Call Me By My Loves

Image by Omer Salom on Unsplash

2 October 2024

It still happens. That in a moment, here or there, at home or up high in mountain ranges, somewhere I feel particularly safe and relaxed, that I call out to Medjool using Mike’s name.

“Mike?” I say, or perhaps, “hey, Mike!”, or simply “Mike”.

I catch it immediately and feel a little perplexed. Not embarrassed. Not ashamed. I don’t know if I apologise – I don’t think I do, though I would if I called a girlfriend by another name, or one child by another’s. On reflection, I don’t think it’s insulting to call someone by another’s name if that other person is also someone you love – such as a child, a girlfriend, or husband or partner. But there is a little delicate moment, perhaps, when the child or husband has been dead for some years.

I know why it happens. My brain is still processing the loss of (in this case) Mike. I was with Mike almost 30 years and my brain had some good solid time to create robust neural pathways joining up all of the dots possible about Mike: Mike-in-my-life, Mike-in-our-bed, Mike-in-our-house, Mike-cooking-in-the-kitchen, Mike-mowing-the-lawn, Mike-fixing-something-in-the-house, Mike-making-love-with-me, Mike-out-on-a-run-with-me, etc. Everything about our life joining up and creating meaning about where he was in space-time. And not only that, but creating predictive capacities about his presence even when he is not physically there. Like at work in Zurich, out doing the food shopping, fixing the car. Or dead.

When someone’s died, Grief-Brain-Neuroscience research tells us that the brain simply cannot grasp that someone is permanently gone. The brain structures – particularly those around attachment – have spent decades being gently coaxed into recognising patterns of presence and reinforcing these. And the brain now, suddenly, needs to rewire itself. Hence the disbelief that someone is gone even though you know you just attended their funeral. Hence the walking around the house looking for Mike to answer a question about a piece of admin, years later. Hence the calling Medjool by Mike’s name in a moment of utter or simply casual “at ease-ness”.

It’s not about a lack of connection with Medjool. And I trust that it’s not a sign of a collapsing brain. Even if sometimes I wonder about that too. It’s just that even as new neural pathways with Medjool are being created, the old ones with Mike don’t go away, even though they become less dominant. Particularly in moments of intimacy, relaxation, or emotions running high.

As with so much in Grief, the language is about “both-and”, and not “getting over” or “moving on”. Finding ways to co-exist with both of these loves in my life, allowing my brain to rewire, reconstruct, reintegrate feels like the most natural process.

And as for Medjool’s response when my momentary lapses happen?

When I first called him “Mike,” I expected hurt or irritation that perhaps I wasn’t fully here with him. But instead he smiles and says, “I love it when you call me Mike. It’s a compliment.”

I am so glad that he gets it. One love doesn’t replace another love. It adds to it. Mike isn’t erased from my heart, or even my life; he’s simply hanging out in a different space. And Medjool sits in my heart too, taking up space that’s just for him. This is the strange dynamic of widowed love: the heart can grow, bigger, wider. There’s no need to abandon the old to make room for the new. So when I call Medjool “Mike,” I’m not mixing up past and present. I’m simply honouring the fact that love endures in all its forms, in all its names. Neural pathways, etched in my brain like familiar trails, don’t disappear when someone dies. They simply coexist with new ones.

Here below, another piece I wrote, early in my relationship with Medjool – when the name that came out for Mike was “Micky”. Now that was something else… 😉

http://www.widowingemptynests.com/2020/11/15/i-nearly-said-micky/