Remembering and re-creating a separate identity

Sandy and I joked frequently about being codependent, or "co."  Codependency has a bad rap, and for good reasons. And, ultimately, I had become codependent in the last year of Sandy's life. I'd set everything else aside, assuming it would all still be there for me when she was well, when we'd gotten to the cure, when we both had health and energy. Or, in the worst-case scenario, when she'd died. 

When anyone asked me how I was doing in the latter half of 2010 or the first half of 2011, they heard how Sandy was doing. I didn't even realize that was how I answered the question until a friend pointed it out. She'd asked how I was, I told her the status of Sandy's health and symptoms and test results, and then she asked again, pointedly, "How are you doing?" I had no answer. I was Sandy's caregiver; my entire focus was to improve her health in the present and to conquer the cancer in the long term.

Since she died, I've felt my role has been primarily that of the caretaker of Sandy's memory. Even after her death, I've been putting her first, fearing that she's vulnerable. I want her to live on forever. Of course. But this morning I realized I'm beginning to be ready to start reclaiming my own identity, to disentangle the threads that bound us so tightly during her illness. I'm ready to start pursuing the things I'd be doing if she'd recovered fully, if I'd been able to turn my energy to tasks other than caregiving.

I started making a list of aspects of my identity, parts of me that may or may not have to do with Sandy, but that are mine to embrace moving forward: writer, reader, thinker, list-maker, cyclist, gardener, traveler, friend, confidante, counselor, activist, planner, cat-lover, neighbor, sister, daughter, in-law, procrastinator, volunteer, and, yes, widow. My relationship with Sandy remains a very important part of my identity, and I intend to keep it there for the rest of my life. How to integrate that with a life that I'm living - rather than just marking time - is the challenge. 

The authors of About Grief capture it well in paragraphs from different areas of the book:

Each griever must ask the question, “Who am I, now that you’re gone?” And the answer to that question often revises one’s self-narrative. Grief is a story you tell yourself. It’s a story of the death of someone you loved. It’s a story of the life of someone you loved. It’s a story of your life with them, and it’s a story of your life without them.

Going forward with your life will mean taking the fragments and gathering them into a version of loving the person that you can live with – and even someday come to enjoy. The alternative is that the loved one you lost will be nothing more for you than a tragedy, a bill for love, a shape of air, grief.

This is the challenge of grief: to take the mess of pieces you fell into upon your loved one's death and glue yourself together into something approaching "whole." Broken, yes. Reglued, yes. But  a version of whole nonetheless. This is the trajectory of grief, moving from someone's death back into living your life again. This is the arc every griever travels.

I know this isn't a linear process. I'm not done grieving, not done screaming and keening and clutching my chest in pain. But I'm encouraged to remember that I am a unique person, and that it's no betrayal to Sandy to be my full self. Indeed, it was my full self that she loved.