factor too.

All in all, yes, a very nice Christmas. As the fifth one while widowed, they've become something mostly unmarred by grief. A few momentary stings here and there...but nothing significantly worse than typical weeks, really...and for me, nowhere near as bad as Mother's Day or the week preceding Anna's birthday can still be. But then again, I've always really liked Christmas...which helps, I imagine.

All the same, I'm glad it's over for another year....