For most of my adult life, I have been a great sleeper. I usually have had little trouble falling asleep and I’ve stayed asleep for most of the night.
After my husband’s stroke, the stress and what seemed like an infinite number of unknowns exhausted me and I continued to sleep well at night but I awoke exhausted and dragged my way through each day. That continued for the first seven or eight months after he died.
Then I had a period of not being able to sleep at all. Intense anxiety kicked in and every time I was about to drift off, my entire body would go on high alert and I would leap out of bed, gripped by dark fears. After a couple months of that, my doctor prescribed Lorazepam, which helped me start sleeping again. It took six months to get my anxiety to a point where I could at least get decent sleep a few nights a week.
In the year and a half since then, I’ve gone from needing eight hours of sleep a night to feel rested to needing nine or ten and then I often feel a wave of exhaustion around midday. Many days I take multiple naps, sometimes adding up to two hours a day or even more.
Lately I’ve been noticing that it’s often emotional tiredness that makes me want to nap. I think my body is actually getting enough sleep, but the effort it takes to keep moving forward when my husband is dead is exhausting.
When he first died, I did everything with the thought “Tom is dead” in mind. I would think, “I’m showering (Tom is dead)” and “I’m eating lunch (Tom is dead).” Over time, the prominence of that thought faded, but there is still a weight I feel like I’m carrying around and that is what ties me out.
I first read Jack Gilbert’s poem, “Michiko Dead” in 1999 and the image of a person carrying an awkward box that can never be put down stuck with me. These last few months, my mind has gone over and over again to that poem. I think I’m tired all the time because of that box of grief that can never be put down.
My thoughts now aren’t “I’m writing (Tom is dead)”—they are more like “I’m writing (why am I so tired . . . oh, it’s the box I’m carrying)” and that box is grief for my husband. Carrying it means I’m always working. The box is invisible to others and I’m so used to carrying it, I forget sometimes that I’m carrying it—but it still tires me out.
I try not to judge myself for all my napping. When the voice in my head tells me I’m being lazy, I try to respond, “No, it’s fatigue from carrying this box around. It’s ok to nap.”
Michiko Dead
BY JACK GILBERT
He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.