Writing While Grieving 7: Where Is My Mind?

This Is My Brain on Grief

[Previously]

I’m no better and no worse

I’m still around, but it’s a curse

Grieving is a state of mind you’ll definitely want to avoid. I’ve been through some rough things, but I’ve never felt this close to losing my mind. It’s like I’m one blink away from that. Somehow, though, I continue to get shit done, so I guess I’m more stable than it seems. I’ve been doing all the adulting it takes to deal with probate and estates and city, state, and federal bureaucracies. I’m cooking and grocery shopping and meeting people for coffee or lunch, having guests over, going to shows and readings, working out on the bike trainer, fixing stuff around the house, and preparing for a couple of upcoming speaking engagements. For just over four months now, after wondering for a year if I’d ever write again, I’ve been writing up a storm. This means, from what I’ve read, though my grief is prolonged or complicated or whatever you want to call it, I’ve been functioning—which means I likely don’t have a disorder.

Good to know.

Lately, writing has been more fascinating than ever, and I’ve always been fascinated by it. When I’m writing, I can take a step back and say, “Okay, what the hell is my brain up to now?” If grieving didn’t hurt so much, it would also fascinate me. It’s wild. I mean, my brain is just wild these days. When I watch what’s happening to my mind, I’m kind of enthralled. In this newsletter, I want to take a close look at what’s been going on. (Some of it isn’t pretty.)

As I mentioned in “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” (my most “viewed” newsletter and maybe one of the best things I’ve ever written), I found that some of the scariest things my brain has been up to, like anger, are typical and harmless. I haven’t found anything yet that isn’t to be expected (save perhaps one), but when they are happening to you, they don’t feel typical or harmless. Let’s take them one-by-one.

Anger: Baby Please Don’t Go

I am so angry. This is understandable. I watched my life partner and best friend since I was sixteen years old suffer terribly and for months on end. If that doesn’t make you want to smash everything in sight, nothing will. I haven’t smashed anything, though. I haven’t punched any walls. Never been the type. My father was, and my philosophy has always been to ask, “What would Dad do?” and then do the opposite. That still holds. (Thanks, Dad.) Though my anger is understandable, I want to understand it more, because it has seemed like there’s more to it than being angry about the unjust thing that happened to the one I loved so deeply.

In an interview, Mary Francis O’Connor, author of The Grieving Brain, spoke about bonded relationships and how the brain encodes them. “Once you bonded with that person, that physically changed your brain, and they are in your brain physically, forever . . . They’re a part of you.” When that person dies, “a part of how we function in the world is taken away.”

My brain feels ditched, ghosted. It’s trying to figure out what happened. It can’t figure out why my wife won’t reach out to me. This may be why people so easily interpret ordinary things as signs from their beloved from the other side. It’s like all those old blues songs where the guy can’t figure out why she left him. He still thinks she’ll come back, but it sure is taking a long time. He’s all wrapped up in puzzlement, and it’s starting to get on his nerves. If the river was whiskey, he’d be a diving duck.

Empty closeness bonds, then, are an additional cause of the anger a grieving brain experiences.

I mentioned before that I’ve never been through a breakup. I had amazing beginner’s luck. My first girlfriend? She married me. Weirdly, her death feels like she broke up with me. Part of my brain thinks so, apparently. Not only did she leave, she never told me why, never tried to work things out. That’s so rude! As my brain tries to process this, it feels a mixture of resentment and guilt. It goes from hurt and anger to “How did I ruin this?” I’m going through all the rumination involved when relationships end. “It’s like the brain is trying to undo what happened,” O’Connor says. This can slow progress. She calls rumination “avoidant” because it keeps you from appreciating the positive things around you in the present moment, and I admit, that’s been a struggle, but I try.

They Try to Hang a Word Above Us/Love Doesn’t Cover It

My wife and I had a great love that lasted a very long time. We thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company and never tired of each other. Yet, like a spurned lover, I want another chance. I have this new skill set. I want to love her in the ways I’ve learned how to love her since she was diagnosed, the ways I loved her while caring for her, but I want to love her in these ways while she is well. I want to show her how many amazing things I’ve learned in the last sixteen months that the word love doesn’t even touch. I want to do it all again given what I know now. Why let all this knowledge go to waste?

O’Connor explains how all these conflicting feelings of anger, love, confusion, guilt, regret, and bargaining are to be expected. It’s just my brain doing what brains do. “What you’re feeling is way more normal than you think,” she says.

I’m so fucking normal, it’s killing me.

Retiring While Grieving: When the Wrong Decision Feels Right

My wife and I planned to retire last summer. She died in the spring. I knew it would be best if I kept teaching, but when I realized I wouldn’t be able to give my students my all and that it wouldn’t be fair to them to keep going, I decided to go ahead and retire.

I knew this would cut me off from 18 to 22 year-olds, and I knew that would hurt. I’ve been hanging out with that age group since before I was their age. (My future wife was 18 and I was 16 when we started dating. Plus, I always had older friends because I looked older than I was—a trend that unfortunately continues.) I miss students terribly. I miss my colleagues, too. I’ve discovered that work friends don’t easily transition into the real-life kind without a bit of a push, which is an issue because I’m not used to putting myself out there. That means many people I’ve seen regularly for years, sometimes decades, are nowhere to be found (except on Facebook, which is little consolation). So it was a mistake to retire, I guess. But I had to. To alleviate this, I’m being a bit of a pest with former colleagues, with modest success. I’ve seen four so far.

O’Connor makes a connection between losing a closeness bond through death and what it feels like to retire. When you retire, you also lose a part of yourself. That means I’ve had a double dose of losing myself in the span of a couple of months which is not advisable.

What’s left of me?

O’Connor says grief is a natural response to loss, and grieving “is a form of learning,” a kind of “post-traumatic growth.” My grieving, retiring brain has been going through quite the workout. There’s much rewiring to be done.

Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Another thing that freaks me out but also fascinates me, is my grieving brain on happiness. I was very happy with my life, but for 16 months, happiness has been mostly AWOL, and I’ve often wondered if I’ll ever feel it again in the same ways I used to. Sometimes, though, something that should make me happy in a low-key way feels a bit out of control. It’s like my brain is saying, “Oh, Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, come in, come in! Long time no see! Would you like a drink? Can I make you a sandwich? Here, have a seat. Put your feet up. Stay as long as you like!”

I haven’t found anyone talking about this yet, so maybe it is truly weird and just me. The jury is out, but I’m curious about why this happens. My theory is that those happy chemicals have been scarce, and when just a drop trickles in, my brain is so thirsty for them that it opens the floodgates—Wheeee! After being in a happiness desert for ages, all of a sudden, I’m trying to hold back a deluge of happiness over the tiniest thing. Maybe my brain is saying, “Remember this? That was fun, right?” I think that since sorrow is the deepest feeling I experience from day to day, my brain desperately wants me to feel deeply about something else, anything else.

I’m monitoring the situation. My brain is like a friend who can also be a loose cannon. I have to keep my eye on him. It wouldn’t be great if someone besides myself noticed this happiness on steroids thing. They might think I’m being over-the-top in my enthusiasm (because I am), and I imagine that might be off-putting. In such a situation, I’m not sure it would help to say, “Oh, pay that no mind. It’s just my brain trying to trick me into being happier.”

Along with this comes guilt about feeling happy at all. And then there are those moments of true enjoyment, like when I was an interlocutor at a book event and was feeling great about it until I felt my wife’s absence and thought about how pleased she would have felt to be there. All happiness now comes with qualifications, with sad trombone sounds. Maybe that’s why sometimes my happiness likes to take a couple hits of speed.

Widow’s Fire

Another thing that’s a real thing, apparently, is widow’s fire, which is what you are probably imagining it is. It’s a widowed person’s overwhelming, sometimes uncontrollable desire for sex. Thankfully, this one hasn’t hit me. You won’t find me on Bumble. (Sorry to disappoint you.) I’ve got enough problems without that. Though I’m not hot to trot and not looking for anyone, I’m devastated to find myself single. The last time I was single, I was a high school sophomore. Ever since those days, I had someone to wrap my arm around, someone to take my hand as we walked down the street. To think of spending the rest of my life never being touched in those casual but intimate ways is more than I can handle. Not widow’s fire, but maybe widow’s afterglow is more my speed.

I don’t see any way out of this. I’m going to be single forever. First, I’m not a catch. I come with several drawbacks. Before you say “Oh, but you’re highly eligible” and then pause to try and think of reasons why, let me reassure you. I know I have some good points. My wife was amazing, and she not only chose me, but she stayed with me. She could see beyond the drawbacks, but I can’t expect that from anyone else.

Here’s my imaginary dating app profile:

Sixty-something bald, disabled man with multiple sclerosis, a heart stent, and a bit of a beer belly (hey, I’m working on it) and who sometimes may seem inexplicably happy while also on the verge of tears is looking for whoever will take me. Thanks.

I think I know which direction those swipes will go. It’s all very confusing for my brain which is used to me being part of the most wonderful of closeness bonds.

What I’m left with is longing. Longing is long, hard, thankless work. I long for what I had, what I’ve always known, what my brain is convinced is supposed to be there still. Every cell in my body aches for someone I can never, ever have. Good luck with that one, brain of mine.

What I need to figure out is how to be alone. Ick. How does someone who has never been alone ever get the hang of it? Maybe I’ll reread Walden, sign on with a whaling ship, move to the Outback, or take up smoking—who knows?

Like I said, my brain is wild right now. It’s also freaking interesting, unless you happen to be in it.