Highs and lows, PART 1
How I ignore grief … and how it comes to get me.
Brilliant and joyous, always kind, gorgeous and funny, loud and proud
Born 10.21.2005
Died 2.18.2020
Still impossible
Still very true
I’ll write many words about Stella Blue in posts to come, but then again everything I write is about her. Before this platform, I’d been writing on Caring Bridge for some time … writing about coming home from the hospital and her last two weeks with us; then writing about her life; then writing about what it was like being without her. Her mother, Amy, wrote as well … she’s a great writer, I hope she writes more somewhere, sometime. But, having recently separated, and with both of us starting the Life 2.0 it was time to let the shared platform of Caring Bridge come to an end and stand as a capsule of that specific time in our lives when, together, with our eldest daughter Charlotte Francesca Thone, 22, we woke into the world, newly stripped of hope.
My motivation to continue to write is twofold: I want to share this process of grief because I haven’t found a good deal of writing by fathers grieving lost daughters, and secondly, it helps me … immensely; reading helps as well, of course … brilliant people abound for us to learn from, I always need reminding of that … I’m not a natural reader; but writing for me solidifies the small ladder steps I’m taking while I climb up and back toward the new version of myself.
I had an image a few months back that stuck. I was lying in bed next to my partner, Barbi, and couldn’t keep still; my chest was heaving, my body catching deep, quick breaths and huffing it all out, uncontrolled, in gusts, wasted. I’d been lying somewhat still in this state of slow-motion hyperventilation for about half an hour. For fear of waking her I moved my body slowly up and sat on the edge of the bed. With my elbows on my knees, head hanging low, I waited for the rogue wave of grief to pass over me.
It hit hard that night: she’s gone, she’s not here for you to share her future, her sweet breath, her beautiful, thin fingers won’t lie in your hand again … you have memories only. This wasn’t new. I am two years removed from Stella Blue on earth. She is two years removed from the life she loved … though the last 10 months could not be described as fun, she still loved life, still wanted desperately to be with us, and presented to all who witnessed her blind, painful death how gorgeous a human sprit can be.
I wondered, again, at this blind-siding, this out-of-the-blue crush of emotion: I know so little about it. My own head and heart, by an obvious catalyst, are battling sadness, so why are these emotions so bizarre, foreign, amorphous? And why only now, while I try to sleep? Why can’t I find this during the day also, when I’m less foggy, when I’m getting back in my truck after visiting one of my crew on a job site, about to head to Mica’s house for a meeting? I could drive and cry and talk to Stella. (No I couldn’t … I’d be done within 5 and heading home).
I’m a balloon by day, I thought as I sat looking at the dark room. Fragile, weak, thin, but full of hot air, staying up … that’s me during the day. I just float along all day every day, dealing with none of the giant, half-invisible, beast of emotion below or the silence that lies in wait for me at night in the dark. I stay ‘happy’, and light, and chipper and positive.
Grief - no matter how much I read about it’s effects on a person, no matter how well I think I know the signs, never announces itself to me by name when it peeks its chameleon head into my average day-to-day tasking; it only announces itself when it’s being ignored for too long and comes to get me … currently that timing is random but always at night. During the day, while I’m high it’s a hidden sickness. It’s a multi-dimensional fuckery of new feelings, new habits, forgotten habits, cognitive voids, lapses in memory, massive swings of energy, new reactions to old questions and generally an all consuming shift in my old way of being; so basically it just feels like I’m broken in all kinds of ways, but I’m not necessarily movie sad. It feels like everything is haphazardly, accidentally changing in me and it has nothing to do with Stella.
I’d been noticing the balloon feeling without naming it for days, weeks, now. I was floating above the pain by day and crashing down to reality only by the perfect, patient pull of grief, when the denial/helium wore off at night. When I reached that moment of realization every evening, I’d freeze. What the … where have I been all day? Have I been up here, acting like this? Being all happy and Mr. positive? It was a creepy feeling. Not that I’m not a happy person, or that I’m someone who dwells on the dark, I’m not; I’ve always been easy and light. But this was different. I was waking up at the end of the day, from an unconscious play-acting of some kind.
It’s easy to do, scary easy, this balloon dance. Being with other people, my co-workers, or my clients, I have a clear goal: react quickly to what’s being said, clock their needs, grab the words being spoken and pull hard into their world, far away from my own internal mess. I interrupt people all the time, Barbi too, impatient to wait for the end of their sentence, sure I can guess it and taking the plunge to keep things moving. And it looks great during work; I’m the boss and it’s my job to answer quickly and (hopefully) decisively. I float, I let the hot air of my work-a-day persona keep me up, out of danger of the suffering that is the core of every breath I take.
I stay up and out of myself in this chaotic way of being because I CAN; I can manage the non-linear, sweeping shifts of a fast or confusing conversation … that I’ve always been good at. I’m more a McGyver of human interaction than I am declamatory orator or skilled conversationalist. Leaping away from myself lends itself to the attention of others’ needs. I rely on the in-the-moment tells of the person in front of me; drill down on those facial cues for soothing and desired answers and listen for the cultural triggers to segue out of danger and into humor when necessary; it’s not hard to keep a conversation from landing back in the moment, where real people live and breathe with all their warm, humanity … it’s not hard to keep a conversation off the ground.
(I’m lying a bit. I try to have meaningful conversations as often as I can with my guys, and Mica my every day coworker and Mootz. I believe deeply that work is a place to find quality of life just as much as home, and I make sure we pay attention to that in my small company. And it’s not true that I keep everything bottled up during the day; I have a truly amazing working relationship with my fellow builders.)
And yet, I’m getting weird. I’m getting sick. I’m becoming ill, physically, and I blame it on this unconscious state of denial I cling to during the day. I reach the end of the day and I feel like I’m jacked, like I’ve been on my toes all day, and when I catch myself I stop, take a deep breath and literally deflate, it’s comical. I’m breaking down, mentally and physically, from not staying conscious of my own heart and mind, not staying conscious of my grief’s needs. I’m falling into the habit, in fact being sucked up by the habit, of ignoring the grief when it’s quiet … and I most definitely need to stop doing that, I need to go find it, on purpose and with consistency.
-am I losing my memory even more than I always have? feels like it
-are my constant malapropisms getting worse? seems like it
-do I shut down … go through small reboots multiple times a day? yes, cognitive lapses, often
-is my inability to focus for more than … what was I saying? i can’t remember, but I think so.
-is my total inability to stick with a workout regimen getting worse? absolutely
-is this an ulcer bump in my upper abdomen or just my old hiatal hernia? gross, I don’t know
or is this just age?
or is this my pending divorce?
or is this, actually grief coming to get me?
The highs are tearing me apart; the lows …
End Part 1
Currently Reading:
Joanne Caciatorre’s BEARING THE UNBEARABLE
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s EXIT
Just watched:
Tig Notaro’s ONE MISSISSIPPI
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
Comments: happy to receive them or not. I write this for those who, like me, when Stella was ill and I knew she was dying, are looking for a dad’s perspective of grief from losing a teenage daughter to cancer.
I’m not a doctor, psychiatrist or trained in trauma or grief in any way … not that that’s not abundantly clear, I’m just adding a disclaimer here in case you think I am. I’m just a griever.