When my wife died in late 2010, and after taking care of all the legal matters, paying the bills, arranging for her cremation, notifying Social Security, trying to exist through Thanksgiving and her memorial service that provided closure for almost everyone but me, and barely tolerating the loneliness and heartache through the Christmas and New Year holidays, the reality of her death and my new and different life crashed down upon me…and the weight was staggering.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to survive it, nor did I want to. Each passing day proved to be just a little worse than the previous day. The weight of bearing the grief, the sudden aloneness, and the guilt that I might done more for her, grew each day. I wasn’t bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders. The world was going on around me…and without me. The weight of my grief, loneliness and guilt was bringing me to my knees where I’d weep uncontrollably in the privacy of my home several times a day. I began to pray that I’d simply die in my sleep so it would end.
For weeks I did nothing except exist, disappointed that I awoke in my bed day after day. The only thing that kept me going was a routine that I could follow without thinking. Late at night, just after I’d set up the coffee-maker to brew a pot of coffee at 6:00 a.m., I’d fall into bed between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. physically and emotionally exhausted. I thought of nothing as I laid in bed and suddenly it was four hours later. I’d get up, make my bed, use the bathroom, put on my sweats and head for the kitchen to pour myself a just-brewed cup of coffee. I’d open the blinds in the living room and sit staring out the window, waiting for the first light of day. Just to break the monotony, I’d shower every other morning just after my first cup of coffee. On the day I didn’t shower, I’d head to the home office, turn on my PC, open the blinds, and scroll through my emails. I’d hit Facebook, play a few games, have another cup of coffee, and fix my breakfast. After breakfast, I’d clean up the kitchen, do my dishes, pour myself another cup of coffee and sit in the living room again. On those days I showered, I’d get dressed in a fresh pair of sweats, pour myself another cup of coffee, and head for the office to my regular thing. In between coffee, my shower, breakfast and my computer, I had grief attacks that would leave me weak and drained.
The rest of the day was spent watching TV, weeping, staring at the walls, sitting at my computer, writing in my journal, fixing dinner, cleaning up after myself, and falling into bed exhausted. The following day way similar, as was the following week. It was like the movie, Groundhog Day. I’d change my sheets and do all the wash every other Saturday for something different to do. The only time I’d leave the house was to go
grocery shopping, maybe fill up the gas tank on the car or truck and pick up my meds from the pharmacy. I hated leaving the safety of my house. I felt raw, as though people could tell by looking at me that I was only half of what I used to be. I wanted to be invisible so people couldn’t and wouldn’t see me because I thought they could see the jagged hole in my chest where my heart and soul were ripped from me. I felt vulnerable. I felt that people would look into my eyes and see the sad eyes bloodshot from crying and wonder what my problem was or think I was a wuss or some sort of weakling for not manning-up to my problems and carrying on.
The burden began to lighten somewhat when I began attending my bereavement group sessions. They started in February, a little over nine weeks after Lou died, and it helped immensely to be among others who were experiencing the same emotions as I, especially since two other men were in the group. I was not the lone male. Because the bereavement group sessions were once a week for two hours, I used that day, Tuesday, to run my errands. I drew strength from the group, and they helped to make it easier to face other people, and for me to “fake-it-until-you-make-it.” Though I still felt as though I was missing my soul, I began to simply smile at people in the store. I didn’t have to talk with them, I could simply smile at them. Most of them smiled back at me, especially innocent children. They couldn’t tell I was trying to cope with the loss of my wife. They couldn’t see the hole through me because my smile drew the attention away from it. It helped me hold up long enough in public to not have a personal melt-down. Baby steps, but steps none-the-less.
As time passed and the ‘official’ sessions ended, most of us decided that we weren’t ready
to face the world alone after only eight weeks, so we continued to meet. For two weeks we met in a basement conference room of the St. Francis Hospital, then for two more weeks in the nearby Federal Way Library, but we couldn’t take food or drink there, so we decided to meet in a small restaurant for brunch. By that time, eight of us remained of the original twelve in the bereavement group. After twelve weeks, we were now meeting in public. One more small step.
By my birthday in April, I was beginning to feel good about myself. I could think about Lou and not cry. I could think about her and have good memories of things we did, the way she looked, our vacations, and the time we spent together. I missed her terribly, but I felt as though I was beginning to live again, and this time, I was living for myself. The burden of grief was getting lighter. There was a small down-side to this, though. There were times I felt guilty when I became conscious of having some fun and enjoying myself, even if it was something small like going to a movie with a friend. This guilt took the place of grief in that burden I was carrying, even though Lou had given me ‘permission’ to live without her. One of those memories was a conversation we had before her brain tumors began to steal her memories and motor skills. She told me that, if she should die, that she wanted me to go on living, to find someone new to love because I had too much love left in me to go to waste. I even felt guilty for remembering that conversation.
By the middle of May, a year after her tumors were discovered during a routine PET scan that caused us to cancel our vacation, I decided to go on that vacation we had planned. It was a rather bold step, I thought, but I felt the need to get away, to see new things, to go somewhere I’d not been before, and do it by myself. So I made my plans, let people know, packed my truck, and in June was on my way. The first day on the road was the worst. It was my first vacation in twenty-eight years without Lou beside me. It rained for much of that first day on the road, but I saw the most beautiful rainbow as I was coming out of the Siskiyou Mountains. I turned to Lou to comment, and all I saw was a vacant seat. She wasn’t there. I wept for the next fifty miles. By the time I reached Medford, the sun was out. I missed the exit to the Holiday Inn Express but took the next one and began to double back, but I saw a Day’s Inn near the freeway on-ramp and a classic car show in their parking lot. I stopped there and they had one room left, a suite on the top floor, so I took it. They not only gave me a discount for being a ‘single,’ I got to see a classic car show in their parking lot. The day ended well, and the trip only got better from there.
I was on the road for two weeks, making stops in Paradise, California South Lake Tahoe, California/Stateline, Nevada, through the Gold Country to San Jose, visiting with my niece and her family, my nephew and his family, and then my sister-in-law (Lou’s sister) and her family. We took side trips to Carmel and Monterey, and then I drove home. I drove 2,000 miles and took 1,400 photos on that trip. By the time I returned home, I felt like a new man, my own person, and at ease with myself. I had become confident in myself again. I didn’t have to force myself to smile at or talk to people…total strangers…anymore. My friends welcomed me back. Though I was alone, I no longer felt lonely. I no longer ached for Lou, though I missed her. I was happy for her because she was no longer in pain, and I was happy for me for the same reason!
After two weeks at home, washing the truck and my clothes, mowing the lawn, doing some weeding and tree- and shrub-trimming, and cleaning the house, I was on the road again for another two weeks. This time I went to Lakeside, Montana on Flathead Lake for Lou’s family reunion. I had not planned on going, but Lou’s two sisters had called me and urged me to go because I was the family’s ‘last link’ to her. They welcomed me as part of the family and told me they weren’t going to let me out of the family. They are my family, and I love them all! After the reunion, I had no firm plans, so I decided to poke around the area. I drove into the hills above Lakeside and saw stunning and expansive views of Flathead Lake. On a whim, and since I was so close, I drove to Kalispell and on to Glacier
National Park because I’d never been there. I entered the park and decided to drive the Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass, then continued east down to Sunrise, across the highway from St. Mary Lake. I stopped for dinner there, and on a whim, inquired about lodging at the hotel there. All their rooms were full, but the young man at the front desk checked the park’s hotels via the internet and found a vacancy at the Lake McDonald Lodge, either by good fortune or perhaps Lou had something to do with it? Regardless, I took it! I paid for it at Sunrise and then drove back across the Going to the Sun Road to Lake McDonald. When I checked in at the lodge, I found my room was in one of the Lake McDonald Lodge cabins facing the lake. It was a very good day.
The next day I had breakfast at the lodge, checked out, and decided to hike up to Avalanche Lake, then back down to Avalanche Creek before driving to and walking around Apgar Village. From there, I drove back to Lakeside on Flathead Lake. It took another week for me to get back home from there because I spent a couple of more days at Lakeside driving and hiking around the hills above Flathead Lake, then stopping in Coeur D’Alene to drive down the east side of Lake Coeur D’Alene. After entering Washington, I stopped in Moses Lake before finally driving home. Once again, I had been to places I’d never been to see things I’d never seen, and all because I wanted to. This time it was a 1,400-mile road trip with another 1,400 photos taken. I finally felt complete again.
I’d been home for a few days getting clothes and truck washed, the lawn mowed and the house vacuumed, when I realized I was living in a museum…a memorial to Lou where I was a familiar guest. It was not my house, it was our house but she wasn’t with me anymore. I wanted to make some changes to make the house mine, yet I felt guilty about it because I was somehow betraying her memory. I began small…I started on one dresser. To make it easier, I went through both her things and my things. I sorted them into three piles…keep, donate, and throw out. I kept none of her things and less than half of mine. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I went through a smaller dresser of hers and did the same thing, and then the last dresser. The closet was next. I did the same thing there. I went to the guest bedroom and went through the closet, an armoire, and her make-up table. I filled up the bed of my pickup to the top of the canopy five times with clothing and other possessions I didn’t need five times, and took all those things to the Federal Way Multi Service Center. They didn’t sell those things, they gave them to battered women, to both men and women who had been out of the job market for one reason or another, who had been retrained in different fields, who needed nice clothing for job interviews so they could once again fend for themselves. I was glad Lou’s and my things could be used in this manner.
At first, I felt guilty that I might betray her memory. I thought I might lose part of her by
giving her things away, by not holding them sacred. But what would I do with them? I couldn’t use them. They’d be going to waste, they’d be a constant reminder of what was and would never be again. I didn’t want to carry that the rest of my life. I began small, with her clothes, the clothes she loved, the clothes I remembered. It took some time, but after they were gone, I could still remember her in them, how she looked. The clothes were gone, but not the memories. The clothes didn’t make those memories, her stuff didn’t make those memories, we did and I didn’t lose them. It was reassuring, and that made going forward easier. It made giving up my own things easier, too. If I hadn’t used them or worn them in several months, they went.
Adding to some of the guilt about wanting to let Lou’s things go, I ‘met’ someone online at that time. Her name was Debbie and she responded to something I wrote in a bio that I posted on a dating website because I simply wanted some female contact. I commented back. We began to email each other, sometimes three times a day. I enjoyed receiving her emails, reading her descriptions of her family, what she liked, and how real she sounded. I wondered what it would be like to meet her in person. I was reticent about mentioning it because what would have been Lou’s and my twenty-ninth anniversary was rapidly approaching. I wondered how I would fare on that day.
Our anniversary fell on a Sunday in the middle of August, and I decided that I would stay home from church on that day because I didn’t know how I would feel or react. It took some of the pressure off me. When I awoke that Sunday morning, I laid in bed and waited to see how I felt. Aloud, I wished Lou a Happy Anniversary and waited for the sadness to wash over me. I was puzzled when it didn’t, even though I missed her. I got up, put on my sweats and went to the kitchen to brew my coffee. I spent the day remembering her and us, reminiscing about all we did together from the beginning to the very end, and thinking of all I learned from her. I was glad I decided to stay home alone that day, but that day turned out to be a celebration of remembrance instead of a day of mourning. I realized that I looked forward to each new day. I wanted to feel the wind in my face and experience my new and different life with my eyes wide open. I felt new, I still felt young, I still had things I want to do, places I wanted to go, things I wanted to see and experiences I wanted to live and feel. I knew I could…and wanted to…love again. I was finally setting the load of grief and guilt over what was, down. I was beginning to live my life, my new and different life, as only I could, as Lou would have would have wished for me. Life was getting better every day.
The following day, Monday, after three weeks of corresponding by email, I asked Debbie if she would meet me for coffee in a safe and public place. I wasn’t sure if she would accept, but she did! It began as coffee (and tea for her) at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, turned into dinner at 7:00 p.m. two doors down, and then the restaurant was closing too soon. We spent the following Saturday together hiking around Paradise at Mt. Rainier photographing the scenery, followed by dinner at a small restaurant just outside the park entrance, and it closed too soon, also. We met for dinner the following Monday, and by Wednesday we decided that we were a couple.
Seven years later, I am so grateful for my new and different life, and my life with Debbie. I am in love for the last time in my life, and that love continues to grow daily. None of this could or would have happened had I not acknowledged my loss, accepted the invitation to my bereavement group, taken the time to grieve, to get it out, and to finally
stop carrying the grief and the accompanying guilt with me without losing my memories of Lou and our twenty-eight years together. It sure didn’t hurt to have Debbie accept my invitation to meet for coffee, either!
It took a while, but I was finally able to set the grief and guilt down, walk away from it with a clear conscience and a light heart, and begin a new and wonderful life without it. I am truly blessed.
green late spring when the deciduous trees sprout their lighter, brighter green leaves and the flowers begin to bloom again.
As a child, I was happy, friendly, curious, adventurous, and even-tempered. I had no reason to be afraid of very much because my world was full of love, gentleness, fun, and a developing sense of adventure. One of my first real memories, however, involved music. My mother was a classical pianist, and I was brought up on Rachmaninoff, Bach, Beethoven, and Debussy. When my dad was working, building his fishing resort, mom and I would be home. She would fix me breakfast, tidy up the house and I would help her, and she’d play with me for a while before she’d sit down at the piano, a beautiful little spinet, and play.
One day, for some unknown reason, I dragged a cushion off the couch, placed it at the end of the piano, and sat on it to listen to her. I leaned back on the side of the piano and suddenly, I could not only hear what she played, I could feel the music and the emotion through the wood, through the back of my head to my teeth, and through my back all the way to my breastbone. It felt as though I was part of the music…and I was hooked. I was three years old. To this day, sixty-eight years later, I can still lose myself in music, even when I sing and play my guitar at home, or in church with our praise team. This is one of the good experiences that has changed my life and helped me cope with life’s twists and turns as I got older.
While in the Army, I saw and did a lot of things that can’t be unseen or undone no matter how hard I tried, especially in Vietnam. One thing that cut me to the heart, though, was when I watched a young Army Private die in my hospital room from burns that covered 95% of his body after our charter plane crashed on take-off in Anchorage, Alaska after a refueling stop. I had met him just a few hours earlier. He was a nice, polite young man and it was the first time he’d ever been away from his home in Houston, Texas, except for Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training at Ft. Bliss. We were on our way to Vietnam, and I was going back for my second tour and to reenlist once I got back there. I had protected him from three other soldiers who were bullying him in the McChord Air Force Base Terminal just prior to take-off. We ended up sitting in the same row during the flight to Anchorage, so we chatted. I marveled at his innocence, his naivete, and his love for his family. He made me wonder where and when my innocence left me. I was twenty-two. He had just turned nineteen when I watched him take his last breath. Even under heavy anesthesia, I watched as a doctor and nurses tried to revive him, tried to give him an emergency tracheotomy, and finally stopped and hung their heads. I heard the doctor say, “He’s gone,” just before I faded out. When I awoke, his bed was vacant, freshly made. He still had some innocence left, he was a nice guy, and it left me sad, angry and confused that he should die instead of me. Of the two hundred thirty-nine military and dependents aboard that plane, forty-seven died in the crash. Forty-five were military. He was the last to die. I was haunted by that for forty years.
sit silently, with clenched teeth and tears running down their faces from the pain as dead, charred skin was removed, as bandages were being changed, from scrubbing their own eschar from their burns because it hurt just a little less than if someone else did it. I began realize how special my fellow patients were. There were very few who felt sorry for themselves. Over half of them had more injuries and were burned worse than I. They wanted no special treatment above what anyone else had, no matter what rank they held or how badly they were hurt. They wanted to be looked at and treated like normal people instead of burn victims. They worked hard at their physical therapy to regain strength and flexibility. It was slow and painful, and I saw a lot of tears roll down burned faces, but nobody cried out, and no one complained. I respected them immensely. I admired them. I understood them, I empathized with them, and being with them, healing with them, changed me forever in both positive and negative ways.
through all the motions of taking care of legal matters, writing an obituary, and taking care of her cremation as she wanted. After her memorial service, closure was there for everyone else, but not for me. After twenty-eight years, I was alone with nothing to do and I began to grieve. I holed up in the house, going out only for groceries and my prescriptions because I didn’t want to be seen. I only communicated by email because I couldn’t bear to see anyone or talk with anyone. I didn’t know what to do except weep shamefully in the privacy of my home. I had become one of those weaklings, one of those criers that I could not tolerate.
Our group bonded as the sessions progressed. It didn’t take long to realize that we were in a safe place because we were with others who suffered a similar loss and felt the same pain, the same loneliness, the same emptiness, the same fear of not knowing how to cope, and the same fear of being among those who didn’t understand. We drew strength from each other because we understood each other, we listened to each other without judgement, we talked and bared our souls to each other, we cried in front of each other, and no one judged another because we knew how they felt because it was how we felt. Even after the eight sessions ended, we, as a group, did not think we were quite ready to be without each other. We found two different places to meet in the four weeks that followed, then decided to meet at a local restaurant for brunch on the same day at the same time as our previous group sessions. By this time, our original group of twelve was down to eight. In the last five years, the youngest woman who lost her father moved to a different area, another lady lost her only daughter a year after she lost her husband and she joined another group, the oldest gentleman passed away two years ago, and the oldest lady moved to an assisted living facility last year. Now, over seven-and-a-half years after that first session, there are four of us who still meet every Tuesday at 11:00am for brunch. We have become like an extended family to each other.
After my wife died, I became one of those weaklings that I had become intolerant of. For the first time in decades, I cried. I wept. My heart ached, I wanted to give up and die because I could not handle my emotions. It would have been easier had I shut down like I did when my first fiancée died and I joined the Army. Yes, I did have other relationships afterward, but when I felt that I was getting too close and could get hurt, I’d distance myself a bit and then tell whoever I was with, “Well, I guess I’d best be movin’ right along,” and then I’d leave. It took a long time to recover my feelings, and it was difficult feel vulnerable again, but I did it. I had to if I wanted to have any kind of a meaningful relationship, if I really wanted to fall in love with someone. And I did!
I also believe that the amount of grief one feels is directly proportional to how much he or she loved. Grief is the price of Love. I was beginning to understand, and I was grateful for that. With the understanding, came the empathy, being able to understand what others were going through when they lost a spouse or loved one. It’s difficult enough to lose family members, especially one’s own children because they are the flesh and blood of a union between a husband and wife who chose to love each other, and that is what makes losing a spouse to death so hard. A spouse is not family until he or she is chosen by the other to love and cherish, and they choose you back. Once I learned all this, I wanted to pay it forward, to give what I learned to those who need it, to those who want it. I will always be a work-in-progress. Someday, I hope to be the person God wants me to be. This is what I hope.
Oh! And yes, though I experienced such crushing grief, not shutting down emotionally turned out to be a most wonderful thing! I have found love again, with my Debbie.
Regardless, we arrived safely in Anchorage and deplaned while it was being fueled and one of the engines was inspected after the cowling was removed. I suspected it was that far left engine. It was cold and ice covered the runway. I thought I heard we had taken on 69,000 lbs of fuel, but later found out we took on over 117,000 lbs of fuel. When we boarded, once again I boarded late and noticed there were women and children…dependents…on board, possibly going to Yokota, Japan to be with their husbands and fathers. I found a seat in the tail section of the plane, about three or four rows from the back, on the starboard side by the aisle. I noticed that the young soldier I’d met in the McChord terminal was seated in the same row, but across the aisle in the center seat. We nodded a greeting to each other as I took my seat. Though we left the terminal and sped down the runway, the plane never left the ground.
Two or three made it through the flames unscathed, but the next one didn’t. As he ran through the fire, he burst into flames and kept running. Several of us chased him down, tackled him and smothered the fire with our bodies. The remaining soldiers made it through the fire. We were the fortunate ones. We helped him up, and I was appalled because he was totally blackened from head to foot. It was that Private that I’d stepped in front of at the McChord AFB terminal. Behind us, across the (estimated) twelve-foot-deep by about twenty-five-foot-wide drainage ditch, trucks, cars, buses and ambulances began to arrive. Just then, I heard a loud “whump” behind us and turned to see a geyser of flame erupt from the right wing, over 100 feet high, close to where we were milling around just minutes before. We turned and made our way into the ditch and across it to the transportation. I made sure he got into a vehicle and then got into a pickup that had just pulled up. I realized my feet were cold because I wasn’t wearing my shoes and socks. Most of the plane was now fully engulfed in flames.
I endured my “Groundhog Day” (like the movie starring Bill Murray) for just over two-and-a-half months before I began attending my bereavement group sessions the following February 1. I do believe that making the call to attend those sessions was one of the better things I’ve done for myself. I needed to learn how to cope with Lou’s death. I was a fighter, not a griever, and I was at a total loss as to how to deal with my grief. I thought I was weak for wanting to go, for having to go. I’d rather have wrestled with God and lost, I’d rather have taken a bullet for her, I’d rather have taken her cancer for her and died in her place, but it was not to be. I had to stay and live with the emptiness, with the pain, and with the horrible loneliness without her. I thought I was alone in the way I felt, but found I was not. The group showed me that. I was among others who were experiencing the same emotions, the same guilt, the same anger, the same regrets, and the same thoughts as I, and I began to feel safe among those kindred spirits. I also began to learn that there is really strength in numbers and we formed some friendships that have survived to this day. And we learned how to cope, albeit slowly.
It still wasn’t easy, and it certainly didn’t get better right away. Grief has a certain inertia about it that seems to be overcome only in small bits and pieces, and Time is one of the more important factors and forces that help nudge healing along. The interesting and sometimes maddening thing about Time is that there is no set amount of it that will help healing along. Time is a personal thing. It stands still, especially when one is grieving a loss. In grief, passing time can be more painful than passing a kidney stone because the pain of grief cuts through one’s heart and soul and there’s only one thing a person can take to ease that pain, though it’s something that the deceased would never want the survivor to take…one’s own life. I can say that, amid my pain and grieving, I began to understand why some surviving spouses, especially men, take their own lives. They couldn’t stand the pain and the loneliness and didn’t know how to cope with it. I am not ‘wired’ that way, though I prayed to God that he would take me in my sleep. I also began to understand why some survivors passed away within months of losing their spouses, whether men or women. One can die from loneliness and a broken heart. I wondered why I didn’t.
On my birthday in April, almost five months after Lou died and about a month after her birthday, I awoke and felt different. I laid there in wonder, because for the first time since she died, I felt good. I purposely thought about her, and I purposely formed the words, “She died, and she’s no longer with me,” and then I waited for the grief to flood through me. It didn’t. Only sadness did. I threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. No crushing grief, no heartache, no pain. Only sadness. I got dressed, made the bed and went to the kitchen to make my coffee. I sat in the living room with my cup of coffee and wondered how, after almost five months, I could go to bed with a heartful of grief and awake feeling as though someone flipped a switch and turned it off. The first thing that popped into my head after that thought was, Happy Birthday to me. The pain was still a fresh memory. I still had the same thoughts, the same sadness, the same memories, but no more pain. I thanked God and Lou for this incredible gift. I felt I was on the verge of a new and different life now, and I began to feel hopeful for this new beginning.
decided to take the vacation that Lou and I planned before she was diagnosed with brain tumors. We had abandoned that vacation in favor of beginning radiation and chemotherapy treatments to stop the tumors. Sadly, none of it worked. I took my first road trip in twenty-eight years by myself in honor of her. I drove to places I’d never been to see things I’d never seen. The first day was the most difficult, but things only got better after that. I didn’t feel conspicuously alone. I began to enjoy my own company and be confident in it. I looked directly at strangers and smiled, and they smiled back! I drove almost 2,000 miles and took 1,400 photos. I was gone for two weeks. I love digital cameras!
It was just three days after what would have been Lou’s and my twenty-ninth wedding anniversary, and about nine months after she died that I met Debbie, and my life changed once again. She and I fell in love. Upon returning to my home one day after visiting Debbie, I looked around the house and was stunned. I walked through every room and looked at it closely. I realized nothing had changed since Lou had passed away. I had been existing in a museum. I sat down and wondered where I was going to begin. I needed to make some changes in my new life. The following morning, I began in the master bedroom. I went through the large dresser and sorted Lou’s clothing into two bags…one for give-away, the other for throw-away. I kept nothing. Then I went through my clothing and sorted it into three piles…give-away, throw-away, and keep. The stuff I kept I put back in the drawers. I did the same thing with the other two dressers before I started on the closet. From there, I went to the guest bedroom that she used as her dressing room and went through the armoire, the closet and a small desk. I filled my truck five times with Lou’s clothing and took it to the Federal Way Multi Service Center, so they could give it all away to battered women who had nothing and needed to start over again. I thought it was the highest and best use for the clothing she loved. I took my unused clothing there, too, because they also gave it away to men’s shelters.
I am rebuilding my life with Debbie now, and it feels good and right. Does that mean I have forgotten Lou? No. I never will. How could I? We spent more than twenty-eight years together and I learned so much from her and our marriage. That chapter in my life ended on November 23, 2010. A new chapter began the next day, and it began badly. Though it lingered in grief for a while, it has only gotten better by the day since then. Before Lou died, and before her brain tumors took her motor skills and memories from her, she gave me the most selfless gift ever. I didn’t remember it until months after she had passed away. She felt that she needed to give me permission to move on, should she die. She told me that she wanted me to find someone new and love them because I had too much love left in me to go to waste. Can you imagine that? How can I ever forget her?
Then there are a very special group of people who feel relief because they managed to survive the ‘holiday stretch.’ They began the stretch with trepidation. They went through each holiday remembering it the way it used to be: Halloween with their children, and grandchildren, passing out candy together and marveling at the Trick-or-Treaters in their costumes, preparing for and celebrating Thanksgiving together and with family, and preparing for, decorating for and celebrating Christmas together and with family, and finally, bringing in the New Year together. They remember the things that were so “special” to them…the sounds, the scents, the songs, the ‘new’ traditions they began as newlyweds, the moments of quiet spent together…that they no longer share. So, who are these people? They are widows and widowers who are going it alone. They are people who have lost their life partners, people who have lost the
loves of their lives, to death. Yes, most have loving families with whom they spend the holidays, but it’s not the same without that lifetime partner, that spouse, that special one that they chose to love, and who chose to love them back. That is a most special and cherished bond, a special love because each chose the other. Unless one has lost a spouse or mate to death, I believe it’s almost impossible for anyone else to fully understand that feeling of loss. Only then can a child, no matter the age, understand the loss a surviving parent feels when his or her spouse passes away.
the time. I know she had a difficult time trying to care for both, because I heard it every day when I took the time to call her. All I can remember her asking is when I was going to come home. I know that she had no idea how I felt trying to take care of my mom and grieve for my dad, my mentor. I don’t believe she ever understood how I felt until her own father passed away years later, and I finally understood what my mother felt when I lost my wife to cancer in 2010.
For those who have friends who have lost a spouse or life partner but have not personally experienced that loss, I would ask of you to not try to push your friends back into “life,” or try to make them feel better. This will happen only when your friends are ready. You can’t fully understand what they’re going through or the emotions they’re feeling. The only thing you can do is to try to include them, “be there” for them, be patient, and let them talk if they feel like it. Above all, if they are friends, treat them that way. They are trying to figure out who they are all over again, they are trying to understand and get used to their new life as one, and these things are only going to happen on their time, not yours.
To A New Year! May it become better as the days pass. Some people make resolutions for the New Year…and they are mostly forgotten by the end of January. I think a good resolution to make would be to begin to appreciate the “little things,” like the smell of a rose, the taste of a great cup of coffee or tea, how beautiful a sunset can be, a moon-rise over the water, the smile of a child, the sound of a bird singing, or the look on a friend’s face when you tell them they are appreciated and loved. Life really is all about these “little things.”
Christmas lights are up and burning brightly in almost all neighborhoods, Christmas trees are up and decorated, cards are signed and sent, and presents are being wrapped and hidden until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Children are filled with excitement, parents are filled with worry that they didn’t find what their children wanted, and almost everyone is stressed and tired from not being able to find what they’re looking for, including me. Though I found what I was looking for, I had to order it online and, of course, I received a notice that it was out-of-stock and would ship as soon as it arrived at the store…sometime in January. That will have to do. Yet, the season is upon us now, and tonight and tomorrow, Christian churches all over the world will be celebrating that Reason for the Season, the birth of Jesus. My hope is that this is not lost in the Christmas rush.
I have been truly blessed in my life and that holds true today, though I saw little in my future except grief and a horrible, aching loneliness when Lou passed away seven years ago. That chapter of my life closed horribly with her passing, and a new chapter without her began badly. It was filled with grief, anger, loneliness and wanting to die. It took several months before I realized that I really didn’t want to die because I had things I wanted to do, places I wanted to visit, and things I wanted to see…for me. And my life began anew then. In retrospect, I never expected that I would write a book, The First Snow: A Journal of a Man’s Faith-Based Journey through Grief, be published, and find a second…and final…great love. But I did in Debbie, and I am so happy! And because of that book, I met a wonderful friend who has become a sister to me in Yvonne Broady, who also authored a book, Brave in a New World: A Guide to Grieving the Loss of a Spouse, as she lost her husband a year before I lost Lou. Thanks to Yvonne, I am able to “pay-it-forward” by co-facilitating a grief and comfort group named Matthew 5:4 at The Riverside Church of New York via Skype every other week, and have been doing so since May of 2016. This new chapter in my life, though it began badly, is getting better every day, and I do thank God for the gifts I have received along the way.
December, 2016, was an interesting and busy month. There was a lot of preparation for Christmas, including shopping for my grandchildren and Debbie, wrapping the presents, putting up and decorating the tree, setting up the Christmas village on the fireplace hearth, complete with the HO-scale cable car, setting up the Crèche…the wooden stable I built and small ceramic figures I painted to remind us that our Savior was sent to save the lowliest of us, and then practicing playing the guitar and singing the Christmas version of Hallelujah by Cloverton because my pastor asked if I would sing it at the 11:00pm Christmas Eve service. Debbie and I spent a wonderful, quiet Christmas Eve together, enjoying a movie and each other’s company, and then went to the 11:00 pm service at our church.
The first afternoon of the reunion, a Friday, I was sitting at a table at the lodge talking with a couple of people I hadn’t seen since the last reunion I attended, when I saw Aunt Charlotte. I excused myself to go say hello to her. She smiled at me and asked me to sit and chat. She told me she was glad I had decided to come. I told her I hadn’t planned on it until Lou’s sisters had called me. I had thought it was more their family reunion than mine, that I had married into the family and was kind of an “outlaw.” She laughed and patted my hand and told me that once, a long time, ago, she was an “outlaw,” too, because she married into the family. And now she was the matriarch! She was one of the first to tell me that I was part of the family and she wasn’t going to let me out of it because that’s the way families go on. And if I should find someone else and even remarry, she—as well as her children, if she had any—would become part of the family, too. That’s just the way it was.
Now there were six of us, three men and three women, and for the next three years we continued to meet for brunch every Tuesday morning at 11:00am. We had not only become good friends, we had become family. During that time, I had met Debbie, fallen in love, and brought her to introduce her to the group. Don had met Linda, fallen in love and remarried. Linda became part of the group. Over those three years, we had become more of a friendship group than a bereavement group, though R.J. would still get choked up every time he mentioned his wife’s name. It wasn’t long after we began meeting at the restaurant, about three years after he lost his wife, that R.J. lost his second oldest daughter. She was only fifty-four years old, as I recall. The Brunch Bunch attended her memorial service to let R.J. know that we were there for him. Despite this, we watched R.J. become emotionally stronger, more outgoing, and more talkative as the months wore on. He had a great sense of humor, liked pretty, young ladies, loved to go to the casinos, looked forward to our brunches, and had a great appetite. And he loved his cherry pie! He kept us laughing with his jokes and stories, and was loved by all of us. During one of our after-brunch chats, he told me he had wondered why he was still around. He missed his wife so much. It seemed as though he was just biding his time until it was his time. He said he was ready to go whenever the Lord wanted to take him.
Yes, as I get older, I am becoming more thankful for things that are not things but, rather, matters of the heart…for sharing, for gentleness, for understanding, for giving, for kindness, for peace, for love. Oh! And by the way (lest we forget), it’s also the season that many of us celebrate that from which Christianity is derived…the birth of the Christ Child in a barn in a town called Bethlehem over two thousand years ago. I am truly thankful for that miracle! Thanks be to God!
The First Snow 