Chapter Six: REALITY CRASH

In many ways I thought the grieving that I experienced before Sandy's loss, was almost as bad as actually losing her. At least that’s what I thought then. I have come to realize that it only seemed worse because the weight of anxiety was added to my already overloaded heart full of sadness. At the moment of her passing and every week, day and second since, however, the anxiety vanished. Oh, the sadness increased ten fold because now it was real. Now there was no anticipation of how the house would feel without her or how I would go through the simplest motions without her being there or waiting at home when I was out. Now …was here. Now was Now. Anxiety was replaced by Reality and Reality is a fearless foe.

Reality is there in the morning; throughout the day; into the evening and it doesn’t even rest while you try to. It invades your dreams. You can turn in one hundred different directions and each time it will be there, staring you in the face, reaching into your chest clenching your heart. There is no escape and no denial of its existence. Reality can be the embodiment of crippling emotional memories that never leaves.

For a few days last week I began to feel a reassurance that Sandy’s loss wouldn’t ‘break me’ as I feared it would. I knew I’d done the right thing. I knew I’d chosen the right doctor to care for her and another right doctor to come to our home when we needed a familiar hand to guide her back to God. There wasn’t the usual Guilt I’d read about. Were there things that could have been done better or events that could have gone better? Of course. Nothing is ever perfect or as planned. If there was such perfection, then the cancer would never have eaten its way into my little girl’s body and she’d still be sitting in my lap purring that motorboat purr of hers.

But yesterday I was blindsided. In my almost frenetic attempts to occupy myself, my energies and my time away from the house, I found myself at home barricaded by a series of events that, in and of themselves, could have been dealt with individually. But for whatever reason, they all began to build and meld together into one of those large, insurmountable boulders made all the more impassible by the two-steady days of torrential rains and constant gray skies. A package with a picture of Sandy I’d wanted her vet to receive had gotten lost in the mail; letters I’d painstakingly and heartbreakingly written to those people I felt should know about Sandy had met with no response, and worst of all, I’d made the terrible mistake of trying to take on too many new tasks at once.

Literature and grief therapists ‘say’ to “just do something…. but not too much at once”. I’d filled my head and blathered on to my husband about all the changes we’d intended to make in the house should be done now; that I’d do all the necessary preliminary research and we’d start on those minor to middling remodeling tasks we’d been putting off for so long. It would provide the diversion from Reality I desperately needed. Rain, gray skies, seemingly piddly events piling up, stuck in the same surroundings and routine I was desperately trying to alter if just enough to ease the pain of Reality - suddenly came to a thundering halt. Suddenly I was suffocated by Reality.

Reality can’t be conned. Reality can’t be fooled or evaded or swept under the new carpet or painted a different hue. Reality remains stoically ever-present in whatever form it personally chooses for you. Now Reality didn't rise upon me like a slow tide or creeping fog. No. This Reality was that large, unavoidable boulder hurled off the cliff I’d been trying to climb in the hopes of eventually facing it and honestly dealing with it and hopefully accepting it but...maneuvering my climb in my own way and at my own pace. Reality decided it was time for us to meet on its terms and at its pace. Reality always has the upper hand.

Today, for the hour or so I’ve been sitting here typing this, is the fist time in two days I’ve been out of bed. I haven’t showered. I've only eaten some toast yesterday morning. But I'm trying to drink some water at least. I never knew one could sleep so long even after they totally awaken. When I’d lay there more than a few minutes, with my eyes wide open, I’d start to think or cry or howl into a pillow and pull my entire body into a fetal position and before I knew it, I’d be fast asleep again. The same actions were repeated every few hours or so. I speak little or not at all when I slog to the kitchen for water or to the bathroom. My husband, I’m sure, is afraid to leave me. But I also feel he’s helpless and he knows it. I no longer want to do anything. I just want to escape ...Reality. But now Reality had assumed yet another face: Depression.