Just Get On With It (Life) Already!

Shortly after my husband died, my six-year-old son said the words that would pretty much mark his style of grieving, so much different than my own.

"This is our family now," he said emphatically, giving me and his sister a big hug.

Whoa, boy! What do you mean? Could you possibly be saying that we must, right now, face the reality of what is right in front of us (three people, not four)? Are you saying that your father is dead and we have to go bravely forward without him? I think that's exactly what he was saying, and he continues, six years later,  to preach this kind of stoic, fact-based, feelings-be-damned approach.

Poor boy. His sister and I were all for grief groups and therapy, writing down memories of his father in a journal, participating in much bittersweet reminiscing of days past, and getting all worked up as the anniversary of his death approaches each year. He really does, I think, find it tiresome. Granted,  he doesn't remember too much about his dad...but still....does he have a point?

I think it's really easy for young widows and widowers to get a little "woe is me-ish". (Guilty as charged here.) We didn't sign up for the early death of spouse or single parenting or having to start all over again, or grieving. It was completely unexpected and out-of-sync with most people we know. It's also easy to stay stuck in the past longer than might be necessary, because change is hard, and enforced change can feel unfair and nasty.

Still.

I think my son has a point. This is our family now. This is our life now. This is my life today. Worth remembering. Worth....a writing exercise!

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Sentence completions are one of my favorite types of writing prompts for visualizing your own thinking. Take each prompt and time yourself for two minutes while answering each one. There are no right or wrong answers, and sometimes your answers may even contradict one another. It's really a clearinghouse for your own thoughts on a topic.

This is my life right now and I need to:


This is my family now and I enjoy:


The past is gone. What I see in the near future is:


Since my spouse died I have made positive progress and change, for example:

Peace at Last (for now)

Suddenly something has shifted. It's subtle, but I can feel it. I just feel so darn settled, at peace, calm, accepting, and OK. I'm living less and less in fear.

I'm happy with such small things lately: the sound of the furnace kicking in when it's cold and bitter outside; my ridiculous fleece pajamas with little moose on them; a phone call with a girlfriend who really gets me, who I really get; making a needlepoint pillow for my daughter. Watching my son's excitement as he views the sport of curling on the Olympics for the first time, making improvements on my house, planning a neighborhood party, beginning to imagine a future for myself where before there was only the past. Remembering the me I used to be before illness and death too soon made me someone else.

Grief is taking a new shape in a different sky, everything rearranging in blasts and gusts and silences. The absence of Ken is a permanent part of me now, just as those 15 years of being with him will never be erased. Now that his presence and absence have etched themselves through my skin and bones and heart, now that I know this, now that I trust that even in disappearing he remains, I can begin to loosen the grip of grief to cross safely into a place that remains unknown to me even as I enter it. With my eyes open, I still can't see where I'm going. I'm moving slower because I don't know this landscape. This is where I am and I can't be located. Certainty has been stripped from me: the promise of the husband, the marriage, the partner, the way it was supposed to be isn't. There is nothing to do but get up and see what's next.

My head's been down a long time. It's time to look up and imagine the future I never planned to have.

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Take a few minutes and write about absence. Then write about peace. And then let yourself imagine the future on paper in words, if you can.

Crossroad to a Different Life

I am at a crossroad.

Down one road is my old life--the one that began when I met Ken. Down this road is the memory of a life once lived.

I'll never forget the day he buzzed up, walked the steps to my apartment, entered my world with his kind eyes, compassion, and soothing voice, and changed it forever. Three months after I met him, I wrote these words.

"I can't believe I've found you. My whole life feels transformed--everything softer, everything whole. I would have settled for less and thought I was happy. That's a scary thought. I think into the future. I imagine that we can have 50 years together and it sounds too short. I imagine you dying, and me never feeling quite as alone as I did before I knew you."

Just 13 years later, confronting the medical reality that he was almost certainly near death, we talked in his hospital room at MD Anderson's stem cell transplant unit. It was the end of four years of cancer treatment which began when he was 48 years old.

"I don't want to feel all the pain I'll be in if you die," I said. "What if everything falls apart?"

His simple reply:

"Sometimes it will feel like it's falling apart."

Those feelings have found their place for me in The Heartbreak Diary. Often, the only way I can relieve my pain and create meaning out of what happened to me, to the man I loved, and to our young children, is to keep on writing about how this loss makes me feel. My heart was shattered by Ken's death. The life I'd hoped to lead was taken away from me. I am heartbroken still, but the only way I can come to terms with it is on paper. In my everyday life, I keep putting one foot in front of the other, my children walk in the door looking taller than when they walked out, and though I'm moving forward, in a way I'm still living in the past. If I can write about my loss, I can keep on living.

No matter what type of loss you have endured, when you commit to keeping your own Heartbreak Diary you have a place to unload your sorrows. It creates a map made of words where your deepest feelings can be recorded to reveal their wisdom. It's like a roadmap out of sorrow to new hope.

No one can understand your own brand of pain as well as you can. You are the one best suited to honor your grief, respect your strength, pay tribute to your sorrow, and then watch as your words lead you to a new beginning. All you have to do is begin. Fifteen minutes a day. You need show it to no one.

I am at a crossroads. One road takes me back to the life I had before I lost my husband.

Ahead is a different road altogether: the road that moves forward, past the life-changing moment that was Ken's death. I want to believe there is more for me in this life. But it's hard. It's hard to imagine any kind of complete life without Ken. I'm going to have to be dragged by my hair, or under the chassis of a hooligan's truck down this new road. Only I'm the one who has to do the pulling and the dragging because no one else really cares what I do for the next forty years of my life. Like it or not, I'm like a pilgrim, a gold rush girl, a new immigrant crossing the sea, a colonist in a wagon heading West. This road has a new trajectory, (though from time to time it runs along the road of memory). So I stand here at a crossroads. One foot on each road. Pushing, dragging, propelling myself forward.

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Moving beyond pain requires acceptance. Acceptance of what you've lost, acceptance of what you have that is good, and acceptance of a future that is unknown. What do you accept in your life right now?

I accept that Ken is dead.

I accept that my life with him is over.

I accept that my life as his wife is over.

I accept that I am a single woman with two children.

I accept that my children are my number one priority.

I accept that I have absorbed a lot of loss and disappointment.

I accept that my life has not turned out the way I had hoped.

I accept that it is very hard to find a good partner at this stage in life.

I accept that I am increasingly lonely.

I accept that I am lucky nonetheless.

I accept that I am in good health.

I accept that I must work hard to recreate my life.

I accept that I don't know what the future holds.

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At a Crossroads

Moving into the future

without you is impossible

but necessary,

necessary to my existence

on this earth,

earth where you are scattered.

Once you were the most solid one

I knew here,

here where I must

move forward in pieces

on the unsteady ground

in the dark, alien landscape

you left with your light.

Light return.

Return me to a point

where I can at least begin,

begin to remember

I have my own light

that once brought you to me

where I stood

at a crossroads.