It has been nearly seven months since Bill's terminal cancer diagnosis shook our lives, and it has now been almost four months since he died at age 57. It has also been seventeen months since my mother died of a terminal illness at age 69, and two months since Bill's mom died in a tragic house fire at age 85. Like it or not, I'm earning a personal Ph.D. in handling terminal illness, sudden tragedy, loss, grief, and life after the death of a loved one. As the Nationwide Insurance TV commercial says, "Sometimes life comes at you." Ready or not, here it comes, fast, furious, and out of control.
The seven month time period is vital to me because that's when I mark the beginning of my grieving process, and his. My grief didn't start when Bill died; it began at the moment they found the golf-ball sized tumor on his pancreas. Although we didn't know at that time that he would die as quickly as he did, we both knew he would die, probably within the year.
One of my most important jobs as his caregiver was to help him grieve as well. After all, he was the one robbed of his health and life. He was the one hurting, suffering, and eventually, leaving the life and the people he loved. Helping him meant lots of different things, and I learned as I went along. It meant listening, talking, and crying together. Sometimes it meant giving him tough love, and other times it meant biting my tongue. It meant giving him space to process his feelings without ever letting him feel alone. It meant doing my best to make sure he had closure with everyone he loved and allowing his friends and family to spend precious time with him and to say their goodbyes. And, honestly, it meant sharing him with the whole world when I knew I was losing him. With his days numbered, all I wanted to do was hold him close and keep him all to myself. For us it meant visitors every week and weekend, big music and birthday parties, and a house full of people at every moment because that's what comforted him most. It meant setting my own needs aside so that I could help make his final months and weeks as beautiful as possible. It meant giving him unconditional love, to the very end. I loved him so very much. I had to be willing to let him go when all I wanted to do was hold on to him with all my might.
Every day people ask me some version of the same questions. "How are you?" I always answer with, "Today, I feel ______." That way I can be honest in the moment. Because feelings during grief can change moment to moment, that's the best way I know to respond. The second question is more of an observation. "I don't know how you do it. You're dealing with so much right now." I never quite know how to respond to this. I always acknowledge their statement, but what does a person say to this? I usually remark that I'm just surviving like everyone else, trying to deal with each crisis as it comes, feeling my way through it all. And that's the truth.
Grief is messy. It hurts. It's like surgery with no anesthesia. There may be five stages of grief, but they are far from a linear journey. They bounce around like a ping-pong ball in your heart and soul, and like the weather in Ohio, you might experience all five stages in a single day. No two days are alike, emotionally. It's the most unpredictable ride I've ever been on, and most days I wonder whether I'm moving forward, or going in circles. There is a blindfold over my eyes that doesn't allow me to see the other side, so I keep going.
I am learning a lot, though. I'm learning lessons I could only learn on this specific journey. Bill and I decided very early on in this process that we would be as open and transparent with our experience as possible, for several reasons. Firstly, if we publicly shared our experience, we wouldn't have as many private inquiries. There was no way we could keep up with the lovely calls, emails, and texts from friends and family. Secondly, we wanted to document our experience, in all its raw pain and exposure, on the outside chance that it might resonate with someone else going through the same thing. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine we would receive the outpouring of response that we have.
And it's still happening. I have people I've never met approach me every time I travel for birding, work, or personal time, who thank me profusely for sharing my experience so openly. Because I've opened my heart like a fishbowl, other people willingly share stories of their grief and loss, many with tears in their eyes and overwhelming empathy in their hearts. I've becoming aware of this unnamed "Band of Grievers" - soul friends who are bonded by an experience like brothers and sisters who have experienced the nightmare of combat together. I suppose this is a sort of battle, too, as we fight our way through the days, months, and years of uncharted emotional waters. The greatest gift in all of this is knowing I'm not alone in my experience. I'm often tempted to isolate myself entirely, but I keep making myself connect with people. The right people. The soul people.
To continue sharing my unpredictable grief journey, I'm sharing ten things today that I'm learning. These are not things I've mastered, but truths that are awakening in me. I'm sure I'll have ten different things to share months down the road, but this is where I am today, and these are the lessons I'm learning.
When someone dies, people always say, "At least they're not suffering anymore." or "At least they're at peace." or "At least it happened quickly." "At least they didn't suffer.", as if this somehow offers those left behind a glimpse of a silver lining around the Hell that is death and loss. I realize people are trying to be kind and reveal a bright side to loss, but there's nothing good about cancer, loss, tragedy, or death. There's nothing good about terminal illness, or older people dying in house fires. There's nothing good about our loved ones being gone from our lives forever. It's all terrifying, a living nightmare of the first order. But I believe that there can be a purpose in the pain if we open ourselves and allow it to change us. It can smooth out our rough edges, firm up the weak places in us, sharpen our focus and perspective, and open our souls to a depth of love, forgiveness, and healing we've never known.
That is my greatest wish - for you, for me, for all of us. May we be brave enough to embrace the pain and to let it shape us, making us better, not bitter.
TEN TRUTHS: Things I'm Learning Through Grief
1. Everyone grieves differently, but not every grieving behavior is healthy. It's essential to identify "healthy healing habits" and stick to those, rather than allowing destructive, emotionally-numbing patterns to form during our grief.
2. Nobody knows what to say to you when someone you love has died. Even the most socially adept among us feel awkward offering their condolences. Listen openly to anyone who wants to share in your sorrow, especially when the words are clumsy. (I've had some pretty funny experiences with this that I'll share at another time).
3. Death, loss, and grief are now part of my story, but these things don't define me completely. My story is still being written. They're gone, but I'm still here.
4. The only predictable thing about grief is its unpredictability.
5. It's okay to feel happy. It sounds like a quote from Captain Obvious, but it's incredible how guilty grieving people can feel when they realize they're experiencing positive emotions. We know it's okay to be sad, but it seems like we're betraying the one we've lost if we feel happy. We're not. We're just living and healing.
6. Identify your safe people and allow them to be your companions on this part of the journey. No one should ever have to die alone, and no one should ever have to grieve alone.
7. Grief changes us. There's no way around it. We will never be the same after this experience, nor would we want to be. And although grief is hard, change is good.
8. Self-care, even at the most surface level, is not only important right now, but it's also critical.
9. Find good things to do, and do them. Volunteer. Take a friend to dinner. Make a meal for someone sick. The only way through grief is to grieve, and the only path to wholeness is to live, love, and give unconditionally. As much as we're tempted to wallow in our self-pity, the path to healing is showing unconditional love to others.
10. Grief can become either a hole in our hearts or a doorway. We get to choose whether grief will become a giant void that swallows us up or a door that leads us to a more profound relationship with ourselves and others. How we use the space that loss creates in our lives is up to us. We can hide in the hole, or we can walk through the doorway into a new and different life experience.
