I’ve written about the stages of grief many times over the last 10 and a half months and how I go back and forth between them. I feel like I finally reached the stage of acceptance that Kenny is dead and he’s never coming back in the physical form a little over a month ago. But, even though I’ve accepted the fact that he’s dead I still bounce around all over the other stages.
One minute I’m so full of grief over his death that I can’t stop crying. The next minute something happens that I never had to do or take care of when he was alive and I’m full of anger and rage at him for dying. The whole process of this back and forth between the stages of grief is maddening. I feel like the steel ball inside a pinball machine ricocheting from one bumper to another. This pinging back and forth feels violent sometimes.
Most days the depression stage of grief is my constant companion. I may not always appear that way to others, but it’s definitely always there just under the surface. I had someone tell me this past week that I seemed like I was doing great in light of the fact that my husband had died. I told her point blank that most of that appearance of “doing great” is fake, and really, it is. I guess this is something that people who are in the grief process do–pretend to be happy and okay, when in reality they are not.
There are a lot of days when the anger stage of grief is front and center. I think that these days are just as bad as the depression stage days, or perhaps even worse. Anger is a strong emotion that can sometimes bring out the worst in a person and it certainly has in me on my anger days. I’ve screamed and yelled at Kenny for dying. I’ve cussed at him too, quite nastily I will add. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve screamed “Why did you fucking die and leave me here all alone??!!!” Of course when I have these moments I immediately feel the guilt stage of grief right afterwards because I don’t hate him, I love him, and I always will.
I had a lot of those angry days this week. My car battery was dead when I went to leave work on Tuesday and I had to call my daughter to come and jump it. As I sat in the car waiting for her I felt so low for having to depend on one of my kids to come and help me. I should be self-sufficient and not have to depend on anyone for anything, but I’m not. Since Kenny died I’ve had to depend on so many people to help me and it makes me feel one million times worse about the situation I’m in. It’s during these times when I’m the angriest at Kenny for dying.
When I went to get a new battery tonight at the auto store the man who put the new one in said to me, “There’s a whole lot of corrosion here” I told him, “Yes, I’m well aware of that, and that’s one thing my husband should have taken care of when he was alive but he’s dead, so…..” The man just looked at me. I think he was uncomfortable at the comment I made but it’s what came out of my mouth right at that moment.
As I stood there for over half an hour waiting for the man to replace my battery I thought about the times since Kenny died that I’ve been so angry at him for dying and leaving me. I couldn’t help it–the memories of all those times just flooded my brain and I couldn’t push them down no matter how hard I tried. I felt that anger boil right up to the surface, again.
I thought about how my inspection sticker had expired several years ago and the tires wouldn’t pass inspection. There was a broken stud on one of the wheels that Kenny just kept putting off getting fixed. The stud needed to be replaced before we got the tires replaced. Those two things needed to be taken care of for a few years but he just never got around to doing them. I was finally able to buy four new tires this year and had someone replace them for me.
I got the car inspected, too, but I did have to put up with the techs there trying to tell me I needed $1500 worth of stuff done on the car right away. They see a woman by herself and think they can take advantage of the fact that there is no man with her. I declined the $1500 worth of work, most of it being things that don’t need to be done now and them being grossly overpriced.
My car needed an oil change and got that done myself, too. The next thing I have to work on getting done is new brakes. I for sure won’t be getting the place that did the inspection to do that. I’ll probably buy the brake pads myself and pay someone the labor to put them on.
My angry days haven’t all been car related. There have been plenty of days when personal stuff has left me feeling full of despair, both at the situation itself and the fact that I have to go through it alone without Kenny here. I don’t have him here anymore for emotional support and it isn’t always easy to travel that particular road alone. Most days that one thing is very hard to do.
I had to walk into a courtroom all by myself in December, almost two months after Kenny died. I had to stand in front of the judge alone while the witness in my case lied under oath about what she heard the defendant say, even though she told me in front of my kids, on two different occasions in the two months after he died, that she did hear the defendant say it. I lost my case because of her lie but I did appeal it. I’ll have to go back to court alone again next year when that appeal is finally heard.
I’ve had to handle other personal things alone that Kenny would have been able to help with, even if that help was nothing more than letting me cry into his shirt as he hugged me and told me it would be okay. I think no longer having that one thing there is one of the hardest things to handle about him being gone. We all need a significant other who will be there for us in this exact way. When that person is ripped away from you there is no more alone feeling than that. It’s brutal.
I can’t stand the anger stage of grief. It drags you down into a dark pit you feel you can’t climb out of. The guilt that comes after the anger leaves you feeling emotionally drained. This whole thing is a vicious circle and I want off of this ride but I can’t, not quite yet. There’s still more emotional pain to process before that happens.