What Widows Fear

I can remember it like it was yesterday: the heart-pounding, animal-like fear I felt when we found out that Ken had cancer. If anything is going to activate fear, there's nothing like a cancer diagnosis preceded by weeks of tests and not knowing the outcome. The doctor appointments, the scans, the x-rays, the diagnostic surgeries, the lack of control, put it all together you've got the perfect recipe for being scared out of your mind. That's just my story. For some of you, it was a call from the police, a sudden collapse in front of your eyes, a suicide, a quick and unexpected decline, or something else. Each one, I know, made your heart race.

I've come a long way from the day of that cancer diagnosis in February of 2002. I was 40 years old with a six-year-old and a three-year-old. I've had a lot of fear to wrestle down including: how will I ever survive, what will I do with my life, how will I manage everything, and will I spend the rest of my life alone. It's nine years after that cancer diagnosis which would lead to my husband's death in 2006. Interestingly, I notice that what I fear today is completely different from the things that scared me then.

Naturally, since I believe that writing is an excellent tool for processing feelings and moving forward in your life, the whole idea of What Widows Fear (and don't fear)  is today's writing prompt.

Take 10 minutes. Write about what scares you...what REALLY scares you...and what doesn't scare you. Just keep your pen going without thinking too hard. Try this exercise again down the road some time. I'll bet that your list will be different because when you work on your grief actively, you make progress, you change, and you grow.

Here's my list:


I am a little bit scared of power.
A little bit scared of sugar.
A little bit scared of emptiness.
A little bit scared of loneliness.
A little bit scared of nothingness.
A little bit scared of never changing.

I am scared of falsehoods.
Scared of phoniness.
Scared of meanness.
Scared of contempt.
Scared of bad choices.
Scared of big egos.
Scared of cruelty.
Scared of inhumanity.
Scared of ignorance.
Scared of violence.
Scared of more grief coming my way.
Scared of having to struggle.
Scared of the swift passage of time.

I am really afraid of cancer.
Really afraid of heart disease.
Really afraid of stress.
Really afraid of being overwhelmed.
Really afraid of poverty.
Really afraid of wasting my life.
Really afraid of not being loved.

I am not afraid of my life anymore.

Not afraid of silence.

Not afraid of rejection.

Not afraid of being on my own.

Not afraid of remembering.

Not afraid of remodeling.

Not afraid of lighting a fire.

Not afraid of downsizing.

Not afraid of moving.

Not afraid of writing.

Not afraid to speak my mind.

Not afraid to love.

Not afraid to be a mother.

Not afraid to try new things.

Your turn!  10 minutes of writing about fear (and not fear). Get it out on the table where you can look at it.

After the Fairytale, A Different Story.

Hey! I was reading that!

Once upon a time I was part of a certain type of family: we were a happily married couple with our two kids, a house and a dog. We lived in a neighborhood with other families like ours. We had a lucky partnership with a full future ahead of us. Together we would love and influence our children, return to our twosome when they left home, and then enjoy the gifts of later life.  It was the kind of family that I came from myself; the only kind I had ever imagined. A great classic tale.

But then the twist to the story (a horror story?) -- the big bad cancer wolf showed up at our house, started eating up the book, tearing away at the pages. He ate up the husband and father completely, but he spared the rest of us so that we could figure out how to write a whole new chapter.

How do you start a new family story when you're a widow and a single parent of young children? When you're married with kids, there are typically two different choices you have.  Either you stay married, or you give up on that and you get divorced. But when you're divorced or widowed, you have a whole slew of different options.

You could try marriage again. It's what many of us worked toward in our 20s, 30s and sometimes 40s back when we first entered the search for a partner or potential future co-parent. Yes, you can do that again, move in together, figure out how to blend your families, share, divide, sell, and rearrange the accumulated stuff every older adult has put together over the years. After my husband died five years ago, that's what I felt I needed to do to have a full and complete life once again. My kids need a father! I need a husband who lives here with me and shares my bed! I need it now! (My kids, however, were not so interested in reading THAT classic tale over again.)

Nine months ago, I started seeing somebody new. He has his own form of gobbled up family -- his was eaten alive by divorce, mine by death. Either way, our nuclear families have been blown apart. The story of each of our lives shredded mid-way through the book.

Suddenly, I'm not so sure about how it all ends...the story, I mean. Back THEN, before the wolf came around, I was confident I knew just what was going to happen. I liked knowing the ending. Since that wolf came around, though,  I have switched genres completely. I'm not reading fairytales at the moment.  Now I'm engrossed in a mystery. Surprisingly I like it. I have no idea how it ends.

How To "Trick" Grief

When you're in the throes of grief, you need a few personal tricks to keep on moving through the pain, especially in the early months and years after sustaining a major loss. We all have tricks we play, we just may not be aware of what they are. Joan Didion called it Magical Thinking. I think a little mental magic might be essential to the new widow or widower's survival.

I was partial to frequent lunch and coffee dates with sympathetic friends because they made me feel that I wasn't alone after Ken died. Through laughing, crying, eating and talking together on a regular basis, I forgot for a while that Ken's loss had the most immediate and long-term effects on me and my kids, on our little family -- that his death was my problem more than anyone else's. My sense of community was heightened through these frequent coffee shop stops at the same time that my nuclear family had been blown apart, and I had become less like others around me. Pilates and yoga classes made for a nifty trick because while my faith in a good life had been severely weakened, my body was getting stronger -- a strategy I highly recommend for its ability to bring on personal power during an otherwise powerless time. Then there was the rock I bought that had the word "acceptance"etched into it. I kept it displayed prominently in the living room, an ever-present visual mantra that sat there staring me down every day. Why the word "acceptance"? Well, death had come to town, this time straight to my door, and who was I to resist death, something as natural as birth and breath? This loss didn't make me special; it made me human.

I used pilates to strengthen my core, yoga to build mental clarity, friends to remind me I was still connected to something even as I was cut loose, and acceptance to move forward with grace, and even joy.

The whole "why me?" avenue was not a logical destination, for me. Instead, and surprisingly so, I found comfort in the stories of so many who had lost before me, and those who will follow -- in effect, every single person on the planet. Anger felt illogical to me; my internal argument went something like this:

Babies die. Toddlers die. Teenagers die. Young adults die. Middle-aged people die and elderly people die. People are born in mud huts in impoverished war torn nations, or in stuffy train cars to parents escaping to give them a better life, or in nice suburban homes with every comfort. My husband died at 52 after two high-tech stem-cell transplants and the best medical treatment science had to offer. It was the worst thing that could have happened to me and our kids, and yet it was our crisis to honor and memorialize and come to terms with and understand and share and deal with and ACCEPT simply because we are human. But I couldn't do it without my little tricks.

Ken possessed a nature that was one of the most calming forces I have ever encountered. Just sitting with him could lower your heart rate, just recounting a troubling tale with him could turn it into something of little importance, and just feeling his steady hand on mine reminded me that everything would be OK no matter what feelings roiled inside me. People would say of Ken that you always left a meeting with him feeling better than when you had arrived.

No wonder in his absence I found that I needed that rock that proclaimed "acceptance." It's solid, firm, reliable, unchanging. It has weight. I trust what it says. It doesn't waver. I know, it's just a rock, but I gave it the magical power to help me. I needed to believe something. For me that something was the idea of acceptance.  So what tricks do you have to get you through the wild ride that is grief? Acceptance is a word I grabbed onto like a zipline of a mantra that smoothed my way over the hills and valleys of life after loss.

There's an old oak library table in one corner of my living room. On it are houseplants, a collection of amethyst rocks, a fake Tiffany lamp which was my one and only purchase from a home shopping channel, and a collection of smooth stones from the beaches of Rockport, Massachusetts from one of many vacations there with Ken and his entire family.  On one of those beaches, some of Ken's ashes were scattered. Among those stones, I've placed the one that sits solidly and steadily and says only "acceptance." Nice trick. It's one that I have learned to do too.

Magic won't make grief disappear altogether, but a few good tricks can help us get on with living. Even when one life disappears altogether, there's still magic in the world, and you can be the magician that makes amazing things happen all over again.

A Priceless Gift You Can Give To Your Children After the Death of a Parent

When Ken died, our children were little. I didn't want them to forget the memories that belonged to them of their father; not just the stories others would tell them about him, but their very own personal memories. So, night after night, in the days following his death, we'd sit together on one of our beds and we'd each tell one of our favorite stories of Ken. Natalie, who was 10 at the time, was the official scribe who would write our memories in a special journal. Alec, who was six, would struggle more with coming up with a memory night after night, but he did it, and now they are all written down for him.

Natalie told the story of what her dad sometimes did when he put her to bed:  he would take off his glasses and try them on all of her different stuffed animals. That was news to me, and I loved hearing it. Alec recalled that Ken would call him "my bestest buddy" and how they would play a wrestling game at bedtime that involved lions and cubs and a scoring system. I talked about the delight I would feel every time Ken would drive his old Saab down the alley toward our garage as the kids and me played in the park next door,  knowing he would soon be joining us there with his open arms and open heart wearing his long brown trenchcoat.

This ritual helped us manage the early, surreal days after Ken died. We'd all gather together on one of our beds, snuggle up, talk and write. We were connected by our home, our warm bodies, our memories and each other.

In the early days and months after the death of someone you love, you are not at all ready to let them go. You're barely ready to admit they are, in fact, gone. By getting your family together to write down the little and big things you remember and love about the person who has died, especially early on, you are accomplishing a lot of important work including holding the person close to you before you are ready to let them go, and valuing the memories they left in your care.

Natalie and Alec lost their father five years ago. While there are many different ways we can remember him, one of our favorites is to take out that journal of memories we wrote together so many years ago when we were raw and sad and grieving hard. Today we can read those memories with a lighter heart. We remember how hard it was back then. We see how far we've come. We're reminded of how what we did together as we wrote made us stronger.

As hard as it is to admit it, when children lose their parents at a young age, there are many important facts and intangibles they either will not remember or will never be given because of their father or mother's absence. By helping your children unearth and write down their authentic memories before they slip away, you are giving them a priceless inheritance that could otherwise disappear forever.

Relit and Realistic

Delighted now
Or should I say
Relit?
After your ashes spread
I scattered
away from the sun.
Artificial, indoor light
bulbs burning all night long
through the winter
after you had gone.
Spring 2006 came on
like a dirty rat,
revealing everyone's bliss,
my empty, messy lot.
I didn't want to look,
didn't have the right lens,
needed a box with a pinhole
to take in the brightness
shining off the more fortunate.

Delighted now
Or should I say
Reignited?
Years of energy preserving
left me
flickering on and off
high and low
desperately working the bellows.
Until,
willing to be still,
accepting less warmth, less everything,
I invited in emptiness.

Delighted now
Or should I say
Revived!
By your new love
that I stare at open-eyed
not believing
we will always be healthy
always be here
always be alive.
Delighted now.
Relit! Reignited! Revived!
Realistic.

The Worst Thing My Late Husband Ever Said To Me

I don't remember what I did to make Ken say it. He was rarely angry. Never mean. So I must have been awful, critical and pissed off. I must have really been giving it to him good. I have no idea what I was upset about then, more than twenty years ago. We were vacationing in Puerto Rico. Steady Ken driving us around the island on the frightening, perilous roads where huge, lumbering trucks passed us as we approached blind curves. I can still remember how the drivers came right up on our bumper before lurching around to make the aggressive move past us. But I can't remember why we were fighting.

I imagine that I was angry. I imagine that I went on too long about who knows what now. I imagine feeling very entitled to my boiling anger. Then there was Ken with all that controlled calm. What did he know about intense emotion anyway? Uh, well, he was a therapist, so I guess he knew a thing or two, but he rarely displayed anger himself.

This time, though, he gave some back to me.

I wonder now what I did and said to make him strike back.

This I remember. I apologized for my angry words. I said I was sorry. I said, "I know I'm lucky to have you."

And he said this:

"Well, I'm not lucky."

I'll never forget it. It was the worst thing he ever said to me.

__________________________________________________

It's easier to remember all the great times in your marriage once it's over. It takes more courage to look at the rough spots. Take the halo off for a moment. What harsh words or fights did you engage in with your partner that can still make you cringe today? Spend 5 minutes writing about it.

Let Your Grief Be Like a Storm

To get the value of a storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may penetrate our skin and we be as it were turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet and weatherbeaten...

Henry David Thoreau

Your grief is not something to be judged or analyzed or compared. It may be understood by few or by no one. No, you are not taking too long, or dwelling on it, or selfish, or ungrateful. It is not your fault. Grief comes and goes. If you are sad now, you will get better. If you are joyful now, you will be sad with grief another time. Grief is as inevitable as snow in winter and rain in spring. It can ruin you. It can restore you.

When your grief comes, let it storm.

Who Will Be There For Me?

A really good friend of mine had a bad bike accident a week ago. It had started raining during the ride. While going down a hill, she started thinking to herself, "I'm going too fast, I'd better do something."

The next thing she remembers is her husband at her side crying while she lay in a hospital bed.

Here's what she said to me while convalescing at home from a head injury:

"You're married to this guy all these years. Something like this happens. I just NEEDED him so much."

That really got me thinking. First, I felt so glad and relieved that she has such a devoted, loving, good husband, especially at a time like this. But I also couldn't help thinking a few other things.

Of course, since this is The Heartbreak Diary where I hope to inspire others to write about their loss, I couldn't help but come up with a new writing prompt for you to try.

AFTER LOSING MY HUSBAND TOO SOON, I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN

___________________________________________________________________________

After losing my husband too soon, I don't know if I can:


Count on someone to be there for me if I ever become really sick or incapacitated.

Ever again allow myself to need somebody and to believe that they will be there. Because, hey, they might not be!

Trust in more than just today.

Go back to a time where I felt as safe as I did with Ken.

Allow myself to depend on somebody else.

Today My Loss Feels...

I'm repeating myself here but only because I think this is one of the most powerful and healing writing prompts for anyone who has suffered a traumatic loss.

TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

I encourage you to use this writing prompt at least once a month. Spend, ideally, 15 minutes, just writing whatever comes to mind. It's really helpful and it costs about 100 or more dollars less than seeing a therapist. (This is not to say that I don't value therapy, au contraire. My late husband was a damn good therapist and I believe that every adult can benefit from psychotherapy, whether you've suffered a big and untimely loss or not.) Just find yourself a quiet place where you can take 15 minutes to write without any editing or criticism. Sometimes writing the prompt down again if you are stuck can help keep your pen moving along and keep your thoughts flowing. You can even write ridiculous nonsensical words. Just keep writing.

TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

I have been using this writing prompt myself since Ken died five years ago. At first, it would elicit all kinds of sadness, despair, hopelessness and exhaustion. Then, occasionally, glimmers of hope would show up amidst the sadness. Or, repeated themes would emerge. Or I might see an area where I needed and had to ask for help. Sometimes an idea for a new goal or a path toward change presented itself. Lately, there's hope, gratitude, and even new happiness in there. Using this prompt regularly can show that you are making progress, or show that you are stuck, or show that you need help, or show that you are ready to try something new.

TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

Awareness. It's all about awareness: knowing where you stand in the present when you hold yourself up next to the big wall that is the loss of a spouse. Maybe the wall never gets knocked down completely. Maybe you don't want to knock it down completely, leaving some of it as a memorial to the person you lost and to the part of yourself that's been lost. But, probably, most of us don't want a big old wall of loss blocking off the rest of the life we get to live. A little awareness can help keep you moving on through, like a hurdler.

Today is February 10, 2011.

TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

Distant, distant. And present, present. Like fuel that can take me anywhere I want to go. Unbelievable, still, unbelievable. Not so scary anymore. Like its made me so much more aware of my own mortality and of how short life is. That combined with turning 50 this year...it makes me fear the seeds of illness that may be imbedded in my own genetic makeup, cancer, heart disease, ugh. I don't want to be sick. Lately I'm just so incredibly happy to be healthy, and that my kids are healthy. Grateful to be alive. Really, I feel pretty darn satisfied with everything else. I feel, even, lucky. Whoever imagined I could feel lucky again?

TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

Like a new path that will take me somewhere interesting, towards something that matters deeply to me. I've become a children's grief support group facilitator at Willow House in the Chicago area. It is so completely and utterly rewarding to feel that I have something to give to others who have lost a loved one. I am so grateful to write this blog and to hope that I may help someone with my words, in the same way that others who are writing help me.

TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

Like my greatest worry is for my children and how losing their father so young will affect their lives, for the rest of their lives. Will they be wounded in ways that can never be mended? In ways that will makes their lives unhappy? Or will it fuel them in some way toward a good and happy life? I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate that my children lost their father. I hate it so much more than the fact that I lost my husband because I feel like at least I was an adult, but they were just young and innocent children. HATE IT. What if I can't help them? The older they get, the more I worry.

TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

Like it's your turn.


TODAY MY LOSS FEELS:

Less.

I expect less now. Less of just about everything. I can live in a smaller house, work in a smaller job, have less love, understand that my body will fail me eventually, realize that I cannot control the fate of my children.

I can be happy and at peace with less, especially when there is an absence of crisis. I am almost to the place where I think it's shameful to complain about anything at all when you're simply -- healthy.

Acquiescing to loss feels like a fist tightening inside me squeezing anger inward, releasing spasms of contentment and discontentment simultaneously. I nod my head. I am happy with less. I shake my head, no.

The closer and closer and closer I creep to feeling acclimatized, OK, feeling better, feeling contentment, despite your eternal goneness, there is an accompanying relapse of disbelief. Can this be true? I am happy and without you?

It feels good and wrong to be satisfied this way. It's satisfaction skating on shattered ice. If I fall right through, I won't be surprised.

I wish it was spring, these mountains of snow melted overnight. Just one green shoot is all I need.


___________________________________________________________________________

What does LESS mean to you? Anyone who's suffered a major loss lives with less. What's it like? Spend 5 minutes writing about LESS.

How To Love a Dead Husband, Five Years Gone

The purpose of this blog, The Heartbreak Diary, is to encourage people to write about their loss as a part of their recovery plan. Today's exercise asks you to create a brief, bullet-point list of how to love your dead spouse. Depending on your own unique circumstances, the lists will differ from person to person. I'd love to see your list! So quick...without too much thinking...give me fifteen ways to love the one who died.

Here's mine:

1. Think about him often.

2. Tell stories about him to anyone, even strangers.

3. See him in your children and then tell the children what you see.

4. Learn from your relationship, and even if it was an excellent one, as ours was, pledge to do even better the next time, if you're lucky enough to have a next time.

5. Really live your life and try to leave behind self-doubt, guilt, anxiety and fear. Live for him. Live for the life he had cut short. Live in honor of him. Live as well as you can so that you can teach his children that life is great (even when you lose big.)

6. Laugh alot.

7. Honor your good health, mental and physical. Don't take your sound body and mind for granted. Exercise your body, your mind, and your emotions. (One way to exercise your emotions is to write about them.)

8. Remember how he loved you and love yourself that way.

9. Write about him.

10. Listen to music he loved. Read books he loved. Do activities he loved.

11. Honor his values.

12. Love his parents and siblings and other relatives.

13. Try to get something positive out of a loss this huge. Try to live a better life.

14. Love life.

15. Remember your love and let it guide you to better days.

I Wish My Dead Husband Had.....

Dear Ken:

Even though I am eternally grateful for your being such a truly excellent husband and father during our 2 year courtship, or 13 year marriage and our 10 years of being parents together, there is one thing we forgot to do during the 4 years you were sick. Gosh, we had so much time sitting around in doctor's offices and hospital rooms...I can't believe we didn't put this together.

(Eternal hope for recovery down to the last minute can really screw up one's efforts to plan for the dying part!)

We forgot about putting together the handbook on how a mother can also be a father. This handbook would have had the following chapters:

Chapter One:

Fun activities and Games to Play with Your Son at ages 7 thru the rest of his childhood and adolescence

Chapter Two:

How to talk to your daughter so that she grows up feeling that she can do anything, be anything and feels as though she is the most cherished girl/young woman/woman in the whole world

Chapter Three:

How to Teach Your Son the Secret Essentials of Manhood

Chapter Four:

How to teach your son, left fatherless at age 6, that life can be trusted, people won't leave you, you're not weird because you don't have a dad, and you will somehow fill the gaping hole that is the absence left by your father's death and find fulfillment and satisfaction in your own life.

Chapter Five:

How to ensure that your daughter will be able to trust a good man's love.

Chapter Six:

This chapter catalogues every single parenting situation that I will ever encounter in my whole life and what your response would have been had you still been alive and actively fathering our kids

Chapter Seven:

How to teach the kids that mommy isn't trying to hurt them, annoy them, or trying to replace you by having a new man in her life. Within this chapter you would have written a paragraph on how to show the kids that they might even be able to get something positive themselves out of mommy's new boyfriend because he's really a good, loving guy. This chapter will remind them that you can never have too many people in your life to care about and love you.

Chapter Eight:

This chapter veers off into the supernatural/spiritual dimension. This is where you promise the kids that you will meet them in their dreams on a regular basis and just when they need you for advice or angelic guidance. (Feel free to stop by and visit me too if you get a chance.)

Chapter Nine:

In this chapter you leave the recipes for potions that all of us left here on earth can ingest to take away the acute pain that comes at select times because of your absence: holidays, graduations, birthdays, weddings, visits with old friends, trips, all that good stuff.

Chapter Ten:

Here you remind the children how much you love them even though you left too soon. Uh...you know what? Redundant. Let's scrap this chapter. You did a great job loving all of us. I think that's been done already.

Wedding Anniversary

I did not mention it aloud

this year.

It was terrifically cold that day.




In our dining room

women played recorders.

Tom juggled.

Alyse had a bad cold.

My parents looked sharp

in their great clothes.

Naomi was pregnant;

so was Shereen,

who organized

some picture taking.

Pat recorded it on video.

Susan chatted, whispered.

Mark observed.

Anna played "Skye Boat Song"

on her new clarinet.

Evan announced time to begin.

A famous Chicago judge

Jewish for my father

declared us married.

The littler ones threw confetti,

Rebecca had a new sister-in-law

married to the identical twin of her husband.



Alan and Linda and Paul were happy

not to know

that in thirteen years

this pair (these pairs)

would be halved.


We spent the next two nights

in a beautiful suite

at The Drake Hotel.

Far below

our warm, elegant room

we watched

little cars, workers,

travel north and south

on snowy Lake Shore Drive.


To the east, reliably so,

great Lake Michigan,

beautiful, huge, dark,

familiar,

unpredictable.

I Think I'm Done Grieving...But I'm Afraid to Say It

Is it OK to say this? I think I'm done grieving the loss of my husband.

Oh boy. I'm not sure about this. Just writing the words makes me feel uneasy.

It's been five years since Ken died. In these five years I have dwelled upon his death, worked hard to understand its effect on me and on my children, gone to hours of therapy, attended grief groups, written extensively about Ken, cancer, death and widowhood, renewed my self and spirit through friendship, yoga and exercise, felt sorry for myself, experienced deep pain, sadness and loneliness, and adapted to life as a single woman and single parent. I used dating as a strategy to push away the pain of losing my husband only to find that in being rudely dumped by one guy I finally got it: my wonderful husband was actually gone and never coming back; there would be no repeat of the incredible piece of good fortune that was our meeting and our marriage. (It took about three and a half years to REALLY get that my terrific marriage was over, Ken was gone, and my life had to essentially restart in foreign territory.)

I once read that it takes a "significant life event" to make profound change occur once you've reached adulthood. Well, Ken's death was that event and I am now changed forever. I feel like a different person, a better person, a more content person, a more sober person. The contentment comes, ironically, from truly understanding that one day I will die and this wonderful life and all it holds will be gone. And so, I cherish it more and worry a whole lot less. I am not the same Jill I was before. I have lost a great deal. And yet, I think that I am through grieving. For now, that is. Because my "significant life event" has taught me that there is life on the one hand and loss on the other. Those hands are clasped together. You can't live without loss, you can only decide how to live well despite it.

Yet, I feel bad thinking that I'm done with grief, like I'm not supposed to ever be done. It's a fix I'm in. If I were still mourning Ken's loss and living in the middle of grief 20 years after his death certainly I would be stuck...I wouldn't have successfully managed to accept his death and to go on with my own life. But to believe that I have reached a place where I am no longer grieving? What does that mean?

Here's what it means to me:

I have accepted Ken's death and made a decision to live as well and as joyfully as I can anyway.

I can now think about Ken with primary emotions other than just despair or sadness or hopelessness or guilt or regret. Mingled in there now in equal measure are happiness, contentment, gratitude, joy, peace, and strength.

It will always be painful that Ken died. There will continue to be many moments that make me cry for the infinite absence, the hole, the lost future, the what-could-have-beens.

When someone dies, a common refrain the widow hears goes as follows: "Your memories will sustain you" or "He'll live on in your thoughts." I once wrote soon after Ken died that the thought of living on memories is like driving on fumes. But today, five years later, I'm starting to understand what it means to be sustained by memory. I will turn 50 years old this year. More than half my life is past. There is so much precious material to be mined in those years now gone. I can see that now.

Once again, I can see a future that excites me instead of one that feels hostile, unknown and foreign. When Ken was sick and I feared he would die and leave me alone, I was filled with fear and dread so severe I couldn't live with it without turning to medication. After he died, my world felt as though it had crumbled. I actually had a dream in which the floor of my kitchen developed an enormous crater in the middle of it -- my foundation was disintegrating.

I have rebuilt in these five years a completely different structure that may have more doors and windows. I feel more open to possibility, more willing to embrace change, more able to be just who I am without apologizing for myself, more inclined to see what's out in the world, even if it's unexpected. Loss has informed me: there is no one way to safety. There isn't safety. There's just experience, good, bad, neutral. When you live, when you're not dead, what you get is to experience. I compare myself to Ken who can't experience anything anymore: not love, not loss, not pain, not pleasure. I'd rather be alive to take it all on.

Yes, I think I'm done grieving for now. I never thought I'd get here. It was the hardest work I've ever done, but I'm glad I did it. I gave it my all.

There, I said it.

An Exercise Worth Repeating, Regularly

I believe fervently that writing about one's deepest and most basic feelings is one of the simplest actions you can take to keep your life moving forward, to avoid getting stuck in unhealthy emotional spaces. In fact, that's what this entire blog is about: sharing feelings about loss in words to both move myself forward, and perhaps inspire others to do so as well.

(It's no surprise to me that so many people are out here writing blogs since they've lost their spouse. In fact, I'd wager than those who are writing about their losses on a regular basis are healing up quicker than they might be otherwise.)

Every now and then I'll post one of these blog entries on my Facebook page. I can't help wondering if those who have never had a spouse die young are surprised by the fact that I'm still writing about his death almost five years later. Do they think I'm stuck? Do they think I just can't "get over it"? Well, I believe the exact opposite is true and as I write I move on through different aspects of grief.

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Here's a really simple exercise I like to repeat every once in a while to see where I currently stand in relation to my loss. There are a lot of different ways you can lead into this but it starts with a simple prompt like:

Today my loss feels like:

OR

What is most interesting about my loss now is:

OR

What I'd like to say about my grief today is:


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What I'd like to say about my grief today is:


--That even though this time of year is the time that complications from Ken's second stem cell transplant were sending him on a steep and scary decline, I actually had a really great Thanksgiving this year that didn't find me dwelling on what I didn't have, or feeling full of sorrow. I felt pretty joyful.

--I am happy again, but in a different way, in a more measured away, in a holding back and careful way.

--It makes me so much more able to wait and see, to feel discomfort, to embrace uncertainty.

--I'm kind of afraid to need someone again the way I needed my husband.

--It sure feels better with a new man in my life.

--I believe that if you can overcome an intense loss, you can overcome just about anything. I feel somewhat invincible. And I find that weird, because I've been so leveled by loss.

--It's so heartbreaking that Ken couldn't be there with us at yesterday's Thanksgiving meal...it's so heartbreaking that he can't do anything with us anymore...and at the same time, he is so present for all of us. You have to figure out how to live with the loss. Why is it so hard when it's such a basic element of what we all must eventually encounter? Why are we so flummoxed by death?


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Your turn. You and loss. Today. Write about it. Don't think too hard. Just a few sentences.

Ten Widow Peeves (or Thanksgiving is on Thursday and I Feel Like Complaining.)

1. It is none of your business when and who a widow/er dates. When you lose your spouse, you can make your own dating rules, OK? Or maybe you'd prefer to spend the rest of your life alone. That's your choice. I think losing your spouse at a young age is the second worst thing that can happen to a person. (First, if you don't have kids.) Give widowed people some slack. If they can find their way back to happiness, they've worked damn hard to get there.

2. Forget about analyzing and comparing the widow/er's new partner as compared to their dead spouse. The new living guy or gal isn't the dead one. There is no reason why they should be similar so don't be surprised if they are totally different. But if you're still scratching your head, here's the secret answer: they are two different people.

3. I try hard to not judge you when you say how hard it is when your husband is away for a couple of days or even a week on business. I used to feel that way too. But when you do say it to me, behind my fixed pupils my eyes are rolling. I actually can't believe I have acclimated myself to the fact that my husband is never coming home.

4. Why oh why couldn't I have had the perspective on life that was gifted to me by my husband's death when he was still alive?

5. Do you know how much I wish that my son, who lost his dad when he was six, would have one or two men in his life who would take a deep interest in him and provide him with the attention and guidance that only a man can give him?

6. I don't know when or if I'll ever stop grieving the loss of my husband. If that makes you uncomfortable, too bad.

7. I wish it weren't so difficult to accept being happy again. Being happy feels a little bit wrong. It's like Happy-Lite.

8. I hate that my husband died and I always will.

9. Please don't ever tell me my husband died for a reason. I happen to be comforted by the idea of randomness, inevitability, and sheer bad luck.

10. There will be more to lose and I will get better at accepting it every time. What kind of improvement plan is that???

More Grateful, Less Secure

Everything has changed since I lost Ken on January 14, 2006. I lost my husband, my most trusted confidante, a truly wonderful man, the father of our kids. I became a single parent, no longer able to share my concerns for them with someone equally invested in their well-being. I make all the important decisions: I decide and I act when I want to on matters big and small. I learned to sleep alone with a pile of books and newspapers where a loving partner used to be. I started taking care of the grass and home repairs. When squirrels got into the house, I'm the one who had to figure out how to get them out. We set the table for three instead of four. I've driven 2,000 miles as a solo driver with my kids, something I never thought I could do. I've learned, and even worse, my kids have learned way too young that sometimes the very worst thing does happen. Just recently I noticed that sometimes I say the words "my late husband." I guess it's because I'm seeing someone else now and it sounds funny to say "my husband" when I'm clearly with another man. But I think my ability to utter those words also has to do with the fact that it's been almost five years. He's getting farther away, my late husband. He hasn't been my husband for a while now.

Of all the things that have changed for me, the one I'm noticing the most now, is how I seem to have lost the sense of safety and security Ken's existence brought to my life. Ken was a no-risk proposition. His solidity, his humanity, his goodness and his love for me and our kids was unshakably true for me. I had made such a good and important choice; we had chosen well when we chose each other -- and still, and still it ended, and it ended badly with Ken suffering, dying young, leaving us behind with so much left to be done. I had an illusion and the illusion was this: because I had chosen such a great partner, I would be safe. I think many women grow up with this illusion: a man will make me safe.

I don't think I can ever believe that again, and I'm OK with that. There is something strangely freeing to me about embracing this crapshoot of a life with open arms -- as an individual. Heads or tails? Who knows which answer is the right one, or where your life will lead you when you make your next choice? In losing Ken, I've had to grapple with my alone-ness, with my singular responsibility for how I will live the rest of my life, for how I will cope when it gets tough out there, and for realizing that the infinite possibilities of experience we are privileged to have while we are still alive and healthy are enormous gifts. Granted, we don't always know what's inside these gift boxes, but we get to open them, to be surprised, to receive something new. That's something Ken can't do anymore. So I'm lucky, more grateful, more open to happiness -- less safe, less secure. I accept.


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When we lose someone, change becomes our predominant environmental condition. But even the changes change over time. Where are you now in relation to the change that has accompanied your loss? Write about change for five minutes. Get to know your current environment.

Dear New Love

It is amazing to have love again in my life, to have somebody who cares about me, thinks about me, and holds me. Ever since my husband died, and for the years that I feared he would, I have wondered how I would ever manage without him. It hasn't been easy. Working to accept this loss has consumed and transformed me. Diminished me. Expanded me. I think that this loss will continue to shape me forever.

I want you to know that sometimes it is hard for me to acknowledge how much you mean to me. I have lost the delusion of permanence and I am trying to live every moment, in balance, with peace, no matter if I am alone or with you. It feels critical that I not be too attached to any one definition of happiness, particularly the happiness derived from love. Self-containment feels like a vital act of personal preservation.

My happiness with you is measured because I sometimes feel as though the wonderful, loving feelings I have for you detract from the love I had and continue to hold for Ken. The terrible truth is this: if Ken had lived there would be no you in my life. I wish Ken were still alive, and I would bring him back to life if I could because I don't want him to be dead. Because he died, I found you. I am glad you're here with me now. I like loving our uncertain future together.

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Try this:

One of the hardest aspects of loving again after loss are the inevitable comparisons between the one who died and the one who lives. Can you play with idea of comparing? You know you do it. You know it makes you feel uncomfortable. Embrace it.

I refuse to compare the living and the dead.

The living just sent me a text message.

The dead lives on in my children.

I hate to compare the living and the dead.

The dead doesn't have a chance vs. the living.

The living doesn't have a chance vs. the dead.

I compare the living and the dead.

My foundation lies on the earth where you left me;

I tap dance on the newly sprouted grass.

Stopping in Peace

Going through a major traumatic event is exhausting. Losing someone you love is devastating. I find that almost five years after my husband's death, I avoid stress wherever I can. Contentment matters more to me than ever before. It feels essential to my well-being. I might as well be a hippie carrying a multi-colored sign that reads: PEACE + LOVE cause that's all I want anymore.



I am not ready to stop
Being content, to change.
I will not give up my peace.
After years of spinning,
Reaching for light,
Returning to darkness,
With every revolution,
Lightheaded yet grounded,
Tied to the wheel
As it turned us over and over.
We became thinner, more fragile.
I trusted the inner ear
To maintain balance, to know up from down.
This spinning can't go on endlessly.
Eventually slowed to an absolute
Halt. Where I find myself now:
A still, calm, silent rock on the ground.
Flung from the heavy wheel
Sprouting shoots, tendrils, soft moss
Fingers, arms, muscles, fists, hands
Held to the sun
Which has never, ever felt as warm
On this cold surface
Heating up. Transforming. Growing subversively.
No longer empty, barren.
I am not ready to change,
Ideally suited to my current environment.
No more spinning, please not yet.

Happy Little Ode to Death

Happiness is coming back to me. I trace its return to March of this year, four years and two months after Ken's death. Around that time, some of the heaviness of grief began to lift. (Not to get too weird on you, but shortly before this lighter me began to appear, I did have a moment when I felt and saw something that I took as Ken's spirit shimmering at the foot of my bed. Then there was a flash of light, and the shimmering human form disappeared with a flash past my bedroom window. The experience, in the moment, left me feeling awestruck.)

It's not like I ever completely lost the ability to be happy during his illness and since his death. Thankfully, I've always been able to find pieces of joy wherever I go. But, coming face to face with the prospect of losing Ken, and then meeting his death head-on and slogging through years of pain, have made a purer form of happiness available to me now. How can I describe it? How can it possibly make sense that I would be happier after the person who introduced me, finally, to the love I had longed for, was dead?

I wish I had possessed this form of happiness and contentment while he was alive. I think he had it all along. But me? What a dope. Until I understood that what we cherish most can be ripped away...can come to an end...WILL come to an end...I didn't get it and I worried and struggled more than I felt grateful. Never again, I say!


So, here's a little happy ode to death.
After you read mine, create your own!

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Death is horrific, but:

-- once you've lived through it, there's not likely to be anything worse that you'll ever have to encounter

--life sure feels good when you consider that you could be lying in a hospital bed instead

--the best way to honor your loved one is to remember how much they'd rather be here and to show life the reverence they can no longer feel

--it's real and it hasn't come for me, yet

--I am a better, stronger, happier, healthier person because I let it wake me up from silly delusions of unimportant matters

--because of losing Ken, I have been enriched, and though I sometimes feel ashamed that it took his death to make me wiser and more content, I will not squander what I've learned