Coping
People email and text and call to ask: How are you coping?
The short answer is: “as well as can be expected” and maybe, for spans of time, “even better than expected.”
We are fortunate that Pat had established a very carefully-manufactured routine of managing the house and caring for Cal, and while I am wholly inadequate to fill his shoes (how I can grow potatoes and greens?), I can follow in this footsteps because he had thought-out every detail since he was a a control-freak.
Cal’s nurses, Peggy, Amina, and Renee, have taken extra shifts and worked around the clock from the moment Pat was sent to hospice to be sure there were no holes in Cal’s care. I suspect some people must assume that I was some sort of superhuman caring for two rather sick people at the same time. The truth is, there were an army of people . Rather than imagining me as a saintly Florence Nightingale, you might better view my role as the as an emotionally overwrought manager of a clinic with two patients.
The cards and food and letters and flowers and fruit baskets continue to appear at our door, but the pace has slowed.
Pat’s memorial fund is closing in on $35,000, which means we are in excellent shape for the coming year and beyond for the foundation. With no Challenge, 5k or other events, this funding keeps the lights on.
The kids are finishing up school, and if you must lose your father in the midst of a school year, I suppose a global pandemic -where your classes are pass-fail and everyone is utterly distracted - may have some advantages. The kids are not worried about protecting their GPA or even showing up for class since COVID-19 has erased such obligations.
I am in the final months of my sabbatical, and I am saved the hardship of teaching classes and turning in grades. I do owe Beacon the final edits of my book mss. and I do have to update the epilogue with the my thoughts on Pat’s death. These are things I dread.
But while the deadline approaches, I am not sure what I can say about Pat’s death beyond a primal scream. Then, there’s the fact that it’s hard to focus on copy-editing and working with the marketing team on blurbs. The new book is based on the claim I am some sort of expert on grief. Pat told me he was proud (and even a bit jealous) of me for writing another book , and yet, he would never read it.
Somehow, part of me wonders if Pat’s exit also gets him out of watching me “promote” the book.
But the piece he wrote about Cheltenham shows that as he faced his own death he recognized the value of connecting the dots and making meaning out of it all. Pat was clear that switching up his strategy so late in the game seemed impossible. I think he was sort of proud of me and tried storytelling as a way to manage his suffering. I think that might be a nod to me, a recognition that my way had some value. Might this have been one of those rare occasions where Pat ceded that I was right?
And I hope Pat’s essay provided some comfort. The story is about him and his father. Camille gets a brief mention, but not Cal, PJ, or me. The essay is a rare and cherished insight into a deeply private man. Until now, the only clue I had about Pat’s thoughts were the final moments he spent with Cal that Easter Sunday when, worried and pained and thoughtful, he told me,”I am worried what the future holds.” And I assured him that he had done everything he could for us, and that we would be okay and he did not need to worry about that, that he had taken care of us.” I do believe that the only way to conquer grief is to turn it into a story.
A part of the new normal is how I have turned our bedroom into a beautiful shrine to Pat. Etsy got me the cases for his ashes, and as the reviewers at Etsy promised, the box is really quite lovely. I have flowers and pictures of the children and his sisters and parents and me surrounding him. His glasses are there with a guitar pic and even the The Pixies t-shirt he wore on this first day of grad school the day we met. He had given me the shirt decades ago, and I have saved it. It just seemed like it belonged on the bureau with his ashes. After being rather overwhelmed by the ashes, I like the idea of Pat being around. It must seem odd to keep your dead husband in the bedroom with you, but Pat’s energy is wonderful and soothing. The only pain it causes is the sharp jab when I wake up in the morning and am forced to recall that he is not here and never to return.
I am so grateful for our children, who are, without question, so infused with their father. This is not to diminish the fact that they are their own people with their own lives. But Camille has increasingly taken on the role of earnest life coach to help me with my grief. She scolds me about listening to sad, depressing music and sleeping with Dad’s favorite blue hoodie or spraying Pat’s Hugo cologne around the house. Most of all, Camille is not really on-board with the idea that I wear her late father’s clothes in public, despite Camille’s progressive sensibilities with regards to gender and sexuality, she is no fan of my grief-induced cross-dressing.
The good news is that I am following Camille’s advice enough to shower, make my bed, and even wear a bra out in public. It was a pretty big deal for me to jog for two miles for three days in a row (which also helped with the wearing proper undergarments and improved hygiene).
After Pat died, I cleared out the rug and moved out some of his plants to declutter the dining room in a sort of Swedish death cleaning (aka döstädning). In my variant of death cleaning, I discovered that one of Pat’s plants had leaked water on the rug, causing a dark mold and even staining the hardwood floor underneath. If Pat were alive, this discovery would have resulted in a rare fight where I yelled and he scowled. Because Pat is gone, it seemed wrong to be angry with him. Instead, I channelled my rage at the left over medical supplies and paperwork from Penn and the hospice program. It felt good to take these giant contractor bags and throw out the Penn Hospice fridge magnet and get rid of the shower chair and IV pole and the oxygen tank. I wanted to make room for memories of the vibrant, six-foot tall, pre-cancer Pat, not hospice Pat or cancer Pat. I even called my friend Emily Crane, a wonderful architect to help me finish designing my home office. For years I have done all my online classes, writing and foundation work from our dining room table and an old book shelf we got at a garage sale. I want to invest in building the bookshelves and putting in a proper desk for working from home. It’s been ten years since we bought the house and when Pat was home getting infusions, the living room became the infusion suite and it got stained with blood and food. It might seem extravagant to reupholster the couch now (even as Saint Joseph’s pursues pay cuts). But, I don’t want to look at this room and think only of Pat slipping in and out of consciousness and dying. I want the house to be exorcised of his suffering , and make room for a future filled with memories. I aspire for every part of the house to bring the joy I feel when I walk through his garden. The garden is amazing, my practical mother advised me to scale it back. And when I study the monthly water bills, she has a point. Pat’s crop yields just barely cover one month of water. But the garden is this magnificent tribute, the purest embodiment of him, I don’t see how we shut it all down.
PJ and Camille are finishing up school. PJ only has a few hours of school each day and he assures me that things are going well. Now that I am getting over the heap of estate related phone calls and paperwork (though I am still waiting for Pat’s death certificate), I hope to reach out to PJ’s teachers to offer an update of sorts. PJ makes a point of hugging me each day (and Camille, who is not much of a hugger, permits me to hug her once a day). PJ’s hugs are guilty pleasures, he sounds and feels like his dad used to be before the ravages of cancer. I savor them because it is like I get both of them at the same time when my son gives me a hug and kisses me on the forehead.
Camille and PJ both check on me and ask what I need, and then get annoyed a bit when I ask them to clean the kitchen or walk the dog and start to cry about “how I am okay, I am just a bit sad thinking about Daddy.” We all love sharing our Pat Carr stories or imagining what Pat would think or say about something the President said or what we are making for dinner. PJ and I talk about how we keep looking around for Pat to tell him something. Cal misses him most of all, her health (thank goodness) is fine, but she is quiet and most assuredly smiles less and laughs less. She just knows her father is gone. And I can’t decide if playing a video of him singing or speaking would offer comfort or cause pain. I know hearing Pat’s voice makes me ache for him more, it is not as if Cal could be tricked into believing he is here. She may be blind, but she could smell and sense him, she knew it was Pat by the sound of his steps.
The first two weeks consisted of weeping so extreme, it made my dehydrated and caused me to lose my voice. Now, the crying happens in less convulsive episodes and the dark feelings about wanting to follow Pat to the afterlife have subsided. I still listen to a lot of sad music, but for 24 hour I managed to play things besides the Avett Brothers and elegiac Irish music by the Celtic punk band Flogging Molly.
But, the short answer is that we will be okay because we have to be, because I promised Pat, and, most of all, because he sacrificed himself to make it so.
