Creatures of Habit

Creatures of Habit?

One morning last week, one simple act showed me what a creature of habit I am. I’m sure most people can relate in one way or another, as many of us have morning routines. I get up, put on my sweats (Hey! I’m retired!), and test my fasting blood-glucose level because I’m a diabetic. Then I take my thyroid medication, I head to the kitchen for a small glass of lemon juice…two teaspoons of concentrated lemon juice in a half-glass of filtered water…just to get started. As the Keurig is busy making my first cup of coffee, I head back to my home office and turn on my PC (not my pc-ness…I am not very politically correct, but that’s just me) before I fetch my hot coffee.

After dunging out my email in-box and responding to various emails, which usually takes another two or three cups of coffee, I head back to the kitchen to prepare my brunch…read “late breakfast.” All those duties/tasks can be performed on auto-pilot as they don’t require much thinking. For that matter, either does breakfast. I know where almost everything is located in my refrigerator and I seldom look through everything because for me, easy is good. This is what spurred this writing.

There are two egg cartons side-by-side atop the shelf covering the right crisper drawer. One is for hard-boiled eggs and is labeled so in small printed letters, and the other is for raw eggs. Since the carton for raw eggs is always on the right side next to the refrigerator wall, I grabbed an egg from that one to make a ham and cheese omelet. I already had preheated the frying pan and had melted coconut oil awaiting my egg, when I tried to crack it…and crack it again. It cracked, but wouldn’t open to spill its contents into the hot pan. I took a closer look at the egg and found it to be hard-boiled instead of raw. Hmmm. I opened the refrigerator, looked at the egg cartons only to see that they had been switched. I guess Debbie switched them when she was refilling the cardboard carton from the plastic, two-dozen egg carrier she got from Costco. That explained it. It was time to change plans.

Since I didn’t want to waste the egg, I turned off the range and took the pan off the burner to cool, then shelled the egg. I put the grated cheese away and got two Babybel cheeses from the package in the refrigerator and a slice of ham I was going to use in my omelet. I sliced a banana into a bowl, covered it with Ezekiel 4:9 Golden Flax Sprouted Grain Crunchy Cereal, sprinkled a little coconut sugar on it and added coconut milk to it and sat down to a different-but-good breakfast.

It broke me out of my habitual routine.

So…what’s this got to do with anything else? I’m not saying that a habitual routine is necessarily a bad thing. It depends on the habit and the routine. When my wife of twenty-eight years died just over six years and two months ago, it was my morning ritual, my habitual routine, that helped me get out of bed every morning and helped me go through the motions of taking care of myself. Blood-glucose testing, taking medications, making coffee, turning on the PC, and sitting in the living room staring at the outside world while I drank my first…and sometimes second and third…cups of coffee before I made breakfast for myself, was what got me out of bed and kept me going, even after only four hours of sleep.

As my dear friend, sister and author of Brave in a New World:  A Guide to Grieving the Loss of a Spouse, Yvonne Broady recently wrote in her blog that every day for her was like the movie, Groundhog Day, waking up to relive the day before over and over and over again, repeating the same mindless routines, reliving the same mind-numbing pain and loneliness from the loss of her spouse, seeing constant reminders around the house of what used to be that would bring sudden tears, and feeling more alone than one could have ever known. It was that way for me, too. And for me, it was only my habitual routines that made me put one foot in front of the other and keep moving until I’d collapse from physical and emotional exhaustion, only to repeat it the following day, and for many days after that.

But as in the plot of Groundhog Day, though he was disappointed to keep awakening the following morning from trying to kill himself the day before, one day Bill Murray’s character stopped trying to kill himself and began to try to improve himself and to have some fun…to make the best of a bad situation. Similarly, one day I stopped praying that I would die in my sleep and began to take tiny steps to begin making the best of a bad situation, to begin living again in my new and different life, not as Bob and Lou, but as just Bob. It was a slow and oftentimes painful process, but I could slowly feel myself becoming a whole being again.

It was difficult to break some old habits because I had become emotionally or physically attached to them, or because I had become comfortable with them, as bad as they were. On June 12, 1980, I had my last drink of alcohol before I checked into a treatment facility for twenty-eight days. I couldn’t have done it alone. It saved my life though I lost almost all my old friends and a marriage. I began to live my life again, and this time without alcohol. Though it took two years of AA meetings every day and two to three over the weekends, I had broken a habitual and addictive routine by replacing it with another until I was finally free.

On March 17, 1990, I smoked my last cigarette after smoking three packs a day. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that the intense craving for a cigarette lasted for approximately two minutes and would then abate. Those cravings came five minutes apart the first couple of days, but I knew that I could withstand two minutes at a time. I did, and I did it “cold turkey.” Over the following weeks, the five minutes stretched to ten, then to fifteen, then to a half-hour, then an hour. In three weeks, the only time I craved a cigarette was after my morning coffee and then after dinner. In a little over a month, the cravings were gone. I began to live my life without cigarettes and broke another habitual and addictive routine.

Sometimes, I believe the sadness of grief can become habitual, too. I couldn’t help but feel sad as I grieved over the loss of my wife to cancer. The mind-numbing pain and loneliness, the sadness of seeing the constant reminders of a life that is no more, the guilt of wondering if I had done the best I could in caring for her, and the feeling of being left alone, of the isolation and emptiness, became a cloak I expected to wear every day. The days stretched into weeks, the weeks into months, and I often wondered if the months would stretch into years of never-ending pain. I wondered if I’d ever be happy again. Sometimes, if one doesn’t reach out for help, the sadness lasts a lifetime because when it is combined with guilt, it will transform into depression. I hurt and I was sad, and I didn’t want to become more depressed than I already was.

In doing some self-examination, I knew I wanted to be happy again but didn’t know how to change my situation. I decided to seek help through a bereavement group because I needed to be with people who understood and were experiencing the kind of grief I was. It was a big step for me for a several of reasons:  1) I thought I wasn’t strong enough to get through my grief by myself; 2) It was so far out of my comfort zone to show my grief; 3) I didn’t want to “get used to” grief as a way of life; 4) I didn’t know how to fight my grief though I was mired in it, so I thought I was weak; 5) I felt a need to be with others who understood how I felt; 6) I was close to the end of my rope.

It was a matter of my personal survival.

I had survived an adventurous childhood of riding cows through barbed-wire fences, sliding down the ninety-foot bank to the beach in front of grandma’s house in a gunny sack, falling out of more trees because of broken branches, crashing my face and my three-speed English racing bike at thirty-five miles per hour without a helmet on a gravel road, rheumatic fever, and later, getting tossed out of college, the death of a fiancée, Vietnam, a plane crash, alcoholism, a divorce, and losing my wife of twenty-eight years to brain tumors. I’d have taken a bullet for my wife, and I would have taken on her cancer if it meant she would live. But it was not meant to be and I didn’t know how to handle that. I had been able to fight everything else that happened to me, but I didn’t know how to fight her dying, so I prayed hard until the only thing I had left to look forward to was the beginning of my bereavement group.

I believe that first step away from my grief habit saved my life. Because of my grief, my loneliness and self-imposed isolation, I had begun to understand why some people who had lost their spouses committed suicide. I didn’t want to take my own life, but I understood why they did. Instead, I prayed every night that I would I die in my sleep so I wouldn’t have to face another day with all that pain and longing, because that’s all I had to look forward to…just like the movie, Groundhog Day.

Those bereavement group sessions helped show me ways to begin to cope with that grief, and showed me ways to begin to unburden myself of it. One of the things that stuck with me was the recommendation to journal my feelings. I had already begun to do that when I was caring for my wife almost two months before she died. I did it to keep a record of what it was like to care for her, what it was like to cope with losing a bit more of her every day, of what it was like to see what hope I had left for a miracle cure erode by the day, and to show my sons…her sons…how much I loved her and would have gladly taken that bullet…that illness…for her. I wrote and wrote and wrote some more. I wrote about every aspect of my grief from every conceivable angle.

I also began to push myself to be out in public more alone. I would even choose to shop at different stores because I finally realized that no one cared who I was. I was anonymous…I was almost invisible, non-descript. I was simply another shopper that no one paid any attention to. No one could see the hole through my heart and soul, no one could see my pain and aloneness because none of the other shoppers knew me. It was raw and scary at first, leaving my comfortable hermit zone, but my confidence grew as I wore my average guy disguise and no one could tell anything about me just from looking at me. Yes, occasionally a memory would leak from my eyes, but that got easier to control as time passed. The new habit became fake it until you make it, and it would last until I got home. The first few times I returned home after an outing, after I’d close and lock the front door behind me, I’d lean back against it or sit on the stairs to the main level and just weep. But at least I did it! I was breaking out of my habitual isolation. It got better day by day, week by week, until one day there were no more tears.

You may ask, what is this fake-it-until-you-make-it thing, and how does it work? Very simply, it is finding something to smile about and then smiling, wherever you are and however badly you may feel. You could be standing in the middle of Aisle 5 in your supermarket feeling the loneliest you’ve ever been because you’re shopping without the love of your life who just died, and you want to cry right there. Take a deep breath, and try to remember something that made you smile. Let the smile come to your face. Smile at a happy baby in a shopping cart pushed by his or her mother. Smile for no reason except to smile. Don’t let your face forget what it feels like. Acknowledge other people in the store. Smile at others who are shopping alone. Your smile may be the nicest thing that’s happened to another on that day. And they may even return your smile. You don’t have to be the happiest person on the planet to just smile. It’s a beginning, and it works.

As spring drew near and the weather began to improve, I forced myself to go outside more. I could see that my back yard needed attention, so I finally began to weed and prune the shrubs and trees, and I began to redo my little pond…for me. I began to do things for me now, and to think of myself as an individual instead of the abandoned half of what used to be a team. That ‘habit’ was one of the hardest ones to break, but my back yard and getting my hands dirty to get that yard to where I wanted it was therapy for me. I began to really enjoy working in my back yard because I could see the day-to-day changes I was making in it…and in myself. Because of this almost-instant gratification, I also began to notice the little things like the new sprouts of my trillium and day lilies, the first signs that spring…the season of renewal…was here. I began to notice the birds that were showing up in my back yard and was amazed at the variety of the species. Some of my old habits were changing into new ones, and better ones. They made me smile more, and I felt better than I had in months.

Change Can be Good or Bad; It’s What You Make of It

It did take a while for me to overhaul some of my old, dark, self-destructive, and isolationist thoughts and habits by replacing them with new, more outgoing, emotionally- and personality-stretching thoughts and habits. These new thoughts and habits got me out of a cycle of habitual grief and sadness, and away from depression. There was no magic pill that made it so, yet the whole lonely, painful journey became magical in itself with each realization that I was outgrowing my grief. I was healing. Though there was no magic pill, there was…and always will be…a magical ingredient. Time.

What’s so magical about Time? That ingredient is always part of every recipe for the destruction of individual or a collective of lives, places, things and civilizations…or their healing or building up. It is the one ingredient that allows the other ingredients to mix, to bind together, and to strengthen or weaken. The other ingredients in the recipe are what will determine what is destroyed or healed. Most of those other ingredients spring from the attitudes, feelings and beliefs of humans (except for natural catastrophes). In those of us who have lost a loved one or a spouse, grief is one of those feelings.

It’s a paradox, to me, that the best way to prolong grief is to try to avoid it by not acknowledging it or running from it, while the quickest and healthiest way through grief is to face it, acknowledge it, and experience it instead of avoiding it or running from it. I’ve had some experience at both. They both hurt like Hell. In past blogs, I equated grief to the darkness of night…the absence of light. Some people are afraid of the dark…and grief…so they try to avoid it or run from it. If one chases the sun to try to stay in the light, one will only get tired and scared that the darkness will overcome them and, eventually, it will. When it does, the fear and weariness from running and the time it took to try to avoid the grief, will cause one to huddle in the darkness to try to wait out the night or the grief itself. I believe this does the most damage to one’s self and eventually hurts the worst.

Conversely, if one turns and faces the darkness and walks into it, one has more of a chance to deal with that grief with more energy, heightened senses, and on one’s own terms, as frightened as one is. It’s still a scary and painful experience, but if one keeps walking through that night toward the new day, and though one may stumble and fall to one’s knees several times, one will navigate through the darkness of grief in less time. As I navigated that darkness myself, I remembered a quote by Charles Beard: “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” If you can see the stars, you are not truly alone. I was also told that if I clutch my pain tightly in my hands and then open my hands to let it go, my hands will then be open to receive something else…perhaps even a blessing of happiness. It was so difficult to remember all this. Sometimes the grief dulled the senses so much that I missed the opportunities for good things to happen to me. I prayed that wouldn’t happen to me too often.

On most occasions, time passes too quickly. The exception to this, when time seems to stand still, is when one is grieving. There is no magic pill that will make grief pass any quicker than it does. There are no shortcuts. It is work. It is painful, and it feels as though it will last forever. It is my personal experience, however, that grief will pass faster if it is faced and dealt with. It helped me to join a bereavement group to be with others who were experiencing the same kind of grief over the same type of loss. There is strength in numbers there. There is a kinship, a commonality among these people, no matter their race, creed, or social status. There is only loss and grief, and acceptance of what you are going through. There is no judgement, there is no right or wrong way to grieve because grief just is, and there is no timetable because everyone there knows how personal grief is. It can take weeks, months, or years to heal from grief. Yet, it is the passage of that time as well as a belief, a faith that the grief will ease, that will make it so. I also believe that a faith in God helps, too, because it is difficult enough to go through this alone. When I was away from my bereavement group, I spent a lot of time talking with God, both in anger and begging for patience and a respite from the pain of my loss. He is big enough to take it all, and kind enough to grant me the respite when I needed it. I promise that it does get better, the pain does subside, good memories will vastly outnumber the bad ones, and life will get better. With Time. Be patient with yourself.

Most facilitators of bereavement groups have also experienced that loss and are there to help guide those grieving, to bolster them, to help them express themselves, and to help break and keep the bereaved out of their habitual grief. They do understand the feelings of helplessness, anger, loss, loneliness, sadness, hurt, and grief. They are there to give back, or rather, to pay forward, the gentleness, the kindness, the acceptance, the affirmations, the patience, without time limits and without judgement that they received from the facilitators who preceded them. That is what I hope I’m doing now.