Do you ever have one of those weeks when you feel kind of .... off, for no particular reason? Maybe you feel a little anxious or eager or sad but you don't know why? They're like ghost feelings; they don't seem to go with what's going on in your life. I've been having a week like that. Not in a big way .... just fleeting wisps of feelings, a dream, fragments of conversations remembered or the memory of a hug. Misplaced nostalgia. An emotional phantom limb.
It's been there since Thanksgiving and getting stronger, although not intrusive. And then the other night I was engaged in one of those late-night, wine-soaked conversations with a good friend, and I found myself talking about .... well, what doesn't matter, but I thought, "Why am I talking about this now? I don't want to whack on this dead horse any more." So I drank another glass of wine and changed the subject. And then it struck me: an anniversary was coming up on December 1, today. Bleh.
I remember the first time I became aware of intrusive anniversary feelings. I was 24, my dad was 46, and he dropped dead of a heart attack one day at work. It was sudden; I didn't know he'd been sick and drinking lots of Alka Seltzer, his cure for everything. Nobody had mentioned he wasn't feeling well.
But I'd had a dream three weeks before. He died in the dream. It was awful, and I didn't know how I was going to bear it. I woke fully believing he was going to die. I wanted to call him and tell him to be careful. LtColEx talked me out of it. He said there was nothing wrong with my dad, and he'd just think I was crazy if I called him about a dream. He was right. So I didn't call, even though the dream still haunted me. My little dreams had come true before, but that didn't mean this one would. There was no reason to think Dad was going to die. It was ridiculous.
In fact, when a good friend of my parents called me at 1:00 pm that day, the conversation went like this.
Me: Hello.
Lila: Reticula, it's Lila.
Me: Hi, Lila. This is a surprise. What's going on?
Lila: I need to give you some bad news. It's your dad. He's had a heart attack.
Me: Oh, no! How is he? Is he at the hospital?
Lila: No, he .... honey, he didn't make it. He's gone.
Me: Oh, I get it. Not a nice joke. Put him on the phone. (My dad liked to play pranks, and it was lunchtime in Iowa. Surely the dream had simply foretold a joke.)
Lila: I can't. He's....he's really gone. It's not a joke.
Me: (getting angry) Tell Dad this isn't funny any more. I want to talk to him now.
Lila: You can't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You need to make arrangements to get home as soon as you can, and then you need to call your mom later. She needs you.
Me: Lila, I'm really not laughing. Tell Dad I want to talk to him. Now.
Lila: Is LtColEx there with you? Maybe I should talk to him.
Me: You're serious! Dad's really dead? He's dead?
Lila: Yes, honey. I'm sorry.
Me: OK, I'll call Mom in a little while. Thank you.
He was laying carpet with his best friend from high school when he died, which was just how he would have wanted to go, but not yet. God, not yet. He still had two kids at home. I was the oldest of five. It was the most traumatic event I'd experienced, and still is one of them. I grew up that late winter, a lot and fast. It was February 28.
The next year, my grandma died, the tiny woman in this photo. I was pregnant with Drake, and I flew home for her funeral. She had cancer, but she wouldn't let me come home while she was in the hospital. She said to wait until she got better and was back home. We buried her on February 28. My grandfather had died years before, not long before I was born. He died on February 28.
The next year as February dragged underway, I noticed I was feeling really fucking crazy. That's the only way to describe it. I was anxious, weepy, even scared. I had no reason to be. I couldn't seem to shake it, and it was getting worse as the month progressed. Finally, in the course of talking with my mom, my sister, and my brother, I realized we were all feeling that way. We were all going crazy. And then I understood what was happening: we were waiting for one of us to die.
It seems pretty obvious now, but I was young, and I didn't remember experiencing something like that before. Knowing what it was helped intellectually, but emotionally I was still braced for the call. Every time LtColEx left on a flight, I fretted--and that wasn't normal. I hated to hear the phone ring, and I jumped out of my skin if somebody came to the door; I was sure it would be two Air Force officers in their class A's, coming to give me bad news. Nothing bad happened.
The next year the craziness was there again, but not as intense. And the year after. Eventually February was only miserable because it's a miserable month, not because I was waiting for someone to die.
I've felt the phantom dread before on the anniversary of a bad accident and another time of extreme trauma--those were to be expected. But I've also felt them over much smaller events. I don't feel crazy this week, so I can only assume there are degrees of anniversary feelings. In the "literature," they're linked to post-traumatic stress disorder, but I'm not talking about PTSD now. I'm just talking about feeling a little bit out of balance, about a place or a person from the past popping up unexpectedly in my mind or in a conversation, about feeling nostalgia and regret at the mention of a certain movie or hearing a certain song or .... well, if you've ever experienced it, you understand.
I'm not sure why I've never noticed anniversary feelings about a happy event. Maybe I do, but those feelings aren't disturbing so I just accept them like a happy little gift from the Karma Fairy. Or maybe they're more obvious, like excitement about Christmas or the Crayola-scented feeling of dread and anticipation late in August when school always started starts. Those are so obvious, I'm not sure they count. The anniversary feelings, the phantom emotions, I'm talking about usually creep in over something that was traumatic or left unresolved.
Eh. I'm glad life is busy and I really don't have time to dwell. After today I expect the clock will chime the next hour, and the phantom will fade away quickly, dragging his chains behind him. I wish I weren't so sensitive to these time markers, especially this time. This should not warrant even one anniversary feeling.
I must have a an especially vivid calendar in my subconscious, because I wouldn't have noticed this one if not for how I've been feeling .... and the dream. And talking too much over one-too-many glasses of wine. If things had been different in this particular story, I probably wouldn't even have called it an anniversary. It would have been silly.
Tell me I'm not the only one this happens to. Do you ever notice you're feeling out of whack with your life? Can you trace it to an anniversary--a beginning or an ending, a special event? Does it help to know this is a phantom in your heart, not something that's happening now? Or do you indulge in a little grief for what might have been? Tell me some anniversary stories to take my mind off mine, and I'll tell you a different story tomorrow.
