21 Oct 00 - 2 weeks have passed since I last met with the Anabos. The Saturday in the middle - the third saturday - I was not ready to go back to LGCH. I was still bottoming out. I gave it another week and then visited on this day. I'm glad I did. It just felt like that was where I was supposed to be. No guilt, no pressure, just a clean, clear sense of purpose and validation.
Liz's condition had deteriorated to the point where she was "not all there". That's how I referred to Paige's last days since she was not capable of being lucid while on so many drugs and under such toxicity (chemo, cancer by-products, etc.). During this phase Paige would shake and be out of it, then snap to and talk to you briefly before going back under. It was during this period that she set up Kim and Jud, which is ironic since Kim is the common link that got me introduced to the Anabos in the first place. So in a way, Paige introduced me to the Anabos. There's that curious linkage again. Paige's scheming to fix them up was so cute. She'd perk up, learn about Kim and then pass back out. Then she'd perk up again a while later, tell Jud what to do then pass out again. This went on for a day or two and they started dating.
Through this period in her final weeks I felt as if someone had removed most of the oxygen from the air. It was so hard to breathe, to see ahead to the next meal, to just function. Everything moved so slowly. Each afternoon felt like a week. I've never known that kind of agony before. I tell people I aged a year that month, and I don't think I'm exaggerating by very much. Paige's glimpses of adorableness while awake were the only respites from this state.
Liz's mom was clearly in this state when I met her this Saturday.
She was clutching her chest, crying, and said "How did you do it?" "Second by second" was my answer. I asked if she could see far enough ahead to picture dinner that day. "No." Neither could I when I was there.
There are no words for those moments. All you can do is be there. We sat outside, on a bench in the sun.
After a short while I asked if she had any hobbies she was passionate about. "Gardening" was the reply. "You're gonna do a lot of gardening in the next year" I offered. For me it was triathlon training, which was lucky. By spreading the exercise around 3 different activities I managed to last 24 months before an overuse injury caught up to me last month. That spanned 14 months of Paige's cancer, and 10 months of grieving. I'll have to pick a new activity while I continue my process.
Soon Mom Anabo had enough of the sunshine and had to get back in with Liz. Sis Stephanie came out and talked with me for a while. She mentioned that her state was like her mom's. And like me, she had taken off work for that last month. There's no way you can function as a normal person during a time like this. I couldn't even gather up the presence of mind to check voice mail or anything. None of that mattered anyway. I remember thinking that I didn't even have to rejoin the 'normal' world again anyhow. I could pack up, move to Florida (where I"m from) and tend bar on the beach and tell the world to stuff it. That was tempting, but I knew myself well enough to see that I'd get bored fast, and besides I like my job. That was fortunate, as it became my 2nd anchor after exercise. Church was the other biggie for me. This was probably the first anchor above the other two. The folks there really assisted during this whole ordeal.
At this time I'm enduring the most intense period of grieving since Paige passed away. This was triggered two weeks earlier by the combination of events - the visit to LGCH, the reality of Elizabeth's situation, the realization that 2 years earlier I was there with Paige, and the very real, very current emotions exhibited by the Anabo family. These two weeks were a time of some of the darkest sadness I have ever known. I had to call my parents several times during that period just to talk to someone that I felt comfortable crying to. I remember calling mid-week at 11:00 pm California time to my mom in Florida. I knew I'd wake her but I had to speak. When she answered the phone all I could utter was "Mom I'm sad" and I cried uncontrollably. I could barely get the words out. I cried so hard my ribs hurt the next day.
If the trite saying "Nothing worthwhile is ever easy" has any validity then I figured I'd better be in for something good by this point. I was not disappointed -- the truth of the matter was that I would have never seen the situation so clearly had I not been cleansed by 14 days of immense sadness. The gifts that were to be presented were always there, but only now was I ready to see or receive them.
Two key realizations were about to be sprung upon me, epiphany-style. The first was regarding my perception of loss. Until this point I'd never made a distinction between what we really had together (our past) and what we could have had together (our future). I didn't realize it but I was doing a ton of grieving over our hopes and plans, our shared dreams. And when presented with the idea of "letting go" I of couse recoiled and said "No." This was because I perceived letting go as also releasing our past, the real part that we shared, and I was not willing to do that. But I never had to. In fact all I had to let go was the dreams.
When this moment of realization hit me, I was finally able to let go of the parts that were not real, the sense of "what could have been." I never have to let go of what we really had. And I'm still sad about that part too. But the immeasurable burden of that perfect future has been lifted. I can breathe again.
The other realization was no less significant. This has to do with one's sense of purpose on this planet. Mine was crystal clear while Paige was in the midst of her battle. Never let her down. Those were my marching orders. I never really thought about it as such during the crisis, I just reacted according to what I felt. And what I felt was still the same overwhelming sense of love that prompted me to ask her to marry me. So how do you express that sort of thing at a time like that? Simple. Be there. Don't let her down. Now that's the part you can see on the outside. However what I felt on the inside during this process was the most amazing sense of "I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be on earth right now." I knew, not thought or imagined, I knew that at that moment I was fulfilling my purpose in this life. Those moments were fleeting, but when they hit me I just knew, and it was overwhelming. That was a gift, and it really helped keep me going.
However this sense of direction disappeared when she died, but I didn't realize it right away. There was a sense of rudderlessness within me that I could never put my finger on, until this night 11 months later. I had the image of helping a friend push-start a car -- you push so hard and get the thing rolling fast and wham! all of a sudden the load you've been pushing is removed, and you stagger forward without much coordination or direction. That was me for the past 11 months. Now I finally realized that my direction in life, my goals, my aspirations -- all of it -- is back up to me to define. Before all that was so clearly laid out, and the abrupt removal of it was not something I was capable of realizing right away.
All that changed this Saturday night. Both realizations hit me in the span of about 30 minutes, right when I was at the absolute bottom of my suffering. Only then did they reveal themselves. None of this would have happened had I not met the Anabos.