u/edo_senpai

Last night, I had dinner with my actor friend. His wife was out of town and he made time for me. Just me and him. According to his wife, he had a nagging concern that I will become a recluse. So every time he sees me, he would ask.

who else have you seen lately?

He asked the same question again. Followed by "how have you been?" I was prepared. I did not want to lie. "The same"

The food came, we ate. With the way things were going, I anticipated the "silver bullet" argument tagged on with a time-frame. It came up as expected. I countered with the stories I have read here, and my own as well--just to say grief is a lifelong event, it changes but it remains. I explained the grief ball and the jar analogy--how it stays the same and only the jar --our capacity--would change. He followed with a offer to throw out everything owned by my wife while I take "a day off" away from the house. Fresh start, he said.

He talked for ten minutes about how he would react if his wife were to die first. How he would be able to find things he liked to do and recover. He would be strong and determined.

I was tempted to retort with, "you have not even have your car break down on you once, how would you know what you would do? you just won't know."

I had, in fact, had that happen to me a few times. Failed fuel pump. Failed coolant system. Leaking engine oil. Multiple flat tires.

But i let him talk. He made time for me. The chances of communication was 15% at best. Companionship was 100%.

We had another beer. I was glad I said nothing. Grief is not similar to a car breaking down. I don't think we are stuck as widows. If our lives or bodies are like the cars we are driving, grief simply slows us down.

with our spouses gone, its similar to many intricate components disappearing. Car still runs. But it stalls randomly when the wave hits. The moments of inaction forced us to see what the road is about. When it runs, other cars passes us. It gives us the illusion that life and people are passing us by.

I am starting to see that notion may not be complete. But it’s one of many ways to explain to the rest of the population.

Grief life is simply a slow life that we didn't ask for. One that we all have to adapt to, eventually.

A few days ago, I had dinner at a friend's house.

I have known them for over 30 years. They are ten years older than I am and have children in their mid thirties.

Halfway through the evening, the wife talked about a friend who recently became a widower. The wife died of an aneurysm. No precursors. Here one moment, dead the next. It was a matter of minutes.

I thought that's where the conversation was going to. About age, death and loss.

She turned to me and asked.

"what's better? sudden death or terminal illness?"

I gave her my answer. A few moments later, she turned to me and said.

"You are better off. At least you have two years to prepare."

At that moment, I remembered a phrase that I have coined myself- They are my secrets now.

"No. That is not true. she was diagnosed in Jan, and died in August. That's not two years."

Then I saw the fear in her eyes and the dread in her face. Not the embarrassment or awkwardness of getting the time frame wrong. My answer triggered the fear of death in her... and also the fear of becoming a widow if her husband were to die first.

They are my secrets now.

The thought surfaced again. No one talks about her anymore. I have accepted that. Anytime I talk about a memory involving her, there would be an awkward silence. I live with that.

The evening continued. Casual conversation about stuff. One of our friends is an actor. And he talked about his most recent stage performance.

As I drive home, I was not upset. I have not been upset about these moments for a while. I don't enjoy them, but I have make peace with the fact that it is not anyone's duty to remember anything about her.

I am the keeper of secrets. The duty is only mine.

Since the first year I had known there is no undo button to this widow life.

She, of course, will remain dead. And I am still here. Breathing.

I spent a great deal of time and energy examining things I used to enjoy. Time spent with some people that I liked. Or mandatory things like Work.

All those things felt different now. My first reaction was to blame them. Blame the things. Blame the people. disappointed that they did not hold up their end of the bargain. The deal was simply to remain connected to me.

In the end, I realized it was me. It is just me now.

I had changed. Most likely permanently. And so the links were severed.

And I went in search of a new baseline. That is--what are some non-negotiable for this life? what are some things about my life I still have control over? what is the "new stew" I have to live with and eat everyday?

So far I have gathered a few things:

Pieces- my mind and life is almost like a toppled Jenga tower or a bag of lego without instructions. My therapist aptly described it- a destabilization of my psyche. Part of building my baseline is to go through all the pieces and see which ones still fit.

Waves- The grief waves hit differently now. I recall the grief counsellor alluding to the metaphor that grief is a ball that remained the same. Our minds are the jar that held it. The grief will remain the same , but with enough exercise, the jar can expand. Almost two years now, the jar had gotten larger. The amount of effort poured into it was unimaginable when i looked back. The waves still come. Sometimes I fall. Sometimes I drown a little. But I get up much faster now.

Dread- The loss of purpose had remained the same. It is like the morning fog the engulf your person or the grey stratus clouds that always threaten with a nasty downpour. Ever present. Looming. Threatening in a different way from the grief. But I am getting used to it. It is part of my new normal.

Body and mind- I have changed my diet. increased exercise. incorporate reading and writing. All of these are new things. Still, things have not settled. Perhaps this will be constantly in flux.

Future and planning- I don't plan anymore. Only live one week at a time. At first, it felt like a bad idea. I am used to it now. Staying in the moment gave me different point of view from my friends-- which is good and bad. But I own my time and my life. They have theirs.

I was aiming to build some kind of foundation. Another structure to live inside. Almost two years now. I am beginning to think this is almost like crochet. Perhaps, in the end, I will simply have a basket or bag and keep travelling with it.

just my saturday thoughts. thanks for reading.

I feel numb most of the time . That’s my brains way to keep me alive .

On my way to work, I thought about things I have walked away from, because they no longer help me

I find there is always a drive to think everyone needs to be the same . I stay away from those people now

I find there is an addiction to be right all the time in our culture. I stay away from those people and media now

I find there is an obsession for the silver bullet in our culture. “Ten things you need to do”, “if you do this, you will win”, “what you need is this for your purpose in life”. I run away from those conversations once my spider sense tingles

I find organized religion no longer helps me. It is not for me anymore . At the same time, it could be a lifesaver for others . Both can be true at the same time

I find the expectation to rely on friends and family is unreasonable. They can still show up. We can still talk. But I can only rely on myself, because I own this time now. They do not

Just Wednesday thoughts as I down my dark roast. Thanks for reading

II, V, I.

 I counted chord changes as I listened to Autumn Leaves, trying to calm myself down after talking to my friend.

 "Wanna go to a singles event?" he asked, with good intention. The good intention was visible, the way a bad haircut is visible — you see it immediately and decide not to mention it.

 "No thanks," I said. "If I wanted to spend a few hours with nothing to show for it, I'd be on hold with my ISP's IT department." I shut him down. This was not my first rodeo, and my gut had already delivered its verdict before he finished the sentence. It was a rude thing to say. I know that. I have limited capacity, these days, for conversations that ask me to want things I don't want yet.

 I put the phone down and found Scott LaFaro's bass line again, tracking it the way you track a river underground — by feel, by the faint vibration of it, looking for the root note the way you look for solid ground.

 A few thoughts surfaced.

 What is so bad about what I have to offer? 

 A line from Bones, a television show, heard years ago, lodged somewhere I couldn't reach. It shook me when I first heard it, and it shook me again now, differently. When I was married, I had been relieved of that question. She was happy. I had been selected, vetted, taken off the market. I did not have to sell myself or prove myself or present myself in favorable lighting. I was simply here, and that had been enough for her, and now she is gone and the question has returned like a bill I thought I'd paid in full.

 What's good for a middle-aged widower?

 What's good for me?

 Be a man, do the right thing.

 They arrive in sequence, each one landing differently than the last, and I sit with them the way you sit with a hand of cards you're not sure how to play.

 The thoughts took off like kites then — swaying, straining, pulling against the storm in my head, each one trailing its own long string into the dark.

 A few weeks ago, a different friend asked me why I have no sense of urgency about finding another partner. My answer was the same one I keep giving: I don't know what I don't know. But the more honest answer lives somewhere below that, in the gut, where the real verdicts get made. The last time I dated, the world was different. I was different. The whole operating system has been updated while I wasn't paying attention, and now I'd have to learn it from scratch — wade through everything the culture has accumulated in my absence.

 The entitlement. The general ambient hostility towards men, aimed in every direction at once. The feminism that seems to have been blended from several incompatible sources without consulting any of the four waves. The intergenerational family trauma that everyone is now, correctly, aware of, and no one quite knows what to do with. The gaps in worldview and values that yawn open between people from different cultures, different subcultures, different upbringings — each one carrying their own invisible country inside them, its own laws and customs and untranslatable words. And then the contemporary mechanics of it all: the ick, the ghosting, the texting, the performance of a self across social media platforms until you can no longer tell which performance is the real one.

 I know how to be me. 

I have been doing that, imperfectly, for a long time. 

 What I no longer know is how to be a man — because for most of my life those were the same question, and now the world has decided they aren't, and I missed the meeting where the new definitions were handed out.

 Looking around, I can see the available archetypes.

 

There is the theme park — fun to be around, good rides, strong reach across demographics, churros, regular maintenance, market-rate admission. 

 There is the motorcycle — shiny, spontaneous, genuinely exciting, with a notable risk of injury during engagement. 

 There is the golf course — select membership, singular in its focus, lavish in its way but subdued, lots of greenery, a fancy buffet. 

 There is the convenience store — eccentric, full of surprises, a long and meandering history of strange and specific offerings, a kind of walking MacGyver, the one you call at 2am. 

 There is the bank — stable, affluent, conservative in presentation but quietly aggressive, a wealth of history in the vault. 

 There is the man-project — broken in visible ways, the starving artist who believes the brokenness is the point… etc

 

I am none of these.

 

I am the NPC in an RPG — the one standing in the corner of the tavern with no quest to offer, no lore, no side mission. I am the hot dog vendor in the action movie, briefly visible in the background of someone else's catastrophe. I am the parked car in the chase scene. The city guard in the historical novel. The barista who remembers your order but will not be given a name. As-is, where-is. Medium to medium-low marketability, no recent comparables, days on market exceeding 180.

 Dating involves packaging. It involves marketing and filtering and the particular performance of selling — presenting the best angles, hiding the structural damage, hoping someone buys before they notice the draft. I am not sure that process has anything to do with who I actually am, or who I am becoming, or who I might be in a year when whatever is happening inside me has finished happening.

 I am still out here in the ravine of my own mind, trying to decide which kites to hold and which ones to let go. It turns out this is harder than it sounds. Some of them you've been flying so long you've forgotten you're holding them. Some of them have your whole childhood wrapped around the string.

 The priority, I think, will be me. Whatever this me is in the process of becoming — whatever shape it takes when the excavation is done and the dust settles and I finally stand up straight in my own life and look around. I am hoping things will be clearer at the two-year mark. I have been told the two-year mark means something, though it feels more like a line in the sand than a actual milestone. 

 Just thinking out loud on a Saturday, the bass line still moving underneath everything, II, V, I, the oldest resolution in the music, the one that keeps arriving home. Thanks for reading. 

My wife was not the first human to die. There were millions before her. Millions have died in each culture. Each country. Each continent. In my mind, perhaps as many as the number of blades of grass in a meadow. For something that common and normal, I thought our culture would have prepped us for it. We come from a long line of dead people. 

When she was diagnosed, we had hope. Perhaps the treatment would give her a few years. Then the day came when it was clear, at least to me, that the long goodbye had started.  Then I looked into it: “When I become a widower, what happens?” Every bit of information I found was not encouraging.  

I have seen my share of film and TV and read my share of books in different languages. I knew they were made up. But fiction is based on real life. So I thought they were based on true stories. The loss put every single narrative we told ourselves to the test. First month after she died, I found out they were all lies. 

Intentional or not, they were made up to present a reality that did not happen for me, or any of the widows I met in support groups. Month after month in my journey of survival, I kept wondering, “why is the culture like this?”

To the people in my social circle, their thought process was like this. 1. He was normal, he had a wife. 2. His wife died. He is sad. 3. Sadness fade away in time. 4. He will be fine. 5. I don’t have to do that much for him.

I tried to explain myself. For days. Weeks. A few months in, I had a feeling I was overexplaining.  And it was hurting the friendship. 

Soon it will two years for me. Now I have a much better understanding of why the things are the way they are. It is simply because a widow’s life is complex beyond explanation. But it looks deceptively simple to the single and the married. 

Losing a spouse is basically a destabilization of a life. A life that is built on millions of moments, each interconnected. Some radial. Some like spider webs. Some like the AC current. When the spouse dies, millions of components and connections disappear. 

As such, it is not something that would heal itself in time. This is the reason why grief last a life time. There are also many external factors that is part of this process.  

Previous trauma- I only found out later that grief will dredge up old wounds. Any kind of old trauma, healed or not. Somehow the brain just brings it up as if it was trying to further justify how tragic this loss is. How mindful we are about our mind will impact how lost we feel. How equipped we are about coping with trauma is also important.  No one will know or understand this part of our brain. Sometimes we, ourselves don’t know either. 

Time together (married or not)- Time itself is not an indication of the quality of the relationship. A long relationship has an accumulation of memories, each one carries their own unique meaning. A short relationship would carry a burden of the potential in the joint future. All the wonderful and exciting moments to be shared together. When they are gone, these mental connections disappear. Because they are so numerous, there is no way for us to articulate them all. We only feel wave after wave of massive pain as our brain goes through its normal circuits and finds no connection. 

Children young or old – The presence of children means the creation and adoption of the new identity of “single parent” and everything that is related to that role.  The absence of children means you don’t get to be a single parent – and that somehow feels like a dirty blow below the belt.  Having older adult children is likely different. There is a narrative where the retired senior parents get to witness the successes and happiness of their adult children… and now the picture is not quite the same. 

Number of previous marriages- previous divorce and separations will now do their own random haunting. Gingerly and secretly scraping at your sanity—making you second guess your decisions.  Rumination spread like wild fire. Your mind is flooded with “what if” and whether you have failed not just your departed spouse, but also in life. 

Quality of the lost relationship- not all widows have great spouses that is now in the afterlife. Relationships that have more hurt and injury than love and care would generate a different kind of dread and loss. For a lot of us, what we laid down for our spouses everyday made us better people. Whether giving or receiving, the relationship made us feel whole. The absence of it, is not something easily explained. Just like you can’t fully explain back pain or stomach ache, or missing your arm when you are an amputee.

Quality of relationship with in-laws – In-laws can be a blessing in the grief process or the most insidious curse.  If you know, you know. 

History of substance abuse- This is the time when substance (or anything addictive) would make its alluring call of comfort.  The resistance of it or the wallowing inside is depressing and exhausting in and of itself. When we give in, it feels like an old worn out jacket. But it poisons us and would not let go. 

Cause of death and religion- Widowhood could be the beginning of religious deconstruction. But to others, it could mean a further deep dive into it. Neither is right or wrong. But this event will demand a full overhaul of your values. The longer you procrastinate, the louder the alarms sounds in your mind. 

All this being said, to someone outside of the club, a widow’s life feels like married life minus one. Simple. Fixable. To us, inside the experience, it is anything but. The challenge is that each widow will have a vastly different make up (in reference to the above), therefore, there is no one approach that would work for everyone.

The ones that live with CPTSD would need different care than the widow that lived with an  alcoholic spouse. The ones who suffered because of religion looks at the world differently than the people who still have supportive parents. 

In my mind, I think this is why all this “lies and fiction” has been created even though death is a constant in human existence. The experience is simply too complex and multi-faceted—and our capitalistic society have no room for things that have no financial incentive. 

My friday thoughts. it's a long one. thanks for reading

Her birthday was on Sunday

leading up to it, a few people asked me if i wanted to have dinner together. I thought about it for a long time. The good intention there was to provide a good distraction for a few hours. I could imagine the lull and hopelessness that comes after the dinner. I could also predict the daily dread that lead up to it.

what I did not know, was how safe / dangerous it would be for me, to be by myself on her birthday. I decided to give it go anyways. Nothing ventured, nothing gained

I tracked every thought. Every intrusive memory. Every stimulus of despair. The day came and went. It was a good learning experience.

I revisited the meaning of birthday celebrations. In my mind, it is an event to celebrate the fact that someone was born-- and that you are able to be with them. She was. I was. We were. But now I am just me.

The history of the complex journey we had did not bring solace to alleviate the emptiness and pain I experience now. I suppose both things can be true at the same time.

I thought about the centre of my universe -- which was the feeling that life is enough. Enough to keep striving. Because we were together, still alive, working, walking. So we celebrate birthdays, because it was enough to keep us going. It goes without saying that it is not enough now.

At the same time, lamenting on the loss will not add value to comfort my current state of being. I needed to connect new things to my life. Both are true, both can be done at the same time.

Initially, I thought I would simply buy a piece of strip loin (she really liked steak), cook it on sunday, buy her favorite wine and have my celebration by myself. I end up buying three kinds of beef. Had a nutritious Fri, Sat, Sun. No wine. No alcohol.

The cooking, the eating, the dish-washing -- was enough of a reminder of the meals we had. Her voice and favourite sayings appeared in my head on cue. As if she was sitting at the kitchen table.

It was not a celebration. And now, in hind sight, I think I did it right. As it should not be one. Because, for me, it is only the full picture if she is alive and be part of the celebration event. It is now something different.

It is remembrance. She still have a ever-presence in my waking moments. There is no need to heighten it. It does not bring more joy or alleviate any more pain.

How I viewed this birthday was vastly different than last year. it is not better. Just different, with a expanded point of view. Birthdays were similar to candy before. Now its becoming like the Mole sauce. complex and spicy.

just my Wednesday thoughts.

thanks for reading