I Come Out of the Closet!

Since Hal died I have been a bit more vocal in my agnosticism.  Hal was a defense contractor, which meant that his coworkers and employers tended to be very conservative in their views, and I was concerned about how my nonbelief might affect his job.

When my friend Cindy was in the hospital, I began to have a real problem with staying politely silent around theists.  Although it was determined that her brain had been too badly damaged for her to survive her heart attack, her family and friends prayed fervently for a miracle for almost 2 weeks.  I kept up the vigil with her husband for the first week, until the Jewish sabbath arrived, then suddenly felt very much the outsider.  One woman even made the accusation that my agnosticism was generating bad “vibes” that was preventing Cindy from getting better.  I slunk away before sunset and afterward only went to the hospital when asked.

Earlier this month I began writing a column about brights for examiner.com.  For those readers who don’t know what a bright is, you can learn all about us on Brights’ Net.  I share my columns on Facebook for any of my contacts to see.  Doing this got me thinking about some other writing I’ve been doing lately–keeping this blog.

Since moving, when I’ve felt more isolated than I have since Hal died, and when I’ve been more depressed than in the first weeks after his death, I’ve asked myself how I can get some help and support short of driving myself to a hospital and asking to be admitted.  The problem, I realized, is that I hate to let people know that I’m not doing okay.  I can’t afford to keep up this pretense or I fear that I will end up in a dark place I can’t return from.

So I started letting people know that I’ve been having a difficult time of it since moving.  The other night I screwed up my courage and attached this blog to my Facebook.  That brings me to why I’m making this post now–I mentioned on my Facebook that I feel guilty for not feeling worse yesterday, which would have been my 26th anniversary had Hal not died.  A friend asked why I should feel guilty, which prompted a short discussion about guilt and grief before I decided to cover it at length here.

I feel a lot of guilt about Hal and his death.  I know that I shouldn’t feel guilty about a lot of it–I didn’t give him cancer, and I did my best for him while he was sick–but I do nonetheless.  I feel guilty about not making the doctor’s appointment sooner when he started to complain about heartburn (although he didn’t start to have heartburn until the tumor was very large).  I feel guilty about eating in front of him after his surgery, when he could only have a couple of tablespoons of food at a time (although he said he didn’t mind).  I feel guilty about being repulsed when his skin started sloughing off.  And I feel guilty about every cross or impatient word I ever said to him, every TV show he never got to watch because I wanted to watch something else, every gift I gave him that he wasn’t thrilled with, every time I said no to sex. . . .basically I feel guilty about every single thing I ever did that made his life less than blissful.

None of this compares, though, to my guilt over the chocolate pudding incident.  I can’t think about it without breaking into tears; I’ll never be able to speak about it, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself for it.

It happened on Monday, September 24, 2007, four days before Hal died.  He asked me to make him a bowl of chocolate pudding.  The pudding he wanted was a German brand, requiring me to stand at the stove, constantly stirring the milk so it wouldn’t scorch, and to measure out and add sugar according to instructions that were written in German.   I was very tired that night from caring for Hal (he was too weak to walk by then) and in preparing to go to Texas for my mother’s funeral.  My feet and knees ached, and I just wanted to lie in the recliner and rest.  His sister was arriving on Wednesday, so I asked him to wait until she could make pudding for him.

Hal never got his pudding.  I haven’t eaten pudding since and never will, I suspect.  Even seeing pudding on the shelf at the grocery store makes me want to cry, and as I write about it I’m sobbing.

So here it is, Paul.  Here’s my guilt.  There’s some that I don’t deserve and some that I do.  There’s guilt I will eventually overcome and some that I will never get over.  Here it is, out in the open, out of closet along with my agnosticism, my grief, my depression, my fear and my hopelessness.

Not to worry, though.  There’s still a couple of things that are still safely in the closet, in dusty boxes way in the back, where it’s nice and dark.  Everyone needs a couple of secrets, right?