Writing While Grieving 5: All Through the Night, I Me Mine, I Me Mine, I Me Mine

Strike Another Match, Go Start Anew

[Previously]

In conversations lately, I’ve been trying to change my pronouns. So far, I’m pathetic at it. For ages, it’s been We, Us, and Our, not I, Me, or Mine. I said things like “We visited Italy.” “The neighbors are joining us.” “Our house needs painting.” When I’m talking with people now, I keep stumbling over these words, correcting myself. “On Saturday, we—I mean I—had neighbors over for a potluck in our—my—yard.”

I’ll never get used to it, it seems. It must be so annoying to listen to my glitchy speech.

I’ve been wondering what makes it so hard. It must be more than those words being habitual. I’m guessing that maybe it’s also because it means letting go. Letting go is on my mind a lot, and it’s a much bigger question than language use. Once you start, where does it stop? Should I just blow everything up? Get it over with?

“Strike another match, go start anew,” the singer wrote, because “It’s all over now, Baby Blue.”

One of the most surprising things in all of this is that there is nothing to hold on to. There’s nothing I can point to and say, “This, yes, this is the same as before.” In the TV show of my current life, Rod Serling would appear, lit cigarette in hand, and say “Imagine a world in which every object is unfamiliar, every person you have ever known seems as if they are in disguise, where everything you once believed has twisted into unrecognizable forms, where all your interests have gone up in smoke.”

I expected to be in utter despair, to be wildly angry, to not know what to do with whatever is left of my life. What I didn’t expect was that in losing her, I was also losing myself. Also, I had no idea that all of our favorite places would no longer feel like mine, vacation spots, restaurants, concert venues, coffee shops. As the song says,

I stopped looking for you

And the places I won’t go to

Cause they’re all yours

They’re all yours

They’re all yours

And I was once all yours *

There were other surprises. I didn’t know that you could have a lot of friends and still feel all alone. Someone who knows about these things warned me, saying that I would need to spend time with people who didn’t know us as a couple.

I didn’t know what she was talking about then, but I know now. When friends who knew us as a couple see me, I remind them of their loss, of their grief. Seeing me is a downer.

I get it. When loved ones die, we don’t want to think about it. My presence makes people think about it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not their fault. I’ve been on the other side of this, so I know how it goes. Everyone has been more than kind and incredibly helpful. I’m so thankful for this. I don’t know what I would have done without all this support. But many contradictory things can be true at once. Such contradictory feelings can give you vertigo, too. Old friendships are just different now, and it’s one more thing in a long line of incredibly complicated things I need to figure out. And I’m tired.

To address this, I’ve resumed hosting the weekly neighborhood gathering for drinks that I started maybe fifteen or so years ago. I plan to have regular dinner guests, too, the first batch coming next week. This gets people used to solo me, and my lonely house, and it gives me a break from the emptiness and brutal silence inside my walls. I’m trusting that if people have more exposure to whoever I am now, this will help bring on a different kind of normal, and my presence will no longer be a source of sorrow for our/my friends.

Because of the advice I received that I mentioned earlier, I’m also cultivating friendships with those who didn’t know my wife, and I’m finding that to be a comfort in unexpected ways.

I think my wife would be proud of me for trying these things. Though she’s gone, I still have much of what we built together, not in the same form, but a lot of the raw material is there for me to work with.

What I can’t shake is the feeling that, despite everything I’m doing, I’ll never be all right. What does that say about me? That maybe I was never whatever she thought I was, that whatever she saw in me was an illusion?

Those depressing thoughts inspire me in a weird way. As I’ve mentioned before, my wife was remarkable. The freaking city is naming things after her—that kind of remarkable. Plus many more kinds. I want to uphold her name as well. One way is to work toward living up to her image of me. I feel a sense of urgency to show that her faith in me was not misplaced. Maybe that will be enough to keep me going even if I’m never going to be all right.**

When it was We, Us and Our, everything was so fine. It’s hard to let that language go.

Notes

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