The Path to Letting Go

If the pain of grief were not so intense, I would have little motivation to let Anne go and to begin to move on.  In fact, the most natural thing in the world for me was to hang on to whatever bits of Anne I could still maintain and manage.  I talked to her at home and in the truck and in the aisles of the big box discounts where we shopped together.  I would kiss her pictures until they were worn through to the other side if I thought it would make any difference.  I would tell anyone anytime who would listen everything good and wonderful and beautiful about her.  For a while those things felt very good, but after a while they wore thin and the pain returned.  It is the pain that makes it possible to consider letting go and provides the motivation for doing so.

In some ways I had lost nearly everything.  I had left my parish call and moved into a new job just a week before I took Anne to the emergency room.  So my employment, my community and my church were already eliminated and had not yet been replaced.  I had lost the love of my life, and nothing could be an adequate substitute.  I could not continue in my new job for a variety of emotional and practical reasons.  I had no interest in remaining in the Lincoln community, tinged with death as it is for me.  I needed a fresh start, a new beginning, a new life.

This sense of loss motivated me to seek that new life in productive and proactive ways.  Without the radical pain of grief, I couldn’t begin to consider the options for new life that present themselves to me.

This doesn’t mean that I have opened my hands, released everything, and now live with no ongoing consequences of my losses.  Far from it.  For example, I had a panic attack here and there—experiences I rarely had in the past.  People who know me have heard the "Lowell-ism"--"Panic is overrated."  I'm usually very calm, even in the face of crisis.  Often, the worse things get, the more calm I become.  That was even true as Anne lay dying.  In this grieving process, however, that is sometimes not the case--especially when it comes to the health of people I love.  I am learning that panic may be overrated, but that doesn't mean it is always avoidable.

Anne's death began with what seemed to be a simple case of the flu--sneezes, coughs and body aches.  She was so very tired for several days.  From there it spiraled into a fatal staph infection that had triumphed before we even had a diagnosis.  The origins of the infection remain undetermined.  Her attacker materialized out of the darkness, invisible and anonymous almost to the end.  Her killer was stealthy and silent, masked and camouflaged.  I didn't see it coming.  I couldn't see it coming.

Several times now, someone I love has coughed or been over-tired or had body aches.  Someone I love has sneezed or sniffled or had a headache.  And I have felt the tightness of panic in my chest.  What if it is happening again to someone else I love?  What if I miss the signs again and there is a catastrophe?  Where does the enemy lurk this time--hidden and waiting to spring?  I can't see it, and at some moments I am terrified.

I know these are not quite rational feelings.  Most of the time, a cough really is just a cough.  I know that I am responding to events that made deep grooves and ruts in my unconscious brain.  It will take some time for those grooves and ruts to smooth out and be replaced by more normal pathways.  This whole business has indeed gotten much better over the months.  But it is not gone.

I am reacting below the thinking level to inputs and experiences that had horrifying results in Anne's case.  This is as close to pure reflex perhaps as one can get.  I know these things, and knowing doesn't keep the panic away.  But at least the knowing helps me to respond in ways that don't cripple me--not for long anyway.