So do I feel better?

Our family and friends scattered Hubby's ashes a couple of weeks ago. It went well; the weather cooperated and some surprise folks I didn't expect but were pleased to see came tor the event.

And now I get the inevitable question:  "So, do you feel better now that you have scattered his ashes?" My sons get this question as well (which I find outrageously rude for folks to ask them - maybe not the older son but the younger one definitely). Others frame the question to reflect the answer they WANT to hear, "So, I bet you feel a great sense of closure now."

Well...uh...no...  I cannot imagine feeling a "sense of closure" about ANYONE who has been a significant part of your life whether in a good way or in a bad way.  I mean, my own father died of cancer when I was 18 years old.  Do I feel a "sense of closure" about this?  No - my relationship with my father continues even though he has been gone over 30 years.  Becaus who I am and what I am is because of who he was and what he was.  And the conversation with him continues to this day....

As for a sense of closure after the death of an alcoholic?  Well, yes, actually there was a "sense of closure" the day Hubby died.  Because suddenly the surreal nightmarish reality of my life with him was over.  Quick as a switch, I went from one reality to another one.  This was most aptly brought home to me the first night after he died.  I had slept in the guest room for several months - giving up my side of the very comfortable and luxurious king size bed we had always shared for the narrow and uncomfortable day bed in the guest room. Because one cannot sleep with an end-stage alcoholic.  They moan and groan and thrash around a bunch. And they get up all the time and stumble around aimlessly.  It was actually this in-the-night stumbling and crashing about that killed Hubby.  He apparently stumbled and fell over and hit his head on the floor and died of a skull fracture.

So, that first night after his death - me in the quiet house (my sons asleep and my Mother asleep in the guest room - poor woman on that uncomfortable day bed!) - and I go into my bedroom and lay down again after all those months on my side of that king size bed ...and that was the new reality. Was that a "sense of closure"?  I guess I "closed the door" on the guest bedroom and slept in my bedroom.  Life was  totally different.

What I DO acknowledge is that since the scattering of Hubby's ashes, I am no longer on the brink of tears and at the edge of my nerves anymore.  So, it helped...yes, it helped...

My father died of pancreatic cancer.  As a general rule a person gets that particular cancer diagnosis and then lingers for quite a while, slowly and painfully dying (think Michael Landon and Patrick Swayze) while their loved ones care for them, take them to endless doctors, in and out of treatment...an exhausting juggernaut for all.  And then that person dies and suddenly that particular juggernaut ends.  It is just pulled away so quickly.  A vacuum almost.

A friend of mine whose husband died just a few days after Hubby did had that experience. A year of traveling back and forth to hospitals, hospices, specialists...special diets, pills, emergency rooms.  I did not have that experience with my father - he was diagnosed and 3 weeks later was dead.  But I imagine that my experience with Hubby was very much like the more typical experience with a loved one with a terminal illness that my friend and fellow widow (ugh....as an aside, do you know that there is actually a Widows Association?  I just cannot imagine wanting to join this!) had.  Because often cancer is a terminal illness.  And alcoholism is definitely a terminal illness.

The "closure" happens immediately - because the door is slammed shut!

So - no, I did not feel a "sense of closure."  I imagine that some folks there - like Hubby's estranged family members who came - may have felt a "Whew! Now THAT'S over!" sort of relief which they may describe as a sense of closure.  Even my boys may have felt that - they haven't told me; don't want to talk about it.  But I don't feel that because Hubby was so much a part of my life for so long.  And for about 20 of those 26 years, he was a GOOD part of my life.  And the conversation with him will be ongoing...

My greatest friend said something to me one day that I found appropriate.  I was bemoaning the fact that my car had black brake dust on the wheels and I commented that Hubby would be so upset about this and would have told me that he would clean it off for me right away because it is so harmful to the wheel metal and that I needed to "listen" to Hubby and go get that cleaned.  And she said that she often felt that way about her dead father; she hears him telling her what she needs to do.  And she said, "Sometimes you just have to tell them to 'shut up'!"

So...the conversation will continue but sometimes I will just have to tell Hubby to 'shut up'.

Hubby's final resting place - a beautiful state park with lots of dinosaur tracks - he would have loved it!


   

Here was the poem I recited - it is good for an alcoholic (who was so sad and so tormented!) and also for someone who was not religious at all:

SPELL OF SLEEP

Let him be safe in sleep

As leaves folded together

As young birds under wings

As the unopened flower.

Let him be hidden in sleep

As islands under rain,

As mountains within their clouds,

As hills in the mantle of dusk.

Let him be free in sleep

As the flowing tides of the sea,

As the travelling wind on the moor,

As the journeying stars in space.

Let him be upheld in sleep

As a cloud at rest on the air,

As a sea-wrack under the waves

When the flowing tide covers all

And the shells’ delicate lives

Open on the sea-floor.

Let him be healed in sleep

In the quiet waters of the night

In the mirroring pool of dreams

Where memory returns in peace,

Where the troubled spirit grows wise

And the heart is comforted.

---Kathleen Raine (20th century British poet)

My husband is healed and at peace in sleep.