Monthly Archives: December 2023

grieving

Grieving during the Holidays: Going Down the Christmas Rabbit Hole

I deliberately turned down offers of company for Christmas Eve and Christmas this year, looking forward to having the days of peaceful solitude to myself to relax, bake, and snuggle with the dogs. As a BuJew (Buddhist Jew), my interest in Christmas is all about the cookies, cheer, and delicious smell of pine needles. The day itself holds no special meaning to me.

Or so I thought. As I was trying to go to sleep the night before Christmas Eve, I found myself thinking of all the adventures my husband and I had around Christmas. Since the holiday wasn’t special to either of us, we often traveled on or around it, without the worries of so many holiday travelers.

Many years we drove or flew to Oregon to visit his brother and sister-in-law. My husband, his brother, and sister-in-law were an epic threesome, with over 30 years of rich history and goofy antics. Together, the three were a card- and music-playing, motorcycle-riding pack. Having no skills with cards, music, or motorcycles, I became their sidekick. I was happy to be their videographer, heckler, or appreciate audience (and often it was hard to tell which role I was fulfilling).

When the weather allowed, they put down the cards and played bocce, and then I was their caddy. When they brought their musical talents together, with Tom on harmonica, his brother on guitar, and his sister-in-law singing, I was their groupie and once, muse, as Tom wrote a song about my rice pudding.

Two years we went to Las Vegas and spent Christmas eating in the Jewish tradition, eating Asian food. Another time we did a road trip to Death Valley and camped. Several years we stayed in Denver, spending time with local family.

I spent most of Christmas Eve going down a rabbit hole, correlating emails, photos, and calendars to figure out what we did for each of the 12 Christmases we had together. This exercise is kind of like creating the evidence board a crime investigator makes. I scribbled down notes and clues gleaned from photos and tried to connect them with other details and clues from calendars and emails to figure out exactly what we did each Christmas and what the highlights of it were.  

Once I nailed down what we did each Christmas, I did what I now call “the death math”: I calculated how many years away from dying he was for each Christmas and then reviewed how we spent each one with the frame of “we didn’t know he’d be dead in X years.” The rice pudding song takes on more poignancy when I think, “Two and half years before he died, Tom wrote a song about how much he loved my rice pudding.” Looking at each Christmas in relation to his death makes each one a step in us parting ways.

My reconstruction makes visible a beautiful and heartbreaking arc, with earlier Christmases involving more debauchery and later Christmases becoming a little more quiet and reflective. Our last Christmas, after his stroke, had us talking most of the day about love and forgiveness. Because of the pandemic, it was just the two of us and the dogs. We did a Zoom call with his family and with my daughter, who usually spends Christmas with her grandparents in another state. We read, I cooked us a delicious meal and we ate. Tom had a glass of wine, reserved now only for special occasions because of his vast medication regimen. We had both been working hard on forgiveness together, listening to audiobooks and podcasts on the subject and doing forgiveness meditations and exercises together. It was an emotional, intense, and loving Christmas. Without it, he would have died with some important things left unsaid between us.

I suspect the gnawing feeling of loneliness for him is with me to stay. I miss his quiet company, his love for the outdoors and for every damn dog that ever was born, his irreverent humor, his conviction that Christmas lights ought to be put up no matter what (after his stroke, his son dutifully came over to hang our lights), and about six million other things.

When someone dies, Jews say “may their memory be a blessing.” Every one of my memories with Tom is a blessing and I have so many blessings. The pain comes from wanting more, being attached to the idea that I didn’t get enough time with him. I remind myself that I got exactly as much time with him as I got. “Enough” is a tricky word. What is enough time with a person you love?

Accessibility + Dis/ability

I Don’t Recognize Myself in Photos (Life with Face Blindness)

About 10 years ago, a friend mentioned meeting someone at a conference who couldn’t see people’s faces. This person couldn’t tell TV characters apart, didn’t recognize herself in photos, and walked past her loved ones in public without realizing it. My friend said this person’s condition was called “face blindness.”

First chance I got, I googled face blindness, officially known as prosopagnosia. Little is known about the condition, although there is a research center affiliated with Harvard University. The more I learned, the more I was certain that I had it, too.

I’ve had it my whole life, but didn’t know that the way I saw faces was different from how others do. Actually, for me, face blindness doesn’t keep me from seeing faces exactly, but it does keep me from understanding them as a whole and from remembering them. That probably makes no sense if you don’t have face blindness, so I’ll explain it another way.

I can see a nose, a mouth, eyes, and a jawline, but when I look at a face, those components don’t stay steady for me. I may see a jawline but not be able to make sense of the nose. I may see the eyes but they seem to move around the face. To me, faces look very much like faces in Picasso’s paintings do. I didn’t understand why Picasso’s work was considered that interesting until I realized that I don’t see faces the way most people do. (In fact, there’s a theory that Picasso had face blindness.)

As far as being able to remember faces goes, I can see a face in front of me just fine and recognize it as a beautiful face or an interesting face but when I turn away, I have no memory at all of the face. When I turn back, it’s as if I’m seeing the face for the first time. I memorize aspects of people’s faces so it can appear that I remember faces, but it’s really that I’ve memorized that one friend has a heart-shaped face and another has full lips that form a perfect V shape at the middle of the upper lip. I might remember that someone wears distinctive glasses or has a nose piercing or has dramatic eyelashes.

I recognize people by their gait, voice, glasses, posture, clothing, or hair rather than by their face. I know I love my daughter’s face and find it beautiful, but I can’t describe it to you. When I used to pick her up after school, I saw kids streaming out of the school building, knowing one of them was mine but unable to say which one. I recognized my husband by his shoulders and the fact that he often wore Carhartts.

I’ve always had trouble recognizing people when they are wearing a hat, in a different context, or they’ve changed their hair. I’ve developed a lot of habits to offset these challenges. When I’m meeting someone at a restaurant or coffee shop, I try to arrive first and be seated so they’ll have to find me. I’ve had too many embarrassing incidents in which I walked right past the person I was meeting and got my own table near them.

My whole life, I’ve been accused of ignoring people in public. Many times in high school, a friend would claim I had looked right at them in a public setting, like the mall or library, and ignored them. I always said I hadn’t seen them, which was true—but it was weird to me that this was such a common accusation. I hated the cafeterias in high school and college because I’d get my tray of food and then look out into a sea of strange faces.

My inability to recognize faces leads to social awkwardness on a regular basis. When someone who had been my neighbor for ten years started working at my university and I introduced myself to her as if we had never met. Another time, a male colleague changed his facial hair and I introduced myself to him and welcomed him to the department. Once I hugged a man in the grocery store wearing Carhartts and nearly kissed his arm before he told me he was pretty sure I was confused. A guy I went on a date with was upset to learn his handsomeness might be lost on me.

Now that I have a name and a way to explain my condition, I’m much less embarrassed about my regular social blunders. I tell people regularly that I have face blindness. I mention it in my email signature and on the first day of classes. Many people I interact with on campus are in the habit now of saying, “Elizabeth, hi. It’s Susan from Admissions,” to let me know who they are. I’ve gotten much more confident when someone says hello to me in public about saying, “Hi! Who is it?”

A couple years ago, someone asked me if I had read Heather Sellers’s memoir of life with face blindness, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know. Although I hadn’t, I immediately recognized Heather Sellers as the person my friend had met at that conference all those years ago. I immediately bought the book and read it in record time. Sellers’s experience resonated with my own in such uncanny ways—she, too, was regularly accused of having looked right at someone and ignored them. She didn’t recognize herself in photos.

If you think you might have it, you can take this test to find out. Although there’s no treatment or cure, knowing you have it can help you understand your own experience better and, if you want to register with the Prosopagnosia research center, you can help researchers get a better handle on how many people actually have it.

P.S. Face blindness has nothing to do with my low vision. It’s a brain issue, not a vision issue.

grieving

Grief + the Holidays

The holidays are notoriously hard for people who are grieving. Holiday traditions often invoke memories of the person we are missing. Anticipatory grief for someone who is still alive can kick in hard as we remember past holidays with them and ponder future holidays without them. At the same time, the focus on “holiday cheer” can make the sadness of grief feel inappropriate.

This is my third holiday season without my husband. Unlike the past two years, I’ve really enjoyed the holiday celebrations I’ve attended. I’ve been slowly carving out a life for myself that doesn’t include him, which is both heartbreakingly sad and incredibly exciting.

Since my husband died, I’ve mostly just gone through the motions of the holidays. This year I actually feel some holiday spirit. There were glimmers in the past of feeling it, but they were scattered among long stretches of sadness. This year, it’s reversed—a confetti of sadness sprinkled on a mostly celebratory mood.

I am finding ways to make him a part of the holidays:

  • This is the first year since his death that I’ve done Christmas decorating. I hung Tom’s stocking with the others over the fireplace. I think I’ll put some donations to his favorite charities in it and I might write him a card that will go in it.
  • After a Hanukkah dinner hiatus that began with the pandemic in 2020, I hosted a big Hanukkah dinner this year. Nearly everyone at the dinner had known Tom and we shared stories of his enthusiasm for fried food.
  • His son and I are maintaining Tom’s tradition of giving out Starbucks gift cards to employees we encounter working on the holidays.

Making him part of the holidays doesn’t mean I don’t miss him as much as I used to. I never don’t miss him. The life I’m creating is wonderful and I wish he were here to be part of it. While I’m doing well and very happy, I still miss my husband like crazy. I will never let an opportunity to talk about him slide and I am grateful every time someone asks me about him.

At one of the holiday parties I went to, someone asked me about Tom, and I, in turn, asked another guest about her daughter who had recently died. It’s such a relief to be able to talk openly about a dead loved one. This is always true for me, but I find it particularly true during this time of year when the holiday hubbub can become overwhelming.

People don’t ask about my husband as often as they used to. I figure that’s partly because his death is no longer the first thing people think of when they think of me and partly because I am creating a wonderful life for myself and folks may think that means I don’t want to be reminded of him.

But no one has to remind me of him. He is always on my mind in some way. In the 2 ½ years since he died, I’ve never been upset that someone brought up my husband. Not once. And if that day hypothetically comes, I can simply say, “I’m not up for that conversation today.”

As you go about your holiday season, I hope you will check in with loved ones who are grieving. Acknowledge their loss and invite them to share a story, memory, or wish. Thank them for whatever they choose to share with you.

It doesn’t matter how long their person has been gone. As Michele Neff Hernandez, the founder of Soaring Spirits International, says, we grieve our people for as long as they are dead.

grieving, life skills

Changing My Relationship with My House

1 Comment

One of the many worries I had when my husband died was how to take care of the house. I’ve had the house for 23 years and have managed to have very little to do with the upkeep and maintenance beyond cleaning and decorating.  I managed to learn almost no home maintenance skills. I did help with the basement remodel and kitchen remodel, but my skills fell mostly in the demolition arena. I can smash things up and haul those smashed things out, but there’s almost nothing else useful I could do.

Even after my husband had his stroke, he could answer questions for me or tell me who to call. When the sprinkler system had a problem, he told me exactly where to look for the issue. I took pictures of what I saw, showed him the pictures, and he told me what to do.

When the security system had a glitch, again, he talked me through figuring out the issue and calling someone to fix it.

After my husband’s stroke, I read Abigail Thomas’s memoir, A Three Dog Life, about living alone after her husband has an accident that makes it impossible for her to care for him. At the time, I was optimistic that my husband had many years ahead of him, and I shuddered thinking of Thomas taking care of her house alone.

A large part of my first few nights as a widow involved sitting in the house in fear of something going wrong. I didn’t know who I would call, what I would do, how I would afford whatever needed to be done. Although I loved the house because it reflected Tom’s sensibility and made me feel close to him—so many of the decorating choices had been made by him, he had a hand in choosing almost all the artwork, and we had remodeled the basement together—I was also afraid of it.

 Soon after he died, something went wrong with the macerator in the basement. As soon as I realized the problem was with the macerator, I remembered Tom saying, “As long as nothing ever goes wrong with the macerator, we’ll be ok.” It was nearly 24 hours before anyone could come out to look at it, partly because it took me a while to figure out who to call and how to explain what had happened. Finally, a plumber came out and assured me it was actually an easy fix.

In the 2 ½ years that Tom’s been gone, I’ve learned a few skills. Just a few. One of the most important skills is knowing who to call. I often call my stepson first. After I explain the problem to him, I usually say, “Who should I call?” He always has an answer.

As I said a few weeks ago, I also read How Your House Works by Charlie Wing, which helped me a lot mostly by de-mystifying a few things. Wing describes ten aspects of a house that need care and maintenance, and for me, going from worrying about an infinite number of things to only ten was a huge relief.

The most impactful thing I’ve done, though, is change how I think about the house.  For most of the time that Tom has been dead, I’ve thought of the house as a thing to fear, worry about, be mystified by, and spend money on. Over the summer, I started thinking of my house in terms of something I have a relationship with.

That subtle shift has completely changed the way I think about things breaking, maintenance, and the like. It helps me notice that I take care of the house and she takes care of me. Yes, I’ve decided my house is female and her name is Eleanor. I say good morning and good night to her. When she makes a funny sound, I ask her what she needs, just like I do to my dogs when they make a noise I don’t understand.       

Thinking of my relationship with Eleanor makes me feel like we’re in this together. We both miss Tom, but we must move forward without him. I appreciate that she mostly keeps working and doesn’t complain. She’s a trooper, she’s nurturing, she’s strong. Like anyone getting on in years (she’s 110 years old), she needs some help from time to time, and I’m happy to help her when she needs it, just as I hope she’s happy to take care of me when I need it.

One of the way’s I continue to honor my husband is by taking good care of the house he put so much work into. Eleanor has become a trusted friend.