Predictability in Chaos
As the long days of my grandma being in hospice drag on, I have turned to a variety of coping mechanisms to keep afloat.
This experience has been a test of the coping mechanisms that have always worked for me, and as things continue, I am faced with the problem of needing continuous solutions to feel okay.
Even my favorite coping mechanism, rewatching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, hasn’t really appealed to me. I like the idea that I know how the movies go and good will always prevail over evil no matter how many times I watch it (spoiler alert!). But at this point, I’m too full of nervous energy to sit still and watch such long movies - not to mention that it would feel strange to watch them here so soon after seeing all the places for real in New Zealand. (It would also remind me that, when I was in New Zealand, I called Nana multiple times and she was perfectly fine every time - which only reinforces how strange it feels to watch this sudden, steep decline.)
I needed something entirely new, and for that, I turned to a product I’d seen in many Facebook ads before. I had never crocheted before, but I found a kit from a place called The Woobles that looked idiot-proof with video walkthroughs that suit my current need to always have some kind of noise around, even if that means keeping random YouTube videos on when I’m playing video games where I don’t like the sound (this way, I don’t give room for my particularly noisy thoughts to surface).
And so, when I started keeping a list of my coping mechanisms in my anticipatory grief journal, I included “try to crochet a tiny dinosaur.”
The pattern for Fred the dinosaur looked intimidating at first, but I have to admit, it was a nice distraction to use my brainpower for something other than pre-writing Nana’s eulogy and obituary (which put me out of commission for hours). I started with the very beginning videos, learning how to hold a hook and yarn, and eventually cobbled together a green dinosaur with yellow spikes and yellow stripes on his belly.
Once I saw that I had successfully created this dinosaur, I was - for lack of a better word - hooked. Crocheting meant keeping my hands busy, concentrating on something hard enough to keep me distracted but not complicated enough to discourage me, and a way to turn this confusing jumble of feelings into an art project that somehow managed to look good.
Best of all, crocheting is something I can do whenever I feel the need to. When I’m upset, I can rush through smaller projects so I can feel like I’ve accomplished something, and when I have more patience and concentration, I can try larger or more complicated projects. I feel like I’m doing something good with all this excess energy as I watch the little plushies accumulate in my apartment, and I also have an easier time reaching out to my friends, as I enjoy showing off what I’ve made and have found it hard to start conversations with people in light of everything going on.
This week, I packed for Nana’s funeral, which will be out of state, and I didn’t think I’d have the wherewithal to put things together afterwards. I wrote everything that needed to be written, no matter how much it hurt, and all that’s left for me to do is wait for the inevitable.
Even in the chaos of not knowing what will happen from one day to the next - or even one hour to the next - it has helped me so much to have some predictability through crocheting. I don’t have to make a decision about what to do; the pattern has done that for me already. And I know that if I do fourteen stitches in this row and eighteen in the next, I will wind up with a cute little animal that at least somewhat looks like the picture on the packaging.
I even have to admit that there’s some comfort to be found in counting the rows over and over to make sure they’re right, or doing other behaviors that may seem obsessive. But it’s always been a strategy of mine to channel my OCD into positive things even during my darkest times, so crocheting is giving me an outlet for that as well.
It’s not a fix for the overall situation, but honestly, nothing really can be. I’ve had friends try to help but acknowledge that the only way to fix this would be to turn back time and make Nana healthy again, but since that’s not really a possibility, I have to find solutions that help me feel grounded when the world feels shaky. And right now, that looks like crocheting a tiny army of fantasy animals that can make me smile, even if only for a little while.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.