Second Attempt

2011-07-11T11:46:00.001-07:00

My anxiety level has spiked tremendously this year, particularly in the past few months. Its something I've always struggled with, but had a pretty good grip on for a run of years. Now, right now, I am in one of those places where it is hard to imagine it won't be a daily struggle. Our dog, Otis, died in March of 2010 of heart failure. He died at home with Justin and I, we had put nice music on and had made a fire. He had gone into shock earlier that day and needed to let go of his body, but he couldn't. It was truly, truly awful. Any idea I had about some sort of gentleness about 'dying from natural causes' was rendered completely false. He was scared, uncomfortable, but mostly scared. I loved him so much. Its hard to describe the bond I had with him, the best I can do was to say that he was my best friend and my rock. A solid, understanding, steady best friend to guide me through my life. A pure embodiment of Love. I miss him with all of my heart.

Soon after Otis died, I formed an alliance with Natalie and her husband, Dee, and my friends Deanna and Maggie. We focused on Nat's diagnosis, support through her double mastectomy, and forming a plan of action to keep the tumors from spreading. I had a new job to do, and grieving for Otis had to be put somewhere inside for a while. Over the following five months I had a lot to focus on, and I did it while holding my breath most of the time. Like I said in my last post, I was mostly awkward witness and baffled helper, and then cried at night when I went to sleep for my feelings of helplessness. When Natalie finally let go of her body on August 20th, 2010, I sat on the deck and looked at the water and cried those big, sobbing, gutteral cries. Then I had another job to do.

Before Natalie died, she gave our friend Michelle and I specific instructions on what she wanted for her funeral. She wanted to be cremated, and for part of her ashes to be spread at the Artesian Well in Olympia. She wanted another part of her ashes to be spread in a special spot her sister knew about in the San Jaun Islands, and the third part to be spread in her garden back at home in England. And she wanted a party.. a big huge rager with dancing, drinking, and all of the delicious foods she dreamt about eating while sick: samosas, indian curries, spring rolls, mexican food. And we made it happen. It was the perfect party, and we carried out her instructions to the letter.

After the party, I had another, new job. Dee, Natalie's husband, and Dillon, her three-year old son, needed support in the aftermath of her death. They spent a lot of time at our house over the following few months. Looking for ways to keep Dillon fed, clothed, and entertained. One day we rode the city bus around just for fun, something that my brother and I used to do with my dad when we were little. When I have jobs to do, I am highly functional. When everyone packs up and goes home, I guess here I am. With me. And grief, sadness, and anger that I didn't work on while I had all those jobs to do.

Why can't there be a way to wish Otis back into being. I know there can't be with Natalie, I saw her body disintegrate while simultaneously growing a grotesque mass of tumors over the course of those five months. With Otis, he was still there. His cough had become horrible, but he still could be hugged and walk and eat. His heart just wasn't built for a long life.

One of the worst things for me is my mind's unrelenting message: just GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON. That only the most pathetic specimens are like me, a 35-year-old mess. This is horrible self-talk, I'm aware that its untrue and unfair. But my anxiety-ridden mind is obsessive and crafty.

First Attempt

2011-07-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

I got really sick of bumming out my regular blog, Snazzy Bouquet, with all of my sad-sack business. Since I don't keep a journal or a diary or talk to people as often as I should, I'm starting this as an experimental space to write write write it all down. Because walking around in the woods all day with an incessant internal dialogue of self-loathing and debilitating sadness is terrible for me. So this will be a place where I will be writing about watching my friend die slowly (or quickly, depending on how you look at it) from cancer. Its been nearly a year since Natalie died, and my anxiety, ptsd, and ocd have become worse than ever. Grief and witnessing bodily trauma/agony are two terrible beasts who enjoy making a nest in my psyche. Its time for an exorcism.

Writing, as most folks know, can be a magical process that somehow frees your aching synapses from their ridiculous and painful cycle of loop-loop-looping over the garbage that needs to be cleared out. How does crying in the woods hearing my friend's voice over the phone, small and aching, telling me that she just wanted to go home, back to england, back to her cozy house and dogs and garden so she could die where she belonged, do me any good in any way. It doesn't. Instead, she and her husband and son were in a sterile weird suburban apartment in Del Mar where they had no friends or family. Trying to get the tumors to go away with every treatment you could imagine. Most of which were horrible, puke-inducing concoctions and i.v. infusions that made her cold and tired. And frustrated.

I was sitting in my vegetable garden crying yesterday. To Curtis, my friend and Natlie's ex-husband. By some magical twist of fate, he and his fiancee Meghan have moved in down the street from me, and we've been building a communal garden together. I've been putting off asking him something, but yesterday I finally did: what did you think and feel when you came to visit Natalie in her hospice bed, 24 hours before she died? When she looked like a skeleton and was barely clinging to life? He hadn't seen her in years, and so I imagined it would be a shock. And it was. Mostly we just talked about the process that he hadn't witnessed, the things I had seen while she got sicker and sicker over that year. And he let me cry and didn't judge me and it felt so good to let it out.

His question, rhetorically asked, was 'What do you say? I didn't know what to say to her'.

I had an answer though, because it was one of the hardest parts for me, particularly during the hospice process. What to say. To someone who is both actively dying and fighting tooth and nail to hang on to hope and to the possibility of turning the cancer around. My answer is that there really is nothing 'right' you can say. At some point you can't say 'I know you're gonna win this battle' because that would be a lie. And you can't say 'I hope you can die soon because I can't stand to see you in so much pain'. So you feel like a weirdo, an awkward witness, trying to figure out more abstract ways to help. Cooking food for the family, taking her son outside to play. And near the very end, putting lotion on her little arms that had turned into nothing more than bones with skin. This is one of the most painful memories for me, maybe because it involves physical touch, and I can still feel her tiny arms under my fingertips. I had to be careful to touch very lightly, because she had no muscle tissue left at all. It had been eaten away by the illness.

I have been very lucky in my life to not have been touched closely by disease and sickness. There are so many layers to the trauma of watching this happen to someone.. and I feel selfish for even writing that, because why should I be so miserable? I have life, I'm not her son, husband, mother, sister, or even best friend. Why can't I fucking get over this and move on? I don't have an answer except that some people's constitutions are not built for viewing another's dying process. Particularly when the person, Natalie, was young, vibrant, healthy as a horse, a great mom, and not one to ever sit around feeling sorry for herself.

Sometimes when I'm on my woods walks I can hear her voice: 'Sarah! Get over it! Move on'. She was not one for pity parties, living in the past, or sentimentality. She was all forward-motion, directness, making and doing, looking the future. I'm trying Natalie. And I'm honored that you asked me to go on the journey with you. But I'm just not built like Maggie. I'm incredibly emotionally delicate and can not process trauma. I am riddled with anxiety, I'm hyper-vigilant and jumpy, obsessive and overly sensitive. All of this is well-masked with smiles, happy artwork, a willingness to help with others' projects, and joking, lots of joking. But some days, I'm a wreck.

Her son is turning four years old on Saturday. He is an amazing little creature. So happy and funny and obsessed with his toy cars. The idea that he might never remember his mom is unbearable. He was 3 when she died. I don't know if there will be any memories. Its one of the things that makes me say THIS WAS FUCKING UNFAIR. Anger, that's a big part of the grief/trauma beast. Once, when she was a bit healthier, she muttered out loud 'I have to be here to watch Dillon grow up. I have to'. I don't think she even knew she had verbalized that thought, but I heard her, and I felt her desperation and determination. When I think of her saying it, while chewing on her fingernail and researching online for the billionth time different protocols and treatments for angiosarcoma, I cry. I do. How could you not? Its just so sad. That's all. Just so, so sad.

So I have these memories, and more, on constant replay in my mind. They seem to have gotten louder in the past few months. If not up front and obvious, then churning around in the abyss of my subconscious brain, because my dreams are often themes of 'you are a failure, you have life and you do nothing with it'. Why am I being so mean to myself? Because I failed to find a way to help her not die. That is the deepest, most core thought even though it is totally insane and untrue. 'I did the best I could', 'I was a good friend', 'I helped in the ways I knew how'. These are all true. But they are not what my mind is letting me feel right now.

I'm going to counseling, reading some books, and now, writing. I am confident that I will get further away from these feelings, but the process is daunting.

writing exorcise

Second Attempt

First Attempt