Coming face-to-face with pain is part of the journey

I always wear shoes in my house, with its yards and yards of wood floors, but last night after dinner, I took them off. Sam, Eva and I were comparing shoe sizes after Stella and I finished our post-dinner dance party. I was wearing my springy, comfy black hightop trail runners (I’ve been breaking them in for the trails this spring and, eventually, for our trip to Wyoming in August). Sam said his feet were as big as mine (they are) and so I said, “Try these on and feel how springy and bouncy they are!” He put them on and ran around a while while I sat at the table.

When it was time to turn off the lights and head to bed, I ascended the stairs to the family room level with Sam to hit the lights up there. After all the lights were turned off and with Sam close behind me, I raced down the carpeted steps as I always do, except this time my sock-clad feet slipped off the third-from-the-bottom step and onto the second-from-the-bottom step. Finally, my ribcage landed hard on the bottom step.

After three hours of trying to sleep, neither two ibuprofen nor two naproxen alleviated the excruciating pain whenever I tried to shift my body. I woke Sam to ask him to go to the basement to wake Eva, who had come into town for a few days with Calli (who was spending the night out at a friend’s).

I briefly considered telling Eva to take me to Reston Hospital’s ER, so that I didn’t have to confront the demons that awaited me at Inova Fairfax Hospital. The last time I was at Inova’s ER was the night the ambulance took Chip there, after I had performed chest compressions on him on our back deck to keep him alive until the ambulance arrived. The severe pain instructed me to tell Eva to head to Fairfax rather than Reston since Inova is 5 minutes closer to our home.

As we approached the circle for patient drop-off, I wondered how what was to come inside would trigger me. When the night air bit at my skin the way it had that late-spring night of May 31, 2020, I predicted that I would be an emotional mess once inside the ER lobby where I had waited for news of Chip the night he was brought here. The sights and sounds of the ER last night were the same as they were the night Chip was admitted, but no tears came. The front desk worker asked if I’d ever been to Inova before. I hadn’t, except for the night Chip died, and the thought made me sad. Yet, no tears came.

My time in the ER, complete with a PET scan, an X-ray and plenty of interactions with hospital staff, brought memories of Chip’s hospital and ER visits up to the surface. What surprised me was how I was mostly okay with all the beeping machines, medical talk amongst staff and the other sick or injured people present. As I re-visited the memories, still no tears came. I had thoughts and visions of that night in May 2020, but taking deep breaths with each thought or image in my head prevented me from breaking down. I was able to give the registration worker my marital status without crying. When the doctor who examined me gave me the spirometer to be sure I breathe deeply despite my broken rib asked “Have you ever seen one of these before?,” I was able to tell him soberly, and without choking up, that I had seen my late-husband use one after his many surgeries.

On my trip to the restroom around 5:05 a.m., I spotted Room 15, the room where Chip spent his last hours alive and where I stayed with him so that he didn’t have to die alone. I paused long enough in front of the empty room to take two photos and to remember that horrible night. Confronting the reality of Room 15, that it is just a room where people go to be treated, to be healed or to die, seemed like the right thing to do in the moment. Despite coming face-to-face with the room where I lost Chip, no tears came.

After shuffling back to my gurney and struggling to get back onto it, the dam broke. The deep grief finally hit me, and tears flowed just as the doctor arrived to tell me that my rib was fractured. I think he assumed that I was crying from the pain of having to get back on the gurney. I felt no need to tell him why the tears were really falling. I think maybe three or six months ago I would have explained, but nearly ten months out from Chip’s death, I didn’t feel compelled to say anything. In the moment, I believed that to be progress.

All in all, I was able to manage the memories and my grief quite well while in the very place where Chip lived his last hours on earth. The ER brought back so many vivid and disturbing memories, but I did better than I thought I would. I suppose it makes sense considering where I am in my grief journey. I’ve been writing less sad poetry, and blogging less frequently about my grief. I haven’t made an entry in my Widow’s Journal in over 2 months. Sad songs still bring sad thoughts, but the tears don’t come. Reality reminds me every day that Chip is no longer here and that he’s never coming back, but I’ve got a solid grip on that reality.

Three days ago, I even told my wonderful grief counselor Cheryl that I felt okay, and that I didn’t need to take up any more of her precious time. We agreed that I had come so far since I began my journey with grief and that no longer needing to speak with her every other week was a good thing. She gently let me know that the month of May will be tough and that May 31 will be particularly difficult, but she felt confident that I had the skills and support system in place to get over that big hurdle just as I had all the other hurdles on my journey.

As Cheryl said at the end of our final call, my grief journey isn’t over. Grief will rear its head in unexpected moments and ways. She told me that grief will rise to the surface when I lose other loved ones. According to Cheryl, the future losses won’t be the same as my grief journey after losing Chip, but those journeys will have their own path and significance along my life’s adventure. The grief I experience from those future losses will be a process, too, just as it was when I had to accept Chip’s loss and allow him to be gone from my life but always remembered. To honor him, those I’ve lost before him and those who will be lost in the years ahead, I will continue to live my best life.

The Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa wrote “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” That grief quote hits home this weekend after experiencing my own physical pain from fracturing my rib and recalling the painful memories of Chip’s death at Inova Fairfax Hospital. From here forward, I will burn the pain up as fuel as I continue to live life for Chip and for all those who have gone before me.