Alone into the alone

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2024 (473 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Jan. 21, 2010, I turned 60. Until that time, my usual response to well-wishers had been: “this is the one birthday that I’ve always looked forward to.” It was my attempt at humour, a little dig at our youth-obsessed culture and everyone who publicly despairs getting older. This time, however, was different. For the first time, I was struck by the sound of the age … 60 … 60 was starting to sound old to me.

I shared this newfound impression with Laurel, my wife of almost 28 years. She nodded her head in agreement, and with a serious tone, mentioned that if we were lucky, we might have another 30 years, another 30 years together. I responded by reminding her that she had a history of longevity on the female side of her family, with grandmothers, and later, mother and aunts living deep into old age. I suggested that while I was less sure about the extent of my own lifespan, I was pretty sure that she had a long life ahead of her.

On Monday, Nov. 7, 2022, at 10:34 in the evening and one month and six days after turning 70 years old, Laurel died.

“When someone you love dies, you don’t just lose them in the present or in the past. You lose the future you should have had, and might have had, with them. They are missing from all the life that was to be.”

— Megan Devine

Love and Hate

“I sat with anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.”

— C.S. Lewis

Today is Dec. 21, 2022, the winter solstice … the shortest day of the year. As I write this at 12 in the afternoon, it’s -25 C. It’s also 60 years since my mother died of a stroke caused by a brain tumour. It’s also 44 days since Laurel died of this, her second hemorrhagic stroke … a bleed that filled her ventricles and spilled over her brilliant, beautiful and loving brain.

I remain lost without Laurel, lonely, alone, desperately wishing her to be with me. Calling out her name. I miss her so deeply, deeply, deeply. I hate being without the woman that I love. I hate having her name removed from hers and our possessions: removed as co-owner of the car; removed as co-owner of the house; removed from our bank accounts, and from her own investments. I hate that I receive mail addressed to “the Estate of Laurel McLaughlin.”

I hate that the world continues as it always has. I hate listening to CBC radio and hearing personalities talk and laugh as though nothing has happened. I hate that celebrities and politicians that have recently died are eulogized in the media, without similar mention of my dear Laurel. I hate hearing and seeing people talking and laughing at the grocery store, as though nothing has happened. I hate that it continues to snow, and that it continues to cover my beautiful Laurel’s grave. I hate that we can no longer die together … embraced in each other’s arms. I hate it!

Alone into the alone

I went to Laurel’s barren gravesite twice today, I planted a flagpole from our tandem trike in the snow above Laurel’s grave. I need to know exactly where she is in case it snows again and covers her up. Earlier, I had wrapped a framed 8½ x 11 photograph of Laurel in plastic and secured it to the ground. Her official marker won’t be in place for some time, but I can’t tolerate only simple, bare ground covering Laurel.

Loneliness has become my constant companion. I feel intensely, achingly lonely and alone without Laurel. It’s not a gap, an absence, that can be filled by others. When I’m with others, I am still without Laurel, and it seems as though my aloneness is emphasized even more … that I am separate from them and no longer a part of their world. The world in which they carry on as normal … a world that I am left out of. A world in which I seem to be only an observer, peering through the frosted window pane as others talk, laugh and sing by the cozy living room fireplace.

After his wife died, Gordon Pinsent said of himself: “I guess I’m the spare, now.” I’m the spare now, single, solitary, left alone without the love of my life.

Richard E. Grant, in his book “A Pocketful of Happiness,” said that “It’s the sheer aloneness of being alone. Wherever you go, whoever and how ever many people you meet and play with, you return alone.”

It will get better in time, I’m told. But I dread the passage of time. Time is distance, and as each day, week, month and year passes, Laurel will be taken further away from me. I want time to stand still, to keep Laurel close to me. If time stands still, I can pretend that she’s only away visiting, and like Joan Didion in “The Year of Magical Thinking,” I can keep her gardening shoes handy in the hallway, knowing that she’ll need them when she returns. I’m not in denial, but like everyone who has lost a great love, I’m in pain. The great pain of grief.

Grief, I’m told, is the price that we pay for love. It’s our final expression of love. It’s expressed in the ocean of tears that we cry, and in the emptiness that resides within us, and then, in the unrelenting pain. I feel desperate to be rid of the pain, but still, I’m afraid that as the pain weakens, the love that I have for Laurel will somehow weaken. So I embrace the pain, I bear the unbearable as Joanne Cacciatori encourages. I lean into it. Like Padma Lakshmi, I wrap myself in it, wear it like a cloak. A cloak that on occasions, is light and warming, but on most days, is heavy, crushing, oppressive.

“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”

— Francis Weller

Rituals

In the afternoon, I filled a thermos with coffee and put it and an insulated cup into my backpack. I walked over to what had become Laurel’s and my bench at the end of the cut-through near Willowdale Crescent, a two- to three-kilometre walk from our home.

Once there, I sat down on the bench and had my coffee, just as Laurel and I had done so many times before. The day was lovely, the kind of wintry warm, sunny day that Laurel would have loved. Peaceful, comforting. I felt that Laurel was with me. We were together … but I was still alone. Now, forever alone.

I sat on the bench and talked with Laurel for about a half hour. Always, at the end of my conversations with Laurel, I tell her that I love her, and that I miss her. I love you Laurel, and I miss you so much. I love you, sweetheart.

About stages of grief

In the book, “On Grief and Grieving,” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler describe a five-stage grieving process, culminating in “acceptance” of loss. The authors tell us that acceptance is about acknowledging loss and learning to live with it, and not necessarily about being content or at peace with loss. But patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are simply the reflections of those who observe and label them. My experience; my own internal, crippled observation, is that grief comes in three stages: “the beginning, the middle, and the rest of your life.” (Gary Sturgis)

The gift of support

I’m in Denver. Our son had invited me down to attend a Denver Nuggets basketball game and a Trevor Noah comedy show. The last time that I had been to Denver was with Laurel. We had gone to visit David in September, following a similar visit to see our daughter in Toronto. This time, I chose to find an AirBnB some distance away from David’s apartment and the location of our previous stay. It was painful just imagining staying in the same area that Laurel and I had last stayed: seeing the same streets, houses and parks; walking past the coffee shops where Laurel and I regularly stopped for our breakfast lattes, muffins and scones. It was difficult to imagine surviving the pain of repeating that experience without Laurel.

After David picked me up at the airport, we met Laura for pizza. At times, I mistakenly call her Laurel. In a very short time, I knew that David had found someone special. You see, with the three of us sitting around the restaurant table, Laura did something that so many people choose not to do, she asked me about my wife. She gave me a chance to say her name, and the chance to talk about her and about us. She invited Laurel to join us at the dinner table. She helped me to keep Laurel’s memory alive, to keep Laurel alive. She gave me a gift that I’ll always be grateful for: patience and understanding, and willingness to simply sit and listen to me talk about Laurel, my wonderful wife. She gave me the promise of a future.

JOHN SIMPSON

Brandon