Flashbacks

When I walked out my front door this morning to do my animal chores, I heard a nuthatch chirping in one of the trees in my front yard. I was immediately transported back to our house in Auburn in February or March of 2023. To a warm late winter or early spring day when I was home with Sami, following her second craniotomy - I was taking a nap on the deck and heard (and then watched) a nuthatch crawling down one of the mulberry trees towards me. Until that moment, I didn’t know what a nuthatch’s song sounded like, or at least that the song I’d heard before came from a nuthatch. I realized this morning that the sound of a nuthatch is firmly imprinted in my brain - and it will be forever associated with the fatigue and anxiety I felt back in those early months of 2023.

Later this morning, while I was on my walk, I reflected on another walk I’d taken during that same time period. I’m pretty sure the girls were not home - and I’m certain that we were all worried about leaving Sami alone. I needed to walk, but I wasn’t comfortable leaving the house - so I walked two miles doing laps between the house and the barn. And listened to a less-than-comforting podcast about glioblastoma.

These flashbacks, for me, are different from my “normal” memories about Sami. Flashbacks seem to have the capacity to transport me back to an instant - to the sights, smells, and sounds of that moment. And to the feelings I experienced.

In the months immediately following Sami’s passing, the only things I could recall were flashbacks to these episodes during her illness. At the time, I wrote that I couldn’t really remember the sound of Sami’s voice - or much of anything from before she started having symptoms. Thankfully, the happy memories of our 34 years together are easier to recall today. 

But the flashbacks still come. Sometimes they are music-related - I’ll hear a song that reminds me of our trip home from New Mexico, when we started to realize something was wrong. Sometimes these flashbacks come when I’m at a doctor’s office (I’ve written previously about my experience with “white coat syndrome”). Sometimes they come when I visit our old hometown (as I did yesterday).

While I’m grateful that the happy memories come easier to me today, I still find that these flashbacks can knock me on my heels (or perhaps on another part of my anatomy, somewhat higher than my heels, but also on the back side of my body). And in these times, I find that I need to withdraw. To look inward. To give myself a break and sit with the physical and emotional reminders of what it meant to be Sami’s caregiver. I did that today.

I guess this is part of what I object to when I hear that grief is a feeling that we “get over.” I have an essay hung on my refrigerator by Dr. Dennis Klass, given to me by a hospice counselor. It says,

“Time can lessen the hurt; the empty place we have can seem smaller as other things and experiences fill our life;....we can learn to remember the good and hold onto that. But we can’t ‘get over it,’ because to get over it would mean we were not changed by the experience.”

In some sense, these flashbacks are very difficult, at least for me. They take me back to what was (at least so far) the hardest time of my life. But they also help me remember that the experience changed me. They force me to stop and think about how.