I sat on the side of the bed this morning that I always do to pull on my clothes. It’s closer to the bathroom and my dresser and closet. The sun, which has been in hiding in recent days, made a reappearance and poured into the room, bright and blinding. It knocked against the prism that hangs in the window of what is now my second closet … for my boots and dresses and the few random items of clothing I kept that had been my husband’s … and it refracted the perfect rainbow around my feet.
For a few minutes, I let myself bask in the halo of that rainbow, remembering. Remembering what it had been like when my husband was sick, and I had to sit in this very spot to help him get dressed every morning because he was in so much pain. Remembering the moment, many months into his illness, when he was no longer even able to bathe himself, and I had the task of wheeling him into our shower and letting the warm water roll down his back as I soaped him up and dried him off. Early on in his cancer year, he had experienced a strange occurrence of hundreds of blood clots running up and down his legs, and from that day forward, he wore compression hose – hideous white compression hose, that I had to pull up his legs every morning. This took all the strength I had and by the time we had made it downstairs, I was completely wiped out from the morning’s ablutions and dressing activity. I hated looking at those hose on what had been my husband’s strong and beautiful legs – they made him look like someone who was sick. Of that I didn’t need any additional reminders.
I was reminded this morning of these moments, as well as of the fact that 15 years ago, my mother died in the weeks between Thanksgiving and her birthday in late December. She checked herself into the hospital with what she thought was pneumonia the day after Thanksgiving, and less than three weeks later she died in the fourth stage of a horrible lung cancer.
I have found, as the losses and sadnesses in my life compound, that the only way for me to right myself and move forward is by compartmentalizing. I take what I’ve experienced, and when I’m finished processing it, at least the first time round, pack it into the card catalogue that is my brain, with its many drawers, and continue to live the life I have in front of me. It doesn’t mean I don’t take my loss out of the drawer and think about it (which I do, all the time), and it doesn’t mean I don’t grieve (which I do, all the time) but it’s the only way I can pick myself up and function. It’s a safety mechanism, self-protection, which I probably honed from childhood and the fact that I have an open heart which gets wounded easily.
When my mother moved out of our house when I was 16 years old, in the first salvo of a 10-year separation and ultimate divorce from my father, I skipped to school the next day, told my friends and blithely announced “so what, everyone’s parents get divorced.” Of course, not everyone’s mothers move out of their homes and essentially ignore their teenage and pre-teen daughters for months on end. My cavalier attitude was armor against my confused and broken heart. It took decades for that drawer to re-open and for me to cope with my mother’s desertion.
I have been accused, at times, of being unsentimental and using my compartmentalizing tactics to shelve friendships into a drawer too, of not being spontaneous and generous enough with my time and my love. But as I grow older, and understand that my relationships are a top priority, I believe that it is precisely my ability to carve out space for each person in my life that allows me to hold those I love so close and give my treasured relationships the attention they need and deserve.
Many widows and widowers find the need to sell and move out of their homes very quickly after their spouses die. They cannot bear to be in the space without the person they loved; the daily memories are too painful. This was never an option for me, as I have three children for whom this is still their home. My job, I have always felt, was to make their house a safe and joyful place again, not run away from it and the ghosts that inhabit it. A dog helped. As did a concentrated effort to simply keep living and laughing, using our house as a blanket in which to wrap ourselves rather than regard it as poisoned space.
As I sit writing this morning, I am on the couch in the front room of my house, where I have spent many hours in the past four years. When my husband was sick, I sat in here as a refuge from constant caretaking. I would stare ahead, feeling numb, wondering if I would ever be able to occupy this space in a normal way again. Since he died, this has become my healing room, painted now a soothing grey, where I am surrounded by beautiful furniture and my books. And the dog. The sunlight streams in here as well, through the front window that I have never curtained because I enjoy looking out onto the street and into the world. The room is like a compartment of its own, where I feel safe and protected. It is its own character in my story. And in it I can make plans and move forward and slowly open the drawers where the memories lie and let the light shine in.
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