The Winter of my Discontent

After the holidays were over, I knew I was going to need to buckle up for the long and lonesome months of January and February. For the past two years I have gone to Florida for a few days for a reprieve from snow and cold, but because of Covid that wasn’t a possibility this year. I made a list of things to do around the house, things I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and so far I haven’t done a single one because I have neither the desire or energy for any of it.

I have struggled with too much time on my hands which leads to too much thinking, which leads me to feel as if I’ve been catapulted backwards into the early days of grief. Those days when crying and second guessing every word that came out of my mouth the weekend before Mark died was the only thing I did. In a recent week when I cried every day, my therapist suggested I needed to up my meds. I already knew I was sinking and what had been working was no longer effective, and so the next day I called my doctor. By that afternoon I had a new prescription, and my first thought when I looked at the bottle was shame. Shame that I couldn’t pull myself out of another hole, shame that I wasn’t trying hard enough, shame that I couldn’t exercise, meditate, pray, or organically eat my way to a better state of mind. Shame that I was broken.

Every year on the night before Valentine’s Day, Mark would jump up and say he needed to go to the store. I always knew he was going to get me a card. He’d be gone forever, come home, and say, “Since when did the drugstore up at the village close?” I’d tell him it was three years ago and didn’t he remember that from last year when he tried to buy a card there. He never could remember that or that the Hallmark store didn’t have the same hours as 7-11. He’d come home after driving all over to find a store that was still open, a card for me in a little brown, paper bag. The next morning, propped against the coffee pot was his signed card for me to open.

This year on Valentine’s Day, my sinking held off until I went to bed, when I terribly miss Mark’s warm body next to mine, and those quiet conversations in the dark when he would reach for my hand before he fell asleep. As it usually goes, I replay every minute of the weekend before he died. Every missed opportunity to stop what would happen a few days later, every time I believed I screwed up. This time, and for the first time, the replay was different. This time everything that bubbled up were the memories of what was right. The long walks, the time he lagged behind me and I stopped and asked him what was wrong. “It’s my hip,” he said, “my hip is bugging me.” Mark never complained about aches or pains and I said, “Then how about you take some ibuprofen when we get home and we walk a little slower. Will that help?” Or the time he talked about the inner demons he kept battling and I said, “Mark, aren’t you so tired of feeling ashamed? Don’t you think maybe it’s time to set that down and not keep carrying it?” “I’m trying,” he said, “I’m trying.” I looked at him and said, “Maybe you could use some help with the trying,” and he said that sounded like a good idea. The black koi he brought home from a friend’s pond to put in his own because the raccoons couldn’t see them as easily and maybe they wouldn’t be having them for dinner like the orange ones. When he called me over to the car and lifted the tailgate to show me the bucket of fish and how excited he was as he slowly put them in his pond. When he walked the creek on Saturday afternoon and sat at the dining room table pulling off everything stuck to his pants and I said, “You seem happy. You should do that more often, don’t you think? Just walk the creek and clear your head.”

Since Mark’s death, heartache and grief have been my constant companions along with depression and anxiety. In the after, I have come to know that there are tools available to manage these unwelcome boarders. Some tools that take so much work and staying in places where I’d rather run screaming out of, and easier tools like taking a pill every day. Quieting the voice that tells me I’m not trying hard enough, or that taking something to manage my mental health is a sign of weakness is a daily struggle, but I know better than most that a foundation built on shame can collapse in the blink of an eye.

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