Put It In Writing III

It was October that I requested a bid from a monument design company in Texas that specialized in Celtic Crosses.  Three months had passed, and seemed to have been only a couple of horror-filled days.  Shock does strange things to time.  It slows it down and speeds it up simultaneously.  The days dragged individually, every moment a dreadful task to get through, every breath a conscious raising of your chest that is resented passionately...for why should you draw breath, when she could not?  Each day seemed endless, and yet they piled up on top of each other until you could scarcely believe it had been 30 days since you'd last seen your child's face...or 60....0r 90.

I set out to find a monument company that would design and build exactly what I asked for.  I knew that Cory's stone had to be special, and different than the others...there was no one like her in the world.  I spent those first few days wandering the cemetery grounds, sometimes with Jake, sometimes alone, and on one memorable occasion in the pouring rain.  I examined all the different stones, intrigued with the ones in the oldest section.  They told stories if you stopped to listen.  That's what I wanted for my girl.  I wanted something tall and slim, as she had been.  I wanted something as high and close to heaven as I could afford.  I wanted something old-fashioned looking because that was Cory's style.  In the end, I found just such a company, and sent them a sketch of just what I wanted.  They replied they could do just what I wanted.  It would be expensive, but it would also be the very last permanent object I would buy my child.  Now was not the time to cut corners.  When the monument man said each piece was one of a kind, and his goal was to have someone decades later walk by and admire it, thinking to themselves, "Someone has left a piece of art out here."  I was sold.   They send out a purchase agreement, and then things got really, really difficult.

It started with the frost line wars between the cemetery manager and the monument man.  There were measurements, specs, requirements, and the like.  I slumped down a little more with each new request and disagreement.  I had barely got through the surreal experience of sketching my nineteen year old daughter's gravestone.  I couldn't do much more.  Tim had checked out for this piece of business, likely recovering from all he'd had to do in the frantic days following the accident.  I remember at one point, just yelling o myself tas I drove in my car..."How fricking hard is it to buy your kid a gravestone?"

I remember thinking it would be easier to purchase a gun...and actually, at that point, it didn't seem like such a bad idea.  Why had I ever been against firearms in the home?

So as "discussions" took place between the cemetery manager and the monument man, I quietly bowed out of the game.  I stopped following up, and I stopped returning calls.  I did nothing more to facillitate the purchase.  I was "all done". 

Looking back, I can see that as the technicalities may have made things more involved, the truth was I just wasn't ready to take that step.  As I've said, words mean everything to me.  To put her name and her dates on a six foot piece of stone was to say to the world, "yes, she'd dead and I'll never see her face again."  I wasn't ready for that.

So that purchase agreement sat in the dining room for the next seven months.  At the tail end of that period, my mom began asking me if I'd ordered, when was I planning to order it, did I need help to order it, and hurry up, or it won't be up in time for Memorial Day.  I could feel my nerves stretching out taut like piano wire every time she inquired.  I was not ready.  I just wasn't.  I remember thinking to myself, come on, people, just let my denial run its course.

It so many ways, I still did not believe Cory was actually gone.  Permanently.  Despite what I had seen, despite the nighmares and flashbacks that plagued me daily, my brain held fast to silly notions.  Cory is at an extra long sleep over.  She'll be home any day now. 
 Cory's in the mental hospital again.  She's getting better. 
Cory's browsing books at Barnes and Noble.  If I look carefully enough, over every square inch of that place, I will find her.

To put up the monument would be to squash all those desperate hopes and dreams.  It was as final as final could get.  I wasn't ready to buy the last thing I'd ever give her.

I wasn't ready for her to be dead.

Bipolar Takes Over My World...Again

What is it like to be in a relationship with someone who has bipolar?  Well, that depends on the person, and on the type and severity of their illness.  I haven't been writing lately because my husband, Tim, has been in the grips of a bad depressive episode.  While I found I could usually roll with the punches pre-accident, post-accident is an entirely different story.  I nearly found myself wondering if that horrid therapist hadn't been on to something when she skated right up to the edge of telling me to leave my husband.  It is a life-long illness.  It can be all consuming.  I am struggling with my own mental health.  Is it really my job to carry every adult male with bipolar that crosses my path?  How do you carry someone on your back when you are crawling yourself?

By threatening to leave him (and he knew I wasn't bluffing, as we'd had this exact conversation nearly seven years ago, shortly followed by a LENGTHY separation), I spurred him into resuming his meds, changing doctors, and mowing the lawn.  Beyond that, it was a waiting game...waiting for the meds to work, waiting to see if he would continue to take them even when he began to feel better, waiting to see if I could hold everything together without either losing my mind or simply walking away.

Dr. Z said being in a relationship with someone who has bipolar goes something like this, "I love you to pieces!  I hate your face!".  It is stressful, confusing, and often painful for all parties involved.  What he didn't say, but I knew from past experiences:  the low parts were hell, but the highs!  The highs took you into the clouds and climbing.  There may be no other feeling in the world like the adoration of a man with bipolar.  To be that object of affection, even fleetingly, is to be the goddess, the queen, the princess...heady stuff.

With Bob, it was just as Dr. Z stated.  I was either his sole reason for living or he wished to do me grave bodily harm.  With Tim, though, it's a lot different.  His highs have always been much less pronounced, and his lows much more prevalent.  Life with him goes something like this:  when he is hypo-manic, I can get the man to do many things with the mere tilt of my eyes; when he is depressed, I become invisible.  He isolates himself from the few people in his personal life, and retreats into the shelter of sleep.  A doting husband will, seemingly overnight, become a complete stranger living in my home.

The man who was my lifeline after Cory's death gradually became a sort of boarder, coming and going without any type of acknowledgement. It got so bad that if we crossed paths in the hallway, he would turn his body sideways to avoid brushing up against me.   He left his bed for only the gravest of obligations- food, work, toilet.  When I tried to encourage him to get help, he became argumentative, accusatory, and irrational.  I began to wonder...am I really here, again? Am I really?   And if I am, why am I staying?

Perhaps because I've been so depressed myself.  I've held on, too exhausted to take action of any sort.  I try to keep reminding myself no one chooses to be depressed. 

So a few days ago, Tim returned.  The day before he'd been the same grumpy, distant lump that shuffled between his bed and the couch.  The next day when I got home from work, my husband was there.  It was the most peculiar thing.  Even his walk was different, as if someone had dialed up a switch on his back, and gotten him going again.  He picked his feet up when he walked, instead of just pushing them forward as if they were twin blocks of concrete.  There was light in his eyes.  He was able to make and maintain eye contact.  He was talking...voluntarily.

What the hell?  The meds finally caught?  His cycle ended?  I didn't know.  I was just deliriously happy to see he was indeed back, and had returned before I'd given up, and jumped ship.

Art as Therapy...Me?

Make no mistake; writing will always be my first love.  These days if I go a long period (three or four days) without writing, I begin to feel on edge and unable to relax, no matter how exhausted I may be.  I find this an interesting phenomenon.  During the some of the darkest periods of my life, I did not write, and must now search my memory to put those experiences down on paper.  It is much harder to write about something that has hurt you if you've allowed a great deal of time to pass.  We are only human, after all, and will generally avoid pain if we can.  I have found that in order to get the negative events down that have shaped my life, I’ve had to form a list entitled, “Things I’m Afraid to Write About Because I Know They Will Hurt Too Much”.  As I, at a snail’s pace, cross them off one after another, I am able to see that while I am writing them, it does hurt, but that hurt fades, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, depending on the topic, and leaves me with a sense of relief, as I suddenly have a little more room in my lungs to breathe. 

We write because we have stories to tell that explain how we came to be who we are, and why we made some of the choices people would not understand if they have not walked in our shoes.  To write a blog, or a story, is to say:  come walk with me for a few minutes, and see how this all came to be.  Sometimes I am the one who understands my decisions better after that walk.  How about that?  It is an amazing process to describe a life experience, exactly how you felt about it then, and how you feel about it now.  As someone very wise once said, “What is healing, but a shift in perspective?”

But somehow, even the writing wasn’t enough.  A few weeks ago, I got it into my head to try my hand at art therapy.  Was my Cory Bird whispering in my ear, as I rested against my favorite pillow, and surfed the net?  Small smile.  Maybe she was.  All I know is that I prefer to paint pictures with words, and suddenly I was googling art therapy.  I remember writing in my journal that I was going to give painting a go, and that I would pick up a couple canvases, some paint, and an art journal over the weekend.

The idea of an art journal was appealing because some writing was allowed, even preferred.  To me, there will never be anything more beautiful than words.  I just couldn’t help but to think if art therapy helped Cory with all the horrors she’d had to deal with, it was certainly worth a try for me. 

Anybody who knows me well, knows I can’t just pick up some paints and a sketchbook and call it good.  I got all those supplies, but also spent the better part of a Saturday in Barnes and Noble, poring over their art journaling magazines and art books.  Suddenly, I wanted to learn to sketch… well.  I wanted to do faces.  I wanted to do nudes.  I wanted to explore the style of expressive painting like Cory had done.  (Thank you, Jay Conklin, for explaining to me just what that meant- to use color, line, and texture to convey feeling, not depict objects or people in their  realistic forms). 

Sure, I’d done some painting at the cemetery when I used to visit Cory everyday.  But what I realized is that I’d been going about it all wrong.  I tried my best –and failed miserably- to focus on the end result of my artistic endeavors.  As I slowly became hooked on the feeling of opening myself, and letting my hands do what they wanted, without caring what it looked like, I discovered what they’ve told us all along is absolutely true…it is all about the process. 

It didn’t happen right away.  I approached sketching and painting as any other new skill to be learned.  I read, I looked at what others had done, and I imitated.  I didn’t do half bad, but nothing felt like mine.  No matter what style I attempted, the pieces only looked like inferior representations of someone else’s feelings and ideas.  What good was that?  And,  really, who wants to be a thief?

I think my current style was a happy accident.  It was a Saturday; I was home alone, missing Cory so badly I thought I would lose my mind.  I sat down and started slapping some paint down on paper.  I made a mistake…and instead of getting upset, I just went with it.  I painted over it, I painted around it.  I made it work for me; I went into the deep.   I spent hours at my dining room table, listening to music, and feeling a peace I hadn’t felt for months.  It was okay to make a mistake.  It might be ugly, sure,  but it was mine.

That was exactly what emerged as my current style.  I basically make a pretty picture, and then, very deliberately, just destroy it.  The thing is, when it’s done, it truly portrays my despair, my misery, my guilt.  And yet, I am able to find some beauty in what has been altered.  With every muddy, fuzzy line, I can remember what it felt like to hold the world in my hands for nineteen years before seeing it ripped away right under my nose...right down my street.

Art is subjective, so on paper or on the canvas,  all my dark thoughts and self-depricating feelings aren’t necessarily unhealthy, they might even be considered powerful.  They say, I was here, I had a love, and I lost her.  But she was worth every moment.  And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Gotta go- I have a picture to make.

 

Put It In Writing II

Okay, I have to admit I might be giving somewhat inaccurate information here.  I'm starting to think that seeing Cory's name on the announcement board at the funeral home, and going there to see her for the first time since I saw her on the road were two different occasions.  It seems to have all blended together.  After all, every day was the same:  misery.
So, seeing her for the first time?  What was that like?
It was like this:
Mark, the funeral director, who is one of the most understanding, patient, kind, and accepting men I've ever met sat us down in a semi-circle on the grieving sofas, those elegant little couches scattered throughout the entry way, and placed considerately just outside each of the viewing rooms.  I guess the hope there was to have a soft landing spot for the ones whose legs can no longer hold them up, which is a pretty good idea, come to think of it. 
My heart was hammering out of my chest as he talked about how good they had been able to make her look, considering.  I spoke up to ask if I could please be allowed to see her first, and to go in alone.  Mark gently informed me that while I certainly could go in to see her first, he was required to accompany me, walking slightly behind, in case I should need anything.  He said this so logically, as if he was accompanying me just in case I needed to be handed a hankerchief, and not in case I hit the floor or tried to open my own throat with one trusty nail.  I cannot say enough good things to describe this man; he was put on this earth to help families in their darkest and most unimaginable times.
So off we went, Mark and I to see my firstborn child, my only daughter, my heart...Corinne Nicole, my Cory Girl.  They say in your final moments, when you know you may die, your life flashes before your eyes.  In that space of maybe 45-60 seconds, being led into that awful, awful room, I saw Cory's life flash before mine...hauntingly beautiful still frames of her at all different ages.  There she was in my arms, a red, wrinkled, and basically bald newborn, as I looked down fascinated, enamored, and frightened out of my mind as I prepared to bathe her for the first time.  There she was with a stubby sideswept ponytail at two, walking the zoo like she owned the place, white Pocahontas moccasains on her tiny feet.  There she was in my lap at eight, facing me with those bright, huge eyes, as I explained she would soon be a big sister...news she responded to with tears of pure joy. There was the beautiful, gangly preteen she had been, all legs and a smile that far outshone her braces, and colored rubberbands.  There she was in the  gorgeous black  dress she'd worn to her first school dance, the shimmer of the fabric unable to compete with the happy glow of her smile to be going with a boy that she liked, and who liked her back...it was one of her moments.  Cory, in my kitchen, mere days ago, laughing while bent over a grocery sack putting things away with me.
Cory:  my life for the last nineteen years.
Mark walked beside me, keeping up a steady whispering monologue, punctuated with, "It's going to be okay."  and "That is all right."  I think he thought if he kept talking, I would fight the insanity that beckoned me from every corner of that cursed room.  I wanted to run away, and never return, but more than that, i wanted to see my girl.  Mark led me with a considerate hand firmly on my elbow, "Okay, we're going to go right over here.  That's right.  That's okay."  My breath caught as I took in the outlines of her arms laying in a position someone had carefully arranged to convey...peace, dignity, rest?  What it conveyed to me was that someone else had moved her arms because she no longer could.  I put a hand over my mouth, and uttered some small cry, pulling Mark closer, closer, closest.  I gazed down, expecting to see some creepy, damaged, dented girl that I would never know.  Instead, I saw my Cory Girl looking breathtakingly beautiful, and very much like herself...eyes closed as if she was sleeping, and lips pouting as if she had been denied some small request that had meant the world to her.
"You can touch her.  Very gently.  Like this?  See?"  Mark was murmurring beside me.  I reached out with  a tentative hand that shook like a live wire.  I touched her flesh, finding it indeed very cold, but perhaps even more shockingly- unyielding, hard, like a piece of wood or furniture.
My mind spun as I took in this new horror.  Before I could fully digest the fact that my child was lying lifeless before me, family members began creeping wordlessly into the room, and discovering the horrors on their own. 
Although I readily shared the space in front of her, I could not be persuaded away from her.  I wanted to stay, and see her as long as I possibly could.  After that first initial shock, there was nothing sweeter in the whole mess than to be near her, to see her,  to touch her, to kiss her gently.
It was when we had to leave so they could continue preparations, that I finally reacted physically.  As Uncle Bud and Tim tried to lead me away, I lost my footing and began to sag to the floor.  I'm not sure if I had been too weak to stand, or if I had been unconsicously planning a sit-in.  I rather suspect the latter.  All I wanted was every second I could have with her before they put her in the ground.
Uncle Bud finally just bent down and picked me up, carrying me out the double doors.  Sometime during the private viewing, Mark had, with permission,  gently pinched my forearm, and informed Tim that I was extremely dehyrated, and needed to go to the hospital.
So what happened next was that Uncle Bud placed me in the backseat of his vehicle, and headed for the hospital.  I sagged against the seat in the back, unable to respond to anyone, and unable to shed tears for my girl because I simply had no moisture left to give.  Shock unfolded its cool black arms, beckoning silently.  Without hesitation, I climbed right into its lap, and laid my miserable head down on its soft, shapeless shoulder.  I floated.

Put It In Writing

I think everyone has their preferred communication style, most likely based on their learning style.  I am a visual person; it's just the way my brain takes in information best.  If my son is asking me to spell all but the easiest of words, such as “cabbage”, I must have a space to jot down my idea of how it is spelled before I can help him.  If required to spit it out based on what I see in my mind, I’d have no better idea than he did.  I’ve often thought I would’ve flunked school back in the Little House on the Prairie days when they had to do all that long division in their heads.  I would’ve have to lay it out to Ma & Pa…look guys, I’m sorry, but my brain just won’t do that.  Then I’d hang my head in shame and go clean the barn.

Friends and family could confirm if they stopped to think about that I start each conversation, whether serious or just dishing the latest with, “So, look…”  Look- as if I unconsciously expect everyone else’s brain to be programmed to receive information the same way I do.  All those audio folks need to just come over to my side, and the world would be a lot easier to navigate.

So my point for explaining all this to you?   I thought you might be interested to know I’ve been carrying the bid proposal for Cory’s monument around in my work bag for the last week or so.  Then I thought you might want to know why.  So here we go.

My brain doesn’t accept a lot of things until they are seen in written form.  Ask my husband, who will tell you that in the worst of our disagreements, we’ve had to resort to written communication to make any sort of resolution.  We once got into a heated argument on the plane back from our first family vacation taken around our first wedding anniversary.  His symptoms of a mood disorder, at that time undiagnosed, had already begun to take their toll on our relationship, and his relationship with Cory.  We passed furiously scribbled notes, riddled with exclaimation points back and forth the entire flight, as my certainty grew that my first steps back  on land would be in the direction of a divorce attorney. 

So picture my immediate family and I getting out of our vehicles in the funeral home parking lot to see Cory for the first time since the accident.  I had to be pulled inside.  As much as I yearned to see her, my waking thoughts went something like this:  TERROR, TERROR, TERROR…I just need to kiss her face…TERROR, TERROR, TERROR…I just need to kiss her face.  I was horribly frightened that when I got the chance to see her, she would be like so many deceased folk, looking absolutely nothing like herself.  God bless my friend Angie’s heart for at least telling me not to be startled to find her flesh freezing cold when I touched her, if I touched her.

If I touched her, are you kidding me?  I think I had some vague plans to climb right in with her and lay holding her as if she were simply sleeping in a hospital bed.  My mind changed on that note in a hurry because once we had all made it inside - my parents, my sisters, their families, and myself- the infinitely compassionate funeral director, Mark, talked to us about what we were about to see.  He said that considering the shape she’d been in when brought in, she looked quite, quite good.  My stomach plummeted to depths unknown.  As I swooned, roadside again within seconds, he explained that while she could be gently touched, she was not to be jostled or handled roughly in any manner.

I took this to mean she could fall apart at the slightest movement, and died inside just a little more, if that was even possible.  As my mom and sisters gave over the outfit I’d chosen for Cory to be buried in (tears are streaming down my face as I type this passage in my favorite coffeeshop), I wandered in the large foyer, waiting.  As I turned around, my eyes focused on one of those black  announcement boards that are used to direct visitors to the correct viewing room.  I scanned it, my eyes bulging as I took in the discreet little white letters that spelled out my daughter’s name.  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.  My heart began hammering furiously and began climbing right into my throat.  I looked again.  It was still there.  My daughter’s name was on an announcement board so people could come view her dead body.  CLICK.  Somehow that was the final piece that needed to fall into place, cutting through my shock, and telling me this was really and truly happening.  Up until then I think I had been clinging desperately to the idea that this whole thing was an incredibly long, incredibly detailed nightmare.  As I read her name for about the third time, those little white letters reached out and just shoved me to the floor.  Dimly, I could hear my sister, Tammy, saying, “Oh no, she’s passing out!” 

I wasn’t unconscious, just unable to stand and read Cory’s name in such a place for such a reason.  She was nineteen, for pete’s sake.  Nineteen.  Didn’t people know that?  Had God forgotten?  As Uncle Bud and Tim helped me to my feet, I weakly demanded those letters be taken down, and wouldn’t stop saying it until the kind older woman accepting Cory’s burial outfit moved to do it.

 

--TO BE CONTINUED

(sorry guys, there is more to the story, but I am just too upset right now)

What About Bob? Part II

Where did we leave off?  Oh yes, I had caved and contacted Bob wanting our pain to be even, wanting him to for once do his part.  He had responded with a mild and fairly civil comment, “You are right, and I got what I deserved when I was turned away after flying up on a moment’s notice.  I will forever live with the regret.”

I sat, hunched in my bed, surrounded by Cory’s dolls, her stuffed animals, dozens of beautiful framed photographs staring me down for the wall, and creased my brow.  Was he actually being nice?  Was he taking responsibility?  What in the heck was going on here?

I sat there dubiously, wondering if perhaps he had finally gotten into treatment.  Then I wondered if he were simply trying to give me an all expense paid trip on the guilt train, for he was exceptionally talented at turning things around on a person- moving the spotlight from his faults or short comings to the other person’s.  Before you knew it, you were thinking whatever bad behavior he’d shown could have been prevented if you’d simply anticipated his needs better, and remembered not to “poke the bear”, one of his favorite sayings that transferred responsibility of his temper tantrums from himself to anyone else that happened to be in the room.

As I sat there pondering the meaning and intentions behind his statement, I recalled my declaration of freedom, made over the phone not quite three years ago.  He’d been in the middle of an episode, spewing out words of acid.  His voice got louder and louder until I was holding the phone out from my ear lest I suffer permanent hearing loss.  As I did so, my brain seemed to wake up and tap me on the shoulder, “Umm, hey, Nicole, are we really here again?  This exact same sad destination…you are 37 years old, you know.  When is enough just enough?”

You’re right, brain.  I do not want to be back in this bad place.  I have done nothing to this man to incur his rage and cursing.  I have only tried to help him and love him to the best of my ability.  This is not my fault.  I don’t deserve this.

Bringing the phone back to my mouth, I interjected with the calmest, and lowest tone I could muster under the circumstances.  “Bob?  Bob?  Hey, Bob…”

After a few attempts, he spat back, “What?!”

This is what I said, “I’m going to give this to you straight, and I’m gonna say it slow….I am not your mother.  I  refuse to take responsibility for your temper tantrums anymore.”

This drove him into the greatest fury I have ever beared witness to, in person or via phone call.  I could hear things being thrown, and he was screaming and yelling, completely out of control.  I knew that it was over.  I no longer felt safe.  It was the end of the road.  No matter how much I wanted him to be well so that we could have a healthy relationship, he had to be the one who wanted it for himself.

My phone beeped with an incoming message, interrupting my memories him threatening to blow his brains out at my front door so the kids would have to see the mess and a creepy, shudder inducing threat to come over and chop me into 86 pieces.  I peered over my screen to read,

“Sorry for your loss.”

Well, look at that, friends and neighbors, Bob was back.