Grief Journey Day + 56

The mornings are cold now, the afternoons fair. This is early fall in Indiana. I hate winter weather and never liked her precursor, fall. But this year I felt differently about summer ending. Usually, the end of summer means the end of all the things Billy & I love most, like cookouts, boating, water skiing, watching the grandchildren learn new skills on the water, sitting outside at dusk with a cold beer, fireworks, hiking. But last summer held none of those pleasures for us. Instead, Billy had transfusions of blood & platelets at least every other day, and hospital stays fighting infection. He never got to ski, he wasn’t strong enough to even walk down the steps to the lake and get on a boat. I went out on the pontoon boat only once, him not at all. It was the summer that never was.

I thought I wanted that summer to end, but now when I count the days since he left I want to say, “Enough!!” I know this sounds stupid, but a part of me is asking, do I really have to keep going on like this, day after day, without him? My poor brain desperately wants to believe that this pain can end and that somehow he can come back now. I don’t want Halloween to come or Thanksgiving, and, God help me, not Christmas.

Billy, your ball cap is still sitting on the coffee table where you tossed it. Your cane is still propped up in the corner by the door. Your Bible and notebook are by your spot on the couch, the house looks ready for you to walk into the room. But you don’t and you haven’t and you won’t.

I have heard him twice now. Both times it was as I was awakening, once to the sound of him laughing and it was so quick, but a sound I knew so well. I wanted more, but there was only silence. The second time I woke up and heard him speaking, saying, “Will you fix me some food?” Yes, I answered in my mind. Yes, how I would love that. I guess I must dream about him, but I cannot remember my dreams. I usually wake with a vague feeling of having gone somewhere dark in the night, somewhere dark and twisted and sad, and as though I had wrestled with something.

I talked to Joanna today and told her I was weepy today. She said Wednesdays were always hard for her. She said she cried more on Wednesdays. Today being a hard day for me and also a Wednesday, I had to agree. She said maybe that’s why so many grief groups meet on Wednesdays. I think she’s onto something. Today is her due date, but her daughter isn’t ready to meet us yet. Everything in God’s timing, Joanna reminded me.

And I will end with my worries about my dog. Emmy hasn’t been herself since Billy died, and I am understanding that this change is a permanent one. She used to love food, but now she doesn’t get excited about eating and I have to sit quietly while her dinner grows cold and congealed because she won’t obey any urging on my part to eat. She has separation anxiety, so I cannot leave her alone in the house while I’m at work all day because she tears things up in the house and destroys things. Usually leaving her outside is not a problem, as long as the weather is nice. However, now she’s taken to tearing up whatever she can find outside while I am gone at work. Yesterday it was a bag of charcoal briquettes under the grill. Today I gave her a very large beef marrow bone to chew on while I was gone, hoping it would satisfy her need to rip things apart. When I came home, the paper plate I set the bone on was in pieces and I cannot find the bone anywhere. It was enormous, and will last several days, so I know she didn’t eat it. Did she bury it? I think about finding her a new home where she wouldn’t be alone so much. I’m not sure what to do. She’s lonely and unhappy. I’m lonely and unhappy, too, And I was hoping we could stay together in our shared state of unhappiness. But I don’t know if it’s best.

I wish Billy were here.