Moving Beyond Grief: The Final Hurdle

Yes folks, it's true. When you finally feel as though you've recovered from losing your spouse, you might just have one last hurdle to jump.

You can tell yourself that you feel better, that you're no longer drowning in grief, in fact, you just might feel, like I do, more fully aware of life's gifts than ever before, but still, at the base of it all lies your dead husband, the one whose death sucked all the air from your body and left you flapping in the wind like a dry husk. He's always there, always there. He's always dead. He's always never coming back.

I don't know how long it's been for you since your spouse died. For me it's been five and a half years. What I want to say is: "I feel better now."  Or "I don't wake up everyday feeling like crap anymore." Or "Some days I don't think sad thoughts about Ken at all anymore." Or "I'm thrilled to be alive and to see what happens next." Or "Fear has finally left the building."

It's really amazing when you get to this point, but it's kind of hard to fully embrace it sometimes. I'm wondering if this is the final hurdle to completely overcoming the loss of your spouse -- when you can admit you're OK without him or her, you've made it, you're happy again, life is good --and you don't feel guilty about it anymore. I'm not sure I'm there yet, but I'm closing in on it. Perhaps another sign of vaulting over the final hurdle is when you can say "I feel happy again" and you don't feel like you have to add something like: "but, of course, I'll miss him forever and it will always be terrible that he died."

I'm wondering if when we allow ourselves to fully grieve, to take the time it takes you as an individual to do what you need to do to process your loss, perhaps then it is easier to cross the final hurdle. Can you picture yourself leaping over it, arms raised high in a victory leap? I can see myself there now, or almost nearly there.

I fell so many times along the way. I was filled with fear, anxiety and pain. I was envious, sad, jealous, bitter, confused and misguided. I wrote about it. I talked about it. I got help. I figured out how I needed to live through it.

I couldn't envision reaching this final hurdle five and a half years ago. I thought I would never want to be in a place where I could be happy without Ken. In fact, I believed that getting to this point would be impossibly difficult and impossibly sad and horribly dismissive of Ken's life and what he meant to me. I also felt, way back then, that I didn't want to experience and feel and process all the grief that his death would bring my way. I knew it would take a long time, and I wasn't sure I wanted to spend years doing it.

But now, years of grieving later, I get it. Grieving fully brings your life back to you. That's why you do it no matter how long it takes. Eventually, you see the last hurdle approaching. Then you get ready to jump.

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What does it feel like to imagine being at a place where you are happy again? Take 5 minutes to write about it. If you can't even imagine it, write about that.

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.


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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.

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.

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.

Writing Works. Writing Heals.

Whether you practice the following disciplines or not, we all know that activities like aerobic exercise, meditation, and yoga are good for us. Maybe you run daily, or maybe once in a while. Maybe you meditate on a regular basis, or perhaps just when you feel really extra stressed out. Maybe you have a daily yoga practice, or perhaps you just get into the downward dog on occasion, or stretch before bed. All of these practices are healthy. They contribute to wellness. You don't have to be a championship runner to run. You don't have to be a monk to meditate. Likewise, you don't have to be a professional writer to write.

Writing can be one of the tools in your toolbox for building a better life. For me, writing is a way to transcend loss. To find meaning in my life. To open a path that wasn't always cleared. It helps me make sense of who I am now and where I am heading.

Reading back through my latest journal, I found the following entry from late March 2010. It shows me how far I've come in relation to the profound loss of losing Ken. (My husband had been dead then for four years and two months. I have been writing about this loss for years now, including writing about his sickness for years before that.)

This piece of writing shows me that I am on a precipice of something new. I am moving to a different phase of the grieving process. I am recovering. I am feeling better. I am changing.

Here's the entry:

What the loss of you feels like today:

It feels old and tired, on it's last legs, out of breath, sagging, ancient, exhausted.

It feels boring, a waste of time, a weight on my shoulders.

It feels like a broken record going round and round on an old stereo, in an empty room, with the door locked and there is no key.

It is colorless, soundless, weightless, invisible, powerless.

It has been done before, overdone, redone, reworked.

It feels like ancient history brought to my door here in the present.

It feels unescapable, unshareable, unspeakable, boring.

It feels like a hangover.

It feels like something I need to shake off, shrug off, lose, get rid of, eliminate.

It feels like a curse.

It feels like a blanket wrapped around my face.

It feels like a path to another world, another life, a way out, an exit, a prompt, a stimulus plan, an inspiration, a wake up call.

It is palpable.

It is a work of art.

It is the most significant event that has ever happened to me.

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Ask yourself: How does my loss feel today? Ask the same question in six months, in a year, in two years.

Ask yourself now, and find out the answers by writing them down.

Restoration

Why is it that just as I have acknowledged, felt, reached a new sense of contentment in my life -- a contentment I have found within myself, ALL ALONE, while planting peas in my garden, or successfully completing a home renovation project, or writing, or not being concerned about whether or not I stay at home on a Saturday night or a Friday night, or a Sunday night,

Why, just as I feel this sweet peace of a contentment with less, with all that I do have, I am then plunged into a deep well of sorrow, a sorrow that skims the cream of my contentment and sits there floating across everything? At any moment, the spark of Ken's premature death can take the picture of my peaceful, quiet forest of solitude and start a little fire raging at the edge of it, curling the corners until it's all just nothing but grey ash and emptiness all over again.

This week I went to Ukrainian village to visit the grand, three story, 1890 redstone apartment building that you bought about 100 years after it was built, about three years before we met, a courageous, urban-pioneering moment in your life as a single, social worker in his 30s. Little did you know that the risk you took back then would become a key foundation of support for your young family living alone without you.

Now I dream of restoring it, piece by piece, this building that has come to sit in a relatively new historic district of Chicago owned now by me who never would have taken the risk that you did. There is peeling paint on crumbling stone, rickety steps in need of replacement, soft brick in need of tuckpointing so the moisture cannot do its damage. I can restore and build upon your dream. I can take something in danger of becoming run down and renew it. You started this. I can keep it moving forward. I am growing stronger though I can still cave in from the devastation of your disappearance.

You were so proud of the building you bought and you loved watching the neighborhood transform around you from dangerous to impossibly hip. Today young people live in the building just like we did....they meet, they move in together, eventually some of them marry. Today I went over to the building to meet with a tree trimmer named Sy. He's going to remove a dead maple tree and trim the dawn redwood that you planted about 20 years ago, and the locust tree that has become simply huge. After Sy left, I met with a young woman who will become a new tenant in May. She's about to begin her job as a medical resident at Rush, and she's moving in with her boyfriend for the first time. She told me they're talking about a ring.

A dead tree will come down. A young woman will begin her career and a new love right here in our building where we were married. I'm thinking renewal. Tomorrow I'm meeting with an architect who knows the area, knows our building, and appreciates restoration work.

I never imagined I'd be doing any of this. Like our building, I've been worn down by what life has rained upon me. But I'm coming back. I'm taking the building with me. We're going to get better. I wish I believed you could see me now. But when I asked you if I should work on restoring the building, I told myself that you said, "go for it."

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Take 5 minutes and write about restoration. Or if you'd rather, write about what's been destroyed.

Loss Changes You

Life is less now. After losing my husband, I've been stripped, not bare, but scraped and whittled away in places. Edges carved. Excitements dulled. Expectations muted. Passions calmed.

I would like to say that I am a bigger person after going through the loss of my husband, the loss of the best person I ever knew. What I feel is that I am actually a smaller person, as if in losing my partner I am left with some portion of what I became when we were together. With the disappearance of this good man from this earth, my understanding of random misfortune leaves me hollow, my insides scooped out. Anything can happen at any time, good or bad, no matter what you do. I am less attached. Emptiness comforts me. Nothing cannot be lost.

My life has become quieter. I find kindness in less of everything.

My home, my own space, is solidly here. When I come in from the cold, the door closes on known territory. I can breathe deeply from the inside. As if for the first time in my life, I embrace the desire to turn inward.

Why write about loss, you ask?

Every time I do, I find out either where I'm going next or where I am now; the destination keeps changing. At the moment, I'm going nowhere. I'm staying right here. I am not lost.

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How has loss changed you? Write about it.

Grief Changes

Better and better I feel. It's slow, but it's happening. My energy notching up. My hopeful nature quietly, gradually, just re-emerging after the crush of death, an opening to possibilities, productivity, new promise. I feel more patient and calm, less anxious and harried. I am eight years older than I was when Ken first was diagnosed with cancer, but I feel about 30 years wiser. I keep wishing that Ken could know the me I've become. We would have been so great together, today. I know, it's wistful thinking.

In these four years since Ken died, and in the four years before that which held his illness and cancer treatment, everything had to be held close for fear it would all blow apart, fall apart, or explode. Protection became paramount: keep germs at bay, keep frightening thoughts from surfacing, keep schedules tight, keep track, keep researching, keep stress at bay, keep death away, keep everything the same, let nothing change.

Everything changed. Nothing is the same. Everything will keep changing. More will be lost. Eventually everything.

I find this freeing. Why fear the inevitable?

Meanwhile, and as I notice new energy and confidence beginning to reveal itself, grief accompanies me everywhere but in a different form. Instead of riding on my back, it follows now from a respectful distance. Instead of shouting, it echoes. In a crowded room, it's one of the many guests, not the honored speaker. It's not dragging me around anymore. I escort it.

Grief has been my partner for a long time. Like anything and everything else, our partnership is changing.

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Describe your relationship with grief. Who is this character that's been by your side? What does it give you? What does it take from you?

Progress (Measured in Squirrels)

We have a room in our house that we call "the fish room". It is a guest room on the first floor of our house that happens to have a fish tank in it. Tonight the double doors to the fish room at the end of the hallway are closed tight. Why? Because there is a squirrel in there, and while I can handle him hanging out in our guest room tonight, (perhaps peeing and pooping on our clothes and shoes in the closet), I do not want it running through the rest of the house.

Every fall since Ken died, (there have been three of them so far), a squirrel appears in our house. The first year (2007), I was really pissed off. On top of everything else, I grumbled, I even have to get rid of rodents. Surely, that is a man's job. Why the hell do I have to not only lose my husband, but also have to take on everything he did around here, including the yucky stuff. It made me feel really sorry for myself. Really sorry for myself. Getting rid of rodents IS NOT FOR ME. That was my husband's job. That's a man's job. (Similarly, having to mow the lawn really depressed me. I'm not much for changing lightbulbs either.) I was also scared. I called my father-in-law. I called my sister. My already depleted spirit feebly whimpered for help.

Fortunately though, I was able to chase the squirrel around with a broom, open a large window, and shoo him out. Oh, yes, it took a lot out of me. I called a few people to tell them of my feat. I lay down. I took the kids out for dinner instead of cooking.

2008...another squirrel, an assertive squirrel, that would venture up from the basement and steal fruit off the kitchen counter. This time, I shook my head, and rolled my eyes. Not again. Why me? It tired me out just to think about dealing with it. And it pissed me off too, but perhaps not as much as the year before. So I hired some professional wildlife trappers, big guys in jeans and T-shirts driving around with trucks full of trapped rodents. It was nice to have some guys around helping me out. One of them even showed me the flying squirrel he had caught at the previous house. We went out to the truck and I looked at him scampering around in his cage. He was cute. Then they set some traps for me in my basement, taped up some places to see where the critters might be getting in, and returned to take the traps away when we caught the squirrel. It wasn't cheap, but I was getting some help, and I really liked that. They even found a place in the roof where they thought squirrels might be getting in and patched it up for me.

Today, a 2009 model squirrel was perched on top of the TV in the fish room. I closed the doors to the room. I went to yoga. I went out and bought a squirrel trap for $50. I called two husbands of friends of mine to see if they would help me set the trap. Didn't hear from them. Meanwhile, my daughter's friend Anna helped me set the trap and I enjoyed mixing some cashews together with some sticky peanut butter. I put the trap in the fish room on top of a plastic garbage bag so that when I catch him he won't pee on my floor. I fully expect the trap will have squirrel in it in the morning, and I will pick that trap up, put it in my car, and release him somewhere far from my house.

This is progress. This is my work now.

Grief Then and Now

When I first lost my husband (in the first year):

I couldn't believe it.

It felt like he was still here.

I didn't know how I would manage.

I couldn't feel anything.

I wondered where all my grief was.

I lost weight and only ate for sustenance.

I couldn't read books.

I couldn't watch movies.

I couldn't listen to music.

I needed my friends desperately.

I depended on the kindness of women.

I couldn't imagine being single and on my own. (even though I was).

I hated looking at children with their fathers.

I hated looking at wives with their husbands.

I wished I had more help with everything.

I felt terribly alone.

I felt terribly unlucky.

My bed was cold.

My hair became completely gray. (Ok, it was pretty gray before he died.)

I developed an obsession with on-line dating thinking that if I could only find a new husband and father for my children all would be well. (My daughter did not share this fantasy.)

I had the whole house painted.

My friend Amy took my living room down to the studs and exposed some brick.

I bought a new dog.

I worried obsessively about my children.

I worried about what would happen if I got sick. Who would be there for me?

I had to learn to make all the decisions.

I hired a professional organizer.

I gave away some of my dead husband's clothing to his friends and relatives.

I got fit.

I bought a new computer.

I worried obsessively about whether or not I should get a job.

I spent more time than I wanted to with financial planners, accountants and lawyers.

I thought about Ken's death in the abstract more than I allowed myself to think about him.

I was awed by the goodness, kindness and generosity of everyone who helped me, and developed a realization that we are not alone, and that all we need surrounds us if we are open to receive it.

Almost four years after losing my husband:

I feel resigned to the bad luck that found me.

I still feel envious of married women and intact families.

I miss Ken, the life we had, and the life I imagine we would have had.

I don't get as much pleasure out of traveling as I used to because I'm not a brave explorer without a companion.

I now have a GPS.

I am going through a phase of reading some of the many blogs written by others who have lost big. It comforts me.

I am forever changed and still changing.

I know that without the many women who have been there for me, and who continue to be there for me, I would be lost.

The sense of loss never leaves, ever; it only changes shape.

I can let go of smaller hurts, disappointments, fears, regrets, and anger much easier now.

I can appreciate the simple pleasure of being alive more.

I appreciate good health.

I appreciate the power of breathing.

I am proud of my strength.

I am renovating my basement.

I am on the school board of a small private school.

I am writing a book.

I am occasionally concerned that my children lost the better parent. (Although I will take some credit for being the longer lasting one.)

I hope I can find love again, but I'm not so sure I will. (In lieu of love I will take: a lifetime supply of good books, new friends, old friends, a reasonable supply of money, creative pursuits that engage me, a job that fulfills me, children who grow up to be happy and successful, a body that continues to support my desire to live well, a means to contribute to the greater good, friends that stick by me, friends who I stick by, a keypad, a pen, paper, a screen, a published book, a resurgence of journalism, a reason to laugh, running shoes, a yoga class, emotions under control, openness, and the willingness to let this untimely loss give me an opportunity we seldom get in this life after we become adults: to change, to become someone different, to realize that there are infinite ways to be, to think, to respond. A major loss rearranges you; might as well be open to a different shape.)