Attaboy, Clarence.

I was out to dinner with my parents last week. That’s a thing I do now - go out to dinner. I do a lot of things now that I didn’t do before, things that I avoided doing because I was worried about bringing COVID home with me. Mostly it’s going out to restaurants or hanging out with friends in public spaces. Generally it’s things I would do maskless. I still mask when I go to stores or think I’m going to be in close proximity to large numbers of people, but between Jennie not being here anymore and my having had COVID semi-recently I’m at least a little less worried about it for the time being.

So anyway. I was out to dinner with my parents last week. I’ve been trying to make an effort to spend time around people. My natural inclination is to be a hermit, to sit on my couch and watch TV or read or just sleep. Sleep is so good. But I figure that’s probably not good for me, so I do stuff with family or friends most nights. That doesn’t mean I don’t come home and get sad afterward, but at least I’m doing something.

Not knowing what to do with myself has been a huge hurdle over the last few months. I spent a lot of my time over the past two years taking care of Jennie and trying to make her as comfortable as possible. But especially over the last month or so before she died, I was actively thinking about Jennie constantly - did she need anything, was there anything I could help her with, am I being annoying, oh no I’m being annoying stop it. I still think about Jennie constantly, but it’s different. More emotionally taxing than mentally taxing. But having that caregiver job became a huge part of my life, and it colored everything I did. In a way I didn’t just lose Jennie; I lost my purpose, and now I’m trying to figure out what that is again.

I was out to dinner with my parents last week. The restaurant was pretty empty and kind of quiet except for the sound of a few TVs in the bar area. We were having a nice time, and it was toward the end of the meal. We might even have been finished at that point.

And then I heard a bell ring. Like one of those ‘ring bell for service’ bells you see in stores sometimes. A little metal countertop bell. I heard that bell ring and I felt myself want to stand up from the booth where we were sitting, and then I sort of realized what I was doing and snapped out of it. I didn’t get far into it. I don’t think my parents noticed.

When we first came home from the hospital after Jennie’s surgery in the fall of 2020, Jennie couldn’t really speak at all. I was in constant caretaker mode for the first week or so, but then after that I had to go back to work (which was still at home but in my office). So because Jennie couldn’t speak, but she would still need help with things occasionally, we got her a bell to ring. Ring bell for service. We both thought it was funny, but also it was useful. She could ring it and I would hear it in the other room and come out and see what she needed. Once she was more able to speak again we put the bell away.

Then in June, after Jennie’s bleeding incident and that first hospital stay, and the doctors put a trach tube back in, she couldn’t speak again. When we came home, she needed to be hooked up to humidified air at all times, as well as to a machine so she could eat via a feeding tube. So we got the bell out again. Between the air and the feeding machine, Jennie relied on me - on the bell - more than she had the first time around. I developed a truly a Pavlovian response - she would ring the bell and I would drop whatever I was doing and come help her or get her whatever she needed. A few times I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I’d heard the bell ring, and I’d pop up wide awake and find her fast asleep.

I hadn’t heard a bell ring, not that particular type of bell, in over two months. Hearing it ring again in that restaurant, that response kicked in. The ringing of the bell meant I had a job to do. And then I realized: no, you don’t. That’s probably just someone’s to-go order. You’re in a restaurant. Jennie’s gone.

The worst thing about grief is how it sneaks up on you. Most of the time I’m okay - I get up, I take care of the dog, I work, I eat, I relax, I sleep. I mindlessly go about my day. But if I stop to think - to really think - or if something unexpected happens that makes me think about it, even just for a few seconds, there’s the grief. It was waiting for its opportunity, hiding in a shadow in the corner of the room, and if you notice it for a minute it strikes. Sometimes it sticks around for a while and I let myself wallow in it. Mostly, though, it seems to hit in quick bursts. I let myself feel it for a little bit, and then I pull myself together and go back to whatever I was doing. A few times friends have been there to help me with that part, which has been both nice and very much appreciated. Mostly it’s just the dog, who doesn’t really seem to know what to do when I’m sad, so he just stands there, presenting his head for me to pet. It helps.

I guess this is all just to say that I’m. I don’t know. Getting through it? I guess? I’ve accepted the fact that this is just what life’s going to be like for a while. Every now and then a bell’s going to ring. It sucks, but. It is what it is. 

Sunday would have been Jennie and I’s twelfth wedding anniversary. I’ve already made some tentative plans, but they’re subject to change. Potential plans include: going for a hike, going to a coffee shop, finding some good cupcakes, reading books, watching the 6-hour Pride & Prejudice miniseries (one of Jennie’s favorite things that we always talked about watching together but never got around to). I’m just going to play it by ear. That’s more or less what I do now.

I mostly just really miss my wife.

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Unrelated but semi-related, I wrote some more about grief and what this process has been like for me in a review for a graphic novel called Mazebook by Jeff Lemire. It’s a great book and it’s helped me put a lot of what I’ve been feeling into some sort of perspective. It feels weird to plug something here, but it’s basically another blog post, so I thought it might be of interest. I don’t know to whom, but you read whatever you want to read, dear reader.