Menopause, grief and support

I went off my antidepressants, and I found grief waiting for me on the other side. Grief with different content, grief with insight, biology. 20/20 Hindsight grief. Grief from below my diaphragm, deeper than my belly, with sobs that my poor old body can barely contain. Grief that rains down on my neck and shoulders like a too-hot shower behind a locked door. A backwards insight at how perfectly, and how terribly my life has laid itself out, viewed from this moment. Grief with such drama, self pity, such compassion.

In the moment, nearly 3 years after his exit, my husband's death feels like an inevitable biological event in my body. The end of my mothering, the start of my chroning. A season of absolute certainty that comforting is my own job (in spite of the beautiful care of my wonderful children). A season so fragile, so robust.

I'm not depressed now, though I am remembering how to watch myself to make sure it doesn't become that. By now, though the grief has stood on the far side of the frosted door the antidepressants created, I can see that it has become my teacher, my fickle friend.

I've known actual people who were like grief: austere, ruthless, staggering. But a small, fierce light on a dark forest path leading me through hard lessons, forcing me to peer through the gloom at the details I might miss if I hadn't become mostly myopic through my funk.

These have most often been my teachers.

My latest one: menopause. I found this guy on Facebook - sweetly trying to explain, and it sent me back into tears, joy and sorrow. He compares menopause to a caterpillar in a cocoon, dissolving, re-forming into something entirely new that it was always secretly coded for, something that flies, something that has a freedom of choice the hormonal flux of motherhood never allowed. Nice one, man. He describes the dissolution of the caterpillar through an enzyme-driven digestion process. Sticky, excruciating, terrifying. He describes the loss of form, loss of memory, loss of identity. The becoming of something new and untried, with new limbs, new eyes, new appetites. Wings. He exhorts the Good Husbands to endure, protect, anticipate with courage. I don't know whether my husband could have endured it, and perhaps has more courage for it where he is now. And I note how these things began together - widowhood and menopause. Too perfect.

The people who protect the cocoon are my children - how lucky am I? I feel a bit like a bag-worm pupa, shored up by sticks: my children the armor to my vulnerability.

It feels safer to mourn now, though. I am not in trauma, not panicking. I have found my stride, I have learned to know my allies, my friends, the boundaries beyond which my enemies remain. So I kind of schedule it into my day now, early while the cortisol is still high, before breakfast when I can get my endorphin antidote.

It's OK. This too shall pass. Thanks for the antidepressants, though: it was good while it lasted.