CHAPTER 1
The Grief Ride
"This is how we go on; one day a time, one meal at a time,
one pain at a time, one breath at a time.”
—Stephen King, Bag of Bones
I did not plan how I would handle my own grief. Even though I had prepared myself to some degree for his death, I never realised that I could still be so ill-prepared for the loss and grief that awaited me.
I had no idea what feelings had slipped in unnoticed that had left me numb throughout the months that went by, in that I was merely existing and did not have much of an inkling of whatever else that was going on. It was as though I had found a door into another zone altogether.
It was similar to falling into a trance after being stuck with a broken record playing in your head for the longest time that you no longer knew it was there. Sometimes, it felt quite like being in the eye of the storm. Even though there was a calm region, I had a sense of impending turbulence close by.
At some odd times, I found myself reaching for the phone to call him, only to remember that I was at a funeral. His. I seemed to have suffered some kind of a mental impairment where it was as though I was living between the world that was real and one that was not; and sometimes, I could not separate one from the other. It was tantamount to a merging of two worlds that were in close parallel to each other.
Sometimes a certain smell or an everyday ordinary item such as his favourite mug or a coffee spoon would hit me so unexpectedly that it would jolt me up from the usual rut that I had been in. Then it dawned on me that he was gone. Not here, or coming back. Ever. And I would find myself breaking down in tears all over again.
My mind seemed frazzled and clouded for most of my waking hours. Everything seemed to move in frames, racing back and forth between the times when Ben was here to the road of emptiness that seemed to lie up ahead of me. Maybe I did prefer to stay in a giant nebulous ball of nothingness so that I would not remember the details that had brought me so much pain. I stayed in bed a lot and wished often, that it were all, only a nightmare.
Some days, I awoke to an all perfectly beautiful and promising morning where the birds were happily chirping away outside of my window and the dew-kissed flowers gloriously blooming. Yet it would snap me down into shreds because I could not share it with him. On a horribly miserable day, everything felt seemingly worse in his absence as he always knew what to say or do to make it all seem better.
On most days in the initial weeks, I would find myself staring into his cabinet where his clothes were. I would hold onto them and cry like a child who had just been abandoned. It was similar to a scene where an oncoming train was crashing into me again and again but I would still not move.
My own isolation for months in a familiar dark corner of my room that I called 'My World' had brought me much solace and a sense of rest. In it, I felt that time was suspended. In it, I finally found a tiny space in this big wide Universe that belonged to me. I seemed to have no interest in whatsoever that I was doing. I wanted to simply shut down, completely. To sleep and never having to get up again. I just kept wishing there was a termination button that I could hit.
The first three months was mostly spent doing the same activity that I had managed best. I found my limbs and body parts attached to the bed in a facedown fashion. It was as if I needed to feel my heartbeat to remind me that I was still alive even though I could not feel it.
The guilt, I think was the worst. In the first few seconds when I was told that he had died—even though there was a sickening reality of death—I was relieved because he was not suffering anymore. But soon afterwards, I began to feel a heavy sense of guilt for having felt that way. I was afraid that if anyone knew how I really felt, I would be severely condemned for it. How could I be relieved that he was dead?
In the days and even weeks after the funeral, I barely spoke any more than was necessary as conversations with others simply felt burdensome. Both, for themselves and me. I looked forward to the luxury of retreating into my own solace whenever I could, often yearning for company and yet, preferring none.
I had very little desire to speak to anyone about what I was really feeling because I was convinced that no one would understand. And even if I wanted to, how would I speak about it when I could not even deduce or articulate what I was feeling into words and language? Grief. Like an enigma wrapped up in a riddle. Just where do I even begin?
I could not even manage to complete a full sentence when I tried to write after a grief counsellor visited me and advised me to try journaling. I so desperately wanted to open up a window to let it all out, even if it was, just a little at a time. But I could not even find a word to begin when I tried. I could not even pray.
It seemed bearable when I was not taking it in fully. Most times, I had to confront it simply because it made me angry enough to do something. It was hard to imagine being an object of love and God's goodness when you lose the purpose that had held the beliefs of your existence. You could cry all you want. But you just won't see it.
In Storm of the Century, Stephen King wrote, “When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why God? Why me?' And the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off.”
You could feel a sense of self-loath, of blame and even in the same manner as though you were being punished. Sometimes I felt so alone. It was as if I had fallen so far into the abyss of blackness and obscurity that I had reached the other edge of eternity with nothing else to hold on to.
I had simply lost the interest to live.
CHAPTER 2
The Emotion Of Missing Someone
"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day,
so I never have to live without you."
—Winnie the Pooh
Day after day, I awoke to a world that felt empty to me. I could hear the birds singing outside my window when I opened my eyes; I saw the sun returning home in the evenings. I told the LORD, "I am ready to leave. I have no incentive to live on." But God seemed so cold and distant because I would still wake to yet another day and then another, as if I was being intentionally ignored.
It felt immensely void, parched for miles and miles away on a wide, free expanse of space. It was as if heaven and earth had met each other out on the horizon and you simply could not tear them apart. It was similar to walking on shifting sand so that one never quite knew how to retrace where you had been when the day was over. I just merely existed. It was a sad, meaningless existence—and I was in it.
Getting through the day and making it through the night was my greatest goal for each day. It felt so much like having a great story being rudely interrupted so unexpectedly. It was as though someone had put a full stop in the middle of my book that still had many chapters to go.
The emotion of missing someone is difficult because it has no promise of an end date or relief of any kind. The long nights alone were especially agonising. You just somehow make it through like fighting a withdrawal of sorts, cold turkey; night after night.
.......................................skip
The Seduction Of Suicide
There were nights when I couldn't sleep because I had missed him so much that I would enter into the room quietly. I would sit in a corner in the shadows, with my head on my knees hoping to feel whatever was left of his presence or to catch a whiff of the scent he had left behind. The yearnings were intense; so intense—that the prospect of escape via suicide often danced in seduction before me.
The execution of the act itself was not difficult and it seemed to promise a quick relief from all the pain and suffering that I was in. Have I thought of my children? Yes. I had even gone about quietly, setting things in order as if I was preparing to make the transition for them as painless as I possibly could. Yet I knew I would be forever ashamed had I left this way. Then an even more terrifying thought came to me. What if—I'd killed myself, only to wake up in a different world from Ben?
Perhaps, I really could not dismiss the existence of God, despite it all. I still believe there is a God! And He could not have led me so far out here, only to abandon me now. I still hear myself saying in a stubborn whisper, "Though You slayeth me, yet will I still trust in You.”
Nonetheless, the sleepless nights were long and extremely difficult to get through. I simply could not describe the emotions that were consuming me by the seconds. Night after night, I battled through the tease to end the pain and agony in my soul.
Journal
The emotion of missing someone is tormenting. It felt so much like drowning that I sometimes found myself gasping for air. On some mornings, I would wake up with chest pains as if to remind myself that my heart was hurting because it had been broken. I lay in bed as emotionless as a corpse with a blank mind. Maybe I did wish that I was dead, and was pretending to be dead. But dead people can't feel pain—yet, I still did.
.......................................skip
Guilt
One evening over dinner with the boys, I blurted out of the blue, "I should have been a better choice..." but stopped short when I realised it would make the boys uncomfortable had I continued. It was a random line that had seemed to come out of nowhere, except a spillover from my own thoughts.
"Better choice for what?" one of my sons asked.
After some hesitation, I decided to make it known anyway.
"To have died."
That familiar awkwardness and silence filled the space that we were in. I had often tried to coax both my sons to speak about their own emotions regarding the loss but without much success. Perhaps, they being boys were just wired to be more logical in their thought processes rather than being incessantly emotional like their grieving mother. There had been too many good dinners that had gone bad between us. We could have done worse, had I not restrained myself to stay off the grief topic for most of our conversations around the table.
But then, this time the younger boy responded. He said to me, "No. If it'd been you—who'd died... Papa would not have survived it."
What he had asserted offered me an enormous sense of comfort and inner peace. In that one-liner of a young boy, he echoed maturity and deep understanding of things. His simple answer had not only acknowledged my suffering but also affirmed my strength—both, at the same time. Even though it did not immediately kill my morbid fascination with death ever since their father's passing, I saw guilt leave our house that day.
