When the Well Runs Dry…

A Lyrical Lament

• My Husband is Anxious Most Mornings

• Out of Body, Out of Mind

• We Remember: Our Vows

• Actual Notes Found on Bill’s Phone

• We Write a Letter: to Andy who is Missing

• The Death of Miriam and the Madness of Moses

• We Pray

• This Morning

  

My Husband is Anxious Most Mornings

He wakes with a whimper and a

quick inhale of breath. I bristle. 

I look over and his face is scrunched, 

brows furrowed, his mouth 

slightly open in an 'o' - 

mummy-like as if to exhale a long ancient 

curse. Sometimes he sits on the edge 

of the bed and it shakes. 

He rubs the sharp hairs 

over his right eye, trying 

to get clearer reception. It's no use. 

I encourage him to breathe 

and feel his feet, assure him 

the feeling will pass. Or if I'm feeling 

particularly fatigued I just tell him to take a pill 

or go for a walk, or both.

I understand the strength it takes 

for him to wake up and do life. 

I understand the enormity 

of facing these paper dragons, 

but still I lay in bed and focus on my own 

breath, feel my contractions 

in my belly, the rising heat as I grab 

my phone and search for recipes 

or new open houses or see 

if the new Worldle is up yet.

His grandfather died in the state 

of dementia, so did his father, 

by way of Parkinsons. 

Sometimes when he's laying on the bed 

on his back, dead-like, I see 

the purple skin of his father.

But, it's too soon. 

I talk to him and I know he doesn't hear me. 

He pretends he does. He is good 

pretending  he is ok. And he's good 

pretending the world is ending. 

I know he is ok and 

I know the world is ending. 

The simultaneity 

of truths painfully bent. 

It's ok that everything is ending. 

I learned once that evolution would not be possible 

if things didn't die.

---

Out of Body, Out of Mind  (September 2023)

I thought I heard you breathing next to me. Then I woke up. 

The basic activity of the prefrontal cortex is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.¹

Andy’s mom says there are no good psychiatrists. 

Many authors have indicated an integral link between a person's will to live, personality, and the functions of the prefrontal cortex.

I use my phone to record you when you panic and you don’t notice. I need a witness. 

Cortisol is a steroid hormone that is produced by your 2 adrenal glands, which sit on top of each kidney. 

I called my sister on Saturday morning. My sister and I don’t agree on a lot, but we agree that we love you and that you are one of the special people and that there are times you just need your family.

When you are stressed, increased cortisol is released into your bloodstream. 

Andy texted you the night before he died. He said, “Hello Mr. Weber. I miss that beautiful bald head of yours. Please send my love to your lovely wife.”

Having the right cortisol balance is essential for your health, and producing too much or too little cortisol can cause health problems.

Andy walked out of the hospital in blue paper scrubs, no shoes, no phone after waiting 17 hours for a bed.  

Cortisol levels are highest in the morning. 

You have a terrible startle reflex. You say that you haven’t slept at all in three nights. “It’s too loud,” you cry. “These people are crazy.”

Your amygdala is a small part of your brain, but it has a big job. It’s a major processing center for emotions. 

When I come to visit you’re still in scrubs.  “Where are your clothes?” I ask. You don’t know. I tell the nurse that you have clothes and she says, “Oh” and takes them out of you locker to inspect them. When she lets me out she has a bag of your clothes ready for you. 

It also links your emotions to many other brain abilities, especially memories, learning and your senses. 

Andy died like Virginia Woolf. Only I don’t know if there were stones in his pockets. 

When it doesn’t work as it should, it can cause or contribute to disruptive feelings and symptoms.

You tell me the next day you’re still in scrubs. I talk to the nurse again. She's new. She doesn’t know what happened in the four feet from when I left and you were not given your clothes. She says, “He’s not very good at making his needs known.” 

Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one's thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity. 

Andy’s mom connected me with Dr. Tadros, a doctor that runs a Ketamine clinic. He said I should make friends with the social worker cause they will give me the most information while you are in the unit.  

The dissociative disorders that need professional treatment include dissociative amnesia, depersonalisation disorder and dissociative identity disorder.

They didn’t give you earplugs so you asked to sleep in the quiet room. 

Paranoia is the irrational and persistent feeling that people are ‘out to get you’.

These are the emojis most used on my phone right now; ❤️🤞😕🙏🏼📢😬🫶🥹😢👍🏼🥴😫😩😭🥲🔥😤🤮🍷

Treatment aims to reduce paranoia and other symptoms and improve the person’s ability to function.

I don’t know how to pay the bills without you. You have all the passwords. 

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions). 

When we were home your illness seemed like an indulgence and I said terrible things to you, things I know I will regret. But in the hospital, I see you and somehow feel like I’ve never seen you before.

To get rid of the thoughts, they feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions).

You told me today that you felt like “a crumb” and my heart crumbled.

In psychology, learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they stop trying.

Once I remember where you are I doze back to sleep, but then I have a quick dream that you come out in your blue scrubs to do the SNL opening monologue, but when you open your mouth nothing comes out, cause what’s actually funny right now? But yesterday Meg brought us a sandwich and said, “comedy is tragedy + distance.” So you must’ve said something funny, but I don't remember what it was.

---

We Remember: Our Vows (June 16, 2012)

I love you Bill and I love loving you. 

Because when you walk in a room your first instinct is to hug everyone. 

Because you laugh. 

Because you have soft eyes and a strong chin. 

Because you make me and our children feel safe. 

Because not a day goes by that you don't tell me how much you love

me and how beautiful I am.

I love you because you are good and worthy of so much love and I know if God gave you me, then he must think I'm pretty amazing too. 

And because I love you I want to spend my life trying to make you happy. 

I want to be present.   To hold your hand when our children graduate. To cry with you when they move away from home or get married. To take pictures of our grandchildren in your arms. To celebrate our adventures and see the world. 

But I also want to be engaged in the small things: to make dinner by you r side, to toast our friends, to dance with you in the living room after the kids go to sleep, to pay the bills, do the laundry, walk the dog, and sit on the deck with my feet in your lap and enjoy the night's breeze. 

I will pray with you and for you, I will ask your forgiveness and I will give you mine quickly and freely, and even on the most ordinary day I will kiss you and bask in God's grace, thankful that he has loved us so much that he made the miracle of us. 

Actual Notes Found on Bill’s Phone: 

• September 10, 2023 10:02am

Takes a lot of my time, but even more so puts a strain on my focus. 

• June 16, 2023 7:27pm 

Tiny Marc on my head.

• June 13, 2023 11:12am

Church of the wild

• April 1, 2023 11:21am

Garlic

Ginger

Cinnamon

Lemon/Lime

Heart and strain

• January 2, 2023 8:21pm

Branches of inner 

Sharon²

• February 7, 2022 10:23am

Smart Goals:

Locus of control

Positive thinking

Learned helplessness

Defense mechanism

Goal setting

Purpose in life

Boundaries

• January 25, 2022 11:31am 

Window of Tolerance

• January 17, 2022 11:38am

Two Truths and a Lie

Enjoy hiking and nature

Watch MASH repeats as a coping mechanism for anxiety

Take in Shakespeare plays for pleasure³

• June 15, 2012 7:08am

I love you because there is nothing else I desire or am capable of doing as beautifully, flawlessly and justly as loving you.

I love your joy filled beautiful soul, overflowing with understanding, kindness, unending adoration and caring for family and friends.

I love knowing you will always be there, my guiding light, my confidant, my soul mate.

I love your glowing beauty, both inside and out, felt by everyone around you.

I will live every day of my life loving you.  God's hand will guide us and bless us in this awe inspiring life journey.  Love is the end..

---

We Write a Letter: To Andy who is Missing

June 2, 2021⁴

Dear Andy,

I was going to write my blog post on inexplicable joy but then you went missing.

I was thinking of you the other day as I walked Lola. The music, my dog prancing down the sidewalk with curiosity and energy and the long awaited warmth of the sun made me want to dance. I thought to myself, “Dance! You are a 50 year old woman, no one sees you anyway.” I tried to convince myself, but my New England, Protestant self kept my joy under wraps and I walked with my heart doing only a slight and appropriate internal jig.

I thought of you because I knew you would have danced. But then you went missing and I stopped walking Lola.

I know these last two years have been the most painful of your life. I know the last in particular has been unbearable.  You have gone from someone who could dance with abandon, to someone who weeps with abandon. And yet, every time you wept they seemed tears of transformation, but as quickly as the tears would start they would stop, and in their place something less real. 

Like in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, I’m always surprised how fast Viola gets over the presumed death of her lost brother Sebastian and without any shows of grief jumps head first into romance. Laughter and grief. Lightness and Suffering. They seemed so incongruous.

You’ve been missing now for 12 days and been off your meds for as long, but I’m hopeful that means your grief has subsided a bit and you are in a happier, albeit manic, space. I picture you walking over a country club golf course, hospital scrubs, dirty socks and scruffy beard dancing like Puck through the forest. Or as Michael has hypothesized, as Edgar in Lear, covered in mud and taking on the personage of Poor Tom, biding your time till it’s safe to come out of hiding. Whichever Shakespearean play you have been transported to in the woods, I’m hoping there’s laughter and light there to balance the suffering of the last year.

Your sister posted the most beautiful reflection this morning about how to care for yourself in the midst of suffering. She referenced an interview with Pauline Boss, the psychologist who coined the term “ambiguous loss.” She says we as Americans want to fix things, to get past things, to heal. And yet, most times, Boss says, there is no closure. Instead, we learn to live with grief, and the most painful form of grief is that which comes with ambiguous loss. When a loved one is present physically but absent because of dementia. When a loved one doesn’t come home from war and is missing. When a loved one walks out of a hospital as they are awaiting a room in the Psychiatric unit. 

I wonder if your loss is also ambiguous which is why your grief cannot be contained?

Boss says when talking with someone going through ambiguous loss there are only a few things to say:

• How long has it been?

• What does this mean to you?

• I’m so very sorry.

I want you to hear this Andy… your life has much grief yes, but Joy too. As the Psalmist says, “Joy comes in the morning.” It doesn’t say that the grief is gone, but that joy comes along for the ride. And from the same Psalm “[G-d’s] favor is for a lifetime.” 

You’ve lived too long this last year without joy my dancing friend. I wonder if this is the nature of your illness, an inability to hold both at the same time - a difficulty with the both/and - instead an interminable cycle of dancing and weeping.

You texted Bill the night before you went to the hospital. “Hello Mr. Weber. I miss that beautiful bald head of yours. Please send my love to your lovely wife.” I re-read the text and smile often. I also re-read the last email I sent you a few weeks earlier; the last thing I told you, “I am so glad you are found. Praying you continue to be found over and over again. Sending all my love to you my dear and beautiful and pain-filled friend. - K”

Come back to us Sebastian, our lost brother. Come out of hiding dear Edgar. Dance over this way, playful Puck.

We love you so,   

Kelley

---

The Death of Miriam and the Madness of Moses

In the first month, the entire Israelite community entered the Zin desert and the people stayed at Kadesh. Miriam died and was buried there. Now there was no water for the community, and they assembled against Moses and Aaron. (Numbers 20:1-2)

How did she convince her parents 

to bring him into the world when 

Death was part of his promise? 

The young midwife/sister/mother 

saved him again at the river’s edge, 

hidden among the reeds and then 

unbidden at their mother’s breast.  

Later, heavy with burden and tongue, he trudges

cross the desert while she trumpets  

and dances in the round. Leading 

towards promises, God calls 

both the anxious and the bold.

When in the wilderness, do you shake the bushes

for snakes or come armed with tambourines?

We journey together, the deflated and the indefatigable;

and even though bitter water turns sweet, 

we remember its bite.

When I was young, I imagined terrible plagues 

and how I’d cross to the other side 

bruised but smiling. At any twinge 

I’d scan and ask, “What’s the worst?” 

and clearly answer, “eh, it’s not that bad.”   

But when Miriam’s well ran dry and Moses 

held the whole of the spring himself, God says to him

“We will cross this threshold with ease and 

a whispered Amen.” 

But compelled or crushed or confused, he does

a violence to himself as to the rock.

And yet water still comes, lest we forget

“I am the Lord, your healer.”

---

We Pray

Dear Andy, Saint of the flickering light,

Be with Bill. 

You, above all, understand the torment he is plagued by.

Stand beside him, dear friend.

Hold his trembling hand.

Lay your gentle head on his gentle shoulder and love him as I know you do.

Kiss away his tears and rock him to sleep.

Stay by his side and if a desperate thought comes, snatch it and crush it under foot before his eyes flutter open.

Stand guard. 

Hold the vigil of sleep for him tonight and every night he’s desperate for quiet.

Give him a gift from across the veil. 

Siphon the silence of the dead and drop the elixir in his ear. 

Maybe sing to him.  You have a beautiful voice. 

I miss you dear one. 

I ask all this in the name of the One who comforts us all in our torment, 

Amen. 

---

This Morning

He’s woken up five times throughout the night and panicked that he’s missing a meeting at work. I calmly assure him he can sleep. He doesn't have to go anywhere, just be here with me. Feel my heartbeat. Synch his breath with mine. 

Even long after he’s awake and conscious he still asks me what time it is, scared he’s about to miss his imaginary meeting. 

I place my hand on his forehead. 

“Do I have a fever?” He asks. 

“No,” I say. “I just want your brain to stop spinning.” 

“It won’t stop,” he says sleepily. 

“I know,” I say. 

I leave my hand on his head a moment longer.

---

August, 2023

1. In this first piece, everything in italic non-bolded text is pulled from definitions from the internet.

2. He was trying to remember The Banshees of Inisherin

3. This is the lie.

4. This is an edited version of a post I wrote in June 2021 before we knew Andy had died.