Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Flashing Back

I am not sure if the flashbacks will ever go away completely.
They certainly are not as raw but still linked with emotion for me.
Sometimes they came out of left field but sometimes they are linked to just a trigger to remind me.

On Saturday night, Mr. X and I went to have dinner with his parents.
We had a nice dinner and then sat down to watch a movie together.
"The Family Stone" was on regular TV and I was the only one who had seen it.
I like the movie as I think it is pretty humorous at times.
I also knew there was sad ending to the movie.

The tears came.
And came.
And came.
Thankfully no one, except Mr. X, could see my face.

At one point in the movie, the oldest daughter lays down with her mother as she is napping.  She wraps her arms around her.
As Roger was being pulled off life support I just wanted to crawl up into the bed with him.
Especially once they pronounced officially gone.
I wanted to wrap my arms around him.  Pull him close to me.
But I couldn't.
Because he was donating his organs, because I was donating his organs, he had only a few minutes before we had to let him go.
Or at least it felt like a few minutes at the time and to me.

At another point, the husband's face as he crawled into bed with his wife truly expressed my feelings.
After I knew Roger was going to die, crawling into bed was painful.
Knowing he would never come home to me.
Knowing he would never crawl into bed with me.
I remember those moments so vividly.
Memories are linked to emotions and emotions were certainly high.

At the end of the movie, you see the entire family for their first Christmas without their mom.
Although my first set of holidays were not too bad, my second set hurt a lot.
I was no longer numb.
Emotions were at the surface.
Roger was truly dead the second set of holidays.
The first set he was just not here.

I do not know why I am surprised at how weepy I became.
From the outside, I want to laugh at myself.
Did I really think grief was done with me?
Did I really think I would not think of Roger as the holiday season madly approaches?
At least this year, it does not feel like a boiling pot of water ready to come over the top of the pot.
This year, at least so far, it feels like a few bubbles coming to the surface sporadically.
It reminds me of the sulfur springs in St. Lucia.

Sigh.

3 comments:

Andrea Renee said...

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Candice said...

I think your words here summed it up perfectly:

"Roger was truly dead the second set of holidays.
The first set he was just not here."

That's it exactly, but I hadn't put my finger on it in quite that way. But you're absolutely right. The first set of anything hurt because Charley wasn't there. I kinda understood that it was because he was dead, but it was the later, repeat-times of hitting holidays, big events, etc. where I finally realized that he'd never be there again. That's why I finally started to understand, as much as I could little by little, just how long and how permanent "dead" is and just what it meant.

Candice said...

(And for the record, I don't like that Blogger tells me that my comments are too long. Making me split them into more than one comment?? How rude!! ;o) But continuing what I first wrote....)

I saw The Family Stone in the theater on Christmas Eve only 5 months after Charley died. 'Fortunately' (said tongue in cheek, of course) I saw it with one of my bestest, oldest, and most supportive friends--and one who'd gone through her own nightmare tragedy relatively recently, although it didn't involve death--and we were both horror-struck as we watched the movie. We saw it coming a mile away, but we couldn't leave or turn away.

Yeah. Not such a hot choice for us to see on Christmas Eve so soon after our losses...and a seriously dumb choice on the movie makers' part! People dying just shouldn't be in the plot line of something that looks like just another silly, fun, happy Christmas movie on the surface! Bad Hollywood! Bad! ;o)

But I'm not surprised you reacted as you did. Those triggers are so powerful, particularly when they reflect back to us things we went through personally but couldn't really process at the time because we were so numb and in shock. Two years and three months out really isn't all that long after the death, after all. (Relatively speaking, at least.)

Hugs being sent your way, Star....

xoxo,
Candice