Thank Goodness for the Little Things

"In grief, the little things are the big things."

~Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D

Grief One Day at a Time

I have been expressing my thankfulness for little things in gratitude journals for over 40 years.  This practice has been a support through divorce, illness, and times of conflict and stress, but never as much as these past months since John's death.  So, upon coming across this quote recently, I decided to revisit the gratitude journal I've just completed to see what little things buoyed me up this past summer.  Could it be that noticing and appreciating these things contributed to the summer being easier than I had dreaded?  

• a bumper crop of roses - John would have been so pleased
• a hummingbird hovering within inches of my face
• chilled red grapes
• a decent night's sleep
• and an afternoon nap on the patio chaise
• figuring out how to program the TV on my own
• frozen yogurt on a hot day
• a good book - great writing, thought-provoking, elegant - the perfect book for the moment
• an unexpected call from an old friend
• and an invitation for lunch from a new one
• two dozen, yes two, yellow tulips (my favorite flower) from a friend, "just because"
• the desert sky at dusk
• a slice of cheesecake that I treated myself to
• chicken noodle soup when I'm under the weather
• how much better everything sounds with my new hearing aids
• finding an old love letter
• a sudden, unexpected happy memory
• a card, a joke, a silly gift -  moments that evoked giggles, even outright belly laughs
• a customer service agent who actually provides good service
• helpful strangers who reach objects on top shelves without my asking (I'm only 4'11 and need all the help I can get)
• anyone who asks how I'm doing and is willing to hear the truth
• friends who have walked this path before me and can reassure me that what I'm experiencing is normal
• a stranger telling me how much she or he enjoyed John and misses him
• old musicals - especially anything with Gene Kelly
• and gripping British mysteries
• a good news story that sets the tone for a positive day
• stumbling on an inspirational quote
• finding something I've misplaced 
• and always, always, my sweet Rufus, my little companion, who greets me with pirouettes and soft growls, tailing wagging, a guarantee I never walk into an empty house

Reflecting a bit on this list, I can see that this simple practice of recording 3-5 little things I'm grateful for every night is, indeed, one of the little things that is helping me endure this grief.  Without this as an established practice, I suspect I could find it almost impossible to notice the little things. For this enduring practice of finding gratitude for the little things, I am most grateful.

How Could I Forget?

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."

~ John Lennon

Where did the summer go?  I had so many plans - plans to write, maybe travel a bit, complete reorganizing the house, lose 10 pounds (again), and of course, deal with this on-going grief as it was sure to arise.

Then, life happened.  It interrupted my plans in late May when I woke in the middle of the night with an attack of vertigo, the room spinning, my stomach churning, and the realization that should I fall, no one would know.  A realization that brought on a wave of grief and anxiety I hadn't known since the days immediately following John's death in November.

It was this event that set into motion a series of challenges and decisions that would occupy several following weeks.  First, the diagnosis of Positional Vertigo, exercises to correct it, weeks of unsteadiness and incipient nausea, and always the fear of falling.  Then, hearing testing and hearing aids.  Followed by a balance assessment and the warning that my balance was so poor that I was in danger of falling, with or without vertigo.

For a while, it seemed that each new attempt to resolve a problem only led to the identification of another problem.  It took all of my emotional energy to avoid holding a major pity party for myself.  Needless to say, I didn't travel, didn't write beyond my personal journal pages, and comfort snacking didn't do much for a diet!  So much for plans.

Ultimately, I did resolve my health challenges.  I enrolled in a balance course and made significant inroads in organizing the house.  I got an alert system which has alleviated much of my concern about being alone.  And while I haven't lost weight, I haven't gained any - a small victory considering all the stress!

So, as dawn arrives later every day and dusk settles sooner, as autumn is in the air and I anticipate the first anniversary of John's death, my second Thanksgiving and Christmas without him, I could easily descend into anxiety and trepidation.  However, the greatest accomplishment of this summer has been to remind me, not that life happens while I'm making other plans, but that I have the resiliency, the skills and support to deal with it.  I almost forgot.  

Just Not Yet

"Don't cry because it's over.  Smile because it happened."
~ Dr. Seuss

I love Dr. Seuss and I so want to believe this.   I can recognize that I am making progress, for sure.  In those first few weeks after John died, I despaired of remembering him other than from those last six months when he declined so significantly, losing weight, losing his ability to drive, losing his eyesight, eventually needing my help for even the most rudimentary tasks.  I panicked when I couldn't remember the silly little jingle he created and sang only in the shower.  I couldn't sleep in our bed, couldn't ward off the regrets.  

I turned to a multitude of grief books, hoping to find that someone else, anyone else, who felt the way I did.  Thankfully, I found the reassurance I was looking forward.  Not crazy, not unusual to feel so frantic.  

Then one morning, out of nowhere, the jingle emerged as I was waking up.  Gradually, sweet memories from those last six months returned.  How pleased he was that our little rescue dog, Rufus, and I had "found each other."  How he would sing to me, "Have I told you lately that I love you?" several times a day.  How, when I asked if he knew how much I loved him, his response was "and do you know how much that mattered?"  How he always expressed his gratitude to me, to his doctor, to the home health care and hospice nurses who cared for him.  Memories that, though they first brought tears, could also evoke a smile.  Not either/or but both.

In recent months, other memories have returned, sometimes initiated deliberately by someone sharing a common experience.  Or when I have had the courage to sit with photo albums or my basket of all the cards he sent me over the years.  When I have had the courage to go through a travel journal - our trips to Tuscany or the one to Sicily when we came upon a relative of mine sitting on a doorstep in her housecoat and flannel slippers, a scene from a Fellini movie.  Or the photos from the helicopter ride down the face of the Jurassic Falls.  How thrilled he was to sit beside the pilot.  

There are the memories that pop up unexpectedly - when it's dusk and I can hear him call to me to "come see this.  You won't believe the sky."  Or when I wake in the morning and recall how he would ask how I slept.  Hearing that Tiger Woods won the Masters and knowing he would have said, "I told you so."  Walking into the local Starbucks and ordering an iced tea the way he would have.

The intimate memories - the night we met in a "bar in Kansas City."  Well, an elegant lounge actually, but he loved telling everyone it was a bar.  Our wedding, the way he hovered when I had breast cancer, the beautiful messages he wrote on every card until he could no longer even sign his name.  

There isn't a day now when yet another memory emerges.  Bidden, unbidden.  Most of the time I can smile, well, at least smile first.  Am I at the point when I don't cry?  Not yet.  Will there come a day when I can simply smile because it happened?  Maybe, hopefully, but just not yet.

This Much I Know

"Healing in grief is a lot like the onset of spring.  It's unreliable and fickle."

~ Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Unreliable and fickle.  Certainly my experience.  It's uncanny how this spring my inner mood so reflects the weather - or is it vice versa?   

Some days, the skies are gunmetal gray and the temperatures have dropped by ten degrees.  It's all I can do to get out of my nightgown and accomplish anything.  A song, a telephone conversation, an unexpected request related to John's death and I'm weeping.  A grief burst to rival the cloudbursts that have been all too common this spring.  

Some days, I wake to sunshine and the expectation of a good day, but by noon, banks of gray clouds roll in and the threat of yet another cloudburst increases by the hour.  On these days, it takes so little to unleash my own cloudburst of tears.  For how could those grief experts who warn you to prepare for the first anniversary or birthday or holiday know how easily I can fall apart at the sight of the first tulip, remembering the delight he took in planting them.  Or the sight of the first hummingbird, reminding me that he is not here to fill the feeder.  Or how even anticipating the first roses brings tears as I know he will never again bring in a fresh rose in the morning to greet my day,  How could they know?

Lately, however, there are days when I think I'm making progress through the forest of my grief.  The sun shines.  It's warm and a breeze whispers the shrubbery.   I have energy, look forward to the day and getting out and among folks.  The memories are sweet.  I barely shed a tear.  I even laugh.  On these days, I can believe there will be more such days, hopefully, many more.

So, this much I have come to know about this path I'm walking - the journey is, at best, unreliable and fickle.  Grief bursts are to be expected at the most unexpected times.  They are a part of the journey, but they, like spring showers, eventually pass.  So, I do best when I take it a day at a time, some days an hour at a time.  

I know that quotes like the above help me to make sense of my experience.  I know that the good days, and there are good days, are cause for celebration. The good days, and there are more good days, are cause for optimism.  I know that somehow, someday, the firsts will not overwhelm me.  I know that I will survive, and maybe, just maybe, even thrive again.  Even if, today, the clouds roll in again.

I Am No Stranger to Grief

"Grief is not a train track toward acceptance.  Instead, it is more of a 'getting lost in the woods.'"

~ Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD

I am no stranger to grief.   I have walked the path of grief alone and as a companion of family members and friends many times in my 78 years.  I have grieved openly over the assassinations of my youth and the shootings too common these past few years.  I am no stranger to grief.

So I thought I was prepared for John's death.  I was naive enough to think I was "ready".  Moreover, I was more concerned that I would be relieved rather than bereaved.  I wasn't - either ready or relieved.  I was shocked, that the pain and fear and regret were so crippling; also shocked that I was shocked.

It has been 12 weeks now, 12 weeks today, and the initial shock waves after subsided.  I have put my feet forward into the woods, deliberately, albeit with no small measure of anxiety and trepidation.  It is helping to think of this as a journey on an unchartered path through a dense forest.  This metaphor helps me when I'm going along, seemingly upright and grief descends like an unexpected branch that smacks me in the chest or an unseen root sending me tumbling face forward to the ground.  It helps when is a ray of sunshine breaks through the canopy of grief and for a moment I feel guilty that I feel OK.

I'm pretty sure not everyone thinks in metaphors nor finds solace in them, but this one works for me.  Grief as a path, an unchartered path through a dark forest.  A path that one has to create slowly, carefully, a step at a time.  Sometimes moving in the wrong direction, sometimes stumbling, sometimes frightened and disillusioned, but eventually finding the clearing.

I remind myself that I am no stranger to grief.  I may not have been lost in so vast, so dark a forest before, but I have made it through a miscarriage, a divorce, the loss and betrayal of friends, my own cancer - I will survive.  Someday, I may even thrive again.

To Remember

"Promise me you'll always remember:

You're braver than you believe,

And stronger than you seem, 

And smarter than you think."

~ Christopher Robin to Pooh

I gave a plaque with this quote to John two years ago, at the beginning of his valiant battle with a rare cancer of the blood, a battle he lost the Monday before Thanksgiving.  I wanted him to cling to these words, wanted him to remember every day through the hundreds of transfusions he received, through his steady decline how much I believed in him.  How brave and strong and smart I knew him to be.

Then I forgot that I had given it to him.   He never used the words brave, or strong, or smart when people marveled at how resilient he seemed, how courageous, how amazing that he survived beyond the initial prognosis of six months.  Instead, publicly he would credit it to his orneriness or stubbornness.  Privately, he would declare that he expected a miracle.  For hadn't he survived non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, several bouts of skin cancer.  He was going to beat these odds, too, and be the first to defeat what we had been told was incurable.  He didn't use the words, but every day he lived them.

I forgot about it as I sent him more cards, found other plaques, penned letters of acknowledgment and gratitude and encouragement, and grieved as I watched him decline,  eventually surrender to Home Health Care, and finally to Hospice services.  

Then, on a day following his death, when I could muster the courage to check out his computer and immediate surroundings, I found the plaque and shared it with my sister who had come to be with us, to be with me.  She encouraged me to place it where I could see it.  Where it could serve me as surely it had served him.

So, it now rests on my bedside table where it nudges me to remind myself in the morning and in the evening, in the moments when grief and loneliness descend on me like a sudden thunderstorm, when I fear I haven't enough years left to ever feel content again, that

You are braver than you believe,

And stronger than you seem,

And smarter than you think.

~ John to Angie

I repeat the words and hope someday I'll believe them.  Just not yet.