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.  

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.

Because He Listens

"The first duty of love is to listen."
~ Paul Tillich

I write this as we approach our 35th, and I fear our last, wedding anniversary.  We met 38 years ago, Aug. 18, 1980, to be exact.  In a bar in Kansas City, as the song goes.  Just 15 minutes before I had determined to leave.  I was there with a colleague, sharing with her the highlight of a long road trip I had taken alone, so proud of what I had done.

John walked in with a friend to celebrate a successful business transaction and sat at a nearby table.  His first trip to Kansas City, he asked a question of his friend that the man could not answer.  But I could, and without much thought, did.

We continued to talk - about the city, and then work, and backgrounds and interests - and he listened, at a level I had rarely experienced.

When we parted, we exchanged telephone numbers in case I ever got to Cleveland, his home base.  In case he ever visited Kansas City again.  Which I seriously doubted.  

The next day, I told my mother that I had met someone who, though I was sure I would never see again, gave me hope that there might be someone with whom I could build a lasting, supportive relationship.  In fact, I told her, were we to live in the same city I was sure we would end up married.

He called the following Sunday morning just to talk.  And he listened.  As he did every Sunday morning for weeks.  And eventually every Wednesday evening, and eventually every night.  As he did throughout the challenges of determining how to create a lasting relationship across miles and different careers, across different backgrounds and commitments, across significant hesitations and considerations.  Somehow, even when he became most fearful or I became most frustrated and angry, he strove to listen.

And I came to realize that for all the reasons I had come to love him, at the top of the list was that he always listened, no matter how difficult the conversation.  I moved to Cleveland, and we married in l983.

That foundation of talking and listening through the tough conversations has served us well.  Sustained us through several moves, career changes, presidential campaigns, caregiving for my elderly parents, and battles with cancer.  It continues to be a basic survival skill as we deal with this, the greatest challenge we have ever faced, the most difficult conversations we have ever had to have.  Still, he listens.  I have never loved him more.

Coming Full Circle

"We never know from one day to the next what surprise lurks around the corner."

  ~ Joy Loverde, Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old 

I know, heaven knows I know, what Joy is talking about.  From the major surprises like disease, death, or natural disasters to the minor surprises like a garage door that suddenly won't open or a burst water pipe or a flat tire, we never know.  But we also never know when we'll meet someone who will change the course of our lives or pick up a book that gives us the answer we've been looking for for months.  Or, as happened to me last week, the information that I made a difference in someone's life who continues to make a far greater difference than I ever could have made.

Joy is an old friend. We go back over 25 years.  More than a friend, more like a much younger sister or the daughter I never had or would have been proud to have had.  There was a day when she asked to come in for a coaching session as she wanted to talk about a career change.  A change from the marketing career at which she was skilled, experienced and successful.  A change to something that would use those skills for something that made a bigger difference than promoting someone else's product or business.

I remember that conversation as though it happened yesterday.  I've shared the experience of it many times in coachings and trainings in the years that followed.  I asked Joy only one question.  "What issues are you passionate about - in what arena would you like to make a difference?" She answered quickly - "The way children are treated and the way old people are treated."  I then suggested she go home and choose the one she would like to focus on and think about how she could apply her skills and talents to the problems she saw.

It was as simple as that.  She returned shortly saying she had chosen to approach the issue of eldercare and knew exactly how she might carve out a new career.  What followed was her first book, The Complete Elder Care Planner, speaking engagements, workshops,  consulting and ultimately recognition as a major contributor in the growing eldercare advisory industry.

Fast forward to a week ago.  I was searching for a book, any book that might address the overwhelm I was feeling about a future without my husband.  The perfect book appeared, at least the title suggested that it might be.  As though the author could read my mind - Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old.  And the author - Joy Loverde, my Joy.  

I downloaded it immediately and started to read it.  Exactly as I expected, it is well-written, well-researched, clear and compassionate.  But what I didn't expect was to find my name in her acknowledgments.  After all these years.  I didn't expect the tears, gratitude, and the profound sense of satisfaction and delight that almost overwhelmed me.  To know that I had influenced someone who now influences so many others and will continue to do so.  And that I am now a recipient of what was set in motion in that simple conversation long ago.  We have come full circle.  And that knowledge, in itself, may be more important to me than anything in the book.

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Random Acts of Kindness

"Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, most underrated agent of human change."

~ Bob Kerrey

I woke this morning to a damp and dreary day. A good day to rest, read, and reflect - especially since we are still recouping from our recent trip to MD Anderson Cancer Center.

This trip can take a lot out of us. It's not just that air travel has become more difficult. It's also the emotional stress of not knowing what we might hear from the hematologist, the physical stress of pushing John everywhere in a wheelchair, the physical stress for him of yet another bone marrow biopsy.  And when we're done, managing another day of travel and our morale for at least another week until we receive the biopsy report.

We've made this trip three times within 17 months. Each with a similar routine, yet each yielding radically different reactions. The first visit we met with the hematologist assigned to us, an austere Russian trained research physician, whose honesty bordered on bluntness, a shocking confrontation with reality while we were already shell-shocked. By our second visit, she was warmer, gentler, but the news she delivered still bleak and unpromising. Still no cure on the horizon. No appropriate clinical trials available. And her concern for John's appearance disconcerting. The biopsy took two attempts, and the results still were inconclusive. Overall, every bit as challenging a visit. Maybe even more so.

It was a surprise, therefore, when we both affirmed as we left our accommodations that this trip was a much more positive experience even though we couldn't pinpoint why at first. Yes, our doctor was even warmer, more personable, more patient with our questions, clearer with her answers.  But still no cure, no appropriate clinical trials. The biopsy went smoother. But still no results yet.

And then it hit us in the airport as someone offered to help with our luggage. This what was different. The constant stream of kindness that had enveloped us the entire trip. People who lifted luggage without being asked. People who held doors and offered help with the wheelchair. People who not only gave directions but walked with us to be sure we were headed the right way - and not because they were paid to do so. People who smiled first. People who genuinely seemed pleased to see us and willing to listen. People who reminded me with every gesture that there are wonderful, kind and decent people all around us.

Simple, unrequested, unexpected acts of kindness. I'd like to think I would always be aware of and grateful for them. But I suspect they have meant so much more because I am so much more aware of our fragility, so much more susceptible to cynicism and despair. Powerful, inexpensive but not underrated in this household.

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One Step at a Time

"Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths."

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

As much as I love a good quote and have notebooks and computer files filled with them, I have committed very few to memory.   This quote by Goethe is the most recent.

In reflecting on how few I have memorized, I realize there are three reasons a quote makes the cut - it conveys something I already believe but with fewer and more impactful words, it evokes a feeling or belief I wasn't aware I have, or most importantly, it challenges and impacts the way I am thinking.  This quote falls into the third category.

Prior to coming upon the quote, I was most influenced in the way I think about life and its challenges by a transaction with a friend in December l999.  We had just moved to Vegas with my mother, who was grieving the sudden death of my dad that October.  Determined to give her a decent Christmas and reassure her that this was now her home, exhausted and grieving myself, I nonetheless pulled out all the stops and decorated the house (with many boxes still unpacked in the garage) and invited friends for a holiday party.  

The evening hadn't progressed very long when my friend pulled me aside to paraphrase the Breda O'Connor quote and remind me that my future as my mother's caregiver was a marathon and not a sprint - a simple, immediate, and effective image for me.  So effective that I clung to that image for the next 18 years, through caregiving for mom, my battle with breast cancer and John's stem cell treatment for non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  And it served me well.

But today, soon to be 77, once again a caregiver, the metaphor or image of running a race, even if a marathon and not a sprint, is no longer helpful.  Not that I would have recognized this were it not for stumbling on this quote.  Somehow the image of walking a winding path feels more congruent with my experiences these past 18 months since John was diagnosed with a currently incurable form of MDS.  Plugging uphill, with unpredictable switchbacks, dips in the road, obstacles to be cleared or avoided, moments when I can barely breathe, the path ahead poorly marked - yes, a winding path up a mountainside.  The more I have reflected on this quote, the more validating it has become.  The more helpful it looms for the months ahead.

I don't know the shape of the mountain ahead of us or how far up the path we will make it together, but I do know, without a doubt, that it will be winding and circuitous, in spots even treacherous.  I do know that we can and will take it one step at a time.

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