VIEW: The Six Tides of Grief

I remember holding Carolyn’s hand as the nurse confirmed Carolyn had taken her last breath and she was now dead. In that single instant I believe I felt shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance all at once. It was a tsunami. Since that moment there’ve been one or two true tsunamis of grief, but most have been waves. But even the waves contain elements of all six of the so-called “stages” of grief. Eight months later, I still find myself shocked, in denial, angry, then I’m bargaining, depressed and finally accepting. All at once and in the space of time it takes to pour a cup of coffee. (And yes, one full of clouds, too.)

….Arles. After that half-hour or more wait in Paris to purchase the mandatory seat reservation for the TGV high speed trains, I subsequently tried the online service on my rail planner app. I found it to be quite convenient, save for one wrinkle. The bar code where the car and seat assignments are embedded does not convey that information visually. You need a conductor to ping it with his device to find out. On this leg to Arles, I discovered how iffy it was relying on platform staff to perform this service.

The 10:34 to…

 …Toulouse. For starters, the scenery on the southerly swing from Bordeaux to Toulouse improved dramatically over the Paris to Bordeaux leg. Villages with medieval walls and fortresses on hills, broad, winding rivers and handsome, prosperous farmhouses swept past my window. At one point I felt this amazing smile form on my face, coming suddenly out of nowhere. This trainhopping idea was working perfectly, and I was loving every minute of it.

The 10:50 to…

…Bordeaux. There was, fortunately, nothing much to see out the window the entire way from Paris to Bordeaux. It was the kind of flat, brown and weathered green landscape that would have had Carolyn put away the camera and settle in for a good nap. For only a few dollars more, I’d bought a first class rail pass. The spacious, reclining seats would have been no match to beat Carolyn’s ability to fall asleep within the space of a single yawn.

When I decided to self-publish the journal I’d kept of the time Carolyn and I were first together in 1972, I gave all the real people fictional names. Carolyn’s became Danielle. She liked it. “Very French,” she told me. In these recent years, whenever we fell into conversation about that time in our lives, we called it “visiting Danielle.” In many aspects, from traveling alone to beginning again in Paris, this current trip carried a strong feeling of “visiting Danielle.”  

I’m about halfway between my first two solo European train adventures. A short four months ago, I was still struggling whether I could even conceive of traveling without my beloved traveling companion. With my second Eurail pass already in hand for a six week’s trip starting in March, I can foresee a point in late April when I’ll have completed The Year of Living Alone. (I capitalize only to highlight to myself that this will be the first year since I was twenty-five that I have actually lived by myself.)

 The French train trip began on a proletarian note. This was good, since Carolyn and I both knew flying as retirees would drop us down in priority on the standby list, and that our Business Class days were all probably behind us. I still got on the flight, and with an aisle seat, I retained unfettered access to the bathrooms. I also felt a greater sense of safety on this first trip without Carolyn: I watched as my seatmate carefully read the entire safety card tucked in the seatback, as we’d all been instructed to do, but that all except her had blissfully ignored doing. 

A reconversion to traditional Christianity as an adult, it comes as no surprise that C.S. Lewis’s otherwise insightful essay on grieving would be anchored, if not weighed down, in a religious context. Setting theology aside for those of us who’d prefer it that way in considering grief, Lewis scours his inner state of being following the death of his wife with the thoroughness of a surgeon cutting out a cancer. What he’s produced is a seventy-six page road map for negotiating oneself up from the depths of loss and grief.

A little less than two weeks to go, and the stand-by list continues to hold in my favor. Flying standby has its own contestant on The Price Is Right thrill and drama attached to it. But I’m making as much as I am about this trip because it’s not at all about getting away. It’s about heading to a place that is still unknown to me. It can’t be found on a map or listed on a train schedule. Yet, that’s the way I’m trying to get there. Like Hugh Conway in Lost Horizon. Except my Shangri-La was taken from me, and what I’m seeking is not something that could ever replace it. So what is it exactly that I’m looking for?

Since this first Christmas without Carolyn is a first rate train wreck, it’s appropriate I’m riding Amtrak’s Cascades line to Vancouver, BC. Upon boarding, I did stifle the impulse to ask the conductor to show me the emergency brake, just to prove to me he knew where it was.