Grief on Jury

I'm at home. I'm in bed. I'm still functioning. Which right now is saying a lot. So I'm going to blog. I haven't blogged in about a week, which is a long time for me. I haven't blogged because my week has just been that crazy, by the time I made it to bed every night I was not capable of functioning enough to blog.

I guess I would say I've had an interesting week. I'm still at this moment trying to decide if I should write a separate blog about everyday, because I totally could. . I think for know I will just write about one thing I did this week. Really it started about a month ago.

I got a postcard for Jury duty. Now most people when they get those cards they check some sort of excuse why they can't go. They have small children, they will be out of town, they must work, there are any number of reasons to get you out of jury duty. I imagine "my husband died leaving me alone to take care of our small child" would have counted as a valid excuse. But I have this thing called "widow brain" where I really feel like my brain does not function properly anymore.  So I sent the card in without any excuse whatsoever of why I couldn't be there. I was thinking in my head "it doesn't matter it's not like their going to call my number, that never happens" Uh except this time they did and I had to show up for jury duty. "It's fine, I'll go for like an hour and they won't pick me 'widowed stay at home mom who just started working' is not a good candidate for a jury" Uh except to them I guess I was because I somehow got put on a jury.

I found myself with 11 other people on a three day criminal case jury. I don't want to go into detail about it but lets just say it was a very emotional grown up case. It was very emotionally exhausting as well. For someone who has been emotionally exhausted for the last two years... ya it really wasn't fun. Still trying to figure out how I got in this mess we started introducing ourselves. What do I say in a room of 11 strangers "Hi I'm Jenny I have a nine year old daughter and a dead husband" It didn't really seem like the place for that so I  left out the dead husband part. Which in a way feels like your starting out in a lie because it is such a central part to you you can't possibly leave it out. But I did.  I went the whole first day on the jury not mentioning to anyone my dead husband. It felt strange. I missed Dan.

By the second day it was even more awkward. Why didn't I just tell them on the first day. Now everyone is talking about their husbands and I'm not saying anything. What am I going to say, no my husband didn't get up and leave for work before me today. He hasn't left for work for two years because he died instead.  I ended up going to lunch with another lady on the jury. She asked me what my husband did for a living.  I gave a nervous laugh. This is it. "Well currently he is living in Heaven so he doesn't work, but he was a counselor" Yup she looked a little stunned. We spent the rest of lunch talking about Dan dying and how hard it is. I told her it was very traumatic but I didn't tell her how he died. I don't know why.

We went into the third day of Jury duty. Only 1 out of 11 people know my husbands dead.  The court ended and we went into deliberations. After we decided on a verdict we had to wait awhile for the judge to come back. Everyone was making small talk about the case. A big part of the case where witnesses time lines not matching up and someone commented on that. I have a different perspective on time since Dan died. So I felt I needed to express my opinion. So I started to talk about how when you are in a traumatic situation time means nothing. How when I was in a traumatic situation I had no idea what time it was. How I can remember very well scenes or points but couldn't tell you at what point in time they happened.  I told them how I remember what time it was when I called 911 because I looked straight at the clock. 11:15.  How I had absolutely no idea what time he died until weeks later when I saw the death certificate. For all I knew it could have been 1 am or 4 am, there was no sense of time. Turns out it was 12:01 am.  Then someone asked this question "who was it that died?" "My husband, I watched my husband die" Then the room went dead silent,

Some people gave me their condolences. Some people didn't know what to do. They murmured about how hard that must of been.  I gave my usual reply "well we go to a lot of therapy" There was more murmuring. Then the whole room started laughing. Apparently someone had made some sort of joke about food. I didn't hear the joke, I wasn't paying attention. I was lost in thought about the night Dan died.  After Jury duty was finally over we were all walking to the parking lot. Someone said they were sorry about that joke, it was inappropriate timing. I said "it's ok people don't know how to handle death. People don't know what to say to me, it happens all the time"  They all muttered in agreement, yes people don't know how to handle death. They don't know what to do with the young widow with the young child who waits 3 days to tell them she's a young widow with a young child. It's ok I don't know what to do with her either.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on castle