therapy hour

I trudge home for lunch after 3 home visit appointments. I barely had the energy to drive to the client's house exit the car and enter their house. I ask my self how can I can continue to keep this up it is so exhausting........ I make it home for luncht 1 PM, I didn't feel like eating or fixing anything, so low energy.I climb into bed......the house is cool and I want to get warm and really don't have energy for much else.... I have to leave at 1:45 to make the 2 o'clock appointment at Hospice. I watch red numbers change on the digital alarm clock, wondering if I can still call to cancel, I am tired of this grief work and all these therapy appointments and all the grief books and writing and thinking and mediating and crying or trying to cry while on an antidepressant....this is like a part time job!!
And I don't need more work hours I need more free time. What would I do with the free hour, probably just lay here, surf the net or the TV. Might as well go, it's only 70 bucks, add that to the $25.00 co pay for the psycho-pharmocologist this morning and I am already in debt for today. I spent more than I earned and can barely get through the day. I mind wrestle with myself, go not go. Finally at the 11th hour, I get up to leave, it is 1:51.
I make it on time, Kelli is running a little late. I sit by the gas lit fireplace, still trying to get warmed up.
Kelli comes and gets me.
We start. I talk about the fatigue and feeling so very tired of all the work that this is, I well up but can't cry. I tell her about Provincetown. I tell her I am tired of reading grief books and that the one I just finished was terrible. I described one of the exercise where you take all of your loved ones clothes and sort them into three piles, 1. must keep, 2. undecided, and 3. toss. I told Kelli that I really not ready to do this. We talked about where I am in the grief journey and although I am tired of all the work I have not traveled far enough down the road to be at the place where I toss Chris clothes. " What does it mean to hang on to them?" Well, I have the feeling that Chris will come back and be upset that I tossed them. "Will he be upset because you didn't believe that he was dead"? "I am not sure.....It's just a feeling that I have about his stuff, and not touching it or disturbing it, a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that he will somehow reappear. It's stupid, he was cremated, he has no body to wear the clothes with, and yet I feel like somehow he will be back". "If you threw the clothes away why would he be mad?" I don't know I just know the clothes need to be there
"You have said that you think Chris is in Nirvana, can Nirvana be a place where Chris can still reach out to you?" I am not sure I will have to think about this maybe read about it or talk to someone. All I know is that it is hard for me to receive "signs". I saw a rainbow in Ptown on November1st, I wanted it to be a sign....but have a hard time believing it. I saw a car the same make and model as Chris and the licence plate was "Ruse". Another sign?
I don't want to be like some of my friends....a good parking place at the mall, a sign from Chris, extra change from the grocery store clerk, a sign from Chris, the weather man is wrong and the day is gorgeous, a sign from Chris. The signs can't be that commonplace! Kelli observes that I have to have parameters around the signs but even when I see them I have a hard time accepting them. I need proof I say. Kelli shares that in order to accept the signs I may have to suspend my logical brain for a moment and open my heart to the signs. If I don't I am missing opportunities for comfort and solace. I will try to be more open I promise, I feel that Chris mind was so amazing that if he could send a sign he would, we never talked about it, although my friend Bob and I talked about it and I see the signs we had talked about all the time, a black crow in the road street lights turning off. I feel confident that it is Bob staying in touch, why can't I feel the same about Chris? Because we never discussed it in detail?
I still struggle with the whole thing, how such a wonderful fully evolved, enlightened perfect person could have been taken at age 50, I sob that he won't live to be old and that i won't get to know him later in life. It's not fair that he was taken from so many people that loved and admired him. What was the purpose of his life then, why only 50 years, only 12 with me?
"What do you think his purpose was"? This is such a hard question.......He came into my life when I was having a hard time being a good parent to Max. Chris taught me how to be a better mom, how not to get so stressed out and not be so hard on Max about trivial things like his sloppy room. He showed me what was important in life, and what was worth letting go. He was always trying to get me to slow down. He made me a better person and a better mother using the 80/20 rule. ( accept that 80% of what you get is ok, let go of the 20% you didn't get).
He also single handedly remodeled my disaster of a house, every room was changed, every window and door was installed by him. And of course his masterpiece the kitchen. How ironic I mused to Kelli, that I now have the kitchen of my dreams and no one to cook for, just like that Christmas story "the Gift" where the wife sells her hair to buy a watch chain for her husband's watch, and he sells his watch to buy her combs for her hair.
Kelli tells me that sometimes our homes are metaphors for our soul, and that Chris changed both my internal world and my external world. The house and the kitchen are reminders of that. That in fact I am wrapped up in his handiwork every time I am home and it is his way of holding me now, he left it to hold and nurture me.
It is apart of our new relationship that we are forging....