Last night, something funny and endearing happened on Big Bang Theory. I’m watching the series through because I have never seen it and I need dumb, low-stakes television. I turned to see if you also thought it was funny, my brain tricking me for a split second into thinking you were seated in your usual seat on the couch, but you were not there. You died. I lost language as I gasped for air between tears, attempting to recover from the impact of Grief Whiplash punching me in the gut. It took 93 days for me to look for you in the same room, a sadistic muscle memory and a refreshing reminder that I was not always devastated by you.
Tag: MuirWood
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Message Sent to Both Heather and Randy Separately on Wednesday:
When Jeffrey and I first started dating, we got into a debate about the word ‘irregardless’. Jeffrey insisted it was not a word, that its meaning is duplicative of ‘regardless’ and that it’s grammatically incorrect to say ‘irregardless’. I googled it and found ‘irregardless’ in the Oxford English dictionary, among others. It does look like the word was added to the dictionary more recently because people say it so much. It’s considered a word even though irregardless and regardless have the same meaning. I loved that conversation so much. It was debate and learning and everything I love so much about what would become our relationship.
My therapist said ‘irregardless’ during our session yesterday and I immediately thought of that memory. I couldn’t tell them because you look like an asshole if you point out something like a grammar error to another person Jeffrey worried he looked like an asshole when he pointed it out to me. But he didn’t. I like learning and I want to do things correctly. I asked Jeffrey what words meant all the time because I knew he would know and I could validate “that word means what I think it means”.
I really feel like I’m never going to have that ever again. And it is suffocating.
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Grief Makes New Sounds
Yesterday during therapy I sobbed so intensely I heard a sound I never heard come out of my body. It was somewhere between the pitch a hiccup and hyperventilating. I do not know how to describe it.
Mom said I need to talk in therapy about what is going to happen next week, about walking into the home we shared, the home where I found you not breathing on our dining room floor. “It’s too soon in the grief process for you to have to be doing this”. As if I did not know. I knew my mom was right because the thought I had the two times she brought it up was, “why are you focusing on this? I don’t have a choice but to go there and pack up our things and pointing out what’s hard about it isn’t going to get all this stuff done.” Defensiveness is always holding up a mirror.
I am overwhelmed. There really is so much to do. I need to sort through your shirts and select the ones I want to keep so someone can help me make a quilt. I need to donate your wheel chair and other medical supplies to the organization who helped you get a wheel chair at no cost after your injury. I need to donate your Trike to the organization that helps folks with disabilities get outside, that helped you test ride different bikes to figure out which one was best for your accessibility needs. I could sell the Trike, it’s worth a lot of money, but that feels wrong when a grant helped you buy it. I need to give your dad space and time to identify what he wants from your things. I need to figure out what I can sell or give away as quickly as possible so I do not have to pack more than necessary. I need to coordinate for a junk person to take the things we cannot haul or donate ourselves. I need to clean and remove my existence from the home I lived in for 8 years, 1 spouse’s gender transition, 1 divorce, 1 pandemic, 1 graduate school degree, 1 engagement, 1 career ending and another starting, and 1 fiancé death. I need to decide what of your things I am not sure I will regret giving away. I plan to box them and write your name on the boxes with a Sharpie. Do I store those boxes in the new apartment or a storage unit? Do I want reminders of this confronting me daily or do I need to put them somewhere?
These questions feel impossible to answer. My mom is right, it is too soon. But I am not getting a choice in making decisions about my timeline for grief. I have to do all of this next week. I did not ask to or sign up for it, but this is happening. When I let in what I feel about being in our home, new noises reverberate through and out of my body. You died when I was not ready and now I have to participate in the next chapter of the trauma triggered by the worst day of my life, the day you died. I am not ready. It is too soon.
I cannot decide if I want to sleep in the apartment or even be in there alone. My parents got a hotel room because eventually there will not be a bed in the place I am trying to remove my existence from. I cannot decide if I will regret not giving myself the time to be in our home, my home, the home the holds so much of my life, of who I am. The apartment holds every painful moment of my life and there are so many of them. It holds my survival and my accomplishments. How do I decide if I can handle being in there? How do I look at your jackets, fold them, and give them away? Will I miss the dumb dice you bought too many of? The coffee mug with yours and your uncle’s name on it? The duvets and bedding we picked out together. You used to sit in the green chair in the office and read a book while I worked. But I do not need the chair. The blankets hold your smell. They hold us. All of these things hold us. Hold a lifetime no longer happening. A dream that is a nightmare I cannot and will not ever wake up from.
I told Heather I keep waiting for my life to get bigger than this grief, but that is not happening. The grief is everywhere I go. It is reflected on the face of everyone who sees me. Everything I do, I’m doing while Grief is sitting on my chest, punching me in the throat, mocking me.
We leave on Friday morning. An 11 hour drive to the guillotine. I feel like I am preparing to stare down the sun. I know I will lose eyesight, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. I need to get used to looking at this duller version of the world, but its sepia tones are so muted and dystopian.
What the fuck?
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MuirWood
Jeffrey’s last name is Muir, and mine is Wood. We were MuirWood. I loved and still love that. For his birthday in 2022, I bought Jeffrey a custom blue neon sign that said Muir Wood. It hangs now in our living room on a gallery wall of artwork we both collected. We talked about eloping in Muir Woods as a way to commemorate our pairing in a space that, while we had never been there together, would feel so natural to who we both were. Redwoods, clean air, warm spring. A beginning marked with the hope of a season blossoming and the wisdom of nature. I do not know what I will do with the MuirWood sign at the end of this month when I make it back to my apartment to pack and move. Where does one put a sign that represents all your dreams disappearing? Under a bed? In the back of a closet? The trash? Hanging it feels impossible, a painful reminder of what will never be. Not keeping it feels like a betrayal.
When Jeffrey entered the hospital, I started a group text with his sister, his brother, and his father. I called it “MuirsWood” because there are three of them and only one of me. It felt poetic and honoring while also being accurate. Today, Jeffrey’s father reminded us it has been two months since we handed Jeffrey over to the organ retrieval team. With the reminder, I wanted to remember what happened in those few days. I do this a lot since I have been back in Chico – I go read every post I made from that week so I can revisit what I experienced. Every time I go back to remember or attempt to document the timeline of what happened in the hours and days after finding Jeffrey, I get stuck as I uncover a new piece to process. Today is no different. As I read the Facebook posts now, I am struck by the time lapse of what was happening before Jeffrey died.
For context, if you were to look at my Facebook timeline (which is private), you would see the two updates below, one after the other.
I do not understand how I could go from such a relief for surviving Election week as a therapist, to finding Jeffrey on the floor and everything I am dealing with since. The juxtaposition of those two experiences existing in the same 20 hours, let alone the same universe feels astonishing.
It also strikes me as I look at these posts that I thought on Saturday, November 9th, I would potentially have weeks with Jeffrey. The news I last had is there is going to be a lot of waiting in the weeks ahead. I know that is because the neurologist team told me on Saturday morning we had to keep waiting to see, that miracles happen, that we do not know enough about what the brain is capable of. I also know I could not believe what my instinct knew was true because it was too inconceivable. His last words flash in my brain again. I love you cutie.
I have talked about knowing in my body Jeffrey was gone when I found him, and I do still trust I knew that. But I could not listen to my instinct in the aftermath of finding Jeffrey. Experts were the 9-1-1 operators talking me through CPR for the 8 minutes it took the first responders to arrive. Experts were the paramedics who spent 5 minutes alternating between CPR and defibrillation in an attempt to bring back a asystole pulse. Experts were the ER nurses who pumped him full of medicines to stabilize his body. Experts were the ER doctors who cooled his body down to 91 degrees (or was it 89?) to minimize the stress as Jeffrey’s brain tried to stop swelling and connect to his heart. What do my instincts know about what science and medicine can do for our bodies? Absolutely nothing.
I do not know how it has been two months since we gave Jeffrey to the organ donation team. I just spent two hours trying to explain in this post that I do not understand how on a Thursday night, I was a therapist who survived Election Week and 20 hours later I was a fiancé performing CPR on her partner. 20 hours separate before and after as documented on social media. I will end this post as I suspect I will be ending many posts:
What the fuck?
A Natalie Observed 