Sometimes Terribly Sad, But Not Depressed

Responding to the question “How are you doing?”

I said in my first post that my emotional journey since Julie died reminds me of riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Trail. In a single day, I travel from low valleys of grief to high passes full of beauty and light. Given my summer of travel by mountain bike and by boat, it’s fitting that my other favorite metaphor for my mood is waves on the water. Every day, I am struck by waves of grief. The exact period and the amplitude are unpredictable but the waves arise and break over me every day. The heartache is not a metaphor. It is a visceral feeling in my chest as grief washes over me.

The waves crest and break and then it’s calm. I move on and attend to living my life. Sometimes a big wave knocks me over and drives my face into the sand. Other times they splash against me but I remain standing and appreciate the power and the grace of wading in the sea of life.

One wave that knocked me over was this picture.

On April 4th, granddaughter Lucy had an MRI to diagnose what turned out to be a benign mass on her thigh under her buttock. Margot sent the picture to let me know that Lucy had come through the diagnostic procedure well and would wake up soon. Seeing it made me weep. It brought to mind all of the times Julie had IVs in her arm, her vulnerability, the anxiety I felt, and the tension of waiting for test results. To see precious Lucy in the same position broke me. Feelings I had held in during our visits to Fred Hutch came pouring out.

This big wave of grief was followed in a few hours by the story of Lucy’s resilience through her procedure. Parents do not accompany small children when they are put under general anesthetic so the doctor and nurse came out to greet Margot, Daniel, and Lucy. Lucy, age 2.75 years, said “I am going to go in with you and breathe into a balloon. Then I’m going to fall asleep. When I wake up, I’m going to have a popsicle, a lollipop, and a donut.” She then took the hand of the nurse and confidently walked off for her MRI. The nurse later told Margot that Lucy was unusually composed for a two-year old and had better social skills than her own four-year old.

My wave of intense grief was followed by delight and gratitude for a vital and precocious granddaughter. This is what I mean when I say that I’m sometimes terribly sad, but not depressed. After my mother died in 2001, I was actually depressed and that experience was quite different from what I feel now. For me, depression was an absence of feeling, an emotional flatness, with no relief from persistent low mood. In my 40s and 50s, I developed a toolkit for addressing my depressive episodes that started with simply acknowledging the problem and working to identify solutions that worked for me. Talk therapy, medications, mindfulness practice, and exercise all helped. Daily exercise outdoors is now the single most powerful tool to support my mental health. I supplement exercise with the other tools as I need them.

While I’m not depressed, my emotional state since Julie’s death is perhaps a first cousin to depression. One thing they have in common is that I sleep more than is normal for me. I now sleep nine hours at night instead of eight and almost never miss an afternoon nap. As memories of Julie arise during the day, my feelings of gratitude and grief deplete me. By the evening, I don’t have energy to watch dramas, nor am I in the mood for comedy. I can’t concentrate on reading books for very long so most often I listen to music. Peter McGarry asked for my favorite playlist in the comments on my post about the Kokopelli trip. It’s a collection of songs by the Tedeschi Trucks Band that I’ve listened to well over 100 times. They are a fabulous band that Julie and I were able to see play in Seattle in May of 2024. The music is now very familiar and soothing to me, yet I hear new things each time I listen. I make an effort to find and listen to new music too but I have kept returning to that playlist over the last year for the comfort it gives.

A big wave of grief hit during my visit to Seattle last week. I stayed with Burgess, Ksenia, and Emory for a week and started every morning by bouncing Emory on my lap for 30 minutes while his dad made coffee and fixed breakfast. They are a happy threesome and I was happy to be with them. Several days I had meetings at UW in the morning and then worked from our boat which is moored next to campus in Portage Bay. One afternoon it was warm and sunny and I had just come back from an hour-long workout on the standup paddle board. I sat in the cockpit of the boat and was overcome with missing Julie. We had spent so many happy hours together there and I was profoundly sad to be floating alone, without her, on a perfect sunny Seattle afternoon.

It's been three and a half months since Julie died and I don’t yet notice any change in the frequency or power of these episodes of intense grieving. I’ve been told that after a year, the period between waves lengthens, but the waves still break hard. I also have learned that each person experiences grief differently and at their own pace. Some small changes in me have emerged over time. Before it was unbearable for me to look at pictures of Julie and I had to change my phone to stop rotating photos of her. Now I can see them and tolerate the bitter and savor the sweet feelings that arise. I’m living day to day, riding the waves up and down, moving forward and discovering what’s next for me.