The Breakup

Well, I ended up breaking up with my girlfriend of eight months. It wasn't so much that something had changed in the relationship but something had changed in me.

I pretty much fumbled the whole affair. I know people breakup in all kinds of ways these days - in person, over the phone and over e-mail. I felt too emotional to do it in person, but I felt I needed to get it over with so I called on the phone. Unfortunately I didn’t confirm where she was at the moment she answered. I thought she was home, but she was actually out in public when I ended up blurting out what I had to say. Well - that was uncomfortable. We ended up getting together and talking for a couple of hours. It was pretty stinky. She admitted that she felt something had been amiss for a couple of weeks.

Gilda house

Later I'm on the Internet reading about programs at the Gilda house. They have a weekly group that discusses "living with loss". I make a note to go to the next meeting when I'm back home.

Livestrong

I'm off on another business trip this week. This morning I boarded the plane and waited to see who would be sitting next to me. A fellow about my age and about my build (tall and thin) sits down in the center seat. I politely worked on Sudoku puzzles for a portion of the flight before I began to talk to this guy, Luca. He's originally from Italy and has now lived in Vermont for about ten years. I inquired about the yellow "Livestrong" band he wore. Initially he simply noted that he was a five year cancer survivor, over time he told me bits and pieces about his ordeal and treatment. As the conversation evolved we found we shared a passion for cycling. We talked about bikes, gear, rides, and racing. I have the "American's" perspective of bike racing which is mostly limited to knowledge about the Tour de France. Luca had a more extensive knowledge about the entire racing season and the competitive riders in Europe.

I described the Five Boro bike ride through New York City. Robin and I had done it a couple of years in a row, then last year I rode it with my brother Corry and friend Larry. Dad missed out on it and has been training to ride it this year (actually next weekend).

The conversation has been flowing very smoothly until this point. I try to tell Luca that my wife Robin died from cancer. Nothing comes out of my mouth. Tears start welling up and I'm sunk. I try several times to start to talk. I'm sure Luca is a bit confused now - he's thinking "what's going on with this guy??"

This is the second time in a month that I'm speechless. It's harder this time. Luca has no idea what's happened to my speech center and motor functions, nor could he guess the history behind it. He's now staring straight ahead with a vague expression on his face, but I can tell that he is listening. I can't imagine the confusion in his head, and then as I begin to communicate, how do the thoughts come together for him as a cancer survivor? Last summer I was on a similar flight to Florida and spoke to a man with a Livestrong wristband, but I never told him my history. Here was the opportunity being presented to me again.

Over a matter of two or three minutes I mumble and spew and get some words out about how my wife had died and I sometimes have trouble talking about it. I still have tears in my eyes, but then I start talking about the details. The dates, the doctors, what we guessed, what we knew, Once I get going with the details the grieving symptoms disappear. Once I begin communicating again Luca's face softens and my words flow.

Why have these symptoms reappeared so strongly now? I feel like I used to be so good about talking and telling the story. Suddenly it feels like I'm completely out of shape. Like a marathon runner who has taken six months off from the sport and suddenly decides to go out for a long run, I feel emotionally atrophied.

Goodwill

I felt the need for Spring cleaning so I resolved to clean out more of Robin's old clothes from closets and take them to Goodwill. I began going through drawers and closets only to discover that I have pretty much taken everything away except for a few t-shirts and bike shirts. I still have a special t-shirt given to Robin from my coworkers which has all kinds of hand-written "wishes for a speedy recovery". They had given it to her early on in her fight.

Billing never ends

For five months now I've been receiving billing notices for a blood test performed in October 2006. How many years from now will I be receiving bills? It would probably only take a few phone calls to resolve with the insurance company, but I put it off month after month.

In a new twist, today I received a refund from the company who supplied home care supplies in January 2007. In reviewing their accounts they realize they overcharged $45. They've sent a check made out to Robin. It's a good thing her name is still on the checking account...

Thai reprogramming

Tonight is dinner with a coworker. We're at a fancy Asian restaurant sharing a bottle of wine. Yum - more Thai food!

It takes forever to decide what to order, it takes a long time for the dinner to come, afterwards we sit and talk for a looong time. It's an entire evening of laughter, stories, smiling and wine with someone I barely know. She apologizes for laughing too loudly. I find humor in the thought. We're there two-and-a-half hours but times flies by.

It seems like this could help me reformulate my thoughts about Thai food….

Mysterious

Sometime in the morning I look at my watch for the date. Yep, it's Robin's birthdate.

I don't get hung up on how old she would be today. She got to be forty-three. You don't keep aging after you die, so she just never made it to forty-four.

Sometime in the thaw of Spring I seem to have reached a point of being able to look back and see Robin's life as having been whole. It's kind of like "I didn't get cheated", "she didn't get cheated", it's just that that was her life and her time. It had a beginning and an end. How many people have come and gone in the history of our planet - and sooo fast. Somehow dates like 1910 or 1850 don't seem that far away anymore. We must be talking my "great-grandparent" range with those dates. Just a few generations. People come and people go. Somehow it seems less mysterious now.

Thai Train wreck

This week I'm traveling to D.C. For dinner I ventured to a neighborhood that Robin and I had explored years ago. I'm looking for Thai and just when I started thinking I wouldn't find it, I came around a corner and found the "Thaiphoon" restaurant - that'll do.

It was early so the restaurant was pretty empty. I've been doing a lot of traveling again. I don't often eat out at regular restaurants alone (would rather get take out) but today I wanted something healthier to eat and I wanted to get out of the hotel.

I had been thinking about this neighborhood and about a local tea shop that Robin and I had visited. Then I started thinking about Thai food. Robin and I first tried it while vacationing in Brattleboro, VT. I started to remember how we'd gotten it from a vendor at a 4th of July event, then we sought out a Thai restaurant in town the next day. Yum!

Next thing I know the tears are flowing down my cheeks. I guess all the memories start piling up until they finally derail and I get this train wreck in my head. I haven't had this strong a response in a while. Luckily (I think) the food is hot and spicy so if someone sees me they'll just think the tears are from the hot food… It doesn't last too long and I just let the feelings flow through me...

birthdays

I've been under a little more stress lately at work and with relationships. I'll be traveling to Florida in a few weeks so I called a dear friend from Florida whom I hadn't seen since just after Robin died. My Florida friend and I used to talk about philosophy, spirituality and life (both before Robin became ill and after she died).

We got talking about things and when I tried to talk about Robin my heart moved up in my throat, tears came into my eyes. I could barely speak. I know from experience that if I just keeping trying to talk eventually intelligible words will come out.

It was a very strong grieving response. I don’t know if it's related to the other recent stress in my life, or if I'm in a low period. It really shocked me how strong it felt and how long it lasted. Lots of tears running down my cheeks during the conversation. I know it's probably normal, my friend even said so. I was just caught off guard by how strongly I experienced it.

Well, April 22nd will be Robin's birthday too, so that might having something to do with it.

Still learning

Robin and I had an unspoken pact. There were some issues we didn't deal, and others that we did. It's not that we didn't know what our personal issues were. We'd talked around them occasionally over the years. Since we had similar issues we understood where one another was coming from. I'm sure it's one of the things that strengthened our bond, knowing that we understood each other on a deeper level.

I knew she had some private journals. Since I did the laundry I'd occasionally see one in her sock drawer and respectfully ignore it. I didn't realize that she had written in five or six of them until after she died. Weeks afterward I had sought them throughout the house. Where had those notebooks disappeared to? And then I found them. Stacked neatly inside the nightstand on her side of the bed. Somehow, at the time when she could still make it up the stairs, she had gathered them together and placed them in a spot where I couldn't help but eventually find them.

It was quite a gift to sense that she'd left them for me. Even weeks after she died, reading them brought back that feeling of a bond between us. The greatest writing had been when she attended massage school. Looking back I see that as her greatest triumph. Although she had issues with touch she chose a career path that would put her in the thick of it. Her writings were rife with the issues that massage brought up in her. As a student she gave and received massage every day for six months. Somehow I think she knew what she was facing by enrolling in the program. Eventually it yielded opportunities for growth that she couldn't have gotten any other way.

So here I am, fourteen months after she died. She used to like to sit out in the backyard and look at the stars, moon and sky. In mid-summer she'd lay on the concrete driveway which still exuded warmth absorbed from the daytime sun. Tonight's a little chilly (50 degrees) but sitting out here feels comfortable in so many ways. It feels a little closer to her spirit I guess.

I've been looking at the brilliant moon and thinking about a relationship I've been in for about seven months now. I don't write about it often because, well, it's private. I knew when I started dating that it seemed early, but it also seemed to be what I needed at the time. I'm sure that there are many reasons why I wanted to begin. Looking back now it seems clear that one reason was that I needed to face some of my own issues. Issues with relationships, so they weren't things that I could face on my own. Somehow, like Robin, my soul was finding a way to bring the issues to the fore.

Well, true to what wife tales would tell you, I found myself in a relationship with issues very similar to those that had existed in my relationship with Robin. Somehow our actions often lead us down the same paths again and again. Even Robin and I had talked about how some people can go from one relationship to another finding the same issues with their mates over and over again - never realizing that they are the ones carting the issues from one relationship to another. Always finding new partners who respond to those particular issues.

Although I can be slow on the uptake, the issues in my new relationship kept coming back and eventually I responded differently to them. Instead of feeling a need to be a continually supportive even when someone is acting out their isses I found myself fighting that role (a role which had come so easily to me in the past). Hey, I've got issues, the person I'm dating has issues - but they are our own issues which we've been holding onto for years. The only person who has a chance of finding resolution to them is the person who owns them. So now I'm learning how to confront issues when they arise, rather than support them.

I talked to a dear friend last night about how things have evolved over the past seven months. I talked about how I found myself rejecting the "role" that I had played for years, as if I had actively chosen to be different now. My friend made the observation that maybe my actions weren't so much by choice. She noted that possibly the experience of losing Robin had simply changed me so profoundly that the old "Greg" no longer existed. That I'd lost so much of myself when Robin died that I just couldn't be that person anymore. The statement had a ring of truth to it, because there had been situations in which I'd tried act in my old ways but it no longer felt true to me.

Somehow I think Robin would be tickled to see that I'm still here and that apparently I'm still learning.

Blindspots

I felt like taking time to think so I went for a daytime walk on the nearby golf course.

As I get to the deep back nine I started to wonder if I've been purposely avoiding thinking about Robin the last few months. In some ways it feels like I had consciously moved on from "dwelling on the past" to "working on myself" in the past year.

While walking I considered how in a long term relationship you can develop blind spots. If you've got certain weaknesses in "relationship skills" you don't always fix them. Sometimes you develop crutches and temporary patches which turn out to stick with you for years. If your partner is OK with the behaviors then there's no incentive to change them.

I huffed and puffed as I came to the uphill section of the course. As I looked around I noticed how much further I could see into the woods through the bare trees (leaves won't be out for a few weeks yet). There were houses and roads and other people's lives on the other side of the trees. In all the years I've been here I had never been aware of these sights.

As I thought about Robin I had this sense that she was along for the walk today - that she was traveling nearby me in spirit. As I walked along the golf cart path, I consciously moved to the left half of the pavement, inviting her to come on over and share the walk with me. It brought me immense satisfaction to picture her walking alongside me.

I began to consider how many people die everyday. If there are 4 billion people on the planet with an average life expectancy of 60 years, then 66 million people die each year. That works out to about 182,000 per day or 126 per minute. We're dropping like flies!

Lately I feel more aware. This surely must be how someone feels when they awake from being in a coma for several years.

Sleeping with ms kitty

Apparently I've been feeling down lately. A few nights ago I went to the guest bedroom and retrieved one of the "Hello Kitty" dolls. She's been sleeping next to me recently.

Pissed off

I awoke drowsy this morning. I had been dreaming about being with Robin in the second floor bedroom of her Aunt and Uncle's house in Long Island. She and I were laughing and talking, though I don't remember the words. I sensed that we knew she couldn't leave this room but that I could come back and visit her anytime.

In my drowsy state my thoughts shifted. I began to think about how I now needed to make all the decisions and figure out finances on my own. Then, in a sort of shock I thought "why am I getting divorced??" After a moment of fear it dawns on me that Robin's gone and I'm laying in bed alone.

I suddenly feel let down and pissed off that I still have to wake up and "re-realize" that she's died. It's bad enough having to live it….