Stoic

: not affected by or showing passion or feeling

especially: firmly restraining response to pain or distress.

I can safely say I am not a stoic person, but you might not know that. I looked up antonyms, and my favorite one so far is “kvetchy”. I’m not aiming for that either. I always admired Paul’s stoicism, and I hope some may even have rubbed off on me. Forget that this entire blog contradicts that possibility. I’ve had a couple conversations lately about emotions, how they reveal themselves, how they impact my behavior, and the degree to which my outward demeanor belies the underlying pattern.

I’ve marveled at how, when the weather outside is rough and windy, the world underneath the water’s surface is quiet as usual—the movement of the waves dampened by the mass of water so that a moon snail down at the bottom has no idea there’s a storm. I have learned over the years to get better and better at compartmentalizing grief and stress so that I can be that calm moon snail, though hopefully better-looking, focusing on my life/family/friends/work/pets and not on the turbulence that’s close to the surface. It’s useful, and even amusing, to separate my behavior from thoughts and feelings that on paper would make me look crazy. In fact, last night’s conversation with a friend about the ups and downs of my emotional journey after Paul’s death led me to try to put it on paper. Here is my not-very-scientific graph, and it succeeds:

Another friend observed that my current interior life is like a group of icons on an iphone when you want to reorganize, and they all vibrate, waiting to be moved to their ideal location. I like that analogy quite a bit.

My conclusion is that I’m starting to feel better, but the grief and the sadness and memories provide lots of waves to navigate. Sometimes I ask myself “what would Paul do? What advice would he give me?” Now I predict I will also be asking myself “how can I be like that moon snail?”