"I can't even imagine"

I'm sure those of us who are widowed or who've experienced a horrible loss--regardless of whether it's death, an affair, a life-threatingly ill child, or any other number of tragedies--have heard this line so many times:

I can't even imagine....

Or its closely related cousins:

You're so strong.*

I don't know how you do it.

You're handling it so better than I think I would.**

If anyone can get through this, you can.**

And on and on.

Some of those statements royally pissed me off at the time I was told them (you can guess which ones...yes, the ones with the double asterisks). Gee, thanks for shifting all responsibility for my state of mind to *ME*. Wow. As if I didn't already have enough to deal with as it is. Thanks. Fortunately for the person who would have been saying it, I never got the seeing-red flavor of God doesn't give us more than we can handle. I would have ripped someone's head off if they'd said that particular gem to me. I was pretty fucking angry at God, thank you very much, so it only would have added fuel to the fire.

You're so strong was a weird one for me to react to. I was strong because I was able to take a shower, get dressed, and put on makeup before going to an appointment that had been scheduled for weeks? I was strong because I was taking care of details and arrangements that absolutely had to be made? I was strong because I was taking care of my daughter? Because I was still alive each day? Trust me, if I'd had any influence over the matter in those first four or five months, I would have happily chosen to be as dead as Charley. I didn't want to be dead so much as I simply wanted to be with him, didn't want to have to be doing all of this on my own now, never getting to see him again.

Was I "strong"? I had no choice in the matter. Like my wonderfully insightful friend Alicia has said before (like here), I didn't feel like I was being strong, because it's what was expected of me--what Charley would have expected, and moreover, what I expected for myself.

But after five years of living through this nightmare and reflecting on it all, I guess I can allow that I probably was stronger than I gave myself credit for. Because I did have a choice, even if it didn't feel like it. I could have become a raging alcoholic or crackhead, or I could have lost my child to Protective Services. Or more likely, I could have stayed huddled on my couch, depressed, angry, and waiting to die every week.

But I got an email this morning that got me thinking. This person didn't say these words exactly, but I can't imagine was what floated through my head after reading it, the undertone wafting between words that actually were written.

I never really know how to respond when I'm told I can't imagine. Unlike some of the other commonly uttered phrases (like what I wrote at the start of this post), I can't imagine isn't one that angers me. But it still sort of baffles me, because here's the thing..

I can't really imagine it either.

Every now and then the sheer unbelievability of what happened to Charley, to me, still strikes me. I don't fight the disbelief anymore, but I'm still stopped in my tracks sometimes, even if only for a split second, that this--this horrible, awful thing--really did happen...and it happened to me. (And that it's still a part of my life too.)

I can't imagine much of what happened to me in the last five years, because if it had been a movie or a book, an editor would have forced the writer to remove plot lines, simplify things, because there's no way that the entire story line could be plausible. I lived through the last five years, but there's much of it that I don't really remember anymore. I can factually recall things, events, my reactions to things, but the surge of emotions are mostly just words now. I remember talking to one of my widowed friends about a year or so after Charley died and asking her how she survived the first year or two after her husband died/disappeared and his body was never found.  At that point she was probably four years out from her husband's death, and she told me she couldn't really remember. I was baffled how she could have forgotten, couldn't remember.

But it's true. Much of that first year or two for me is wrapped in a thick, disorienting fog. It's not entirely unlike how you can't remember more than bits and flashes of things after a night of super heavy drinking and drunkenness. I can remember snatches of what happened, or else I can read my journal or be reminded of things by friends, but I'm never really sure what's real sometimes. Even though I also know that it all was real.

So yes. I can't even imagine it either. Even now...and even though it happened to me....