Looking this in the Eye

Moving is exhausting. Moving 23 years of accumulated household and ranch shit is beyond exhausting. But with the first anniversary of Sami’s passing coinciding with my move from Placer County south to Calaveras County, I’ve also found that moving has allowed me to distract myself from thinking too much about what happened last year.

Over the last several weeks, I was often bone tired after spending the day cleaning the barns and hauling junk to the dump, or loading the trailer with things to take to Mountain Ranch. I found myself going to bed earlier than I normally do. And frequently, I found that I couldn’t fall asleep.

When I try to recall things about Sami in these recent weeks, I find my mind drawn to the events of the first half of 2023. To our trip home from New Mexico. To those anxious days when we knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was. To the nights holding Sami’s hand in the neuro intensive care unit after both surgeries. To walking by myself or with our daughters through the neighborhood surrounding UCSF. To eating dinner looking out the window of the acute rehabilitation floor of Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. To sleepless nights once we returned to Auburn. And to the wrenching days in the first half of last August. But I can’t seem to think back clearly to the time before. I find that I can’t focus on specific memories of the 33 years we were together before Sami’s glioblastoma diagnosis. To be honest, not all of the memories from those “before” years are happy, but I find that none of them (happy or not) come into focus for me at the moment.

On the actual anniversary of Sami’s passing (August 13), I thought I’d be sad all day. But I wasn’t. I was numb. Numbness, in my experience with grief, has been my mind’s way of getting me through the days I need to get through. Of helping me put one foot in front of the other. Last week, the numbness allowed me to finish moving.

But I re-read a small card that hospice provided me over the weekend titled “The Mourner’s Bill of Rights.” The last line reads, “You have the right to move toward your grief and heal.” I realized that while numbness may have helped me cope with managing my move (and life generally), I had been avoiding my grief. I couldn’t look directly at my loss. Somehow, part of me knows that I need to - that I need to stop moving long enough to sit with my grief. I feel as though looking my grief in the eye will help me move towards it - to acknowledge that my grief is present because of love.

And so yesterday, I decided to take a day away from unpacking at my new place. I drove through the little towns of Rail Road Flat and West Point, and up Carson Pass to Silver Lake. The dogs and I played in the water; I had a picnic lunch and did some reading. We loaded up again and drove over the crest to Hope Valley - one of my favorite spots in the Eastern Sierra. And then we headed back to Auburn for the work week. I put John Prine on Spotify and thought about how much Sami would have enjoyed the short excursion. I cried some, and talked to Sami some - thinking about how much I missed her. For the first time in several weeks, I wasn’t numb. My heart hurt, but I felt more at ease last night. And I realized that I’ll need to do more of this in the coming months. The grief will always be there; acknowledging it - looking it in the eye - seems important to me.