ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Six days ago I thought that our biggest hurdle was going to be getting through the first week. We had to go out of town and all this funeral business and grieving and intense sadness was going to be very hard for us to bear, but I had this idea that things would seem easier when we were home and had stepped into our normal routine again. Not that the impact of this week will ever leave us, but in a tidy world a funeral would provide enough closure to make us feel that it was natural and desirable to pick up and move on with everyday life.

Everybody but me knows enough not to expect anything about this world to work out in a tidy fashion.

I felt mournful, somber and heavy all day. I’m mostly referring to the sensation of psychological heaviness, although I think I also gained a few pounds from the disruption to my eating, digestive, and sleep schedules last week. The standard Midwestern response to grief is to replace meals with dessert foods and to supplement this with heavy amounts of salted meat. Someone last week actually brought a coffee cake by the house that was about 20 inches long by 12 inches wide by 4 inches deep.

While I had looked forward to coming back to work and closing the books for May, I still felt a bit unsteady and was not looking forward to sharing the company of anyone I haven’t known for years. In fact, I did not really want to be around anyone who was not my boyfriend or his immediate family. I haven’t been such an emotional wreck in a long time, but despite having had yesterday to relax around the house after our drive back, I was still at a point where the slightest kindly word from anyone, or reminder of what happened last week, caused me to tear up and bite the inside of my cheek to prevent completely losing it. It is in some ways a deep irony that a person who hates to cry in front of others is such an easy crier. I was sitting there crying at freaking crossword clues last night for godsake. Waah, a clue about horses and his brother used to raise horses, this is the saddest thing I’ve seen in the last five minutes. Even though I’m a working professional who simply happens to enjoy crying, I’m usually not that bad.

Thankfully my coworkers left me mostly to my own devices today, other than to say kind and supportive things to me while wearing appropriately sorrowful expressions.

Last week before I basically gave up trying to communicate with anyone outside central Kansas, I e-mailed my boss to let her know the funeral was not until Saturday and therefore I had no chance of making it back to the office that week. I commented how hard it had been on everyone to listen to funeral music and make a choice on songs, not to mention the rest of the arrangements, and remarked briefly that I was considering drawing up funeral plans for myself and my boyfriend sometime after we came back. If the worst did happen, at least our family would have sort of a road map to go by.

When I came back she had left a whole sheaf of advance directive and funeral planning worksheets on my desk, with a long handwritten note explaining that she and her husband had done this and had also gone through it with their parents as well, and offering her general moral support. This is the same woman who called me last Tuesday morning to say it was more important to be with the family than anything else, and who didn’t hesitate to give me the rest of the week off with no notice, even though I know it was an inconvenience to her when we have several projects to be wrapped up before the end of June. I wanted to sob with gratitude when I saw the funeral planning papers. To someone else it might have seemed morbid, but I can’t get over what a thoughtful, sincere person she is.

I realize I’m not making a real point with this. If I were, I guess my point would be that I am new to this process and I didn’t know how upset we would feel for so long. I thought we would feel sad, but that the feeling of wanting to cry hysterically would have gone away by this time. I feel naive now for not having understood any of this before. I think that what I didn’t really get before coming home is that our lives can’t go back to being the same after this even if we surround ourselves with familiar people and things. Getting the week over with did not really have the effect I thought it would. I suspect now that there is no such thing as getting over a death like this.

I’m not saying we won’t be okay again. It will take more time than I thought.