Loss and Normalcy

My father-in-law, Virgil, passed away on January 14, 2012.  He was 82, in declining health both physical and mental, but the death was still sudden.  I did not know him well.  By the time I met him he was already in his early 70s and kind of doddering.  I would sit next to him and he would ramble on and on about everything.  The conversation would be a bit like reading The Prophet from Jupiter by Tony Early or Catch-22 where every sentence could dovetail to a different idea to another to another.  So I just had to keep up with him.  I believe he wasn’t the same person that people who loved him knew him to be and adjusted to the person he became over time.  For me, he was a guy who liked to talk and I liked to try to talk with him.  I do wish I knew him better, but sometimes just having someone nice to talk to is good enough.
My wife, of course, knew him much better.  He was 50 when she was born, so I suppose you could make the argument that even she did not know him as the same man that her mother and older siblings knew.  She repeatedly tells me how I’m kind of like her dad, which she means as a compliment.  Like how I rarely meet a stranger, a generally nice guy that most other people tend to like.  You know, your quintessential “good guy.”  I even wear a white hat from time to time.

So, with this in mind, this past Saturday, I collapsed.  I blacked out in our bathroom.  Struck my head on the bathroom door and cut my head.  A cut that required 5 staples and some deep stitches to close.
Emily was in bed when this happened.  She had woken me up from falling asleep on the couch at around 2am in order to get me to come to bed.  She was probably half-asleep waiting for me in bed while I finished with the nightly bathroom routine.  Then she heard the sound of me collapsing into the door, breaking the wood molding pieces on the door.  I had hit the door hard enough on the inside that I jammed a piece of wood essentially through the door, which blasted off a piece of molding on the outside.  I believe it was on that piece of wood that I jammed through on which I cut myself.  It was sticking up through the door like a spike when I got home, so could have easily impaled myself deeper onto it.  I presume I hit the door, got stabbed by the door and I rolled off it, which caused the deep cut.  I am damn lucky.

She rushed out to me, helped me up and got me to the hospital after an initial surge of panic.  Three hours in the emergency, a CT scan, an EKG and those Frankenstein-like staples in my head, and we got to go home.
What I’ve failed to really appreciate is what Emily must have felt like right then.  She had just lost her dad the week before.  We spent all week trying to get his affairs in order, and get her mother in order as well all the while managing Emily’s sorrow.

And here I am.  The guy that she married because I reminded her of him.  Blacked out on the bathroom floor with a three-inch gash in the back of my head after blacking out for some mysterious reason. (Doctors proclaimed it was a combination of dehydration and blood pressure wonkiness.)  However, in that moment, she had lost her dad, and then here's me, the love of her life, prone on the ground, collapsed and bleeding.  The thoughts she must have had.

I'm okay now.  It's days later and I'm here, but Virgil is still gone.  Today is like any other day, except Virgil is still gone, and the potential for me being gone is very real as well.  The way I hit the door, the way I cut my head, it could have been a lot worse, especially if I think about it more.  And Emily has to live with all of that.  And I can't feel more terrible for her causing more anguish by passing out, and I feel completely culpable for what happened to me.  I just hope I can help her from here, and definitely hope to not fall out like that again.

I know this should lead me to this life is a gift, we must enjoy it point, but that's not really where I am.  I'm still struggling with where I am after all this.  I tried to fall back right into the old routine.  Shit, I'm painting the bathroom right now.  Nothing like an overdue domestic project to get life firmly back in its slot.  But that's what we do, right?  When crisis befalls, we try desperately to routine to normalcy.  Normalcy, or searching for that comforting routine, is what helps us heal, right?  But then what's left after that?  Normalcy makes no place to acknowledge problems.  It's not normal to pass out, hit your head, and receive staples.  It's not normal to lose your father.

Really, what I'm getting at, is that this past week was terrible.  Just terrible.  And returning to normalcy is what needs to be done.  It's what is always done.  But that still doesn't seem right.  The difference between the grief and worry is too vast for the return to normalcy to be enough.  You can't wallow in grief and worry, you can't keep repeating those horrible images over and over in your head or it would drive you insane, part of healing is letting go, but man.  Even acknowledging the worries and grief doesn't seem like enough.  No matter what the choice, neither feels adequate or correct.  But, what else can be done?  Nothing, I suppose, but get back to normal.

viva healing.