(More than) Eleven months without Michelle (#1366)

Topics/tags: Michelle

Warning! Maudlin musing with mourning ahead!

Michelle passed away more than eleven months ago. More precisely, she passed away eleven months, one week, one day, and a few hours ago. I normally try to muse about her and the loss on the month anniversaries [1]. But I haven’t had the mental or emotional energy the past week. I’ve also been short on time, but that’s mostly because I’ve frittered away time on meaningless things.

At some point, I wondered whether I should continue this habit. Perhaps that was in the prior musing. In any case, someone wrote me to say, Musing now, as you find your way without Michelle at your side, seems so right. That sounds reasonable. I’ll continue. Will I find a way in the world? I hope so.

The past month (and a bit) has been, um, complicated. Yeah, complicated is the right word. Or one of the right words. The biggest change has been that I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that she’s gone. Both my conscious and subconscious mind acknowledge the loss. I no longer feel like she might be back tomorrow or in a week. She’s gone. She won’t be back. At least not physically.

I’m struggling to comprehend all the emotional effects of that mental change. I think my base mood is sadder, but I also seem to have fewer moments of severe snot-sobbing sorrow [2]. Are the gaping wounds starting to fill in? Perhaps. But they still come. And I experience gaps more frequently. I feel them almost every time I open a cabinet to look for something and see something that reminds me of her. I also miss the optimistic feeling of I’ll see her soon.

The month has also brought some particularly powerful moments. I felt incredible pride seeing Middle Son defend his Ph.D. thesis and joy at being with all three sons. At the same time, I know we all wanted her there to see the event and to celebrate together. And she’d hoped to make it that long. I guess it wasn’t to be. She won’t be there for the next defense, either. At least she was there in spirit.

I celebrated our thirty-eighth anniversary, my first lone. Perhaps writing the anniversary musing about my love for her caused me to delaythis one: I’d already done one emotional dump; maybe I needed more time for the next.

I finally ordered her headstone. Well, to be accurate, I ordered a bench. Headbench doesn’t quite work as a term. The kids helped choose one. It will be nice to be able to sit with her. I haven’t visited enough. She probably wouldn’t care. But it’s good for me to grieve at her grave.

Last week, I spent one day so depressed that I didn’t get out of bed the whole day [3]. Well, I did leave bed to use the bathrooms, but that’s it. And I slept most of the day. I wasn’t explicitly depressed about missing Michelle. Rather, I was overwhelmed by the state of the world. Would I have had more coping resources if she were still here? Almost certainly. But I didn’t cry or sob. I was depressed, but not sad.

In contrast, the other night was one of the most emotionally difficult, after I spent time with some of our couple friends. They were talking about trips they were taking together (and that other couples are taking together). Afterwards, I fell completely apart. I sobbed for nearly thirty minutes. We’d been looking forward to a time when we could take more trips together. We’d been doing better at setting aside time for trips, but she’d really wanted to do some of the kinds of trips our friends have planned. Now she’ll never have that chance. Me? I don’t care as much about travel. I just liked being with her. I wish I’d been healthier so that we could have done more adventurous trips.

I also said the Mourner’s Kaddish for her for the last time. Well, the last time until the Yahrzeit. It’s been strange, but useful. Why strange? First of all, she wasn’t Jewish. Second, it’s not something that was part of my family tradition. We didn’t do the Mourner’s Kaddish for my grandparents, my father, my aunt, my uncle. But it felt good to do it for Michelle. And it feels good to be in community, even if Shabbat services (or any services) also weren’t part of my childhood.

I’m still struggling to handle life without my primary executive function. I managed to get the checkbook balanced for the first time since, um, April. Five months of check statements are a pain to reconcile! But I’m getting better. I’m also moving forward on the last major financial task from the estate. Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than it should have been. You see, we’d written the will so that there didn’t have to be an estate; everything was supposed to flow to (or through) me. But we forgot a few things. And now it appears I do have to set up an estate. Bleh. Yeah, I know, the struggles of the privileged. It’s still painful.

I started this musing by noting that the past month has been complicated. It has been. I’ve also been happy, sad, heartbroken, proud, depressed, and more. I’ve struggled. But I’ll keep working on a path forward. There’s no other direction to go.

Postscript: To our couple friends (and others): Don’t worry about talking about your trips in front of me; I like hearing your plans and sharing in your joy and anticipation. And I don’t usually fall apart after hearing your plans. This was the first (and, I hope, only) time.

[1] Okay, I mostly muse about myself, or at least my reactions to the loss. But I do so in tribute to her.

[2] I don’t seem to be able to avoid alliteration that actively annoys anybody.

[3] Ah, the privileges of sabbatical.

Version 1.0 of 2025-09-16.