Back to the Start

We were raised mostly as only children.  Divorce, age difference and living with different parents caused us to grow up without shared experiences.  He was 19 when he became Uncle Kevin.  We met at a bar near the stadium Saturday.  It was really such a treat to get to spend time with him.  Yes, we talked about Hayley but we tried to make it a night of fun not sorrow.  As I sat there at the bar and later at the concert, I realized how much I did not know about my brother.  I was totally ashamed of myself.  I knew he was accomplished.  I have always been proud of his career, his marriage and my amazing nieces.  But I could not answer basic questions siblings should know.  So I asked.  What was your first concert?  Tom Petty. Oh man that is so much better than mine.  Aha.  I said “Aha, Aha, AHA!!!” he kept saying huh?  You know “take on me”.  I got a little smirk from him.  We were talking about Henry and how well he has done learning the saxophone.  Did Kevin play an instrument growing up?  No.   I am sure he felt like I was interviewing him and I sort of was.  But I had a lot of questions.  I really actually wanted to know the answers.  It felt good to be interested in something other than my pain.  That is when part of our couple’s counseling Scott and I go to every week clicked.  In counseling we are working on our relationship in order to handle our grief together.  One ongoing theme is to be “curious” about each other.  I realized that is what I was doing with my brother and it actually felt good.  It felt like I was building a relationship.

That is when I realized I don’t really know my husband.  Okay, I know him.  But I don’t think I have ever really been curious about him.  I know exactly what annoys me about him.  In fact I know it well.  I know what I wish he would do.  But have I never been curious enough to really know why does he act, do, and live the way he does.  27 years together, my entire adult life, shouldn’t I know more.  I honestly can’t remember what his first concert was, if I had to guess I would say Rush.  But who knows.  I realized to understand how he is grieving I need to be curious about his relationship with Hayley.  He needs to do the same with me.  By doing that we can understand each others triggers.  We can know what we should do to support the other.  We can actually grow closer through our grief.  What a novel idea.  The counselor mention this as a goal and I remember scoffing in my head.  Like, seriously, I will feel lucky if I come through this grief and actually be able to function.  He is so damn observant.  He caught my thoughts on my face.  He asked me “what would Hayley want?”.  He asks this a lot.  The first time he asked I began to cry and hold my hand over my mouth to stop myself from blurting out “she wants not to be dead, that is what Hayley would want!”.  I have not said it out loud to him but it is there every single time he asks that question. Then I take a deep breath and answer the question.  Hayley would want Scott and I to stay together and grow closer for us and for Henry.  Hayley would think it was an even bigger tragedy if her death tore us apart.  At the end of some days when I ask myself what I accomplished today, all I can say is I didn’t tell someone to Fuck Off.  That’s something right?  Well that and I didn’t physically harm anyone or myself.  That is also a good day.

I remember Psych 101 and the stages of grief.   I thought the five stages of grief were linear.  You know, like one at a time and in a row.  I figured the length of each stage might vary, but not the order.

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Fine, I can do that.  I like things with order, clear and concise.  What they don’t tell you about grief is that the stages don’t go in that order, that they can all happen in the same day, even the same hour.  You can go from denial to depression, to acceptance and back to denial all in the time it takes your Kureg to make you a shitty cup of coffee.   Not only do they make it sound like something orderly when they call it “stages” of grief, but they fail to mention several other “stages”.  For Example:

• Blame
• Guilt
• Pain
• Hatred
• Sleep
• Loneliness
• Isolation
• Mania
• Cognitive Impairment
• Fantasyland
• Preoccupation

I have personally experienced every single one of the original Five Stages of Grief and my own list above, that we shall call “All the other Shit”.

I will explore these experiences in more depth when I can.  Right now I have a raging headache going on from the withdrawals from the “sleep” medication they are weaning me off of.  See previous posts.

But let’s touch on a few.  Fantasyland.  This one is a fun one.  This is what the Fantasyland Stage of grief looks like to me.  Several times at the concert I thought about texting the picture or video I just took to Hayley.  When I wake up in the middle of the night to pee I look down the hall to see if Hayley left her door open.  If she did I would need to go shut it before one of the dogs joined her and woke her up.  This was not a girl you wanted to wake up, it was scary.  She didn’t mind the dogs laying with her when she was watching TV but if they joined her while she was sleeping the shit might hit the fan.  So I would sneak down, take the towel off the door where she hung it to dry even though there was a perfectly good rack 24 inches away, and quietly shut the door.  Then I could go pee without worrying the dogs would wake her up.  In Fantasyland I glance to her closed door, sit down and then realize she is not in her room.  She will never ever be in her room for the dogs to wake up when I pee in the middle of the night.  Fantasyland is that brief rush I get when I turn in to our culdesac and see that her red car is in the driveway.  Red Car equals Hayley is home.  No she is not.  Another example is those first few seconds in the morning when I review in my head who is home, what are everyone’s plans today and can I go back to sleep.  The truth always comes quickly and it is like being kicked in the gut.  All of these experience only need seconds, fractions of seconds to run their course and leave you breathing shallow from the pain.

Preoccupation means to be engrossed with something or fixated on a task.  This has happened to me with furniture.  It started in the hospital.   My kids don’t like change.  We have had a dark green chenille fabric sectional for over 15 years.  It was our first ever big furniture purchase.  That couch was well loved.  Everyone loved it.  It was so comfortable.  It was big, we could fit many people.  The party couch.  That couch held 5 year old daisy scouts, junior high slumber parties, and high school boys lounging around watching youtube videos.  Hayley and I decided it was time to replace the big green monster.  Scott would no longer sit on it.  He said it was gross.  Hayley and I went to Macy’s three times before her surgery.  Our first visit was when we found her new adult bed.  We sat on every couch in that place.  We had narrowed it down to two fabric sectionals.  I wanted leather but I knew that Scott would be the voice of reason and say we can’t spend that kind of money when one of us didn’t have a job.  There was one leather sectional that Hayley fell in love with.  I took a picture of her enjoying the power recliners.  I said nope, not going to happen.  Shortly after I ended up one Saturday determined and listed the sectional for sale.  At the same time I found a crate and barrel sofa set from a family that used it for a low traffic front room.  They were like my friend’s couch that I enjoyed.  Slip covered so you could change the color.  They had a certain beachy Nantucket feel about them that I love.  So one Saturday night at 4:00 I rented a uhaul truck and with Hayley riding shotgun drove way the heck out past carnation almost to Snohomish.  I had never driven one of these things before and it was a mother daughter adventure.  Once we drove off with my $300 furniture prize that would cost over $3k new,  Hayley informed me that these were the ugliest couches she had ever seen and that I was completely insane.  They were ugly, they were this salmon pink color.  I kid you not.  She said Dad is going to hate these.

Well  we got the pink couches into the house.  I explained that when I was working again I would order a more neutral color in new slipcovers.  Henry made a gagging sound and Hayley said they were awful, she may have called me an idiot.  Scott…I like this color.  We thought he was kidding.  Both kids were so pissed about the sectional being gone it was like I had re-gifted their Christmas puppy or something.  So mad at me, they both mentioned it daily.  I didn’t enjoy sitting on them either.  They were not deep like the sectional.  They looked fine, but it was the fact that something that had been there for so long was missing, like we had knocked a wall out.  But guess what?  Scott loved them.  It was that ugly pink couch that Hayley was laying on early Monday morning in July screaming for us to call 911 because her head hurt so bad.  I can still picture it.  I can picture the paramedics.  I can hear the dogs wailing from the closed master bedroom as they did everything they could to get to the intruders.  I can hear myself over and over explaining to them that she had just been discharged from the Issaquah Hospital but we needed to get her to Seattle where her surgeon was waiting to make sure she got the care she needed.  I can hear them explaining that they were the only engine on the plateau at the moment due to some fires elsewhere and so a private ambulance would take her.  I watched them take her off that ugly pink couch and onto a gurney and take her out of her home.  The home she would not ever return to.  As Scott and her were getting into the ambulance, I remember the lead responder say to me “was it really medically necessary for her to have the breast reduction surgery”.   What I said in my head was “Fuck You Asshole”, out loud I said “Yes it was”.  I have been planning for weeks to go to station 82 and find this man and to inform him that she died less than 24 hours after they questioned the need for their services for her headache.  It still haunts me.

But I am off topic, this is supposed to be about Preoccupation.  That week as I held up that wall in the hospital I became preoccupied with the couch situation.  I knew that when I came home I wanted to curl up on that green monster.  It became a symbol of comfort and the opposite of change.  If everything looked the same when I got home then this wasn’t really happening.  I was fixated on that couch.  I told my friend, please, I am not crazy, but I need a favor.  Here is the buyer’s information, they live a couple of miles away.  Can you please ask them if we can buy the couch back and I need it done before I come home.  Please.  She didn’t ask any questions, she didn’t judge.  I am the luckiest person in the world to have a friend like that.  Had the situation been reversed I don’t know if I would have reacted the same.  I would think she was losing her mind.  That Saturday her husband rented a trailer and they put the pink couches in our garage and brought back the green monster.   Henry was so happy to see it.  I saw the same need in his eyes for nothing to be changing.  If nothing changed, if everything looked the same, Hayley was not gone.  It was that couch where 15 Christmases had been spent, wrapping paper all over it.  Where all our dogs lounged.  The Chaise was my favorite spot to sit and breastfeed baby Henry.  It was the spot I curled up, with friends and family, waiting for the call to say it was over.  It was the place I have been crying while countless people held me, no idea what to say.  But it was time.

Recently I convinced Scott to get out of the house and go to Macy’s Furniture with me.  I was promptly greeted by our salesperson, Richard.  Richard is about a 101 years old but he has sold me all of my furniture in the past few years.  Scott wandered around.  Richard asked me how does your daughter like her new bed.  I had to ruin the poor mans day.  We walked around, I showed Scott the fabric sectional that we had picked out.  It is too big.  Okay, it comes smaller.  He said I think we should get leather.  Okay.  We walked, we sat, we reclined.  I said my only requests were it be a sectional and it have at least one recliner.  When I saw the one that Hayley loved I pointed it out.  I said that is the one I sent you the picture with Hayley lounging on.  He saw the price and as predicted we looked elsewhere.  I thought I found a good value in a different brand, he said we are not paying that much.  I pointed to a small fabric accent chair.  I pointed out the $799 price tag.  “Scott this is what furniture costs and if you want it to last 15 years it costs more.”  I reminded him what we spend in 2002 on the green monster.  I asked him how much did he want to spend.  He said “$500” and walked away.  Yep, that field trip was over.  He wasn’t ready.

Last week we decided to take another look, I have been so physically uncomfortable and in pain.  I can’t seem to find the right place to curl up and watch the world go by.  He must have felt the same.  It just felt like unfinished business. We spent several hours at that store, lounging and discussing pros and cons.  We were the only customers.  I walked in, set on the lower priced one, a compromise.  He kept going back to the Hayley pick.  He said I think it is this one.  I asked him are you choosing this because it was the one Hayley liked.  He was so honest, “probably” but it also has all of the features we wanted.  The green monster went to our new friends at the Red Barn.  That felt right,  I was able to let it go.  Today the new couch arrived.  There are three recliners.  There are three of us.

I have received so many positive messages about this journal.  I have celebrated the compliments on my writing and the hope it is helping others as well as myself.  But right now I am trying to figure out where I was going with this.  I started with a Coldplay concert, touched on a psychology lesson and ended with a couch.

I might as well own the fact that this entry has no theme and just jumps from topic to topic.  But, wait, that is exactly what I was trying to explain about my grief.  It jumps from topic to topic.  It has no theme.  It has no map.  It is not linear.  It is not focused.  It is a big jumbled mess of emotion and pain.  I am going to end with a song.  This was the one song at the concert that made me cry, that made me think of Hayley.  I have copied the lyrics below and attached a link to the song.  It is called the “Scientist”, but for me I call it “Back to the Start”.  Today when Scott and I went to have lunch at the met market, I stared like a stalker at three females.  A Mom, her Adult daugher and her angelic toddler in her stroller.  The two adults looked so much alike it was clear they were mother and daughter.  Their body language spoke of a closeness, more like good friends.  They seemed comfortable being together.  A pair.  A pair with a granddaughter. The opportunity to start an amazing journey over from the start.  Thankfully they were so engrossed in their conversation that they did not notice me staring at them with tears in my eyes.  I whispered to Scott, “I just realized something.  I will never have that. Three generations.”  He stood a little closer to me.  I was not just grieving the physical presence of my daughter.  I was grieving all of the what could have been and what was to come.  The pain was sharp and the desire to go back to the start and do it all over again took my breath away.

[Verse 1]
Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry
You don’t know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions
Oh let’s go back to the start
Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on a science apart

[Hook]
Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start

[Verse 2]
I was just guessing at numbers and figures
Pulling your puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles, chasing our tails
Coming back as we are

[Hook]
Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard