And Now....What?

Last time I told you all that I had arrived at a place where I felt hopeful enough and free enough to think about building a new life, a new identity.  That is easier said than done, of course. 

Make no mistake that you will wake up one day and be done grieving and know how to proceed. The process of grieving will be with you for a long time.  You will hear a song, experience a smell, remember a good time.  But I can promise you that you will start remembering more good times and joyous occasions with your loved one than the sad ones.  I am noticing this in myself.   In terms of knowing how to proceed to build a new life, you will find it to be an evolutionary process.  You did not arrive at the place you were in your life when you experienced your loss in an instant.  In most cases much of who you were when the loss occurred took a long time to form.  So it stands to reason that making a new identity for yourself will take time, and require you to be patient and brutally honest with yourself.

It will involve contemplating your life, and may even involve some contemplation of your death.

I was fortunate enough yesterday to run across a TED talk by a New Orleans artist by the name of Candy Chang.  In her talk she explained that she had experienced a devastating loss in her life and wanted to contemplate what that meant in an artistic fashion.  She came up with the idea of creating a public space that asked the question “What do you want to do before you die?”.  She created a public space on an abandoned building in New Orleans where she stenciled the question on a chalkboard wall hundreds of times and left chalk for people to fill in their answers.  By the next morning after installing the piece the wall was full.  This phenomenon has gone around the world.  Such walls exist now in hundreds of places.

So that got me to thinking. Taking stock.  Who am I? What motivates me? What do I want to do before I die?

I was raised and educated to believe that my life is about being of service to others. By and large I have lived that life. I am a grandpa.  I am a stepfather, a friend and neighbor, and for over 33 years of my adult life, a husband. It has been my privilege and honor to be these things, the most significant of these, I believe, was being a husband.  Making what was important to her important to me. Making sure she (and her children) came first no matter what. And when she became ill, making sure that she was cared for and loved with absolutely no reservation. She is gone now, which has the effect of rendering the main ethos of my life somewhat moot. Metaphorically, it is like a garden hose that has lovingly watered the garden for years and then the fitting broke off, causing the water to be sprayed randomly everywhere, putting the garden at risk.

 

So what to make of this? What do I want to do before I die?  I want to be the best grandpa I can be.  I want to be the best friend and neighbor I can be. And yes… at some point, I want the chance to once again love and be loved. (Boy was that hard to say….).

I just want a life full of people, full of companionship, good humor, kindness and serenity.  That will suit me just fine.

01-31-2016 MPC

  

A New Direction

INITIATION

In some cultures, traumatic events are viewed as an initiation, seen as an opportunity to redefine oneself and take life in a new direction.  The traumatic event can be a critical illness, the death of a loved one, a divorce or betrayal.  I learned about this way of thinking when I was recuperating from heart and lung surgery to deal with a tumor in my heart in 1999, surgery that saved my life.  After months of physical therapy and other kinds of rehabilitation, one day I finally came to a place in my life where I was able to say, “I no longer wish to be defined as a sick person”.  At that point, with the help of my beloved wife, Susan, we moved forward and built a new and better life together, after having both suffered the trauma of my illness and near death.

My beloved Susan was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2011, fought hard for nearly 3 years and died in November of 2014.  As our battle with her cancer progressed, and she suffered recurrence after recurrence, and it became clearer and clearer that we were going to lose, I became numb, became focused on caring for Susan and making absolutely sure that everything that could be done to keep her comfortable was done, and also to let her know how much she was loved and valued.  This I did right up to the moment when she stopped breathing.

 

It has now been fourteen months since Susan passed away, and I can report that it has been a pretty miserable fourteen months, added to the time prior to her death that she was ailing.  However, I have now come to a place where it is time to begin healing.  When you lose your spouse, you lose so much more than just your best friend. A huge chunk of your life and your identity are ripped away, and tossed into the wind.  It is no longer clear who you are.  It is even less clear how to rebuild your life, and often it is not even clear that the desire to go on even exists. That was certainly the case for a time with me.

I made some choices when Susan died, however,  which may have laid the groundwork for me to start healing.  I chose to turn away no kindness, no offer of friendship.  I was blessed with a large and wonderful support system.  I participated in a variety of grief counseling and group therapy situations.

 

And in this last week, it finally came to me. I no longer wish to be identified as a grieving widower. It is time to say goodbye. Not to Susan of course. It is time to say goodbye to the wreckage that was created by her sickness and death. It is time to say goodbye to the trauma.  It is time to say goodbye to the manner in which I have defined myself for 20 some years (Susan’s husband, lover, friend, partner and finally widower).  I wish to find and strike out along a new vector in my life.

It was not easy to get to this place.  I still miss her terribly, and she will always be in my heart and in my memory.  What will gradually fall away is the fear, the numbness, the horror that defined for so long how I went in the world. I can almost feel it slipping away. And I can almost feel Susan cheering me on. She did not marry a man who was numb and fearful.  She married a man who made her laugh, who made her feel loved and cherished; who works hard and gives of himself to others. That is the man she wants me to be. 

My initiation has once again taken place. 

    

Widowhood in Year 2

     Distraction is a useful tool.  During the months of November and December, which are the times of the year when my wife first was diagnosed with cancer and ultimately succumbed, I tried very hard to make the most of every family event, road trip and social event that was presented to me.  I was surrounded by my incredible family and friends for much of the time during those horrible 'anniversaries'.  I was distracted.  And during that time I started to feel better.  I started to see ways to move forward.  I have become less hopeless.  My life began to appear as though it might inherently have some value to myself (more about this idea in a moment).  For me family and friends have provided a metaphorical 'hyperbaric chamber' in which my wounds can start to heal while being distracted.  And by and large it has worked.

     Through much of the first year of my grieving, I could not really see much if any value to myself of continuing to exist.  This sounds harsh and depressing I know, but that is how I felt.  My main purpose in life, as well as a massive chunk of my identity vanished when Susan died.  It takes a massive amount of work to juggle grieving and trying to discern and rebuild an identity.  It requires a great deal of introspection, self awareness and honesty.  Who am I? Who am I outside of my now ended relationship?   I am starting to see some outlines of answers to these questions, some based on what I experienced throughout my relationship with Susan.  If indeed I was a wonderful husband and stepfather, then perhaps I am a decent human being. A good person.  I certainly hope so.  And that would constitute for me, a pretty good start.

     We also must be mindful that healing of any kind (physical, emotional, etc) never proceeds in a straight line.  And yesterday, having returned to my mostly solitary life, the roof came crashing down.  Weeping, loneliness, self-doubt and harsh self criticism, all came roaring through, leaving me feeling run over.  As I write this, it still hurts.  But part of me, the part that has moved somewhat forward, the part that has some understanding of who I really am, knows that this will pass, and that the healing process will continue. It will continue in its slow and circuitous process.  We are the sum of our experiences after all, or as songwriter Lori McKenna puts it, "I am the things inside me".

01-12-2016