if you want to quote stuff in French...maybe you should speak French

I've got issues, I tell you. I just spent almost an hour trying to find the original French version of a grief quote I really liked. It started with the reading of my "Daily Affirmation Email", a service I subscribe to that sends me daily helpful words for this journey of grief I am on. At the end of each email is a quote. Today's quote was by Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette), a French novelist of the early 20th century. I didn't know her at all, actually. I love sharing favorite quotes on Facebook, however, before I do, I usually feel compelled to research the author. I don't want to seem like a total idiot, citing a brilliant Goebbels quote only to find out the context (and his role in Nazi Germany) later on. Btw. I don't know any Goebbels quotes, the name just popped in my head as an example, for not everyone may know who he is.

Anyway, so after I read pages upon pages on Colette's biography, I then decided that the proper way to post her quote would be to do it in French. Why I would do that, when I only have maybe 12 French-speaking FB friends, I don't know. And, never mind the fact that my French is so rusty at this point that I would probably not even understand the quote myself, if someone posted it.
Nonetheless, I continued with my research and looked up a few words on a translation site to narrow down my search on Google.fr ... And let me tell you, there are like 8 words for every one English term I looked up, which made this endeavor all the more difficult. Grief, for example, could be chagrin, douleur, tristesse, peine .. carry or being in grief is translated as porter le deuil  and with grief (as in an obituary) can be translated as profonds regrets. All different nouns! I was at a loss.

So, I didn't find the translation of the passage I wanted to post. And throughout the process - while I was reading an entire page of Colette's quotes out aloud - in French - not understanding half the stuff I was saying - I really began to wonder what type of mental problems I must be having. Why was I doing this? Who gives a sh*t about FB (well, MY Facebook, that is... nobody looks at my posts except maybe a handful of people, most of which do not speak French. Come to think of it, my fb page is really just for me). Why all this trouble? I have a million things on my to-do list. GET HEALTH INSURANCE would be one important item on my list, for example. Or, work on trying to get my new business off the ground. I quit my job, for Heaven's sake. I have no income. I really don't have time to spare on trying to translate trivialities into a language I barely understand anymore. WTF?

I need help.

... oh, and in case you're wondering .. this is the quote (which, i'm sure would sound so much better in French):

It's so curious:  one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.

~ Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954)

Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette

spanish novela type drama ... and stop crying already

something made me call my former mother-in-law (my first husband's mom) today.
as i exchanged formalities with her, i found myself responding in an entirely too honest way.
she asked me how i was and i told her the truth, even though, in her mind i should have never ended my marriage with her son, and i should have most certainly never begun a relationship with J, whom she apparently knew since he was an infant.

this fact, of course, i wasn't aware of until much later into my relationship. i knew that the two families were very much against J & my union but i didn't understand the animosity. years later, i found out that my ex-husband's mother and J's mother had banded together when the boys were really young to help each other out. they lived either together or right next to each other. but, what shocked me even more (and explained their later disdain for my relationship with J) was the fact that the two women had been friends since they themselves were young - back in the Dominican Republic!

oh my, i felt like part of a Spanish novela when i heard these things. no wonder there was all this ruckus about my choice to move on with J. although, moving on with J wasn't really a choice. you can't choose who you love and that man was majorly dysfunctional when we got together. he was a broken person ... but i loved him anyway... no choice.

but, i digress.
so - today, i called my mother-in-law (i don't really ever refer to her as ex-anything. she is a sweet old lady) and when she inquired how i was, i asked her when and if it started getting easier for her, since she lost her husband 18 years ago tomorrow. i was there, in fact, the day he died. i spent that whole week in the hospital with my ex, back then only 19 years old. his father's death changed him. he loved that man and his loss turned him into a dark, dark person for a very long time.

she told me that, of course, she thinks of him all the time but that it is different now. it is not painful anymore. she said that, in her faith (some form of christianity), it is encouraged to control one's tears over a loved one's loss. everyone must die. it is part of life. we all pass over. it is not to be mourned as if it were an eternal loss. you shouldn't cry because they can see you cry and they can't do anything about it and then just everybody is sad. ... mind you, i'm paraphrasing and translating from spanish ... i do speak spanish but this lady is the fastest speaking Dominican i have ever met. it's hard to follow but this is what i think to have understood. ... and, in a way, it makes sense...

i have a feeling that i was nudged to call her today because i needed to hear again that i should stop crying already.  ... i never listened to my friend's mom... maybe i should follow her advice. addictedtomyaddict.blogspot.com/2013/06/and-this-is-what-she-said.html 

the vicodin lure

it is 3 o'clock in the morning. i sit awake, on the couch, in poor light.
just watched a funny movie but as the credits roll, i am right back to my sobering reality.
there really are entirely too many hours and whole days in our lives. too many hours that can remind me of the fact that J is gone for good.

there were moments i had with J in which i thought to myself that i could not possibly be any happier ever than in this very moment ... a moment in which all i wanted was to hold on to him and to never leave this breath.

when grief has its dark embrace around my whole body, i find myself wondering what would happen if i tried what J had. to escape this life with drugs so powerful that they allow a transcendence of one's existence, or a few moments thereof, to something less dreary .. something that could bring joy where there is none. .. or numbness where nothing but sorrow fogs one's gaze.

then, i think, it would be too ironic if i were to start using after the love of my life  succumbed to the very same thing. what would people think of me? ... yup, hard to believe, but, societal pressure is keeping me straight. that, and motherly feelings of duty.

i thought, i could never be an addict. i could never say yes to a drug so hard, it could make me its b*tch. but now i understand. i could imagine it now. especially if i didn't have children. i could imagine willingly throwing myself onto this inevitably self-destructive path.

i think, i need to get rid of the vicodin and oxycodon pills i have laying around for the past few years. remnants of ailments past. given to me but never used. i barely even take tylenol. i just don't like unnecessary medication. -- today, however, as i was organizing the medicine cabinet, i caught myself staring at the pill bottle in my hand. Taking mental inventory of the serious drugs i have in my house and whether i should start putting them to use.  ... they need to go. i doubt, my rational side would ever let me abuse a substance but i kinda don't trust myself in this state.

grief has changed me.

maybe it's an allergy .. maybe it's cancer.

I feel like such a hot mess right now. I haven't showered in days, I have been eating mostly junk, the dishes are piling up, my death wish has resurfaced, I still have no health insurance, I have no income, it's 1:30a.m., and I can't sleep.

***
I wrote the above entry a few days ago. I have since showered, done the dishes, and cooked a good meal or two. But, I am going to bed even later now and I still have no health insurance. Also, my death-wish is still lurking around, which I noticed by the fact that I am sort of excited by the potential prospect of breast cancer. I need therapy. Seriously. ... Alas, I have no health insurance and still no income and so - no therapy for me.

The breast cancer fear has appeared because I have been having an itchy areola and, despite the fact that I am very aware no good comes from researching your physical ailment symptoms online, I googled "itchy areola" and the reasons for this range from a simple bra allergy to Paget's disease, which is a rare type of breast cancer. So instead of splurging on a doctor's appointment, I decided to call all my girlfriends and ask them about the look and feel of their areolas. One of my friends decided to take me on a google images journey of breasts, which taught me more about other women's bosoms than I ever wanted to know. Some images where quite disturbing. Also, why would one ever pierce their nipple? That seems entirely too risky, but also, doesn't that awkwardly show through your shirt? I already don't like it when my nipples peek through my shirt, which they always do because I am always cold, which is why I switched to padded bras, which apparently are giving me a skin allergy ... or let's say are hopefully giving me an allergy ... cuz if they are not, then it might be the other sh--.

Anyway, so ... yes ... I am worried about the big C (oh, btw .. I love that show) .. however, I have to admit a moment of excitement that the end may be in sight. Clearly, my journey of grief hasn't reached a point of real acceptance, yet. I'm assuming, I will stop secretly wanting to die once I am in a phase of real recovery.

Of course, I can't die. I really shouldn't be wishing for that. I feel guilty wishing for it and out loud I say "I really don't want to die", as if my spoken words can undo my inner desire. But, really ... I cannot die. I must not die. My children would be forever marked and I may potentially ruin my older daughter's life. She is the most sensitive person I know. Everything worries and scares her, change is really hard to process, and she regularly asks to speak to "a professional". She just turned 12.
The other day, my neighbor came over to grab a plate of food I had offered. He has been stopping over a few times in the past few weeks. After he left, she asked: "So, Mom ... do you like Henry?" -- I was taken by surprise and said "What do you mean? Of course, I like him. He is a very nice person." -- "I mean, .. do you like him, like him" she responded. -- "What? Why are you asking me this kind of question? Aren't you a little young to be asking such a question?" -- "I'm just saying. ... It's _been_ a year." I was speechless. Yes, on March 5th I will be faced with the anniversary of J's death. I hate the word anniversary for this purpose. Anniversary has a happy connotation. This is shit.

My older daughter, Ava (I can't remember what alias name I have given her on this blog) has always been spewing words of wisdom out of nowhere.
When she was a toddler (well.. around 4 or so) she told me that when she is having a tantrum she really just wants me to talk to her. When she was six years old she and my younger daughter, Lucie (can't remember what nickname I gave her here either), witnessed how I stubbed my toe ("witnessed" me stubbing my toe?..tsk tsk.. I seriously need to expand my vocabulary). As I hissed in pain, Lucie asked whether this was the worst pain I have ever had and if I was going to cry. I told her that I wasn't going to cry, that I hardly ever cried, and that I didn't even cry when I gave birth, which is probably the worst pain in the world. "No, .. I think, the worst pain in the world is if you lose someone you love," is what Ava responded to that. Six years old! What does she know about true pain? But, I can tell you one thing ... she was right. Having lost J is worse than birth or anything painful I have ever experienced. .. I guess, only to be topped by severe medical or physical-torture induced suffering.

is that a negativity vortex around those ashes?

J's ashes are separated into several urns. One of them is a small heart-shaped container, actually, it's a heart-shaped bracelet inside a metal box of the same shape. When we were at the funeral home it seemed like a pacifying idea to wear some of his ashes around my neck. When the bracelet was handed to me, however, I felt differently. I thought it to be morbid somehow. Me! The queen of morbid (amongst my friends, that is).

I don't know if I told the story already, when I realized that the funeral home I had chosen turned out to be led by a guy who had been in rehab with J upstate once. They were friends, but he didn't realize that connection either until J's body arrived from the morgue. And so - because I had asked to split the ashes in order to give a part to J's mom and have his ex-wife hold some for his daughter - the funeral director showed his sympathy with real generosity. Not only did we get a much cheaper price for the service and everything but he also gave us several small urns and three bracelets (one for me, one for his mom, and one for his daughter).

Because it has been so bad lately, I decided to take this heart-shaped container to bed with me yesterday. And somehow this desperation must have triggered a dream of J. This dream didn't seem like a happy visit as usual, it seemed like a bad memory. I was reminded of how low in life he was while we were together. How many of his clothes were too big for him because he got them from a homeless shelter. How he struggled with addiction. We tend to forget the raw, frustrating dailies when someone leaves this world.

When I woke up, I thought, maybe his ashes are just a remainder of his physical self here and shouldn't be seen as anything else. Nothing that is really him and, if anything, possibly fostering bad energy, for in this life, and in this body he was in constant pain. He wasn't made for this world, I once heard someone say about him. Sometimes I feel that's true. He suffered under his mundane existence. It didn't fit in with the injustice and death of this world. He felt privileged and that the only reason worth living was to make a change in this world. He could barely wrap his head around the "posh" conditions of an average, modern, western-industrialized life. Even when he was homeless he had internet access, drank the occasional cup of Starbucks coffee, and had access to the resources of his alma mater (Columbia University). He felt privileged and unjustly so. I can relate to that. I feel the same way, although, I translate this feeling into deep gratitude of my seemingly random placement in this world.

Today, I wondered whether my suffering would be less intense if I lived in a war zone. If I lived in a war zone, all my peers would have suffered similar losses, my whole reality would be shaped by devastation and loss and I would have to adapt and provide for daily survival ...together with all my fellow war zone inhabitants. Clearly, this is a very naive and abstract theory - but, if you think about it, if your closest person dies tomorrow, who can really relate to you? It is utterly isolating to lose someone to death, worse - sudden, unexpected death. Nobody can relate until it happens to them. I couldn't relate until it happened to me. Like with everything else that's unusually tough in our lives.

Earlier, I found myself in the room where the biggest part of J's ashes are stored. It's a strange, triangular shaped, beat-up metal container I found in the second-hand shop across from the building he lost his life in. It reminded me of him and I decided on it as a perfect urn. I don't even know what purpose this thing served before. It seemed as if it had been made for exactly this.
I kneeled on the floor and touched the urn, lowering my head, closing my eyes and then I felt the negativity. It's as if I was told that this is not where and what he is anymore. To think of him differently. That this container and the ashes inside are a bad memory and that he is now in a good place, not tied to our physical world.

As with most epiphanies I have, I always wonder if it's being given to me or if it is just me.

One - very non-ephiphanical (.. wait, that's really a word? I don't see any auto-correct telling me I'm orthographically challenged) ... ok, .. if it isn't a word, I'm making it one. One - very non-epiphanical moment I had ...also today... was the thought about this saying "all will be known in the end". What if I don't want to wait anymore? Why can't we just know now? I'm tired. I'm getting old (almost 40!). The 50-year-olds are probably chuckling now. I feel old, anyway. Like, I've lived enough. I would like to know it all. now.

the only way to process grief is to suffer through it

I don't know what to do with myself. I thought, I was getting better. I thought, this pain is receding, and, that the new year may have brought a new level of acceptance with it. It felt that way. But, I guess, it was just me being in denial. And, you know what happens when you deny grief? It catches up with you and hits you badly, like a sudden arrival of the flu when you've ignored the earlier symptoms to lay down and rest before it gets worse.

Grief, I have read so often now, is something you have to go through. It is a process and you ought to be part of it. You can't clock out and come back when it's done. You are the catalyst of this process - without you, the journey isn't going anywhere but maybe backwards.

I really thought that the turn of the year changed something in me - my perception of time, maybe. I didn't cry for a good week or two after New Year's Day. When last year, I found myself in tears almost every single day. But, on Monday, the pain returned out of nowhere. The tight chest, the overwhelming sadness, the realization that the man I loved so much will never return.

It's almost as if I forget that this is permanent... and maybe in those times of forgetfulness (or denial), I feel better ... until the meaner part of my brain kicks in to remind me that J is dead... that I will never hear his funny feedback on anything ever again...that we will never laugh or argue with each other again ... that I will never be able to kiss his neck, touch his arm, or pinch his cheek again ... that I will never have this kind of uninhibited, trusting, and intense sexual togetherness - ever again. It was as if we couldn't possibly get closer to each other when we were together.