Thursday, February 18, 2016

The Man Of My Dreams

I've been thinking about getting a TV projector to use in the back yard and I'm not really sure if the ones in my budget are good enough for use outdoors. I've been researching them for several days and I've figured out some of the key features that I'll need, but I'm still not feeling confident enough to actually make the purchase.

So last night in my dream Brian and I were in Best Buy and I was looking at the projectors they had to offer and thinking about how much I wanted to spend and doing all the fretting that I typically do when purchasing a product that I don't know enough about. Then I turned to Brian and said, "Why am I doing this? You pick one."

I've only recently started having dreams about Brian in which I don't question his presence. They just feel normal - like before. The first one I had, I remember hugging him and telling him "I can feel you, but I know you aren't here, because I cremated you. How can I feel you?" and answering myself with "who cares." I'm not sure what we did together for the rest of the dream, but it was just normal everyday stuff.

I have no idea if this is a part of grief and something that everyone goes through, but until that dream where I acknowledged that I didn't care about the logistics of his presence, any dream he was in seemed supernatural. Like he was a ghost and just there for a visit. These recent dreams feel more like nothing happened. He's just there, like he should be, and we just do normal stuff like shop for electronics at Best Buy.

What's even more interesting is that I don't mind when I wake up and it's over. With the supernatural dreams, I would be very upset to wake up and find that I wasn't in the dream anymore. With the new ones, when I wake up, I feel appreciative. It's like the dreams are a gift. Like I've been given a few more minutes of the life I had before Brian got sick and I'm grateful to remember what that feels like.







 

Monday, February 15, 2016

Relationships are a little weird for me right now

One of the things I'm struggling to get used to is the changes in my identity. I'm a widow. I'm the head of my household. I'm single. I'm independent. I'm strong (who knew?!). These things can be kind of confusing and sometimes I feel like I have to re-learn how to interact with other humans. 

I wanted to share a sample of German coffee with a co-worker, because I thought it was something he would enjoy. I put it in an air tight glass jar and in order to keep it in the dark, I put the jar in a recycled gift bag with red polka-dots. I had the matching red tissue paper handy and decided I'd go ahead and present it like a gift. The next day I asked what he thought of the flavor and we had a nice conversation about coffee snobbery. He seemed to make a point of sharing that his girlfriend appreciated good coffee too. I doubt that my co-worker mistook my kind gesture as a come on, but it's entirely possible and it's just something I've never had to consider before. 

As another example, I have a friend with whom I've had a million and one candid conversations on a variety of interesting, hypothetical and sometimes inappropriate topics. I've known this person for over a decade and for the first time ever, I felt the need to clarify that I'm not interested in romance. It probably wasn't necessary, but it felt like there might have been confusion about the nature and direction of the questions I had for him that day. 

And it's not just weirdness within existing relationships. I've met a new person who is interesting and with whom I have a quite few things in common. I'd like an opportunity to hang out and perhaps become friends, but because he's a man, I don't know how to go about it. I'm not in a place where I'd want to pursue a romantic relationship and I don't want to give the wrong impression. 

As time passes it also becomes increasingly awkward to know how to reveal the whole my-husband-got-sick-and-died-in-the-course-of-a-month-and-I've-been-devastated-ever-since element of my life to people who don't already know. I also don't know how to deal with the conversation that typically follows such a revelation. Keeping it to myself is a viable option for people with whom I expect to have limited interactions, but anyone who has to work with me or interact with me on a regular basis deserves a heads up.  

I'm also struggling to gauge how much I can get away with talking about Brian, our relationship, our stories, his death, my feelings and the grief process. I think if I were a 3rd party in this experience - a friend or co-worker, for example - I might be tired of it by now.  

I'm the first to admit that I'm not a very good person, and I think if it weren't happening directly to me, I'd be completely bored of the conversations. I can totally hear myself saying something like, "Oh lord, here we go again with the dead husband stories..." or something equally selfish and horrible. 

I am painfully aware of how taxing it must be on the people who have decided to stick through this with me. I don't want to be one-dimensional, but at the moment and for the foreseeable future, the experience of this loss is the first thing on my mind in all circumstances and so it's what I tend to talk about. 

I recognize that some of this is my own insecurity and inexperience with single adulthood and I have confidence that I'll get it worked out. In the meantime, if I accidentally flirt with you or your significant other, please disregard it. There's almost no chance it was intentional.


Brian telling what I'm sure was an entertaining story
at the Eastmark wine club event we hosted.