LIFE WITHOUT DAVID, Chapter 3

I have been giving some serious thought about the ongoing changes in my life, the obvious external ones and, more intensely, the internal movements.  I have been giving more attention to my appearance when I go anywhere...using makeup again...wearing my pretty rings and earrings...buying and wearing different styles, things that make me look more feminine, more put together.  I haven't cared about that for two or three years.  But then, I am feeling physically better than I have for that long period of time (long, when you don't feel good), so that is probably the basis for those changes.  I just wish I would have felt this way while David was here---he loved for me to put on my makeup, my jewelry, wear something besides t-shirts---he would be very pleased about this, although he never complained.  In fact, he would tell me I was beautiful even when I looked disgustingly Not.  Actually, I think I am just fed up with seeing that sickly looking face in the mirror.  
     I have always been grateful for the everyday blessings in my life.  Now, doubly so.  The oncologist and the Rituxan.  The peacefulness in this house.  The security and low-stress quality of my days.  My painting.  My dog and cat.  But most of all, the love and support from God, from family, from friends.  And this is the reason for a large part of the changes within me.  I have always had lots of love in my life, and I feel so privileged to have known that much love.  It is so much easier to love myself when I know others love me.   But the awareness of the unexpected extent and depth of the love I am experiencing is causing me to open up, to drop those walls I have kept built up all these years.  Always the I-can-do-this-without-asking-for-help, the Don't-let-anyone-so-close-that-they'll-see-how-vulnerable-you-are, the Give-but-don't-take person.  (Except with David...he wouldn't allow me to keep those walls between us.)  But now, my family and friends have so been there for me, have given so much of themselves and their valuable time, have become so close, have blanketed me with their love, that I am being re-created.   I feel so much more worthy.  It still causes some discomfort  to ask for and accept help.  And I am always afraid that I may be taking too much...I feel like I must remain the strong one, the one that does for others.  So I am unsettled, but very, very thankful.  I am reluctantly accepting that I cannot, or at least don't want to make it on my own, a kind of a John Donne, no man is an island, realization.
      I am also realizing, in retrospect, how great it was to have David love me the way he did.  We all just take so much for granted until life slaps us in the face.  Even though I thought, as David and I grew older, that I knew how numbered our days were and knew that the day would come when one of us would have to go on without the other, I truly did not know the fragility of hope until that happened.  I always hoped that David would get healthier, hoped that we had many more years together, hoped for this and that, lots of hopes, hopes that shattered like thin glass when he died.  When we lived with each other day-to-day, we had routines, good moments and bad moments, worries and joys, but we still had each other, although sometimes, in bad moments, reluctantly.   But now I know how precious it was to have David and his love, and I feel like I am so much better for it.  And, wondrously, I am learning how much those who knew David loved him.   Another of John Donne's thoughts was that when one man dies, a chapter is not torn but translates into a new language.   And so it does, albeit not the language any of us had wished to learn. 
     Not only am I learning the new language, but I'm learning the new me.  My forever friend Joann reminded me that when David and I married, I changed and learned to be the other half of us, and now that David is gone, I am starting all over, learning to be a different me.  Now I know, though, that I have helpers in this journey...friends and family that love me and support me as I am going through these changes.
     They would like to help me with the hurtful parts, too, but that's something I have to handle alone.  I know that the tear-my-insides-out pain that hits me frequently is part of the grieving process but how I hate it.  Crying is supposed to make a person feel better, to release emotion and hurt, but it doesn't feel that way.  It seems like crying begets more crying, hurt incites more hurt.  I will be so glad when the pain ends, or at least eases.  Self-patience has never been one of my virtues.
     And my heart hurts for the others grieving for David, missing him.  My empathic side feels their pain and wants so bad to be able to absorb it, to take it away.   But it has to find its own outlet.   I tell our daughter to call me and talk her pain through with me until it eases.   I write in this blog.  Our sons, though, and David's good friends, his "bro's"....they call to check on me but never to release their pain.  I worry about them all.  I wish I could just hug them and hold them until it all went away. 
     I've been told that anger is part of the grieving process, too.  I haven't felt any anger yet and just can't see that happening.  Who would I be angry at?  David didn't want to die that morning.  The paramedics that came were wonderful.   David's doctors always did what good doctors do.   Certainly not God...I never understood why anybody would do that.   Who's left---me?   That would be ludicrous.  I wanted David to be with me forever.  There is no blame...anger would be pointless...just a highly unwanted negative emotion.
     Besides, I am trying very hard to not dwell or even linger on the memories of that morning.  I want so much to remember every good part of our life together, even a few of the not so goods.  It's very frustrating to have 40 years of being us in my head and not be able to remember all the details.  I love it when someone says, "remember when..."  because it's another little piece of him returning to me.  I want the warmth those memories bring, not the destructive heat of anger or coldness of regrets.
     Here it is the wee hours of the morning, and I'm still missing that phone call from upstairs telling me to come to bed and wondering if that is one memory that will be there at 1:30 every morning for the rest of my life.  Another piece of David that I can keep.