Bounce

This is an essay about my own bout with grief.
It only pertains to my own experience.
I can’t speak of how other people process grief—it’s far too personal.
I can’t possibly speak of grief in general because it comes in every size and shape and color and weight. Probably smells and sounds different to some folks too.
I can only tell you my story.

For obvious reasons, I can’t and won’t get into any details that will violate anyone’s privacy.

Backstory

It all started on a dreary late February morning when my wife Takako died instantly from I guess it was an aneurysm.
(If you want to learn about us in detail, you can read it here free: https://nobogasawara.substack.com/p/still-life )

TLDR: Takako was 62, we’d been married for 35 years, I’d been nursing her back to health from schizophrenia over a dozen years—the last three of which were good ones in which she was chirpy, happy, and high as all hell from crazy-away meds—and then she died *finger-snap* just like that at our kitchen table just minutes after saying good morning to each other just like any other day.

PSA: Go hug your loved ones. Right now. I can wait.

I kinda knew she was gone while I was still dialing 911, but I kept up with CPR until the 911 operator told me to stop, and go leave the front door open for the first responders. They came and gave her CPR for like 40 minutes.
I didn’t know I had the authority to make them stop.
They don’t have the authority to ask me if they can stop.
It’s all kind of stupid and wasteful and frankly nightmarish when one ponders it, but I’m good about tuning that sort of thing out.

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Anyway, they mercifully got to stop when a supervisor lady contacted a doctor, who told them they could stop. She said, “Sorry,” and that was that.
She asked if I wanted to have her autopsied to determine the cause of death, but I said no, “She’s been through so much already. I’d rather you didn’t.”
I was surprised when she agreed with that.
And no one else followed up on that, either.
I heard somewhere that there’s a months-long backlog of autopsies to be conducted.
That seems to mean people just dropping dead like my wife comes as no surprise to the authorities.

What the hell aren’t we being told?

More sinisterly, I was thinking, “Sheesh, people can get away with poisoning their spouse.” But I never said that out loud.
Wouldn’t have been appropriate.

The girls (Lynn and Kei), and Kei’s BF Toshie came sometime after the first responders’d left. A couple people from the coroner’s service or something were sticking around, and I had to talk with them about this or that.

I wasn’t distraught or wailing or anything like that. Kinda mechanical, I guess, but together without any effort to keep it together.
I don’t flip out and get all hysterical in these sorts of situations.
If wailing and screaming and carrying on helps in the least bit, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it. But it doesn’t, so I don’t.
To me, it’s not dignified and seems like so much calculated and performative drauma. Seems narcissistic. But that’s me.
It’s illustrative of how I process and deal with crisis situations.
That may not be at all how other people deal.
And that’s fine. I’m not anyone capable of counselling someone else.
I’m just saying this is the way I am. It may be entirely irrelevant (but hopefully not harmful or hurtful) to you.

Around this time, a young lady from the police’s victim services arrived.
I was still engaged, so Lynn talked to her first.
VS lady introduces herself.
Lynn: “You’re with the police? Is my dad a suspect?”
…Yes, I know the husband is the primary suspect whenever a wife dies suddenly, but like really? Like, plant the seeds of suspicion? Way to throw your papa under the bus.
VS lady (laughing): “No, no, I visit the family whenever there’s a sudden death to make sure they’re okay mentally, and provide any support they may need.”
We chatted briefly, and she seemed satisfied that we weren’t about to lose our minds and do something stupid. She arranged to call us in about a week to check how we were holding up.

I guess it was a bit after lunch when they came and took my wife away.
She was still warm.

I don’t remember what we ate for lunch or dinner or what we did the rest of that day.
I think Lynn called a few places.
I honestly don’t remember very much.
I didn’t have trouble sleeping that night.
Or any night thereafter, really.
I haven’t been affected that way.
Though I hate that the bed is cold when I go to bed.
But I sleep well.

And that’s how the first day ended.

Dazed

It was all very strange and dreamlike for a while.
I have to look at photos from around that time to remember.
Lynn spoke with the authorities and got the paperwork started.
We’d have to get the death certificate and get those to wherever’s needed, like tax office, motor vehicle department, doctor’s, Japanese consulate, etc., etc. (Not even sure if all those places needed one, but those are the ones we thought of.)
She spoke with the coroner’s office, figured out where Takako was sent, and got in touch with the funeral home to get that ball rolling.
We decided to go with a small, family gathering since she had no family left in Japan and precious few friends after her her mental illness.
All that kind of stuff doesn’t take very much time, though.
There was a lot of just sitting around, me and the kids, for the first couple days, and then my brother Mark came from Japan with my son Kai in tow.
We were really somber and we’d cry here and there, but no one wailed or carried on.
We just…got on with things.
Just a day later—my birthday—we went grocery shopping. We had to, there’s suddenly a houseful of people who need to be fed.
I didn’t trust myself with driving, though.
I wasn’t all broken up, but I was kinda out of it.
Like, I’d have trouble finding things in plain sight. Stuff like keys, wallet, phone’d go missing right in front of my eyes. There was some sort of a cognitive disconnect.
I was still generally okay, though.
People came by with so much flowers, food, Uber Eats money, etc., etc.
We sure didn’t go hungry.
I gained around five pounds to climb back up to 86kg (190lbs) after I’d been forcing my weight down from a disastrous 92 (203) just four or five months before.
I’d get sad, but I thought I could ride it out.
I mean, I’m 62, it’s not as if losing my wife was my first brush with death and loss.

Because everybody’s lost somebody.

People like my grandma, who got eaten up by cancer.
A relative jumped into the path of a train.
My wife’s dad and stepmother went a year apart from each other with heart attacks when they were bathing.
A friend got run over by a car.
A friend blew their head off with a rifle when their parents rejected them when they came out.
A pair of guys I took to a concert in Tokyo killed themselves.
I’ve also grieved over pets.
I made it through those deaths, I’m sure I’ve got this too.
I told myself that, and that is what I said to the VS lady when she called me about week after.
VS lady: “Hi, Nobuyuki, how’s it going?”
Me: “Thanks! I’m doing okay. We’re all getting by. We’ve got a family-only service coming up in a couple days. My brother and son will attend, and then they’ll be heading back to Japan. The girls and Toshie—Kei’s BF—will be staying here for the time being. Oh, and just Nob, please.”
VS lady: “Okay, that’s good to hear. I’m glad you’re very close and supportive as a family. So, there’s no trouble? No fighting or excessive drinking?”
Me: “Nono, nothing of the sort. That would break Takako’s heart. Besides, I don’t drink a lick of alcohol.”
VS lady: “That’s great. Would you be interested in grief counseling services? I can put you in touch with groups that can help you with your grief.”
Me: “You know what? I think we’re good. We’ve been doing well. No one has trouble sleeping. We’re sad, of course, but I think we’re coping. We’ve all lost someone along the way. Besides, group counselling? What is that, like an AA meeting, ‘Hi, I’m Nob, and I lost my wife.’ I don’t think that’d be very useful for me. I need to work this out for myself.”

Famous last words.

Circling

The service was quite small. Just me, the girls (Lynn and Kei), Kei’s BF Toshie who quarantined with us, son Kai, bro Mark, bro Ken and his wife Diane, and buddy Bob and wife Tia.
It was somber and dignified.

For the next several months, I felt as though I was in a circling pattern.
Well, another one.
For the longest time, from when Takako was not yet sick and the kids still lived with us, I felt as though I was always waiting for the shoe to drop.
I had no idea what it was, but I’d always felt as though something huge—good or bad—was coming.
I didn’t lose that feeling when the kids moved out, or when Takako went bughouse, or when I called it quits on my career (that came two months before my wife’s death when my last client died of cancer).
When Takako died, that shoe finally dropped.
I knew then that I’d entered an entirely new phase of life.
…And promptly found myself in a new circling pattern trying to figure out what the hell happened to me, and what the hell is going to happen going forward.

What I did do right from the start was write about what I was going through on social media (you can find me under my name on X, BlueSky, and Facebook).
I later discovered that writing about it as a private diary is encouraged, but taking it to social media could have exposed myself to harm. But, aside from a few insensitive dolts, I received a huge amount of support.
Believe me, that outpouring of concern and caring and love helped keep me afloat in a really bad time.
As for the insensitive, they were more judgmental than outright mean.
Fair enough, but not helpful, block on sight.
I’ve been on social media long enough to not give a shit.
It’s about as useful as getting upset at the antics of your Animal Crossing neighbors.
From my social media postings, I got incredibly supportive and useful advice from folks who’d experienced loss and/or gone through bereavement counselling.
They helped steer me toward getting therapy, because I wasn’t having any of that initially.
One, I’m Japanese.
Two, I’m a guy.
Three, I’m old.
For all three, I’m expected to be stoic, man up, and deal.

Big boys don’t cry.

And, for most of my life, that worked out for me.
There’s probably a lot of baggage to unpack, but it worked well enough that I didn’t really concern myself with the notion.
I mean, I’m not against counselling, per se.
It seemed to be a good thing.
For other people.
But not for me.

Anyway, I wrote and continue to write about my day to day.
I’d like to think it helped me contextualize and understand.
Or maybe I was just wailing and carrying on through my writing.
Thankfully, people were overwhelmingly supportive.
Many even thanked me for helping them with their own things.
At least I think it helped me, seeing how I feel pretty much back to normal.

We decided we didn’t want a grave.
But we also thought it would be nice to have some sort of a memorial place we could visit. (Getting a bit ahead of the narrative, but having a memorial place for the deceased is considered a step toward overcoming grief.)
So, we bought a bench from the city and arranged to have it replace the crapped out one where she and the dog would first rest on their increasingly regular walks toward the end.
We also set a special space aside in the home with a little shrine.
I put up her photo and put out some snacks and tea (haphazardly—I’d better go change it right now) on the mantelpiece. I also had her ashes in a cardboard cylinder beside it, but thought it a bit too morbid for a party and took it upstairs.
(The kids were horrified to find the cylinder gone, “Where’s MOM?!”)

Kai and Mark went back to Japan a couple days after the service.
The girls and Toshie stayed with me.
For a couple months, they were here the whole time.
It was cool, but I also felt a bit cramped in terms of style and space.
I’m sure they did too.
But we put up with each other without much tears and no drama.
I’d like to think we were all mutually supportive in healing.
Eventually, the kids started spending less time here and returned to their 1-bedroom apartments a block away from each other about an hour away in Vancouver.
They’d still come over for weekend stays and holidays (like just this Christmas), and someone’s usually over on Sunday for a dinner.
What I’m saying is, I had and have a very tight-knit family that is loving and caring.
That’s vital for my well-being.

While Kai and Mark were still here, a friend of decades dropped by.
We played a game of crib.
They asked for another game, but I declined.
My heart wasn’t into it.
I also lost the enthusiasm for playing video games.
I was playing the night before she passed.
I don’t blame games for her dying, of course.
But my heart’s just not into it.
Since she passed, I’ve gotten into Pikmin Bloom, which rewards you for walking, though. But games from before, I dunno.
I don’t know if I want to. I know I’ll enjoy it.
I’m not even opposed to it.
But just…haven’t.
I’ve even bought a new TV since. It’s a big and bright 85”.
But I haven’t checked it out for gaming.
The kids’ve played Mario Kart and stuff like that.
I don’t mind.
I wonder if they’ve noticed I don’t play.

I got on with getting rid of her stuff.
A bunch of her clothes.
A dismaying amount of it was brand new.
I donated a ton to Diabetes Canada.
Her clothes didn’t affect me too much; I was more annoyed by the amount of money they represented.
Her shoes sure got me, though.
Her hiking shoes—which I’d gifted—she wore regularly when she finally started feeling well enough to go on neighborhood walks on her own with just the dog.
That was about her last year.
I was so proud of her for that.
I couldn’t stand the sight of them by the door just as if they were waiting to be worn.
I made sure to have them cremated with her.

There’s still a lot of her stuff to deal with, sheesh.

Around the same time, we finally got my mom and father in a care home.
But, predictably, that turned into a nightmare of Memento Mom wanting to go home (with idiot father winding her up out of his own desire to go home). Eventually, they had to be separated and Mom’s now in a long-term care home after a major meltdown at the first care home. Father is still there but also largely out of my hair now.
Having to deal with their home placement and subsequently selling their house sure did my mental state no favors.
When I got really down in the dumps, I quit and hucked all responsibility to the kids and Ken. I’m still only dealing superficially, like their finances.
I should step up more now that I’ve gotten it back together functionally.

Once the kids’ stays got less frequent, I fell into a dull routine of existence. Just keeping me and the dog fed properly, exercising, and walking with the dog a lot.
It was safe.
It was lukewarm.
I thought I was doing okay.

Toward the end of June, on what would’ve been our 36th anniversary, a couple ladies from high school called me up and dragged me out of the house to visit a couple local craft breweries.
We laughed it up reminiscing.
I guess I hadn’t laughed like that in a while.
They were like an explosion of vivid color to what had become a watercolor life.

Spiral

They hauled me out down to the local shoreline park for Canada Day celebrations.
We ended up in a packed beer garden where Trooper put on a show.
They had no original members, but they were guys the band picked up along the way and had the torch passed to them by the founding members, so genuine enough as legacy acts go.
I listened to them in high school, but I’ve long since moved on.
But, I amazed myself by knowing the words to sing along terribly to all but one of their radio-friendly CanCon hits.
The audience was into the friendly vibes, too.
Lots of older folks in lawnchairs rocking out to hits from the 70s for the 70s.
Seeing them be happy in the most natural of ways was eye-opening.
I hadn’t been unhappy, per se, but I also wasn’t happy at all.

And this got driven home when I attended another summer concert by a slick bar band doing covers of upbeat pop hits like “YMCA” and other radio jingles that make me reach for a bludgeon when they somehow end up on my radio.
People were having fun and enjoying themselves.
Because that was the natural thing to do.
And I hadn’t been doing any of that.

Around July, I noticed serious changes in my physical health.
Ever since Takako passed, my blood pressure tanked from around 130-80 down to 115-70.
My weight fell sharply from 86kg (190lbs) to as low as a shade below 71 (156).
I’m not a big guy at 5’8” (1.72m…but I think I’m shrinking), so that sharp weight loss shriveled me—my collar bones became so pronounced, I could’ve kept goldfish in the hollows they formed.
Both my doctor and I attributed those things to adopting a really great diet, better portion control, and exercising.
I think those lifestyle changes certainly played a part but I’m pretty certain now something else was going on.

After these events, I think I finally started to emerge from the dazed state.
Things started coming back into focus.
Reality made itself known.
I guess I was in sort of denial when I was dazed.
I accepted that Takako was gone without really understanding what that entailed.
Now I knew.
For me, it was a crushing sense of loss and desolate loneliness.
Not having my wife to hug and hold and delight and be delighted by and all that entails.
It really hit home when I heard “Wild Heart” by the Bleachers.
I fell in love with it instantly and thought, “She would’ve loved this, too.”
Then I realized I’d never be able to delight her with new music or dumb cat memes or ice cream or how to access a motherlode of cheesy Korean TV show or any of that ever again.
I think that’s when I really cried.
For the first time.
And that’s when everything went off the rails.

Crash

I have to take a step back and try to contextualize this period.
It’s all kinda jumbled up and hard to disentangle; not that I don’t want to talk about it.
So, I’ll look at it through the lens of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
This is all second-hand knowledge, but these five stages aren’t necessarily linear, and they’ll often overlap. I’m also not educated in these matters, so please forgive me if I get things wrong.

So, anyway, this would be when denial crumbles and hope dies with it.

Denial was the dazed autopilot phase when the kids were around.
We just went on with our everyday lives as if it were natural.
Mommy’s gone, that’s all, life goes on.
And that’s a form of denial, too.
Just as much as not accepting grief counselling right at the start. (Although I’m not sure if therapy would’ve been useful in our dazed state.)
Sure, we all understood she was gone, and we’d get sad and all that, but I don’t think we were able to really feel its awful weight until we weren’t able to deny it anymore.
But, denial and hope are strong, too.
It took me several more months to finally accept that Takako is truly, irrevocably, irrefutably fucking gone.
I had to see her memorial bench and her name on the metal plaque to finally get it.
I yelled at the sky when I saw.
That was the only time I did that.
No more denial, let acceptance begin.

The denial phase was ending near the middle of July, after Trooper and “YMCA.”
(The plaque thing comes a couple months later.)
One of the friends that dragged me off to these eye-openers begged me to seek grief counselling. (In retrospect, I’m pretty certain they’d have been crying. I’ve been so darn lucky I had a friend like them to see me through this awful period.)
Of course, me being macho old Japanese man, laughed off their entreaty.
”I’ve got this. Not my first rodeo.”
So, there’s that defiance and denial thing again.

Once reality came into sharper focus—no more denial of her death—depression would arrive in waves.
Nothing I could do about it; I’d just get pulled under, weighted down by the boulder in the throat. Those waves’d come out of nowhere, too.
It didn’t take much of anything to trigger intense sadness.
Songs. Her shoes. Her headphones. Her laptop (it was supposed to be mine. “Oh, this is nice! The screen is so big!”). Her things. The kids. People in the streets. Leaves on the sidewalk.
Anything, really.

My brain was in a crying mood.

This hyperemotionality marked the first several months after the dazed state.
This phase is where, for me, the stages of anger, bargaining, and depression all arrived together.

I’m going into total medical conjecture mode here.
I think I’m chemically imbalanced to begin with on the manic side; I’ve always been a generally upbeat and happy soul.
I think I’m the opposite of depressed people.
I can’t help being happy anymore than they can’t help being sad.
I think my brain reacted to the end of denial and feeling the trauma of loss by dumping fight-or-flight chemicals into the system.
They made me even more manic even while feeling the overwhelming weight of grief.
They made me extremely emotional.
Since I believe the mind and body are inseparable and impact upon each other as a whole being, it makes sense entirely that what happens to me mentally definitely manifests in physical ways.
Goo-goo g’joob.
Disordered sleep, irritability, upset stomach, nerve pain, hypertension, urination issues, headaches…I can think of any number of ways your brain can mess with the rest of the body. And vice-versa. (These are examples of what might happen. I really didn’t suffer physically very much.)
I’m also positive the screwed-up mental and physical feedback loop played havoc with my metabolism and/or hormonal balance so my weight dropped like a stone.
I couldn’t put on weight even eating garbage in large amounts.
Not that I recommend the crash grief diet to anyone.

Besides, there’s no telling how your mind and body’d react to grief.
Told you, this is a personal trip.

In this unhinged manic phase, I tried to rush into a relationship with a nice person who made it clear they weren’t into one, and of course I crashed and burned.
My fault entirely.
I feel terrible about it and there’s really no excusing it.
It happened.
I fucked up.
I don’t think it will happen again.
But when it happened, I felt unloved and unlovable.
It’s nuts, but that was where I was at.

Other things were in the mix, too.

I’d lost my sense of purpose.
I was a caregiver for so long, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I’d sure neglected my own health and happiness, but that’s what had to happen.
I’m not very angry about that, other than feeling a bit cheated. I still got some good years with her at the end, so that part of the equation works out well enough.
But I was suddenly freed.
That felt liberating, but also left me untethered.
And guilt came with it.
I know I could have been better a husband and care-giver.
I could have been less impatient.
I could have been less easy to anger.
I could have been more attentive.

I am so sorry, but I have no one to hear my contrition.

Around the end of summer, I felt awful.
I admitted defeat.
This grief thing was bigger than I could handle.
I needed help.
I reached out to the local bereavement counseling agency.
While waiting for them to get back to me, things just got weirder.
I had a couple minutes of intense dread when it felt like I was going to lose my mind when everything was really coalescing into technicolor bombardment of emotions and my weight absolutely bottomed right out.
But that was the absolute rock-bottom for me.

Grasping

While waiting for the agency to get back to me, I began doing my own research.
I’m a defiant guy.
I like to think I’m resourceful.
I don’t like feeling crappy.
That’s a problem to be solved.
And I solve problems.
Guys do that.
We’re wired to solve problems…or at least make a mess of it.

So, I started looking up online resources and watched some YouTube videos on how I could fight this amorphous blob of bad feelings.
They generally advised the same sort of thing.
Stuff like:
- Be patient and gentle with yourself.
- Keep your life as simple as possible.
- Allow yourself time and space to grieve.
- Develop rituals to facilitate the grieving.
- Allow yourself to set aside grieving sometimes.
- Seek support from safe people who will not judge you or tell you how to grieve.
- Accept that your life will feel surreal for a while.
- Have faith that grieving leads to healing and personal growth.

All pretty commonsense stuff, really.

But yeah, there’s nothing to be gained from beating yourself up.

Beating myself up over it won’t bring her back.
I stuck around when she got sick.
I nursed her back to health and happiness.
She died while she adored me as her hero.
The friend who begged me to seek counselling told me, “You absolutely did NOT fail her. You held her above the water at your own expense. You gave her her best final years.”
And daughter Lynn, “I still don’t know why you’re apologizing. Love her to bits but she was delulu.
“You brought her back to us.”
So, on a big-picture level, I think I can tell myself I did alright.

Nothing to regret.

Another friend told me, “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Your story would have ended the same way.”
That’s also true.
And that’s how I dealt with guilt and other unhelpful emotions associated with it, like anger.

Getting informed helped me get a grasp on channeling emotions.
I’d still get hit with waves of emotions, but it was turning more to sadness rather than the really awful feelings like anger and guilt.
Those really toxic emotions, I’m good at releasing.
They don’t help.
I can just shrug things off eventually.
Or maybe I’m just bottling them up inside.

Tick, tick, tick.

I also tried to channel emotions into feelings of gratitude for the people in my corner.
I’ve been incredibly blessed with circles of family, friends, and acquaintances—even the people who read me on social media.
I came to realize that so many people voicing their support for me were in pain, too. Sometimes far worse than me.
They helped keep me afloat, my head above the waves.

I don’t know where I would be without them.

Now, grief is a really powerful emotion—I tried to harness it as an energy to fuel my gratitude. If I’m going to cry anyway, I may as well put a happy spin on it.
When I’d feel a surge of sadness, I’d remind myself of the people helping me stay above the waves and how lucky I am to have them.
That made me cry a lot, but out of gratitude and happiness.
It sure does feel good to know I’m loved and people care about me.
It’s incredibly empowering and uplifting.

I don’t have any faith in any higher power, but I’d like to think there can be godliness in people that I can admire and cherish.
That’s worth crying over, no?

I should also mention that I found some online penfriends.
They’ve been wondrously patient and kind with advice and understanding.
Being able to express myself in words helped me contextualize my pain, too.
They continue to be important.
I’m lucky to have them, too.

Music became a refuge.
I played music when I wasn’t in bed.
I obsessed over the Bleachers.
I think I ended up listening to them cumulatively for like two weeks total on Spotify and was among the top 0.001% of their listeners last year. I’d only discovered them in July, too.
I don’t know if that’s healthy, but it kept the endorphins going.
I sure sang and danced a heck of a lot in my off-key, awky way.
It’s hard to feel blue when you’re using your body hard.
It’s good for ya, both body and soul, singing and dancing to your favorite songs.

For the same reason, I worked out and walked a lot.
For a while, I walked with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones on.
I needed the music when I was really messed up and thinking too much about things out of my control—which I usually won’t do—and forget about everything except finding strength in the depression-defiant power of the Bleachers and the majestic brilliance of the Stars.
But, as I got better, I took them off.
They’re too isolating.
I need to be unencumbered to be genial to the people I pass on the streets.

The upshot of all that physical activity and the weird wasting of muscle mass is that I got really wiry.
Add eating really clean (lots of produce, little carbs, little red meat, heavier on eggs and chicken, protein + creatine) and I got whip-thin and muscular for the first time ever.
That made me feel better about myself.
It helped me regain confidence.

Lifelines

Toward the end of August, after a wait of a couple weeks thereabouts, the local bereavement agency contacted me.
I spoke with a younger lady (well, they all are), maybe in her 30s, and she asked me about my situation.
And I spilled words and tears for like an hour?
It was kind of strange but freeing to just let everything out.
I think it was more centered on fear and uncertainty as to what was happening to me and what the future beheld.
This is still in my hyperemotional state, okay?
Not really capable of thinking all that straight.
In a state where emotionality held bigger sway over my usually more practical and logical thought processes.
The phone interview helped a lot.
It helped me see what my sticking points were.
Like feeling lost and without purpose.
It made me realize how so much of my day to day living centered around my wife.
It wasn’t healthy for me because I neglected myself, but being a caregiver and emotional support animal defined me.
I had to get out of that subservient mindset.

I had to learn how to prioritize myself because there’s no one else.

Entering September, I reconnected with a couple friends from high school who’d also lost their spouses. I met with them and spoke at length with them.
I felt saved speaking with them.
They understood.
They weren’t judgmental.
We laughed, cried, raged, commiserated…it was incredibly healing for me.
I wasn’t alone.
I never was, but I didn’t understand that before seeing them.
They gave me hope.
Their friendship made me realize I am loved and that I could be good for other people again.
I’m so lucky to have them in my life. And so many others, too.

Toward the end of September, daughter Lynn suddenly hauled me off to LA.
Lynn: “I just quit my job. I’m on funemployment. Are any of your bands on tour?”
Nob: “Uh… Durry’s not touring right now. New Pornographers aren’t either, but they’ll come to town eventually. Oh hey, Bleachers are playing in California. Sept. 22 in LA.”
L: “K, we’re going.”
N: “Hah? I ain’t got no money.”
L: “I got this. Quit whining before I change my mind.”
N: “But, why? What’d I do to deserve this?”
L: “Shush. You’ve been a giver all your life. You can accept a gift.”

Yeah, I cried.

We ended up doing a three-day, two-night dash to LA.
(You can read it here. It’s short and has pictures: https://nobogasawara.substack.com/p/travelogue-la-blitz)

We were late getting into LA, so we only went to a Dodgers’ game the first evening. It was a kind of desultory hangover loss right after Shohei Ohtani’s mind-blowing record-shattering day (6-for-6, 10RBI, 3HR, 2SB, and broke a record of 51HR-51SB).

The next day, we went to a sprawling urban farmers’ market before Ubering to the Getty Museum.
There, I saw Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises,” and everything all started falling into place.
Seeing the painting staggered me.
I couldn’t speak.
I could barely breathe.
It was the realization I could be doing whatever the hell I pleased going forward.
And this was what I wanted to do—get the hell out of Dodge and experience the world.

It felt as though fireworks were going off in my brain.

The very same night, we caught the Bleachers at the Greek Theater.
When I first heard them, I thought they were a teenybopper band, but I soon discovered they were a lot more than that. And that a lot of their music deals with stress, anxiety, loss, depressions…all the fun stuff I was dealing with.
They became totemic to me.
It was music for me to rally around.
Their defiantly uplifting show capped a day of discovery.
A new way forward.
A new way up and out of the suck.

All that in one day!
Imagine what I can experience with the rest of my life.
That’s exciting.

That said, I was still pretty messed up.
Still hyperemotional.
But with uncertainty starting to fade and regaining confidence, I was beginning to see a little light.

A day after I got back from LA, I discovered the city’d finally started work on my wife’s memorial bench.
As I’d said, I have zero faith, and I’m no one’s idea of spiritual but these sorts of memorialized places turned out to be good for helping me reconcile and understand she’s gone.
I don’t go every day, but seeing the bench brings back memories, all of them pretty good or rendered endearing or at least exasperatingly funny by rose-tinted time.
So, yeah, maybe not something so expensive and/or functionally limited as a grave, but a different kind of memorial where one can visit is a good thing for healing.
It was for me.
Like I said, I had to see her name on a plaque to finally accept that she’s gone, gone, gone.

The police’s Victim Services lady kept in touch, too.
She was helpful with kindly advice and practical advice on where I could get additional counselling. And just some friendly banter, too.
That kind of following up helps.
Though I ultimately didn’t seek additional counselling, having someone like her get in touch regularly empowers and encourages the grieving—they’re not forgotten.
There should be more mental health support for victims because they’re so often overlooked.
But then again mental health initiatives have to be a lot stronger all around.
I’m not going to get into that here.
Or anywhere else, really.
I’m not qualified.
Anyway, I was at my supermarket when some pretty, young lady came up to me in the cashier line, “Nobuyuki?”
I was mystified. Who is this young lady? And why does she know me by my legal name? I am just Nob.
The VS lady, of course.
I guess I’d spoken to her maybe four or five times, only once in person.
She recognized me by my voice.
I get that a lot.
I reassured her truthfully and optimistically that I was bouncing back and due for group sessions very soon.

Thanks, VS lady.

I should also mention that I attended a meeting with a panel of doctors and psychiatric staff concerning my mom’s care late in the summer.
I told them I wasn’t really capable of handling things due to my bereavement.
And they all turned suddenly concerned.
I reassured them I’m functional and not in any danger of self harm, but they made sure to have an outreach worker call me and discuss counselling options and agencies I could contact.
Since I’d already started the ball rolling with the local agency, I held off, though.
But that kind of outreach service is widely accessible in British Columbia, Canada.
There’s no shame in seeking help when you need it.
A friend told me, “If you break a bone, you go see a doctor, right? Your brain suffered trauma. That’s an injury. Get help. You can’t fix it yourself.”
Speak with your doctor or local health authorities.

The bereavement agency finally got me in for a one-on-one in-person interview in he middle of October. I spoke with a kindly young lady in her 20s.
She encouraged me to tell me my story.
Since I already wrote it all out in my first Substack essay, I could articulate myself well enough.
I found it easy to talk about what I was going through.
I mean, I’m a writer, I should bloody well hope so.
I think I can bare my soul without getting hysterically worked up over it.
I was a lot more composed than with the phone interview, but I was surprised by how angry I got over recalling our life together. Not so much at her, but just resentment and feeling cheated that all my effort ultimately came to naught. (Which was a wrong way of looking at it—we were both rewarded with some really good years at the end.)
This realization helped me focus and work on those feelings of resentment.
That sort of thing I can eventually justify and nullify once contextualized.
See, if I can’t grasp the context, I can’t very well begin to rationalize it.
That’s why it was important for me to see/speak to someone to give shape to the monster I was grappling with.
Once I could understand it, I can chip away at it.

Around this time, I got in touch with my financial advisors and made some changes.
I also decided to downsize from this massive house with just me and the dog so I can get some equity out of the place for spending money.
I figure I have maybe a dozen more good years in me, so I may as well enjoy it.
Can’t take it with me anyway.
Financially, I’m secure.
Not stinking wealthy, but enough to be comfortable and have fun.
I’m eyeing going to some tropical paradise and living like an apeman for the end.
Why pinch pennies in Canada when I can be enjoying cheap retirement in the tropics?
Things to ponder.

And, having freed up some money, I decided it’s high time I should work on getting my own self back into presentable shape, like investing in some new clothes and shoes (especially since I’d lost so much weight—a lot my clothes make me look like an understuffed scarecrow).
I’m also getting some expensive dental work done, like a new cap up front and several implants.
I’m also getting cataract surgery. That should give me the best vision I’ve ever had.
In these ways, by improving my own appearance, I make myself happier and boost confidence in myself.
It’s making myself someone I can love (more).
That’s a huge component in healing.

Rebound

In early November, I attended a two-hour group session for bereavement with the local agency.
I was the only guy there.
There were around half a dozen ladies of various ages and a couple lady counselors.
The mood was somber, of course.
I didn’t feel intimidated or unwelcome…but then again I’m not very good at reading the room.

The setting was I guess a meeting room with a coffee table in the middle and ringed by comfortable seats. There was a candle in the middle of the table with some wooden birds to serve as comfort items.
Lots of boxes of tissue placed within reach.
At the rear of the room was a table with beverages and snacks.
There was a tasteful abstract mural in muted, neutral colors, I think.
The lighting was kept dim.

The group session was like I expected.
We all go around in a circle, say our name, and tell a little bit about the person we’d lost.
There was a lot of crying, obviously, but there was also other emotions at work, too.
Things like anger and resentment, naturally, but there were also mirth and merriment.
It felt good and liberating to be able to talk about what we were experiencing in a non-judgmental, compassionate setting.

We were all hurting and we wanted to get better.

I came to really understand how grief takes on many shapes and sizes—no two are alike.
Grief doesn’t even have to be about people.
Pet loss, heartbreak, loss of a career…these things affect people differently.
What might be trivial to some people might be monumental to others.

Don’t judge.

Grief can also be a complex beast.
It can be like a writhing ball of snakes with surging emotions twisting around each other.
Crushing your heart.
Squeezing your lungs so they can only draw air shakily in hitches and starts.
Loss, bewilderment, loss of purpose, fear, loneliness, anger, resentment, guilt, woulda, coulda, shoulda…all sorts of good stuff.
Those snakes need to be dealt with individually, too.

Because grief is tough to deal with for anyone.
Not just the grieving.

In a group session (I eventually attended three 2-hour sessions), there was some anger over how some people were insensitive about what they were saying to the grieving.
Like, “They’re in a better place now,” or, “It was God’s will.”
They were furious, “How would they know that? How dare they presume to know.”

I understood, but I also thought it came from good intentions but not knowing what to say. People mean well, but they just don’t know how to deal with our grief.
How could they?
We don’t have a handle on dealing with our own grief (hence our need for counselling). It’s presumptuous to expect other people to know how they should treat the grieving.

There was also discussion over social isolation.
Perceptions of being ignored or even shunned by friends.
“Why don’t they call me?”
I realized it’s because it’s awkward for other people to reach out to us.
They don’t know what to say.
They don’t know if it’s okay to reach out.
They don’t know how to deal with our grief.
It likely wasn’t out of malice, and if it was, hey it’s a good time to get rid of that kind of toxicity as part of your past life, the part that’s gone.
I found that most people are happy to hear from us. We can set the tone and get on with redefining the relationship going forward.
They might even feel guilty for not having reached out. It’s on us to be gracious and ease their minds.
On the whole, people will be supportive and caring, too.
Reconsider your ties with those who aren’t.

I also learned that grief can turn friends into strangers and strangers into friends.
That turned out to be true for me.
I was disowned by people I’d known and trusted for decades.
I can’t really blame the people who walked away—they thought I was wallowing and taking too much time to get over it and they hated walking on eggshells and so on.
Fair enough. I was fucked up and pretty insufferably so.
I’m really sorry about that.
But, man, it’s not like I’m used to losing my wife.
The recovery program said I can take all the time I need and “seek support from safe people who will not judge you or tell you how to grieve.”
So, there.
But I get it, it’s an old school thing.
Suck it up, buttercup.
It’s just another example of people not knowing how to deal with other people’s grief.
Can’t say I blame them. Like I said, I didn’t know how to deal with my own grief.
Anyway, I figure it is better for me in the long run to know where I stand with people and reassess and recalibrate my relationships to ensure my safety, security, and happiness.
All that is on me.

I sure got a lot of time to ponder things like that.

Looping back, I left the first group session feeling emotionally drained.
Crying does that.
But I also felt an immense sense of relief.
I really came to understand that while I am a unique snowflake in my grief, there are plenty of others drowning in a sea of sorrow.
That made things easier to take.

And that’s when things really took a turn for the better.
It was all of a sudden, too.
Like a switch got flipped.
The hyperemotionality lifted.
I’d still get sad, but in more…reasonable ways.
I felt back to normal.
It showed in my body, too.
All of a sudden I was back to my old ways—I’d gain weight if I didn’t watch it.
I gained back nearly ten pounds in short order (to be fair, Christmas and year-end), which I’m now trying to shave off.

I continued to improve at a rapid clip.

I attended two more group sessions and several group walks, but after the first one, I felt as though I wasn’t learning very much new. For sure, I wept over the plight of other folks, but it felt…voyeuristic? That didn’t really sit right with me, and given the limited time and resources of the bereavement agency, I decided I’ve gone as far as I could with them in that style of counselling.

Maybe it’s that old denial thing again, though.
But I do feel normal again.
A little sadder, maybe a little wiser, but the same old me.

Cruising

So, here I am, still puttering along in a circling pattern, but this time, I have a lot of choices. I know I’m still not all the way back, so I’ve been taking it really lazy.
No rushing anything like I did in the summer and bug out.
Take a lot of time to walk and work out and ponder.
Work on making myself the best I can be for myself.
And whoever comes next.
Don’t want to make huge mistakes, right.

I recently told the kids, “I’m not marrying a woman like your mother again. But if I could marry her again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

This time, I have the counsel of incredibly strong and wise women who I’m proud and blessed to call my friends (and two extremely protective and supportive daughters, though one’s a very blunt instrument—love ya, babes).
They’ve got my back.

I think I was/am able to fight my grief because it was/is pretty straightforward.
Takako’s death was pitiless, but it was mercifully instant.
There was no suffering.
There was no despair or the horror of relentless dying.
She died in my arms, her adored and adoring hero.
It was a great way to die.
Too early, but one couldn’t ask for better.

Other things like guilt and anger and resentment and etcetera, I’ve been able to chip away at and whittle down to size once I was able to contextualize them.
When I was rally messed up, I couldn’t do that.
But by seeing and speaking with other grieving people, I was able to gain something like a third-party perspective. Be more observational and objective about what I was feeling.
By understanding what was bothering me, I could begin to address them.
Not saying that’s an easy thing to do—for instance, some people have reasons to be angry that can’t be neatly neutralized by logic—like a senseless death.
I can’t say to people with that kind of psychic pain, “You can get over it in these five easy steps. Just follow my handy-dandy guide to mental wellness and eternally sunshine-happy.”
Like I said, this story is just mine.
I won’t pretend to know how to help anyone else who’s grieving.

They say not to trivialize your grief, but I needed to trivialize it to wrestle it down.
Maybe it’s because I’m a guy, but I try to solve problems on my own.
By stripping away things like guilt, anger, and so on, I weakened it.
By comparing it to what other people carried—much worse things like despair, horror, betrayal, incandescent fury—I could see that my grief was weak in almost every way except for sadness.
Sadness, I could live with.
I still cry often—I sure did a lot writing this—but in a way that cleanses the soul.
Understand this, though: trivializing grief doesn’t mean demeaning your love. That’s another thing. Grief matches the intensity and depth of your love, but it also gets in the way of appreciating that love.
That’s why I had to trivialize grief.
It’s like taking the venom out of a rattlesnake.
The bite still hurts like a sonofabitch but it can’t harm me.
Not anymore.

* * *

Today, I dreamt of her for the first time since.
It was weird.
I knew it was a dream.
I told her I missed her, and she said, “It's alright. Because it’s you, Nobi-chan. It’s all going to be alright.”
Me: “Yeah. I know. I’ve got this. But I still miss you.”
T: “It’ll be alright.”
Me: “But when I wake up you won't be here.”
She smiled, “I'll always be there.”

And then I fell into a deeper sleep.