A Natalie Observed

Tag: Depression

  • Unattractive Gray Box

    Last Friday, a friend posted about the time and date for a community member’s Hero Walk and I had a panic attack. I remembered what it felt like to be posting the same updates for people in my life about your Hero Walk and immediately without warning left my body. I watched myself at the Hero Walk. I watched myself in the room with you. I watched what it looked like to watch me post about the Hero Walk online, to be the people who learned you died. Just as quickly as I left my body, I came back, gasping for air, standing up from the sofa and trying to get to the kitchen sink so I could splash cold water on my face. I grabbed an ice cube. Earlier this month, I saw a doctor and received medication to help with panic attacks, but I have never taken medicine like this before. I was nervous in my panic to try it without someone being around. What if my body does not like it? What if the panic gets worse? I laid in bed at 7pm and turned on Law and Order SVU. I am rewatching old episodes because they do not require much focus. It is interesting to notice how much Stabler bothers me now. His macho, patriarchal ideas of how to be a man are grating. The panic subsided as I watched season five attempt to explain why conversion therapy is wrong.  I was asleep by 9pm and slept until 7am the following morning.

    On Saturday, I sorted all of my mementos into new boxes I purchased for whenever I was ready to sort them. I found a card written by my best friend in second grade thanking her for the Sky Dancer I gifted her. I looked at photos of people whose names I cannot remember, found evidence of my past relationships, of my sister’s past relationships. Of my father’s and my mother’s past relationships. I found birthday cards from my father’s mother who I only remember in images. I read all of the carefully dated and filled cards from Grammy and reminded of all the evidence of her past relationships. I sorted napkin drawings and love letters and poems and and took photos of the things to send people from my past. Here we are, I was telling them. Here is the evidence of who you are in my life. I kept these things to remember you, to remember how you made me feel, to remember the complexity and delicacy of loving and being loved by so many people.

    On Saturday, I also touched all of your shirts. In sorting the mementos, I pulled out the things that are you. You cannot mix into the other boxes. You require your own. A few months ago, I bought an unattractive gray storage container so I could consolidate all of you into one place. I was in the storage aisle at Target for a long time deciding on a container. How do you select the container that fits all of you in it? What color represents the things you no longer need because you died?

    Before Saturday, you were scattered all over where I live now. I would open my bedroom closet to grab a sweater and see the Panda bear with your heartbeat recorded on it be the ICU nurse. The panda sat atop the quilt the organ donation family coordinator stamped your hand onto. I had a container in the hall closet of random artifacts we found while mom and Phil packed to move me from Washington to California in January. Your shirts were in a moving box in the office closet. I needed to organize these things so i can choose when I look at the remnants of you. I also wanted to see what I had been avoiding looking at. What does all of you fitting into a box look like? I do not know what to do with everything I have left. Your wallet? You do not need those credit cards anymore, but I am not ready to let go of it all. What if I regret giving them away? So all of you lives in an unattractive gray box all together in my office.

    After consolidation, you are now in the photo of us on my dresser from when we sailed on your dad’s boat over 4th of July. We listened to fireworks echo across the islands and felt the power of the explosions in our bodies. You are in your deodorant I still cannot throw away in the bathroom cabinet above the toilet. You are in the urn your father made for me, the one with wood from your cane and remnants of the tree in front of the family home you grew up in. The urn has circular cuts on the sides. Your father explained them as portholes, as if you are looking out from inside a ship. We cried as he talked me through what your urn is, cried as I scooped your ashes into the jar that sits within the urn. Ashes got onto the kitchen counter and I wiped them up with a Clorox wipe. You are in the photo-booth pictures from your fortieth birthday celebration that sits next to the tiny pocket-sized penguin Jena gave me when you died on my desk. You are in the half of the neon MuirWood sign that I still have in the office closet. And you now you are in the unattractive gray box.

    It occurs to me that someday all of these things, these remnants of you, will all be and only be in the unattractive gray box. The shirts I am keeping might not ever become a quilt because I am stuck on finding someone who I can trust to help me make it. I am scared of your shirts getting ruined and not having them anymore. I smelled them as I refolded them and put them in the box. They smell like Downy and dust. Your smell is not there anymore. How many times will I move the shirts before I do not want to move them anymore? If I ever date, how do I explain your photo on the dresser? I suspect that eventually the photo on the dresser will not feel appropriate there anymore. I want to believe whoever is next will understand the remnants of you I have in my home, but it feels extraordinary to imagine such a person could exist.

    On the day I consolidated all of your things into the unattractive gray box, I also reorganized my entire office, removed the trash, worked out, and took a bath. I did not eat until 5pm. It was not until 8pm when I was surprised by a panic attack while walking Dottie that I realized I had not been in my body all day. I journeyed to another place in my mind to organize your things, to touch all the memories of my life. I am scared I will always flip between feeling everything and feeling nothing. I walked outside in the cold for thirty minutes, audibly crying. Your welcome, Meriam Park, I hope it was a good show.

    I gave up on New Years Resolutions a long time ago. I do not like the pressure of failing at something when my life has thrown so many curves that limited the execution of a goal. I do like settling into a Word if it appears to me, although, I do not put pressure on myself to find it. In 2025, my word was “surrender”. I knew I needed to surrender to the experience I am having of grieving you. I knew I did not need to resist my feelings of losing you, of having lost myself in my relationship with you. I sit here today trying to grapple with what it means to have made it through this year, but I do not have the words. I think I am still too in it to see what it all means. As I considered what my word should be for 2026, the only one that comes to mind is “acceptance”, but even that does not feel quite right. Maybe I am still in the hangover of surrender. Maybe I keep surrendering until a better idea appears.

    One of my new favorite podcasts is called Shameless, “the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff.” In 2025, one of the hosts, Michelle, had her first child and also lost her mother to brain cancer. In Shameless’s New Years episode released today (recorded in the future of Melbourne time), Michelle reflected on her difficult year, on losing her mother, and on not trusting setting intention for the 2026 because loss had changed her view on predictable safety. Michelle’s 2025 word was Presence and two weeks later she learned her mother had brain cancer. I really, really related to Michelle’s fear. I am scared to set any intention that goes beyond meeting myself where I am because any other expectation feels wrought with potential heartbreak. If there is any lesson in 2025, it is that I can get myself through anything, I am a good advocate for my survival, and nothing will every hurt as much as losing someone you love. Sometimes meeting yourself where you are is all you can muster. And that’s okay.

  • A Wishing Flower

    In the past two weeks, I spent dozens of hours switching between old episodes of Housewives of Potomac and podcasts which analyze each episode. I would rather immerse myself in the carefully constructed drama of wealthy narcissists than examine whatever it is I feel whenever I remember the new layers of grief I felt this week. I am in a feeling that takes my breath away and the familiarity worries me because I know where it leads. I do not like this pathway. How was I just in a reality where this was not present? I had the giggles on Thanksgiving for the first time since I can remember and now I am here? It feels like it will always be this way, grief showing up like a nosy neighbor, a confrontation by all the weight of losing you.

    On Tuesday, a colleague brought a case involving a young widow client to our consultation group. As she processed, I could feel all Parts of me show up at once. The Widow. The Therapist. The Griever. The Colleague. The Trauma Survivor. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this. As The Widow began discussing what this client might be feeling based on my own experience, The Therapist saw looks on my colleagues faces, looks of people who got a peak into the enormous complexity of my grief. The Colleague realized parts of this last year people do not know, the parts The Griever has not written. The Widow spent a lot of time this year wondering if you tried to die, if you completed suicide. The Widow, The Griever, and the Therapist saw a look on one colleague’s face that made me question if my peers realized the hole The Griever keeps trying to crawl out of. The client is in month two of their new hell. In my January of this year. Without knowing them, The Widower knows where this client is and it is very dark there. It is unfeeling and numb. It is one hour at a time. It is surviving.

    While I can make space for the parts of the client story that were so different, for the unique ways different bodies process traumatic loss, The Young Widow knows a version of a story most people, including my colleagues, will hopefully never know. This complexity is alone. The Therapist, the Trauma Survivor, and the Widow know clinical intervention for this client is only to make space until the client’s body shows signs it needs more support. Their body will know because the body always knows. It will panic, become depressed, anxious, and show signs of distress. Until then, the therapist should create safe attachment, make space, and validate. There is no therapy in the first year of traumatic loss. There is only containment and, as needed, education on why the body is reacting the way it does with interventions to help support the reaction. The Colleague and Therapist felt deeply aware of how triggered I must have looked to my peers. I cannot do anything about what they saw. What they saw was raw and honest. This is who I am now, the amalgamation of all these fucked up Parts. They are wounded and they have knowledge. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this cannot process it all. It is too much. I am kaleidoscopic.

    When I close my eyes, I see trying to heal from this grief as attempting to reconstruct a wishing flower. I can feel the texture of the dandelion seed, that soft, delicate prickle. The breeze is Time taking each seed away from me. I will never have all the seeds back. If grief has a timeline, I feel like I am in the few seconds after opening my eyes having made the wish. I did not wish for this. The panic of the task at hand and how long it will take overwhelms me. It is a nightmare. It took me a year to get here and every seed I manage to capture is another painful piece. There is still so much work to do. I am surviving.

    After that consultation group where all my Parts came, I had seven client sessions. By the end of Tuesday, I was exhausted, inhuman. As I ate dinner on the couch, I let my mind wander and began to sink into the reality the consultation group even happened. I am a person with all these parts. I opened my phone and another clip from When Harry Met Sally came up, the infamous diner scene. We watched When Harry Met Sally on our New Years Eves together. You were shocked when I told you I had not seen it. My memory tells me you loved the movie because of your mother, because it was her favorite. I feel apprehensive about my remembering around this detail and worry I am dishonoring your mother and your loved ones by disclosing it. For me, the movie is you. It is surreal to have the tragic death of a Hollywood celebrity trigger the capturing of a new seed of my loss of you. I put my phone down. I watched more adult women fight with each other. I went to bed. Tomorrow we will start again.

  • 11:11

    11:11

    One year ago, I arrived at the hospital for rounds anticipating guidance on removing your life support. The medical team informed us the day before tests confirmed you were not responsive. Your brain did not register any of the pain you definitely should have been in. I already knew. I knew when the neurosurgeon named Natalia told me on November 9th to keep hope up, to talk to you and play music. She told me we never know what kind of healing the brain can do and while I knew she was right, I knew you were not coming back. You did not have it in you to heal from this. We did not know how long you did not have oxygen when I started CPR. She introduced herself as Natalia when I arrived at your room. I remember because I tried to address her by title, as Doctor, but she corrected me. “I’m Natalia”. She’s the only name I remember from that week because her name was close to mine. She asked if she could hug me before leaving. I said yes and she gave me a strong, sturdy, caring hug. I played Reggae Saturday on KEXP because you loved Reggae Saturday. That’s what we would have listened to. I held your hand. I told you I loved you and that it was okay to move forward. I am realizing now you were the first of two people I have told this year it was okay to move beyond this life to whatever is next. The second was Grammy.

    After Natalia hugged me and left, I sat in the room listening to Reggae Saturday with you alone for a couple hours before others arrived. I do not remember who came or when. I know your sister was there and your brother. Your dad and his partner. My parents were making separate journeys from Chico. I had not slept while staying at Adam and Randy’s. I lay awake and cried, in shock. I got to your hospital room by 6:30am. Dottie was staying with Adam and Randy because I could not leave her alone. I sat on the sofa in your room and focused on breathing. Inhale, 1-2-3-4. Hold, 1-2-3-4. Exhale, 1-2-3-4. Even today when I have box breath like that to help my body settle, I remember sitting in that room on the pleather sofa that was easy to clean. I remember looking at lifeless you and out the window at the oranges and yellows of fall. I remember the beeping as they tried to thin your blood. The machine did not work and the nurse was so kind as she overly explained that “this happens sometimes”.

    I was hugged by your neurosurgeon on November 9th. On November 10th, we learned your brain was unresponsive. That you felt no pain. My mom and I walked to your room and a doctor asked to speak with me in a quiet room down the hall. I knew she was going to tell me you were not responsive and actively thought “remember this hallway Natalie, it’s going to change you.” I remember the wall of professional photos of the medical team. I wondered who the interior designer was of a hospital and how did they get that job. As the doctor told me, a conversation I cannot remember, a woman walked in on her phone seemingly unaware I was learning you died. That woman was probably stuck in her own nightmare. Not getting the hint from the palpable despair in the space, the doctor who told me you were brain dead asked her to leave. The woman startled, apologizing for intruding. My mom held me as I wept. We went home. There was nothing left to do. I told Facebook you were not going to wake up and the first of many panic attacks gripped me. Sitting on our sofa in our home, I lost my breath and hyperventilated as I attempted to touch the reality of you dying. The same reality I still struggle to touch. The energy of trauma is other-worldly and powerful. No wonder it splits us.

    On November 11th, I arrived at the hospital a little late for morning rounds. My parents were with me, and I think I asked them to stay in the family waiting area until I knew what was happening, although I cannot remember. I did not want to crowd your room and we were only allowed so many people. The medical team stood lining the hallway and I parted the members of your family blocking the entrance to your room so I could set down my water bottle and jacket. Was it raining outside? Or was it sunny? I think it was gray? So many details I cannot remember. I squeezed your hand and told you hello. Your eyes were half open, the sparkle no longer adorning the cerulean anymore. There was a thin layer of white crust under your eye lashes as your eyes attempted to keep moisture in them. I grabbed a tissue and wiped it away. I tucked your hair behind your ears. I joined your family in the doorway to your room and tried to understand what the medical team was talking about. They gave updates about your nutrition and fluid intake.

    I think it was on the 11th, although I cannot remember exactly what happened and when, that your sister said the quiet part out loud on behalf of all of us: why are we gathering to discuss your nutrition and fluid levels when your brain died? I did not understand what we were doing at Morning Rounds and was so grateful when your sister interrupted their updates to ask. We arrived on the 11th expecting to be talked through pulling you off life-support, but here we were getting updates on your nutrition. Your sister knew you would not want to be laying there like this. We all knew you were not supposed to be suffering any more than you already had. It was not what you or any of us wanted. I did not hear the reasons and went back to your bedside. Someone told me we were supposed to meet with a team at 10am. Everyone dispersed for a walk, a cry, tea, or coffee. I do not remember where I went.

    On the 11th, at 10am, your father, his partner, your brother, your sister, myself, my mother, and my father all sat in the room where I learned you died just the day before. Across from us, two women introduced themselves before quietly and kindly discussing next steps. They asked us to talk about who you were to us. I do not remember much of the conversation. Eventually, they explained organ donation and how it works and I realized they were preparing us for a conversation I had not anticipated. You were an organ donor, and your body had not completely died yet. Just your brain. And, amidst all of this, we could help you help other people. Several of us indicated approval of the idea. It was unquestionably what you wanted. The donor coordinator asked your dad one final time if she had permission to move forward. He made eye contact with me and I nodded (or did I say something?) and he looked to the coordinator and confidently said “it feels like a no brainer. Let’s move forward”. Here we all were in a situation where you were brain dead, having opted to be an organ donor. It was a literal no-brainer. The air in the room hung heavy as everyone quickly assessed if we should start crying over this remark or start laughing. I started laughing, tears filling my eyes. You would have thought it was funny. We looked at the time, and it was 11:11am. So, on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11:11am a group of us defined a day meant for Veterans and Hope as something else entirely. We formalized your time of death.

    Today, I woke up at 5am and could not fall back to sleep. I cried as I remembered where I was one year ago and what it felt like to not know what would happen to you. I tried to exercise but quit one-third of the way through because I could not stop crying while on the bike. I canceled the massage I scheduled because I poorly planned it to take place at 10:45am and I knew I could not stop crying or relax as 11:11am passed on the clock today. I am sitting in my dry, but sweat drenched clothes, wearing the KEXP “You are not alone” shirt your dad got you and your Eddie Bower printed fleece pullover we bought that one time at U-Village. I carved into a candle my mom gave me yesterday. The candle was made by a shaman to burn on 11/11, the angel number, the number of hope and remembrance. My mom had been saving it for herself for years, always out of town on the day or not able to get to it. She handed it to me last night after I made Grammy’s cookies for her memorial on Friday. “I realized you could use it more than me”. I carved the words “love”, “healing”, “wholeness”, “alignment”, “rest”, “peace” and “laughter” on one side. I carved your name on the other. I am going to sit here and watch it burn in between episodes of whatever I end up watching. Because today marks one year since you died and I do not know what else to do but try and remember and focus on what’s to come. David Kessler once said “Anxiety” is the Present and the Future while “Grief” is the Present and the Past. I’m firmly in Grief today. It is a relief to be here.

  • Orange Sky

    Yesterday, I found a poem you wrote me while deleting random notes on my phone. You wrote the poem on September 30, 2024, a month before you died. I had not read it in a while and I started crying. Then I had to work and put away my feelings for everyone else.

    Mornings
    The sky blushes softly, the night fades away,
    As dawn breaks the silence with whispers of day.
    Golden hues scatter, the twilight’s unspun,
    The world stirs in awe at the rise of the sun.

    Birdsong floats on a breeze through the trees,
    Carrying secrets found flitting o’er soft morning seas.
    Each leaf seems to tremble with joy at the sight,
    Light spilling forth, golden, pure, and bright.

    There’s dew on the grass, tiny diamonds alight,
    Each moment a wonder, each second delight.
    In the stillness, the future reaches out with the sun
    Every dawn a promise of a day with you begun.

    Last night, while Alexi Murdoch sang to me about an orange sky, I remembered what it felt like to be absolutely enamored with you. The first chord strummed on the acoustic guitar, and I froze in place, closing my eyes to limit sensory input. I felt my breathing slow, and my stomach relax as joy filled my center, the feeling of warm chocolate chip cookies. I tried to hold my attention there, on the feeling of utter relief. My body is exhausted trying to hold me together, a rigid container bursting, a small aquarium for an orca. I tried to keep my attention on the sensation of buoyancy in the ocean. I felt like I feel in those moments of serenity when I finally notice I am drifting to sleep.

    I managed to stay there for the first in your love before I started sobbing and hyperventilating. The impression of you so close to me feels like every shiver in every horror film. Am I cold or is this you? I touched the feeling of your warmth and was slapped by how far I have fallen from it. My body cannot hold both realities without panic. It is almost a year, and I still cannot hold the pain of your dying alongside how much I love you. Realizing I still cannot hold both caused me to panic and hyperventilate more. I stood up to splash water on my face and fill my water bottle. As I walked back to my bed, I realized this panic attack is because my whole body remembered what it feels like to lose you, that, if I could have felt it all, this is how I would have reacted to finding you on my floor. I split in two when you died and have not yet integrated the halves back together.  

    Tonight, I was reading what I wrote above and realized that I was able to stay in the feeling of loving you for thirty seconds before panic took over. Given I could not feel how much I love you at all 363 days ago, thirty seconds feels like a big accomplishment. Shifts are happening after all.

  • The Wisdom of Ruth Anne Cline

    I took today off because I did not know what I would need. I still do not know. After drinking a cup of coffee, catching up on Marco Polos, and watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek, I felt like I would crawl out of my skin. I thought about running errands, but going to the grocery store is something I would do for Future Me. And today is not for Future Me. Today is for Past and Present Me, for Grief. Instead of filling my gas tank, I walked in Upper Park for almost three hours with Dottie. We walked from the parking lot to the end of Yahi Trail and back up Middle Trail. We were mostly alone aside from a jogger, a cyclist, the man who cleans the portable toilets, and a dog walker with a blind dog. The cloud cover hung low and I could not see the top of the canyon. The creek was silty from the recent rainfall. Leaves were finally succumbing to cooler temperatures and dashes of crimson and gold and chocolate accentuate the oak and sycamore trees. Birds rang the alarm as we entered their territories. A breeze whispered. Dottie smelled everything and kept alert to any sound behind us. I listened to a podcast and kept walking. One foot in front of the other. I’ll know when I’m done and it’s time to turn back. One podcast ended and I turned on another. I could have walked forever except eventually the spiderwebs got thicker than I wanted. We turned around. As we walked out of the canyon, blue skies framed the landscape. There is a metaphor there somewhere, but I do not have the creative bandwidth to know how to better articulate it.

    My grandmother, my mom’s mother, died on Wednesday evening. On Tuesday, my mom called me while I was throwing a tennis ball for Dottie at the dog park that is too small for meaningful acceleration but will do the job. It was 3:29pm. I never heard my mom sound like that before and I knew she was not in her body. She has 24-48 hours. Edita was with her, a close friend. I’m glad she was not alone. I knew I needed to get Dottie home and immediately go visit Grammy. My mom was not in town attempting to visit my sister, my nieces and nephews, and friends before completing a training in Texas. That psychic said my mom would not be in town when Grammy died. I knew I needed to be there with my uncles while my mom and Phil figured out getting her back. I put Dottie in the house and drove to be with them. I hugged them and witnessed them reassure their mother it was okay to go, that Jesus would hold her. That her siblings and mother were waiting. Tears lurked in all of their eyes. The last time I saw one of them cry we were at breakfast after his house burned down in the Camp Fire. Flashback. I hung back when they left so I could have a moment with her alone. I told her I was proud to know her. That mom was coming. That Hailey wanted to thank her for being a safe place when we did not know we needed it. That I wish she could help me understand what I am navigating with losing you. That I love her.

    My mom did make it back on Wednesday morning. She wanted to go directly to the place my grandmother was cared for. I met her and Phil there. I knew it would be difficult for Phil. We were in the week that Phil lived exactly one year ago. He lost his mother, Marie, the lady who loved yellow, on the 25th last year. My parents were going to face losing their mothers the same week one year apart. Eventually Phil left and my mother and I spent Wednesday afternoon with my grandmother. There is poetry there somehow. My mom’s brothers came in and out as time allowed. Eventually needing a break and to wrap up some work things, my mom wanted to go home. We watched a Leanne Morgan sketch on Netflix and I remember watching the same one while in a hotel room driving from Seattle to Chico the week you died. Leanne Morgan is funny and I will not let my sadness and trauma over you taint that. After watching, my mom and I went back one last time. We were tired, but there was not a good reason not to see my grandmother. I kissed her forehead before we left one last time. It’s okay, you got this, I said to her. We knew this was coming. Dementia was there for ten years and cancer most recently. We read the text on Thursday morning. My grandmother passed on Wednesday evening after we left. God keep her. I’m not even religious, but God keep her.

    I do not know how to place these two griefs in the same universe, let alone in my body. As I watched the body of my grandmother labor to keep breathing so we could all say goodbye, I kept thinking about how much this was the way death is supposed to be. This is the loss we prepare for. The loss we expect because of age, because brains cannot function forever, because bodies eventually get cancer. And your death, your loss, is not the way death is supposed to be. People are not supposed to die at 41 because of alcohol used to medicate their mental illness. We were supposed to grow old together, or at least reach five years old. Today, we would have been five years. What am I supposed to do with that?

    I have wanted to ask my grandmother so many questions since you died. How did she recover when Lloyd passed away? Lloyd was a soul connection unlike many of the others. My grandmother and Lloyd were so in love. Hailey and I could feel it as kids. There was this radiant kindness to him that saturated the way we grew up. It matched Grammy’s in a delicate way, still holding the strength and subtle beauty of gossamer. What did that feel like to her? To have him one moment, then not the next? Did they talk about it together? How did he reassure her about life after him? Or did he? I came back from the class trip from Washington DC and I knew immediately by the look on my mom’s face something was wrong. Lloyd passed away while I was touring this country’s ode to patriotism. My mom, sister, and I lived with Lloyd and my Grammy after my parent’s separation and eventual divorce. I watched what happened to Lloyd and felt it, even if I was across the country when he graduated to the next experience. But I was in junior high, too young to know what that could feel like for his partner. For her. And I wonder all the time now.

    A year ago, you guided me through the butterflies at Pacific Science Center. We turned four years old. It was a day that made me feel hopeful, that reminded me of the good parts of us. The parts of us who were curious and wanted to know things. That wanted experiences. That knew we could be so much more than the life we were living. You opened a part of me that let you lead me through the butterflies even though I dislike the idea of their wings brushing my skin. We talked about what we wanted for our wedding, the idea of eloping in Muir Woods for all the obvious reasons. Even with everything going wrong, I trusted you completely. I knew we would navigate it together.

    I knew I would need today off work as I try and grapple with what it means that we could have been five today. We could have been living in this apartment I am in now, together. We could be going to family dinners on Friday, together. To the California coast on weekend trips. Walking Dottie in the park. But you died. In twelve days will be the anniversary of when I found you on our dining room floor. We were four and then we were nothing. It took my family years to get used to the idea of my grammy dying. Will it be the same way with you?

    I have been so terrified of the ways in which losing you will alter who I am. Will I ever trust anyone again? Will I always be afraid they are lying to me about their alcohol use and die? I keep telling myself I would rather be alone than settle for less than I deserve, but did losing you unreasonably raise the bar? I am working so hard to heal. And then my Grammy died. And I do not know how to hold both things at once. I feel like I am in a snow globe trying to decide which flakes to notice. There is glitter everywhere. My attention is fragmented.

    On Saturday, I completed an already scheduled Grief Art Therapy session because I knew I would need time to understand what it means that we will never turn five. I processed what it means to be in two different griefs, to not understand them as both being part of my life and how I am supposed to function. I was so in my head. My mom named on Sunday morning that her feelings need to be processed privately, not in front of others. I instantly understood something I have always felt: there is not always space for our feelings all together, the energy of our feelings together is too overwhelming. No wonder I had not cried while staying with my mother. There was somehow not space. Not on purpose. But how does one process this loss? After Grief Art Therapy, I raced back to my mom’s because her brothers were coming over to reminisce about their mother and help me write the obituary. My mom had signed me up for the obituary which makes sense. I am the writer. I had to write my Grammy’s obituary the same week we would have turned five. What is that?

    It is one of the most distinct privileges of my life to sit at my parent’s dining table with my mom and her four brothers as they remembered who their mother was, how she made them who they all are. I am upset I did not record the conversation for us all to remember. Not one of my grandmother’s children has the same experience of her. There is two decades age difference between them. My grandmother was fifteen years old when she became pregnant with the oldest, and thirty when she birthed my mother. All five of them have individual experiences of anger at my grandmother for abandonment, for the ways she did not always perfect motherhood. And those experiences are incredibly valid. Yet, all of them told stories of her kindness, of her generosity, of her quirkiness. All of them articulated how she impacted them, taught them to not judge others, to hold the complexity of multiple stories, to have Faith. For all the flaws, for all the ways she might have hurt them because we all eventually learn our mothers are humans dealing with the weight of human problems, she modeled always loving them. And they all see and feel that love. There really was nothing my grandmother was prouder of than her children. As I sat documenting and witnessing all of them tell their individual experiences of her, and add more kindling to the story-fire, I felt so aware of how proud she would be of her legacy: these five humans and the love they continue to show everyone else was her gift to all of us and to everyone who knows us. To me. And to you. It is because of my grandmother that I eventually met you. She taught me the generosity, and the love needed to hold the storyteller in us that wanted to grow past four years old. I feel I suddenly understand the answers to all the questions I wanted to ask her. It is her values that allow me to know I will survive losing you. It took losing her to learn that. Because if she could survive all that she did and still have these beautiful children, my family, to show for it, then I can survive losing you. Grammy taught me Love leads everything. And loving you is something I will always be proud of. It’s what she would have wanted.

    When I got back from the park, I made myself breakfast and then committed to being a blob all day. Except to write this, today is for feeling sad about the fact we will never turn five. Tomorrow can be for everything else.

    Grief for Grammy
    Grief for You

  • Ba-Ba-Ba-Baby Steps

    Yesterday, while at Walk Woof Wag, I checked the time to see it was 11:11am. On the 11-month anniversary of you being declared dead, I looked at the time you were declared. I have screenshot or photographed every single time I see 11:11am since you died. So far, I have been able to capture it 58 times. This means, I just happen to glance the time 58 times at 11:11. Like, what is that? Is my internal clock just oriented to that time? I feel like I must be looking for it. I have an album of the screenshots on my phone. I do not know the purpose of having these moments documented, but something about capturing the experiences where I remember you died feels important to me. The other day it occurred to me that I might not want to do this forever and probably need to identify a time when I stop tracking it. Will it become compulsive? I tend to navigate toward compulsive behaviors, a moth to structured and degenerative frame, but I catch myself doing it. I know the familiar feeling of shame as it leeches and unleashes on my body, causing horses to run inside my chest and wet cement to anchor my intestines. That feeling is when it is time to stop wearing the apple watch, to break the 110-day streak on Peloton, or end the diet. Balance, Natalie. There can be balance.

    I was introduced to a Widow in the wild last weekend. She was near my age and also lost a partner to addiction. I trauma-dumped on her. Four beers, two cocktails, and a dance party later, I had no filter between my mountain of trauma and this woman. She received the energy of my great uncorking as I explained through disorganized, intoxicated, and triggered thoughts, how it felt to tell someone who understood how alone I feel all the time. Drunk me assumed she got it, which I feel embarrassed by now. After many apologies for how drunk I was and my haranguing this poor person who just met me, I hit the point when I drink too much where I know it’s time to go home. I called an Uber and left, a Natalie-Goodbye. I did manage to let people know I was leaving, but then, embarrassed, I could not let anyone walk me out. As I waited for the Uber, I watched a young, confident Latina college-aged student face-plant out of a pedicab. She did not lose her leopard print tube-top dress or scrape her 5” heels. She laughed and popped right back up. A queen in her own right.  I would not have survived going to college here, I thought.

    The next day in my alcohol and emotional hangover, I zoomed in on what it felt like to realize just how alone I feel. I feel alone in my grief all the time and loneliness is this new assaulting aroma in the air. I am not sure if I got so used to loneliness that I could no longer feel it’s suffocating and icy fingers or have I never seen it as clearly before? A jacket of brisk, fall air wafted in through the windows and I sat in what it feels like to be this completely alone in my experience of you dying. Talking to that woman, even as drunk unfiltered me who would never normally open like that without a lot of consent first, shifted my view out to a higher altitude. I got to see from another dimension a glimpse of how alone I am. I feel like I felt for the first time the enormity of my sadness since you died. A drone’s view of the grief palace.

    Now as I write this, I am both sitting in the corner of the sectional and also sitting above me watching warm tears slowly slide down my dehydrated face. I can feel the heat of the tears, so I know I am still here in the room. I jump between both views when I need a break from one or the other. Eleven months after you died, and I still struggle to fully integrate your death with the feelings of absolute despair about it. This lack of integration is so devastating. I am in 16 hours of therapy a month. I pay for it all on a credit card because I cannot afford it, but I do not know how else to help myself. I allocate 4 hours to verbally talking about what happened and continues to happen as I open new layers to my grief. I spend 4 hours in an art therapy group procesing in a collective the experience of grief by making art about it. I have 4 hours (2 sessions for 2 hours) of 1:1 grief art therapy because 4 in the group once a month was not enough. And I am now adding one hour a week of brain spotting to help with the panic attacks and overwhelm in my body. 16 whole hours trying to process what happened when you died and the fact that you are not here anymore. And it is still not enough and I would do more if I could. I do not want to keep jumping from reality to not reality. I am exhausted by it. And I am terrified I will always feel like this.

    And here we are again. We found the trigger thought that prompts me to take deep breaths so I do not have a panic attack. It will not always feel like this, Natalie. I at least have to believe that it will not always feel like this. Or else, I am not really sure why I am doing this at all.

    I am still not sure what to do for the 1-year milestone of your passing. November 8-12 is the horrible period of time from my finding you to you being declared dead on 11/11/24 at 11:11am. Also, October 27th would have been our 5-year anniversary. That is a Monday. At first I wondered if work and my clients would help get me through these anniversaries, but I worried I’d need to cancel everyone and why not just take the time off? I think I need to take off from work. But what do I do with all those days? Do I make plans? Spend money to be distracted? Can I afford to do anything? What does one do for the first anniversary of their partner’s death? What does one do to mark the occasion that started the trauma they are still trying to understand and heal from? Do I go for a hike? Do I drive somewhere for the day? For the weekend? At one point I thought maybe I could visit Seattle, but then I realized the last time I was there was when you died. I had a panic attack as I thought about the fact Seattle is not possible. I miss Seattle so much, but I want Seattle to still be somewhere I love even though you died there. I want it to be the good of us, not the end of us.

    Taking the time off is a loss of income over 4 days in just November, not planning for Thanksgiving and inevitable holiday slowdown. This has been a difficult financial year. I am down 20% to last year in my income and no longer have a two income home. I have to make financial decisions as well as decisions in the best interests of my clients. I know I will need the time off. Taking care of myself is in the best interest of my clients. I think my body deserves the time off. My body is so rigid as it is. My massage therapist kept reminding me to let her move me. Let me take care of you, she kept saying as I stiffly coiled my body in an attempt to hold in all the sadness one can experience in a lifetime. Sometimes I wonder if your sadness transferred into me. Part of me feels like I understand you better, understand the holes in your body where your mom used to live, caverns excavated and quarantined by the trauma of her sudden and unexpected loss. I hope you get to frolic in the sunshine with her now. I hope it is warm there.

    A pet psychic at Walk, Woof, Wag told me Dottie was proud of me. That Dottie was sad you left, but glad she could be there for you. Dottie wants me to get out of the house more, she thinks we’re home too much. I’m trying, Dottie. I promise to keep trying to be better for you. The psychic told me you were there, that you were as surprised by your dying as I am. I do not know how much credence I give to all of this, but I do find comfort from it. I miss you so much. It is so nice, in the most distressing way, to remember that missing you also means I love you. The loving part is coming up more than it used to. Baby steps. (Thank you, Olivia Dean).

  • Is That All There Is?

    Yesterday was 10 months since we decided to donate your organs and officially moved into the space of you being dead. It was also the day I realized I had not thought about it. Around 4:12pm I was walking from one end of my mom and Phil’s home to the other and a voice inside me said “oh wow, you were just now not thinking about him being dead”. It was different than “I forgot he died”. There was no trauma or re-remembering of the moments that filled my life ten months ago. Instead, it was a flutter of noticing, the wings of a memory touching my skin. A whisper that did not knock me over. Whispers knock me over so frequently now, it was nice to notice one that left me with my feet still on the ground.

    I have had few more of these moments the past three weeks. I found a video of you making dinner, lip-synching to Whitney Houston’s rendition of I Will Always Love You. I kind of remember the night, but not really. I know I probably made you do that for me on camera because I found it funny and endearing and wanted to capture it so I would remember. I also probably paused the song so I could film it at the right moment. I remember wanting to remember us and how we felt that day, remember the warmth of being madly and exquisitely enamored with you. I wanted to feel the moment of us being on the same page and in the same room with too many groceries on the counter as you layered whatever is in the leftover containers into a casserole dish. I shared the video on my stories because I love it so much. Because I love you.

    After posting, I got texts and direct messages from more than a few people asking if I was okay. I found the outreach confusing. Did I say or do something to cause worry? I felt and still feel a bit baffled by it. To be clear, I am so grateful people check in. My confusion is in no way a discouragement from doing so. My point is I had another moment recently where a memory of you was not immediately coupled with the dread of feeling the loss of you. The checkins tell me the video feels heavier to others than it did to me. A difficult part of what I am navigating since you died is the fact most people do not understand what I am experiencing in any way. I have grandparents who have not experienced the death of their partner. I am the first person in my family, and in my parents generation to have this happen to them. My aunts and uncles still have their wives and husbands and life partners. I am the first of my friends to have a loss like this. Most of us don’t have our partner die before we are “old enough”. Definitely not when we are 36 and 41. This short fucked up stick is all mine.

    When I focus on the Part of me that misses my Whitney Houston moments with you, I can feel the heat of my throat bearing the responsibility of managing a tidal wave, a useless levee about to let the water destroy my precariously constructed Grief Palace. I do not want to feel restriction when I look at you lip-syncing that you will always love me. Because that moment is the joy of us. I have so few of those to see. There are not enough recordings of us at the moments when things felt good. These moments reassure me I did not make it all up. If there was ever any advice I could dispense, it would be to record the innocuous things with those you love. Get a minute of video here and there and then put your phone away and stay present with them. I did this as much as I could with you, but it will never be enough when I was supposed to have a lifetime.

    I am feeling an integration happen, grief folding into my day to day as I find other ways to fill my time that do not include a screen. I finally have mental capacity to do more than watch tv all day. I read a book and started another. I got my library card so I can save money on buying books I will not read more than once. There are small glimmers of hopefulness floating around me and I feel like I have bandwidth to see them. They are fragile glimmers, iridescent little bubbles floating in the wind and bursting at the softest touch. I told Heather last week I was nervous about experiencing this shift because the last time I looked toward the future, a wave of grief destroyed any sense of stability. I lost myself into a depression I do not like and loathe to welcome back. You death makes me scared to trust Hope. Some days I am pretty sure the destruction of Hope is probably the worst part of your dying. Right now, I make it through every single day attempting to convince myself that Peggy Lee was wrong. This cannot be all there is. So, I catalog the small whispers that do not knock me over. I try to watch the bubbles as they float along the cliff. I need as many of these moments as I can get.

    I am operating in a world that is only one day at a time, and more often a few hours at a time. I am struggling to plan for any more than today and maybe tomorrow unless someone else has made the plan for me. Tell me a date and time, and I will be there. My ability to be creative and follow through is limited which makes me a poor social companion. Relationships are two-way streets and there is roadwork on my side. Sometimes I can get around the construction, but most of the time I am stuck in traffic. I feel like I am constantly tricking myself to get things done, something that has been a thread in my entire life, but not in the way it is now. Before you died I ate without thinking about it. Now I eat because it is time to eat. Meals are big factor in how I pass time. I get to lunch and am thankful I made it to halfway through the day. At dinner, I actively have gratitude I can go to sleep soon and pass more of this horrible After without you by sleeping.

    All of that said, I am proud of me. I cook myself dinner more than I do not. I remain mostly sober. I pay my bills on time. I ask for help when I cannot pay my bills on time. I attend all of my client sessions and am accountable in my job. I attend weekly supervision to make sure I do not lose sight of my grief as it impacts my clients. I attend weekly therapy. In July, I joined an art therapy group with other therapists once a month. I am starting art therapy biweekly to have more space for someone to witness what I am going through. I stay in contact with my small group of people most days and remain responsive. The level at which I am functioning astounds me and, when I think about it, I feel validated in how exhausted I am. Then I remember I am exhausted of being exhausted. Then I tell someone in the rotation about feeling totally frustrated with my life and completely depressed. Then I watch tv or drink wine and puzzle or have an edible. You died ten months ago and my body still has not repaired from all the ways my brain broke when I found you not breathing on our dining room floor. But I make myself dinner more than I do not. And I started to notice that I do not always think about you dying. At least there is that.

    August 26, 2022

  • Yet.

    I do not want to write still. I am depressed. Trying to maintain any sort of existence feels heavy and burdensome. I know writing, finding time to reflect on what I am going through, is the right thing to do. It would help me navigate this. But I am struggling to want to sit and touch what this feels like. I want it to go away, for the weighted blanket to dissolve into wispy, floaty air. The weather is warmer lately, high sixties, seventies and a hint of eighties. We are all shedding layers to allow our skin to absorb the warmth of the sun between wafts of the cool breeze. Spring and Autumn are when the residents of Sacramento Valley take advantage of pleasurable heat. Heat that you plant and harvest your gardens in. Heat that allows families to gather for brisket on the barrel in the backyard. Heat mostly absent from wildfire unless it is not. Not the heat of July and August, the heat that brings children out to experiment with cooking eggs on cement or a brownie in a coffee mug. And yet, with the warmth happening now, I do not feel the recharging of the sun. I feel rigidity in my entire body as I try to carry myself through every day without having a complete mental breakdown. I am tired. I am sleeping more. I do not feel creative. I am struggling to win the “why am I doing this?” battle. I am depressed.

    I cannot even recount with significant detail the number of events this past week that contributed to my inward spiral. I am not sure if it is the fact you were honored by Washington State for your organ donation and I was not there. If it was the Seattle apartment charging me $5,131.67 for breaking our lease because you died and I could not live there anymore? Or was it the lingering reality that this was not where I thought I would be in my life? Or it is very high odds I will not have a family the way I thought I would? Or is it that today marks five months without you?

    I miss you terribly and every single thing that happens in my life, good or bad, reminds me that you are not here. How do I capture that feeling? The weight of loss. The layers of this grief, a grief that has lived in my body for so many years before you died and has decided now is the time for me to deal with it. I am somewhere between concrete and the soil. How do you write about that? How do you explain it to people? I spend my days thinking about it, telling myself to write it down so I can work it out, but then ultimately not being able to do anything. To write about what is happening, is to confront losing you. And it still feels impossible to comprehend.

    Thinking about how to talk about this horrible, excruciating feeling makes my heart rate jump 128 beats per minute and gives me a stomachache. It makes being in my body feel dreadful. I started working out every day because I need to feel anything else in my body. I need to feel it do something else but feel this pain. It is the closest I think I have ever understood what you talked about when you described missing riding your bike before your spinal injury. It feels like a sadistic takeover that makes my clothes seem inside out and full of static. This feeling, the feeling of Anguish, is foreign. I hope no one ever has to feel it like this. If I could devise a world without it, right now I would. It certainly is not worth it. 

    Part of me, somewhere deep, deep down inside, chimes in when I get to this place, when I get to the place where it certainly is not worth it. This Part chimes in with a small, barely audible “yet”. Then, without hesitation, I restate the phrase with yet added in. “It certainly is not worth it… yet.”. I do not know what that Part is or how I got so lucky to have her. I am definitely waking up and going through this for her. She needs me to see what “yet” is. I am very anxious to know.