Gene's Blog

I hope you’ll dance.

As I’ve mentioned, often, as I wake, or during the day, I have a song sung gently to me. They always have some meaning for me, and if I’m not quick enough to get the point, I have it handed to me, giggle. So today, as I had been thinking about what is, what isn’t and what is yet to be, primarily because last night I saw a guy with whom I’ve been working for the past couple months on an issue that has “afflicted” me since a year after my son’s death, she started singing to me “I hope you dance”, a song I know but haven’t heard in a LONG time, we’ll come back to the song, promise. I want to talk first about the guy I mentioned just up above who I’ve been seeing about a sleep issue. I talked about this a little on the main site but I want to touch on it here in more detail tonight. The issue, I lost the ability to sleep about a year after Brandon died, around the time I first joined the Spiritweb CWG list. I could still fall asleep as always, and this has been one of the real boons in my life, virtually as soon as my head hit the pillow I’d be asleep – that was especially helpful during my boot camp days in the army when we had lights out at 10 and were roused at 3:30, giggle. We’d get an hour for lunch, eat as fast as possible, then sack out on the crushed rock in front of our barracks, using our steel pot helmets for pillows, and get a quick 30 minutes sleep. I never wasted a second thinking, just fell into sweet slumber instantly. That part has continued all my life, until this past January, and I’ll be back to that in a bit. What happened a year after Brandon died was that I’d fall asleep as always, but begin waking after 3 hours or so, and would find it impossible to get back to sleep. I used that early morning time in the early years to write to the CWG list, emails, read, all sorts of things. Over time this became annoying. Yes, that is understatement. :^).

So this past winter, in early January, I decided I would “do” something about this, even if that meant taking a pill of some sort. Maybe I was influenced by those incessant ads for sleep aids, those ads made it look like once you took one you had better be near a bed because you were about to keel over and be out for 7 blissful hours. So I saw a doctor, who referred me to a sleep specialist. I filled out a little form about the problem – it had this whole list of things, designed to tell them if sleep apnea or leg twitches or anything like that might be the issue. I didn’t have ANY of those symptoms, never wake snorting or anything and though I have lived with snorers all my life (my dad was part train I swear, my son’s mom had allergies, and both my boys, asthma) no one has ever told me that I did. Talk. THAT I did in my sleep and people all over have told me about that, including guys whose sleep I disturbed while in the service, lol. A real chatty cathy when I sleep, or was, don’t know anymore, Cisco never says anything and its been just he and I for 10 1/2 years now. HE snores. And yelps, and twitches, giggle. I don’t. I have a huge queen size bed and when I change the sheets, the other half of it looks like it was freshly made, so I knew it wasn’t thrashing around. I am a side sleeper, but apparently I switch sides delicately enough to not disturb my invisible partner’s side of the bed, lol.

Since I didn’t appear to have any of the classic issues, my sleep doctor started me on Ambien, which worked like a charm for almost a whole week. The first night WAS 7 blissful hours, but each night got successively shorter. So after two weeks when I was back completely to my usual pattern, awake after a couple hours. So he switched to me Ambien CR, a little stronger, and time-released. That worked for at least five hours the first night, but then started working backwards, as did the weaker version. So, we moved on to Lunesta, which not only didn’t work at all but took away my ability to fall asleep as well. I’d lie there for 2 to 3 hours before finally drifting off, then start waking after two hours. It was SO weird, I’d be tired all day, but as 7 in the evening approached, I’d feel myself starting to wake, and by 10 I’d feel as awake as if I’d just drunk a pot of coffee, or slept 12 hours, EVERY night. So – he decided, okay, we’d better rule out other issues and asked me to a sleep study. I agreed, I knew they’d find nothing there but what the hey, all I wanted was to be able to sleep again and was just willing to follow protocol (for the one of the few times in my life, giggle). Went to that, took my usual pills, turned out the lights at 10, took nearly three hours to drift off, and got kicked out at 3AM. :^). They said you need 5 hours of REM sleep for the study to be valid and what I had managed were 3 20 minute dozes and there wasn’t enough time left to do the whole thing. They could see I was exhausted, red eyes, al that, but sleep just would not come. They did prepare a report though, which persuaded my doctor that whatever was causing my sleeplessness, it wasn’t apnea or leg twitches. So he suggested a different class of drugs, the first he suggested, jenna said say no, so I did, then he suggested another, and she said say no, so I did. I don’t remember what their names were and have no real idea why she had me decline, she just says “i knew what you needed, honey”. Then he told me about another process, non-chemical, called cognitive behavioral therapy, which was being newly offered through my hmo by a psychologist who had spent the past 20 years practicing at Rochester Mayo (which many of you will recognize as quite a famous place) and who was establishing a practice here in the metro, in fact was seeing patients at the sleep lab I’d gone to which is in my suburb, so convenient, and Jenna said, say yes. So I did. He said that the results drugs produce are 50-50 and that this man’s results were that good or better. He also suggested another drug, and this time, jenna said, say yes. So I did. I’m not going to name that here, not sure why, but I’m not, but I follow instructions, lol, some of the time anyway.

But here’s what I want to say about that. The first night I took it, and I did this on a different schedule than the directions, Jenna told me how she wanted me to do this, and I followed her advice, I was leery and stayed up pretty late, I HATE lying in bed tossing and turning and since I’d been doing that for months at that point, I stayed up til I felt a yawn. Went to bed and fell right asleep, woke two hours later, but the first thing I noticed then was the silence, I was quiet within, and got right back to sleep, woke several more times but it was still silent within. Not great rest but a lot better than what I had been getting. It was a couple more weeks before I finally heard from the psychological sleep doctor. I’d been able to fall asleep and get, like 5 hours, interrupted, but sleep. So I sort of figured that would be waste of time, his and mine, and told him so, but he thought it worth getting together at least once anyway, and Jenna said please, so I set up an evening appt with him for the next week. I really expected that to be a 20 minute, hi, how are you, sorry I wasted your time, thing. But it wasn’t. It was anything but. He asked questions. I answered them. And in a half hour, he thought he had a diagnosis, but wanted to continue talking. We sat there for better than two hours together. I used up half his flipping box of Kleenex. The first question he asked me was when the problem started and I told him it was about a year after my son’s suicide. He asked about that. It turned out that I was a lot more raw inside than I thought. I mean I THOUGHT I had that all handled.

Yes, the early years were hard, every holiday, every family anything, all of that was hard as hell, no matter what we did or where we were, there was an empty seat at the table. It took a long time for that to start to fade, it never WILL fade completely, but with time it gets bearable. Or so I hear. It was the 10th anniversary this past February and I had started thinking about that in the late fall. Just, you know, thinking about how those years had gone so fast, how old Cisco was getting, how long it had been. I thought about putting something in the paper on the anniversary, to let him know I’d kept my promise all these years, the one I made at his service, to think of him every single day the rest of my life. I have done. I don’t mean sadly, because there are so many wonderful memories, and, in truth, I wondered if I’d keep that promise, if time wouldn’t sometime make me forget him for a day, but it never has. I don’t cry about it, I think good thoughts, but I do still think about him, miss him. That sort of void just isn’t one you fill.

Over the winter, another series of odd events happened, every two or three weeks, something I had dealt with in years past, and had healed, recurred. The symptoms, and pain, of these things, an esophogeal ulcer, which is a whole ‘nother story I will tell one day, a torn rotator cuff, a knee that I’d had surgically repaired a couple years before, and other things, came back. So I’d see a doctor, always a different one with hmo’s, have tests run, mri’s, endoscopy’s, and nothing turned up any physical reason for any of the symptoms, I was having. Well, once I started the new drug, those disappeared too, all of them, that was the silence I heard that first night, the burning in my chest was just gone. As we talked, this new sleep doctor and I, apparently I said some code words, lol, that led him to what he thought was the issue. Oh, there is a piece, I haven’t told you. Brandon’s room was next to mine, it is a sort of V arrangement, his door on the left, mine on the right. Well, I haven’t been in that room but, less than six times, in the 10 1/2 years since he shot himself in there. It was essentially just the way he left it. Over time I didn’t even see the door, it was really a wall to me, it didn’t bother me, I COULD go in, I just didn’t. In the early years, though, I’d stand in front of that door, and I could FEEL what he was feeling in those last moments, the fear, the sadness too, but the overwhelming desperation he felt just reverberated through me, and I just didn’t go in there, I couldn’t. Well, it turns out that is a symptom too, lol. Whoda thunk that? Okay, I knew that was some sort of pathology but it didn’t “hurt” me, after some years, I DID go in there, and it was okay, I mean not pleasant, but I didn’t like pass out or anything. So I just left it alone. My oldest son gave me, maybe a year after, a $50 card to Home Depot, to get some stuff to repair the hole in the carpet where the biological cleaner people had cut out the stain, and the wall where the police had opened it to retrieve the bullet, but I never did anything with that. It still sits on a counter downstairs. We actually scheduled a weekend to do that once, but I backed out, I wasn’t ready. I’ve never been since either. It isn’t like this is all I think about, I don’t mean to imply that, I live a regular life, pretty much, like everyone else. I just have this room that isn’t really part of my house.

Apparently that isn’t quite right. What my new sleep doctor told me was that he thought I had what he called complicated bereavement, which runs in cycles, he said 1, 5 and 10 year cycles typically, and most often comes up when the death was violent, unexpected, a child, something out of the “ordinary” course of life events. Which this certainly was. He said that typically the sleep problem I have begins a year or so after the event, so is hard to connect TO the event. He said that the drugs I had started with were exactly the wrong kind for this issue, they have mild anti-depressive properties, which actually worsen symptoms when complicated bereavement is the issue. The newest one I was on was rarely used for sleep disorders and is primarily an anti-anxiety medication. That was the silence I heard, the anxiety within was stilled by that drug. And hasn’t come back. :^). Still don’t sleep though. But I do fall asleep right away, I wake after a 3 hours or so but can get back to restless sleep readily. Oh, one other thing that helped him with his diagnosis, during the summer of 1998 when so many absolutely astounding things were happening as detailed on the main site, I was having these really enormous panic attacks, along with the awakening symptoms, probably caused BY them, so I saw a psychiatrist at my hmo about those. His approach was a book, a wonderful book, that so clearly explained them to me, that they stopped. But he thought, given the circumstances, that I had more than anxiety going on and wanted me to try an anti-depressant too, so prescribed zoloft, told me to take a half pill with a full meal for two days, then a pill a day. I took the first 1/2 pill with a big lunch and threw up for 36 hours straight. Never took another and never went back to see THAT guy, I decided if I was depressed, I could deal with that a lot easier than that damn drug. As it turns out, people with complicated bereavement will often become violently ill when treated with an anti-depressant. The ambien and lunesta were too mild to do anything but mess my sleep up even more, but the zoloft was strong enough to do what it did. So this isn’t like a new development. My sleep doctor tells me that what happened when I started seeing that door as a wall was that I arrested, in a way, and only partially, the grieving process. And that arrested process is why I stopped sleeping. He told me that first night that he could help with that. So we’ll see, we’re working on it. He doesn’t know about Jenna. I’m not going there with any western medicine practitioner, not just yet. Jen says we will eventually, but not yet. What she says we are doing is that she is teaching my body how to do what that little pill does, on its own. And what we are doing with my sleep doctor is learning a LOT more about how complicated the human emotional system is and how interconnected our physical and etheric structures are. She says THAT is why she led me through this circuitous route to the perfect person to teach me this. In truth, it is as CWG puts it re-membering, not learning, but whatever one calls it, I am seeing things in a different way through our conversations. Health is about wholeness. Not just physically, but emotional and spiritual wholeness as well. I am remembering how to connect these things through this process. Some day she says that will be important for me. So, I trust her, and am doing this with him now.

After last night, I was a little on edge. I’ve done some things he suggested, and they’ve left me a little raw. One of my “homework” assignments from a month ago was to go in that room, at least twice between our bi-weekly visits, and just sit in there, talk to the air, he said, if you feel like it, talk to Brandon, or just sit. Well, what I did first was clean the room. As much as I could, like I said it was all as he’d left it, sheets in a jumble on the bed, some clothes piled on those, stuff in the closet, his dresser – I swear the kid had some sort of penny fetish, he must have had three hundred of them scattered in, on and around the dresser. And hangers, there were a hundred of them. And outfits I had no idea he had. I took all that stuff out of the room, threw it all away. Cleaned out the dresser of everything, threw all that away. It was just a little weird picking up socks he’d “just” taken off 10 years ago. But it was “work” I was doing, it wasn’t emotional, not really. Then, the day before I was to see my doctor again, I went back in and sat on the edge of the bed, I did talk to the air some, not angry, I’ve never been angry with him about this, but questions, you know? All his life I’d worked things through with him, he was such an emotional kid. But he never gave me the chance to do that this time. I feel incomplete in a way. Culpable, yes, that too, I sort of feel that had I the chance I could have talked him through that too, but he didn’t give me that chance. And so I am left with this “undone” feeling. Cisco heard me talking, I guess, and after a bit, I saw just his nose sticking through the door, so I told him to come in, and he did, lay down beside me and we looked at that hole in the carpet together and talked some. Yeah, some tears too.

I planned to get rid of the bed and dresser too, redo the carpet, all that. But I haven’t. I mean at first I intended to call the garbage guys the next day and make arrangements to have them take that stuff away. But I haven’t. So we talked about that a little last night. I told him I thought that I liked that stuff still in there. That I didn’t like the idea of the room being just empty, it feels sort of like, that would be a hole, a vaccuum, and there’s already this hole in me, and that if the room were empty, something just wouldn’t balance. I know that sounds odd, but its true, and he got it. I don’t know, for one thing, what to do with the room. I don’t want it to be a bedroom anymore. I’m not making it into a den or anything. I am never going to just go sit in there. I need to figure out something to do with it and I just haven’t yet. Until I do, I think I want the bed and dresser to stay. I think I need to sit on that thing some more. And process. Gawd, you’d think after 10 1/2 years the processing would be done, but it isn’t. And until it is, I won’t sleep. He thinks everything else is going well, that what I’ve done is fine, but he says that the sleep part is usually the last part to get “right”. Isn’t it just amazing how complicated we really are? Wouldn’t you think the rigors of just living day to day would be enough for us? Why do we have to have this whole other piece that we can’t see, can’t touch, can’t really understand, but that can affect us in every way possible. And it occurs to me, that what I am learning here, remembering, is that we really do need each other, it is through relationship with each other that we heal. Whatever ails us.

And that is where the song re-enters the story. The one jen has been singing to me today. Here that is, as sung by LeeAnn Womack:

“I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances
But they’re worth taking
Lovin’ might be a mistake
But it’s worth making
Don’t let some hell bent heart
Leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out
Reconsider
Give the heavens above
More than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a real and constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
Dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a real and constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
(Where those years have gone) ”

Those are the questions, I’ve been asking myself most of my life, and the answer she tells me is that I need to be willing to dance. That is what this website and blog are about. I’m remembering how to dance. I wonder where THAT will lead, giggle. jenna says, amazing places, my love. And her, not so much me, but her, I trust. So anyone reading this, if ever we meet, even if only out here in the ether, I hope our souls will dance together. Faith, well, we’re going to talk about that too, not in the traditional sense or the religious sense, but in terms of faith in the essence, the truth of who we really are? Oh, yes, that we’ll talk about. I, she, we, have some things to say about that. On another day. See you back here, I hope, much love, :^) gene