The Heartbreak Diary

Just Get On With It (Life) Already!

2012-01-24T14:46:00.001-06:00

Shortly after my husband died, my six-year-old son said the words that would pretty much mark his style of grieving, so much different than my own.

"This is our family now," he said emphatically, giving me and his sister a big hug.

Whoa, boy! What do you mean? Could you possibly be saying that we must, right now, face the reality of what is right in front of us (three people, not four)? Are you saying that your father is dead and we have to go bravely forward without him? I think that's exactly what he was saying, and he continues, six years later, to preach this kind of stoic, fact-based, feelings-be-damned approach.

Poor boy. His sister and I were all for grief groups and therapy, writing down memories of his father in a journal, participating in much bittersweet reminiscing of days past, and getting all worked up as the anniversary of his death approaches each year. He really does, I think, find it tiresome. Granted, he doesn't remember too much about his dad...but still....does he have a point?

I think it's really easy for young widows and widowers to get a little "woe is me-ish". (Guilty as charged here.) We didn't sign up for the early death of spouse or single parenting or having to start all over again, or grieving. It was completely unexpected and out-of-sync with most people we know. It's also easy to stay stuck in the past longer than might be necessary, because change is hard, and enforced change can feel unfair and nasty.

Still.

I think my son has a point. This is our family now. This is our life now. This is my life today. Worth remembering. Worth....a writing exercise!

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Sentence completions are one of my favorite types of writing prompts for visualizing your own thinking. Take each prompt and time yourself for two minutes while answering each one. There are no right or wrong answers, and sometimes your answers may even contradict one another. It's really a clearinghouse for your own thoughts on a topic.

This is my life right now and I need to:

This is my family now and I enjoy:

The past is gone. What I see in the near future is:

Since my spouse died I have made positive progress and change, for example:

Laugh about Death (Ha Ha Ha)

2012-01-20T12:56:00.000-06:00

Grieving is heavy. Ugh. It's such a load on your back. It's all depressing and sad; it makes people want to turn away from you, change the subject, have a drink or drive really fast or eat too much or too little food just to get away from the heaviness of it all. (Ha ha ha!)

The sadness of grief can last a long time, longer than anyone wants to know. When you've lost someone integral to your daily life, especially: a spouse, a child, a sibling, a parent. Maybe you feel like you've got no right to be happy when someone that close to you can't be happy anymore, can't be anything anymore, has to be dead. Perhaps pure joy, silliness, levity, excitement, enthusiasm for your own vital future feels a tad wrong or out of place. (Ho! Ho! Ho!)

Grief changes you. It sucks the lightness from your life and hovers over you like a giant shadow, arms outstretched, threatening, looming, staying put. The shadow can block out the sun; with no sun there is no growth. (Tee hee!)

Major loss keeps rapping on your skull: hello in there, guess what, shit happens! It can happen to you -- again, so beware, don't trust and don't get too comfortable. (Hardy-har-har!)

Last night I had a great experience at Willow House in suburban Chicago www.willowhouse.org, where once a month I go to help facilitate grief groups for children and their families. Usually, a mother or father has died too young leaving young children and a spouse behind to carry on without them. The theme for last night's group was laughter, a wonderful theme, a fantastic departure from the weightiness of death, for people needing support as they heal and move forward past that heavy, heavy load of loss.

The evening was filled with exercises and activities that either had participants literally laugh together (on demand about absolutely nothing in particular), then share happy or silly memories of the loved one who had died. Oh! What a relief to laugh about death and to revive happy times! The energy last night was life-affirming and joyful. I couldn't help but think that the dead mothers and fathers would be grateful for their children having a good guffaw in their permanent absence, and that they would wish for more and more of these moments for their children, and their spouses as well. They would want their children to remember them in their funny moments and happy times, and not for messes left behind or scary moments of crisis. Being dead, they must be thinking...geez, get happy, you're not the one who died. LIVE WHILE YOU CAN!

So lighten up folks. Have a laugh thinking about the one who died. Let the funny and the happy push away that big old ghostly cloud. Put a smile on it. It's not that serious. It's just death and it ain't going away in your lifetime. Laugh about death for a change. Do it frequently. (Snicker.)

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Now's the time to get out your journal (what do you mean you don't have one?) OK then get out a piece of paper or since you're on the computer now, open up a new WORD file, and write for a full ten minutes. Here are a few prompts for you to use...use one or use them all, or make up your own. It better be funny.

Remember five different occasions when your loved one made you laugh and write about it.

Describe some of the ridiculous habits of your loved one.

What did you and your loved one do for fun? When did you have the most fun?

Describe an amazing adventure or vacation you had with your loved one.

What kinds of gestures, gifts, or surprises did your loved one give you or do for you that made you feel loved and important.

Sometimes It Feels Like Everything Will Fall Apart

2012-01-10T15:59:00.000-06:00

When it finally hit us that Ken was likely to die pretty soon, hope continued to blind like being wakened by a flashlight following major surgery for multiple gunshot wounds. We were stuck in a hospital room across the country from our home, our friends, and our kids. Ken had been in that room for almost a full six months of stem cell transplant complications. We were exhausted. He wasn't going to get better.

Still, it was almost impossible to discuss what his impending death meant. To me. To him. To our young family. To our children. Discussing it would have meant that it was real and true. Talking about it felt like giving up on hope.

In the end, we didn't talk too much about what his dying meant to me or to him. It was one of those things that was just too terrible to face; it was a time where words just couldn't do the talking. But, there was one reply he gave me that I will never forget, one reply from my husband, a trained and born therapist whose world of work navigated the world of emotions. His words were inexplicable, obvious, hard to grasp, disturbing, comforting and true all at once.

"Ken, what if everything falls apart after you're gone?" I asked.

His simple reply was this: "Sometimes it will feel like everything is falling apart."

Sometimes you feel like everything is falling apart. When you are there, in that feeling, you can know that you won't always feel that way. Emotions come and go and change. What a gift he gave me. He didn't try to falsely assure me that everything would be OK, or tell me that I would survive or happily move along. Ken told me what he knew from experience. If my life ever felt as though it was ruined, and it probably would, the feeling would not be permanent.

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Sometimes it can be hard to imagine you will ever feel differently than you do right now. What difficult feelings are you holding now? Write them out where you can see them. Sometimes you feel this way; you may feel this way now, but it is likely that these feelings will not last forever.

The Web of Memory

2012-01-03T11:56:00.000-06:00

Nineteen years ago this month, I married Ken. It was inevitable because after we met we were happier together than we were alone. We made our decision to marry while standing outside the wolf pen at the Lincoln Park zoo on October 31, 1992. Our wedding would take place just two months and two days later with seventeen attendees, all family. I always liked the way we decided to get married in the company of wolves who mate for life.

Many things I'll never forget, like the excitement I felt driving to his place in Ukrainian Village, a neighborhood which in 1991 I had never heard about or visited. The drive there from my place in East Rogers Park, when we were just beginning to date, was always this wonderful journey on an adventure I couldn't wait to begin. There, right on Damen Ave just south of Division St., he was growing peaches in his yard and tulips in his garden, in a neighborhood where, back then, anything not chained was likely to be stolen. Once, the iron gate to the yard was ripped right off its hinges, and one year, to Ken's deep chagrin, even the peaches were taken.

Most often when I arrived at his place, I could see him through his sliding glass doors, talking on his cell phone, dealing with one crisis or another in his work in residential treatment for children. Maybe a young girl had run away to be with her much older boyfriend. Maybe it was a call to deal with a suicidal teen. The calm with which he handled these frequent calls was impressive. Here was a man who could handle tough situations with ease, and with empathy. His empathic nature was like nothing I had ever encountered in my life. He was an emotional home I had never known.

January holds not only Ken's and my wedding anniversary, but also the anniversary of his death which falls on our daughter's birthday. The power of emotional memory this time of year is like a vast spider web, lightly descending and enveloping me.

He's been gone six years now, a long time. His children are growing up without him. His son hardly remembers him. And me? I am doing my best to accept a different life that feels vastly less secure than it did before that day in February of 2002 when we found out he had cancer and my dreams became inhabited with coffins flying through a black universe or vast holes suddenly appearing in the foundation of our home. Sometimes I wonder if one of the most amazing things about a great marriage is the illusion it can give of a safe, secure world. I don't think I'll ever feel as safe or as secure ever again, the way I did before cancer stripped me of the center of my life.

There's a part of me that likes the way this time of year throws me back into a place of memory and sadness. Conveniently, it corresponds with the holidays, when everything shifts out of the typical work/school schedule and there is added time for rest and reflection. I like knowing that the tears are still there. I want to feel how much Ken meant to me back when he was still here.

Soon, the year will move along. We'll all get busy again and I will need to remind myself that: "I can do this!" "I am not afraid anymore!" "I can handle this solo-parenting life I never expected to be living!" "I am happy!" "I can be a breadwinner for my family!" I will be my own cheerleader, my own motivator, my own engine.

Every Friday night I drive my son into the city where he plays a card game called Magic with a bunch of guys much older than himself at a storefront that caters to such activities. I drive there, I drive back to Evanston, and then I drive back to pick him up. It's a lot of driving; fortunately, one of my pleasures is driving while singing and listening to the radio. This Friday, my top favorite song ever, Stevie Nicks' Landslide, played as I drove.

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Mmm, mmm, mmm

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older and I'm getting older too

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Sometimes I feel bolder. I definitely feel older, as are my kids. I built my life around Ken, and what's left is simply change and how to handle it, as well as I can.

Happy New Year to all. If you're with a life partner, well-chosen, may you truly appreciate what you have and step lightly over perceived imperfections as if they don't exist at all.

Funny, but the idea of No Closure has given me some closure.

2011-11-11T00:23:00.000-06:00

They've had a rather stunning effect on me, those words I heard on the radio when Nancy Berns was discussing her book called, Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What it Costs Us.

The words bear repeating because I think they are incredibly wise. It's just taken slow me a long time to get it: You don't need closure to heal. You don't need closure to heal. You don't need closure to heal.

These words have given me an enormous sense of peace and permission to enjoy my life, feel happy and content, AND to hold on to the vast and unending sadness that is the loss of my husband Ken. Adults who have lost something really big and important in an untimely fashion, like a husband in mid-life, for example, become re-made; the structure of their life disintegrates, the expected shape rearranges, and slowly they rebuild. What comes gushing out of the pipes of security, safety, control, and certainty, trickles over time into a pool of perspective, peace, gratitude and acceptance. It sits there shimmering. You can soak in it. It can really be quite lovely. Until you start thinking about how you got there...how everything had to be destroyed before you finally let yourself swim.

But, it's OK. I lost my husband. I can't believe it happened to me, but it did. I can't believe I'm a single mother in a great big world doing all this on my own. It's simply horrible that he's not here, particularly for our children. I've grown so much. I've learned so much. The most important thing I've learned in the last few weeks: You don't need closure to heal.

It's like a mantra to me, and I wonder if it stirs others who struggle with the complex and contradictory feelings of hope, sadness, guilt and renewal that arise when one is ready to move on from active grieving. Here's how those words make me feel:

It's like after the structure of my life tumbled down and then amidst all that chaos the rebuilding had to begin immediately, if not slowly, and then finally, finally, that huge amount of dust that got stirred up and landed on every available surface, settled. Oh, once it settles, it's so much easier to breathe. There's more work, there's more clean-up, there always will be. Everything just looks better. Thanks Nancy.

You Don't Need Closure to Heal

2011-10-18T10:22:00.004-05:00

A widow friend of mine recently mentioned a new book about grief (which I haven't yet read) called Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What it Costs Us by Nancy Berns. The author was speaking on NPR recently and her final words were: You Don't Need Closure to Heal.

How I love these words! You Don't Need Closure to Heal. These words explain so much to me. They explain why I sometimes doubt my contentment when I can still shake my head in disbelief that Ken actually died. They explain why I can still become sad in the fall, the time when Ken began his decline to death, when hope and dread and stress swirled around me and all of our family.

You Don't Need Closure to Heal. These words help free me from guilty feelings of leaving Ken behind to live my own time-limited life. They help me understand why today I am a stronger, better person with a surer sense of right living -- even though I owe so much to the man who isn't here to reap the benefits of my improved self.

These six words give me permission to feel happy, to grow, to enjoy life and to honor and respect what I've lost with a gentle bow of reverence.

And for all the people who I imagine might think: your husband died in 2006 so get over it -- now I have six words for you: You Don't Need Closure to Heal.

I hope the rest of the book matches the wisdom of those six words. To hear the author, Nancy Berns, a sociology professor at Drake University, talk about the concept of closure, copy and paste this link to your browser: http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2011/10/17/closure-the-rush-to-end-grief-and-what-it-costs-us/

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Take a few minutes to respond in writing to those six words: You Don't Need Closure To Heal. What do they mean to you, right now? And by the way, do you have a journal for writing down your thoughts about grief? If not, try it. It's just one tool for finding your way back to life.

When Grief Fades

2011-10-13T09:50:00.000-05:00

When my husband died almost six years ago:

I could not imagine how I could possibly ever be happy again.
I felt like a loser.
I felt extremely unlucky.
I was scared, anxious, worried, sad, confused.
I felt out of place and out-of-sync with others.
I felt desperate to recapture my old life --and this, an impossible task.
I felt alone in the world.

Six years later, I find that grief has FINALLY taken the back seat to living. Here's what it feels like at the beginning of this new phase of life after major loss:

I feel so much more aware of how lucky I am to be alive.
I am far less likely to get aggravated or stressed out about daily living.
I am more appreciative and less critical of my own performance and contributions.
Surprisingly, I have become a more hopeful and positive person, despite my incredible back luck!
I have more faith that I am living my truth -- liking what I like--doing what I am supposed to be doing.
I am more open to the unknown and less attached to control.
Sometimes I still feel alone in the world, but, as when I was a much younger woman, I enjoy my own company.

And, yes, if I am going to reveal all the feelings that surround the idea of "grief fading", there is also some guilt, some sadness, and some concern: guilt that I am still alive and he is not, sadness to move forward into a territory where the loss of my incredible husband no longer dominates my world, and concern for how I can continue to honor him and keep his memory alive.

Write a Letter to Your Dead Spouse

2011-09-26T09:54:00.001-05:00

It's an obvious exercise, but it's a good one. If you want to know what you're thinking and what you're feeling, writing is one great way to figure it out, and writing a letter to your dead husband or wife can be an excellent way to put it all out there. After all, who was once your most trusted friend? Who did you talk to about your most important thoughts and feelings? Well, you can still do it (although, sadly, it will be entirely one-sided.) Never mind about that.

Here goes:

Dear Ken,

It has been 5 years and 8 months since you died. Such a long time ago. It feels different today than it did a couple of years ago. I'm not sure how I feel about the distance that has grown between us -- the distance of years, and time, and experience -- my years of living while you have been dead.

I used to spend so much time wishing you were still living on this earth, still my husband, still a father for Natalie and Alec, still here to share a certain life we had made together. I wished that what had happened to you and to us had not happened. I was really very afraid.

I am still afraid sometimes, but not nearly as much. I also know that I can't live in a wishful state, wishing for something that will never be. I've worked from the very beginning on acceptance. Acceptance has been my mantra so that I could go on living without you.

You feel so far away from me. I've had to make too many decisions without you. I've had to go it alone even though you were once my most trusted, most loved partner and friend. I've had to go it alone.

Sometimes I feel sorry for people who are lost and asleep, who don't realize that they need to live without imagining that there is a better, different, more interesting place to be than right here and right now.

Sometimes I am afraid that I can't keep you alive enough Ken. Whatever I can do, it's not enough. You deserve so much more but you got exactly what you didn't deserve. You got to die.

I'm lying. I do wish you were still here. But there is nowhere to go with that wish. Nowhere to go. It's like wishing for my own immortality.

I'm sorry that you aren't with me or your children anymore. I'm sorry that your story had to be a tragic one. I'm glad we chose one another from the moment we met. Thank you for choosing me. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for giving me your wonderful family and for making two amazing children with me.

We didn't finish our story with a satisfactory ending. I hated the ending of our story but the beginning was wonderful.

Goodbye for now Ken. I am so sorry to leave you.

Love, Jill

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When Hope Becomes Nope

2011-09-07T10:31:00.003-05:00

When Ken was first diagnosed with cancer I was 40 years old; our children were 6 and 3. It was a busy, full time in the life of our family. We were scared, yes, but we were full of hope because given the statistics, he was more than likely to survive. That hope stretched out for four years, even when the statistics started looking less and less in his favor as one recurrence then another invaded his body.

How did we express our hope? So many ways. We continued to travel, he invested in his work, we'd set off on our bikes with our little kids, my chemo-bald husband and me. We got a new dog. Ken was a coach for Natalie's soccer team. We envisioned a future still. We lived. We got the best medical care America could offer us and fought for it even when the insurance company tried to deny us.

We got a boat.

Yeah, we got a little aluminum fishing boat with a 15 hp motor. Ok, I'm all for hope, but why did we have to be THAT hopeful. I wasn't meant to have a fishing boat ALONE without my husband. Uh-uh, that was a couple thing. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH A FISHING BOAT!

Yes, it was nice while it lasted, tooling around on Whitewater Lake with our two little kids and our crazy Airedale terrier. Ken tinkered with the motor showing Natalie and Alec how to steer the boat while I pointed my nose into the air, taking in the cool breeze, fully enjoying the ride. I saw parts of the lake that I never got to in our canoe or while swimming. Speeding along with other boaters reminded me of my own adolescence going to cottages with my friends in Ontario on rocky Georgian Bay or Muskoka where we'd spend days (and nights) maneuvering through the shoals, hanging out with boys under the stars, or just kicking back with water below and sky above. A motorboat felt like freedom, felt like fun, felt like good times, felt like youth.

Today that boat we bought with hopes of enjoying it for years to come sits on the dock of a house on a lake, a house that reminds me of better times and happier, carefree days with a sunny future with my husband, who was more than happy to drive me around in a boat. The boat, motor and all, now sits on the dock, on land, no matter what season it is. In the winter it fills with snow and ice. In the spring, it thaws out. In the summer, well, this summer it has grown a nice little coat of moss inside, there are dandelions growing in it as well as a weed that looks a lot like parsley. The seat is covered in black dots of mold. It's a relic of times past. It's a shame.

Sometimes hope becomes nope. That's just the way it is. I'm not telling this story because I feel sorry for myself. I'm telling it because sometimes what you hoped for doesn't happen. Sometimes there is evidence. The evidence tells a story. You might want to tell that story. Why? Because it can help you let it go.

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What object or place reminds you of hope that turned to nope? Take 5 minutes to write about it.

Moving Beyond Grief: The Final Hurdle

2011-08-28T00:33:00.001-05:00

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.

A Different Kind of Happiness

2011-08-11T00:21:00.000-05:00

Driving down the half-mile, single-lane, dirt road with Lac Des Iles sparkling blue on one side and the Laurentian forest shimmering green on the other, I couldn't help but feel wistful. Here we were arriving at the lake house built by Ken's great-grandfather, where Ken and his brothers spent time every summer, where Ken's mother spent her summers, Ken's grandmother and so on. And now we were traveling the winding country roads in rural Quebec toward this special place, but without Ken for the seventh year running.

Returning brought on a sense of longing for what is gone, for something lost that cannot return; a lingering, used up sadness. That's the way I'd been feeling leading up to this trip, to this place, one of my favorites of anywhere I've been in the world with its pure, cool, silky lake, its quiet, its enduring tradition. Why wouldn't I feel wistful heading toward a place that held such joy for Ken, a place I wouldn't have known without him?

But then, in just a day or two, the beauty of it got a hold of me: the clear, black lake, the sweet air, the loons crying and the visitors arriving by canoe or breaststroke. Ken said that memories of the Lake could bring him happiness during his arduous stem cell transplant.

I realized in this heavenly place that I didn't want to feel wistful about my life anymore. I didn't want to keep longing for what could never be: the life I had with Ken. In fact, as the days of this vacation went by, I felt very happy, perhaps happier than I've felt in years. Even my laugh had taken on a new, heartier sound.

I've shed another layer of sorrow and taken on a new dimension of joy, that comes from surviving loss and being grateful for what simply is. It could be so easy for me to dwell in the state of wistfulness indefinitely, but I don't want to anymore. Instead, I think I've found a different kind of happiness.

This different happiness doesn't have anything definite attached to it. It isn't predicated on any particular outcome or end goal. It contains no certainty about what comes next. And it isn't counting on everything going just right, or perfectly, or without a hitch. I don't even believe in that kind of happiness anymore.

Today I'm happy just to have a greater understanding of my own essential nature, and to follow it where it takes me. I'm happy to be open to experience and to be open-minded about what it means to work, to love, to serve and to grow.

When I lost Ken, I lost my fairytale, my happy ending, our nuclear family, but to my surprise, eventually, I found a different kind of happiness that might just be fueled by uncertainty, surprise, the unexpected and the unknown. It took a while to get here, about 50 years. I'd like to stay for a while.

Why Widows Get Mad: A Do-it-Yourself Rant

2011-07-22T00:16:00.002-05:00

We got screwed out of our happy ending. We were raised to fall in love, get married, raise kids, and grow old together. So much for that. We don't want to mow the grass, change the lightbulbs, fix shit, barbeque, do all the cooking, driving, worrying and planning. We don't want to sleep alone at night.

Widows get mad because we have a historical reputation of being kind of loser-ish. In some cultures, we might as well just throw ourselves into a good, hot fire.

We want someone to take care of us, buy us presents and flowers, take us to dinner, give us backrubs, tell us we're beautiful, tell us what great mothers we are, leave notes around the house for us, remind us that everything will be OK, brush off our fears.

We find it hard to raise our children alone. We find it hard to watch our children without their father and other children with their fathers, and we feel guilty that we can't be father and mother both. We get mad because we don't want to take the kids camping or build a bonfire or make something cool out of wood or butcher a fish. We are mad at ourselves because we are not men, especially when we have sons.

We are mad because sometimes mad is easier than sad, easier than acknowledging that little piece of us that will always be in mourning for everything that will never, ever, ever be. We get mad because no one can understand us, because no one wants to be us, because even though you all know how lousy our situation is you still expect us to get over it. We are mad because we know we have to get over it too but we doubt we ever will fully get over it, so get over it.

We get mad because we were so damn unlucky, our kids got cheated, and our dead husbands were even unluckier. We get mad because our future is less secure and more uncertain. Widows get mad because we want the future we had imagined for ourselves when we finally found the one.

Widows get mad because we never feel like we get enough help with our kids, our decisions, our finances, our daily to-do list. Widows get mad at people who complain too much about their perfectly good spouses. Widows get mad when you say that your husband never does anything anyway as if it's almost the same as not having a husband at all.

Widows get mad because they can't be angry if they want to be happy. Widows want to be happy. They can be. But sometimes they feel angry.

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Ok. Your turn. Why do you get mad, widow? Take 5 minutes and put it on paper. Then shove the paper down someone's throat.

The Lost Husband

2011-07-05T21:24:00.003-05:00

I lost my husband
but unlike a cellphone
or a pair of glasses
I won't find him.
Unless, perhaps,
he shows up:
in my daughter's sweetness,
or my son's competitiveness.

He is missing; he won't be recovered
until I stand in the garage to ready the bikes,
water the plants inside the house,
or tackle the weeds with gloves and clippers.

I will never again live with his patience, his understanding
except for when I use
the good deal he left to me,
finally just keep my mouth shut,
choose kindness, be an optimist.

Never again will I see him
proud on Damen Avenue,
or perhaps in my repetitive dreams,
arising in the building where he invested his hope
where our niece lives now,
where we lived once, where we got married,
where I try to keep the dream alive,
even when it scares me
when I don't understand why I am alone in it.

He died at the Evanston Hospital
which is just down the street from our house.
Every time I go there
for an appointment, or to visit the sick,
or remember how I gave birth to our children there,
he wavers and shimmers
like a ghost, here and gone.

He will be absent at graduations, weddings,
vacations, family meals, health scares, proud moments,
storms, and floods.
Then I will say or someone will think
that you should be here, and you arrive.

In Santa Fe once we fell in love
with a painting we didn't buy.
I can still see it hanging over our mantel
where I still admire it
where it makes us happy,
where it never was,
where it never will be again.

Have I told you that my husband died?

2011-06-23T22:50:00.000-05:00

I can't stop myself from telling people my husband died. Now what's that all about? Ken died five and a half years ago, yet I haven't reached the point yet where I can keep it to myself. I'm like a little parrot: my husband died, my husband died, my husband died. It's like a verbal tic; it has to come out. It's the fact that must be known.

I will say that I have improved in this regard. I rarely tell total strangers anymore while standing in line at the post office and I don't open my window and shout it out into the neighborhood at random moments. Still, if I were to just meet you, and if we were to exchange words leading into a conversation, you might find out that I am currently doing a lot of work for a brand new experimental library, I have two children, I love to write, and, well, my husband died five years ago.

My eyes are blue, my hair is gray, I grew up in Canada, and my husband died when I was 44 leaving me the only parent of two young children.

The other day I was driving around doing some work with three women who I've met within the last three months or so. The conversation turned to the tornado warning we'd experienced the night before here in Chicago. Well, here was a perfect opportunity for me to mention that when my late husband had been at MD Anderson in Houston for his second stem cell transplant in 2005, we were there for both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. Just can't stop myself from bringing it up.

So here's the thing: I'm quite happy now. My health is excellent. I have a very lovely boyfriend, I feel like I'm doing a great job raising my kids, I love where I live, I'm doing work I enjoy. My friends and neighbors are wonderful. I am no longer in misery or drowning in grief. I'm having a good time.

And...
my husband died.

It's as if I still can't really believe it happened.
When I talk about it, I keep some of our story alive.
He's dead, but what happened to us is so real and so present for me.
Don't you think for a moment when you see me happy that I have forgotten him.
He died. I remember that every day, again.

For Ken on Father's Day, 2011

2011-06-19T14:53:00.000-05:00

Hi Ken,

It's Father's Day. Yesterday Natalie and I watched Alec get on a bus to go to camp for the next 4 weeks. It was hard to let him go, but I know how much he enjoys exercising his independence out there in the Northwoods. He is a handsome, passionate, deeply intelligent twelve year old boy. Last time you saw him he was six years old. Now he's a vegetarian who believes human beings are really mucking up the planet in a selfish manner. I'm sure you could have recruited him to put rude post-its on SUVs with you. He likes to listen to Stephen Hawking talking about the universe and he likes listening to the Beatles. He soaks up facts and general knowledge like a sponge. Good in every subject. You guys would have had fun zoning out on TV sports and the IPad together I'm sure. The other day he was teaching me the ins and outs of catching and pitching. He's a good teacher. He's incredibly good at math and games of strategy. He's never forgotten your teaching him to play poker. Now he just needs to find someone to play with him. Too bad Natalie and I cannot play chess with him or any game of strategy. He can beat us cold, every time. We are no challenge. He has a really great sense of humor. Despises injustice. Seeks fairness. Gets mad. He loves me. He loves Natalie. Still gives big, hard hugs. He has a hard time remembering you. What can I say? You would love him. He would love you. I don't know how losing you has altered his life, but I know it has, forever.

Natalie? Your little ten year old girl? She's just as sweet and kind and easy as she ever was, and now she's 15. She's beautiful, gentle, patient, thoughtful, understanding. She has your temperament. But there's some funny little Lucille Ball-like comedian in there too. She's in high school Ken. Diligent, hard-working, responsible. Tutoring handicapped kids, doing community service projects, and active on the Green (Environmental) Team. Next year she's chairing the Soup Kitchen committee. She wants to be a teen facilitator at Willow House where I am helping to facilitate grief groups for children or adults. I bet she'll do that training this year. She also loves theater and did a program at ETHS called Theater for Social Change where high school kids get together to discuss difficult topics like racism within the school, and then act them out. She's brave Ken. She's also a leader. A quiet, behind-the-scenes leader. She knows who she is. She's mature. Guess what? She's encouraging me to compost. I stopped after you died, but composting lives on in Natalie's environmentally sensitive person. So I guess we'll start that up again. Natalie remembers you well. What can I say? You would love her. She would love you. I don't know how losing you has altered her life, but I know it has, forever.

We don't like Father's Day as much anymore. But we love you still, and always.

Twelve Tips for Widows Feeling Down

2011-06-08T22:41:00.000-05:00

1. Ask someone to do something for you. I think people really like to help each other; often, they just don't know what the hell to do. Here are some examples:

Could you please clean my grill?
I want to go on a date. Do you know anybody?
Can I drop my kids off at your house for a couple of hours while I take care of a few things?
Hey, what are you doing tonight? Can I come over?
Would you come with me to this doctor appointment?
Will you help me figure out what's going on with my furnace?
Will you show me how to unclog my own toilet?

2. What is something you actually like doing all by yourself? Do it. Then do it again. I love sitting in a coffee shop writing in my notebook. I also like going for a solo walk around the neighborhood. Even though your spouse is gone, you can still like those things that you've always enjoyed doing alone.

3. Make a list of everything you've done since your spouse died that shows how strong you are.

4. Imagine how your situation could actually be worse than it is right now. I don't know if this kind of thinking works for everyone, but I find it helpful to know that I do not live in a mud hut in an impoverished, war torn nation.

5. Do you know anyone who really makes you laugh hard? Try to get together with that person more often.

6. Rent TV show series on DVDs. Start watching from season one until the very last season. Since my husband died, I finished the Sopranos without him (we started it together), and then I moved on to Six Feet Under, Project Runway, In Treatment, The Gilmore Girls, Mad Men, and currently watching Friday Night Lights. If you find a series you like, it's a reliable way to be happily entertained. Plus, the people in the series start to feel a little bit like friends.

7. Pamper yourself. Take a nap. Get a pedicure. Get a massage. Come home early from work. Go shopping. Take an exercise class. You're lucky you're alive so let your body know you appreciate all of its hard work in your service.

8. Have a good book on hand at all times.

9. Remind yourself of who you were before you met your husband. You were somebody once without him. You're different now. You're still changing. But you did have a life before you were married and you still have one. It's just different. It will be different again in a few months.

10. If you are having really terrible feelings of despair, write them down. Keep a journal for this. You're going to need one. Writing out your deepest, darkest feelings can help you move through them faster.

11. Reach out to people. Many, many widows feel as though they have been forgotten by friends or by couples. I think there's actually some truth to this! We do get forgotten and we don't go out with couples the way we used to. But despite this, reach out to people. Feeling victimized doesn't make you feel better anyway. Having a change this big in your life can actually lead to your making new contacts, connections and friends. Give it a try.

12. If you've lost your spouse, you've gone through one of the most stressful life events you or anyone else will ever encounter. Be proud that you've survived. You are stronger now. Be proud of yourself. Keep doing things that will make you feel proud of yourself. A life change as enormous as this one is opportunity for growth, even if you can't even imagine that yet.

Growing Anyway

2011-06-03T09:23:00.001-05:00

Call me irrepressibly optimistic or call me nuts, but if I'm going to have to be widowed, I might as well try to make the best of it. In the early days, months and even years after losing a wonderful husband or wife, hurt predominates. I was there for a long, long time. But I hope that for others, as it FINALLY is for me (5 years since being widowed), there will come a time when you can find and make good in the new life you have been forced to create. I had a very happy marriage and I used to feel guilty even acknowledging that I could be happy without my husband, but the guilt is gone now and I can just be happy. It feels wonderful.

Before Ken died, I said to him, "I don't want to go through all the pain I'm going to feel when you're gone." But, I've done it. I've worked it. And now after all my hard work is done, I am finally experiencing some of the reward.

I once read a description of "the dandelion child". The description of this type of child has always inspired me. A dandelion child is a kid who thrives even in the worst of circumstances--like a dandelion that springs up through cracks in hard, barren concrete.

I used to think it would be unbearably sad to reach a place where I could feel good again. Weird, right? Sad to be happy. Back when I couldn't imagine it, I felt like being happy again would mean that I was negating Ken, leaving him behind. And that felt, at the time, impossibly sad. Today I know that having Ken die, losing him, losing the dream of being a husband and wife raising our two children together, will always, always, be sad. But happiness can grow out of sadness if you let it.

************

Here are some good new things in my life that wouldn't be here if I hadn't been widowed:

I really and fully appreciate being healthy and I no longer consider it to be self-indulgent to exercise, go to yoga, meditate, eat good food, or get a massage. After seeing my once healthy husband suffer from cancer and cancer treatment, I completely understand that having a healthy strong body is an amazing gift and something to cherish.

I love making decisions and acting on them without having to always consult someone else. I feel more capable and powerful than I've ever felt in my life before because I have no choice but to make major and minor decisions for myself and my children all the time. It has been quite empowering for me.

I enjoy having a new man in my life who is not a husband. He has his own household and I have my own household and when we are together our time is not spent on domestic activities or chores. There is time for simply connecting and enjoying one another that isn't complicated by household tasks or shared responsibilities. Yes, we love helping one another out, but there is something to be said for time apart as well as time together, and even for time just appreciating what we are creating without necessarily knowing how it will all turn out.

I feel less fear in general. Now that I have survived one of the worst events that can happen to a person, I approach smaller obstacles with greater ease. This makes life so much more enjoyable and a lot less stressful.

I have more to give to others in wisdom, time and energy than ever before. Nothing matters more to me than my connections with others. I feel a greater desire to share what I know and to give what I can.

On the other hand, I am more comfortable being alone. I understand that loss prevails in the end, and I am learning to accept change and loss with more grace.

*********
Take 5 minutes to write about the good you have discovered growing from your loss. Or, if you're not at that point yet, write about the good you imagine or hope for yourself in the future. Or, if you can't imagine ever feeling happy again, write about that.

Help Wanted: Just a LIttle

2011-05-22T23:34:00.001-05:00

I am 49 years old yet I had never filled my own car tires with air until today. In fact, I asked my 28 year old niece to accompany me to the gas station before I got on the highway with my kids to go home. I was nervous about my big, bulging back tire and I didn't know how to fill it. I imagined the flat I might get on the road, and how I'd be alone with my kids in the evening on the side of a Chicago highway if it got any worse. She showed me how to do it so that the next time I won't need any help at all. So thanks to her for not making me feel like a big idiot for not knowing how to do something so simple. Something that my husband would have taken care of had he been here.

Something else I don't know how to do? I hate machinery and I have a really hard time pulling the cord that gets the lawnmower started. I also have zero interest in maintaining the lawnmower from year to year, zero interest in shopping for a different kind of lawnmower, and if I never again touch another lawnmower I'll be perfectly happy. I'm in the process of completely eliminating all need of said machinery. Two years ago I took all the grass out of my backyard and replaced it all with low maintenance plants, trees and shrubbery. Front yard grass? Watch out. You're a goner in the next couple of years. Cause get what else I really don't feel like learning how to do? Growing grass in the shade. Just not interested.

I felt a little stupid today watching a bunch of relatives listen to me say that I didn't know how to put air in my tires. But when my niece so kindly offered to help, I looked at my father-in-law and said,

"Well, I do a lot of things all by myself."

Married people get to lean on each other all the time. If you're married (to someone with some degree of competence, initiative, pride, or kindness, not to mention love for you), you can partially eliminate whole categories of activities you have no interest in mastering from plumbing to cooking to planning trips to arranging classes and activities for your children. The social schedule? Your investments? Budgeting? Picking up your own underwear? Playing catch? Finding the leftovers in the fridge? Leave it to your spouse. He or she is good at it anyway. Does Mary need help with her homework. Your turn, babe. I did it last night. Johnny has a soccer game? I'm going out with the girls. Can you do it tonight honey? And, by the way, thanks for putting that chicken on the grill!

When people in a well-functioning marriage lose their spouse, they have to be responsible for so many things all by themselves that they never intended to do all alone, sometimes for years and years. Sometimes for the rest of their lives. Some of those things are very big and profound like dealing with your children's emotional highs and lows, or guiding and advising them as they grow to adulthood, college selection, planning weddings, or facing frightening health matters or important financial decisions.

Some of the tasks you now have to do on your own are very small like making school lunches, driving your children where they need to go, moving a heavy object, unplugging a toilet, cleaning up a wet basement after a storm, showing up at school or sporting events,

or filling a leaky tire.

When somebody steps up to help with something very small, it's like a vent opening up in a lone self to let out some of the pressure that comes from living life widowed, from living or parenting on your own when you had intended to do it in a pair. This is a long and windy way of saying thank you to my niece for helping me with something small today. Many times small is bigger than you realize.

Feeling Better is Better Than Feeling Worse

2011-05-17T00:24:00.001-05:00

I feel so fearless in these post grieving days. I feel taller, stronger, more self-contained. The intense sadness left me in this past year, left me alone with what's left of my life, left me alone with a whole new not improved but stripped back life, and amazingly, incredibly, I'm finding that it is enough. It's good. I'm happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here to be able to be a mother and a writer and a friend and a homeowner and a gardener and a traveller and a whole list of other words that describe experiences that I can have and roles I can play.

Five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, I couldn't imagine feeling this way, I COULD NOT IMAGINE ever feeling good about life again back when I lost Ken, but one year ago the pain lifted and under it was a more grateful, less anxious, happier me who finds that I need less to be satisfied. I don't know...there's not much to fear anymore after the worst has happened and you've survived. I don't feel sorry for myself anymore. I feel sorry for my husband who died way too young and misses what goes on around here everyday. I feel sorry for people who are sick and struggling and in pain. But me? I'm happy to be alive.

In the back of my mind, I know that this pleasing state I'm in can change in an instant, but until it does, I'm enjoying myself.

So I decided a year ago when the despair miraculously (or should I say, after a whole lot of the hardest work I've ever done to swim through the muck of pain) lifted, I decided that I would just enjoy a year of feeling good. I'd revel in it. Embrace it. Treasure it. I took my kids to New Zealand, continued writing, started a new relationship, embarked on a major home renovation. It's been a very good year.

And OK, you can shoot me, you can call me a Pollyanna or a freak or some kind of deluded chick on happy pills, but I think my life is going to get even better in this next year and here's why:

I am finding work that I love to do, work that doesn't feel like work, that I believe can really cause positive change in the world. It's nothing huge and impressive, but in this last year I've found two different volunteer gigs that I believe in completely. And what this tells me is that even though a part of me died when Ken died, (perhaps it was the part that believed in safety and security and fairytale endings) there is a new part of me growing today. It's reaching and extending into new worlds. I don't know where I'd be today if Ken were still alive, I don't know what I'd be doing or how satisfied I'd be feeling with my life. But I know that even though he left me cut and broken or maybe even because he did, from that place a flower is growing. It's just a flower. But it's pretty and I like it.

He was such a good man. I wish he could see me feeling better again.

___________________________________________________________

Before I felt better, I went through a stage of feeling guilty about feeling better. Better is better without the guilt.

Are you lucky enough or have you travelled far enough to feel better after loss? Or do you feel like you'll never feel good again? Do you feel better but have a hard time admitting it because it feels disloyal to the one who died?

Take 5 minutes and write on the topic of feeling better...whether you do or not.

Here's Why You're Going to Be OK.

2011-05-05T22:39:00.000-05:00

My neighbor Marguerite died on Monday of cancer. She was 57 years old. I didn't find out until Tuesday morning around 8 a.m. Two hours later I got in my car to go to Pilates class and blew right through a stop sign and almost crashed right into another car. I was able to stop about 2 inches before hitting metal. I wasn't thinking about the road I was on or the fast moving steel I was driving; I was thinking about how I had just seen Marguerite the day before, and how sad I felt to think of Rob at the very, very beginning of the long road of recovery from the loss of a spouse.

Rob and Marguerite were a very romantic couple, very obviously completely in love with one another. In the 15 years that I have lived across the street from them, I had only seen them display love, affection and contentment with one another. Ugh. How will Rob manage without his beloved Marguerite: gardener extraordinaire, gourmet cook, feisty business woman, full-spirited lover of life and woman of distinctive manner and grace?

I think Rob is going to be OK, and here's why:

He had a wonderful marriage and he knows it. He knows that he loved well and was loved well in return.

When Marguerite experienced a recurrence of breast cancer in 2009, twelve years after her first bout with it, I never saw either of them show bitterness, anger or denial. They were accepting and hopeful.

Rob knows how to laugh. He knows that perspective and humor can take the rough glass edges off of pain and sorrow.

He is already reaching out to others. He's open to the abundant support that is ready and waiting for him.

He knows that despite the incredible loss he's just experienced, he was incredibly lucky to have had a wonderful marriage.

___________________________________________________________________

It is painful for me to think about Rob being at the very beginning of his loss when I know so well how long the journey to renewed happiness can be. But at the same time, I feel like I just know that he'll be OK. I remember very well how I promised myself five years ago that I would not let Ken's death destroy me. I knew I would have to overcome the loss of him and our marriage so that I could honor the life that I was so lucky to have.

What about you? Do you know that you'll be OK? How do you know it?

Take 5 minutes to write about why you know you're going to be all right. Even if you have doubts, this is the time to be confident. Remind yourself of your strength. Let your words remind you of your resilience.

How Loss Made Me Lucky

2011-04-22T21:26:00.006-05:00

Does it have to take a tragedy for some people to love the life they have right now? I'm sorry to say that's what did it for me. It took the death of an incredible man, husband, and father to make me love more purely what's right in front of me. I'm not proud of this, but it's the truth. My husband? He loved his life before he got sick. There are plenty of people just like him. But I was not one of them. So please forgive the rant I'm about to make. This is not a holier than thou speech. Because if you ever feel like you're dissatisfied too much, or complain too much, or aren't as happy as you should be, or feel stuck or purposeless, well, I can relate. I used to feel like that too often too, until I lost my husband and the dream of growing old with him, parenting our kids together, and pursuing our new life, as just a couple on our own after the kids grew up.

Sometimes we young widows and widowers just want to shake the rest of you with your intact families, your healthy spouses, your regular routines, and a big old list of complaints. Here's what we want to shout through a big megaphone:

This is it folks. This is what the good life is: your to-do list, your kids who are great sometimes and annoying other times, your professional or domestic work, your vacations, your family trips in the car, your driving the kids around to their activities and sitting on the side of soccer or baseball fields, having your spouse there to help you, helping your spouse, the books you read, your warm home, your friends and neighbors, your plans for your children's or your own continuing education, your pets, the trees outside your house, your garden, your dreams for new possibilities, enjoying or making art or music, volunteering your time...that's what the good life is. It doesn't get better than that even if you're stinking rich or scary smart or imagine you could be doing something different, there's really nothing better than what's you've got right in front of you this minute, so enjoy it. Because there's no guarantee it will be the same tomorrow. In fact, it's all going to change, repeatedly.

As soon as I realized I could never replace my old great life, I made a commitment to myself that I would do my very best to remember how lucky I am right now. There is nothing better I could be doing right now and I am excited and open to finding out what's going to happen next.

When the worst happens, like it did to me, I gained the freedom of knowing that I can survive anything. When Ken died at 52 years of age with so much left to give to his family, friends and profession, I felt an imperative to love the life I have, that I'm lucky to have.

As a young widow, I would love you to know this without your having to lose anything at all. I wish I had figured it out sooner.

You're Gone. You're Here.

2011-04-16T11:33:00.004-05:00

I journal a lot about loss. The pain goes into the writing so the happiness and joy can exist out in the world. For me, writing has been my #1 tool for easing the pain of grief.

I don't care if I'm writing gibberish, random phrases, single words, stories, memories, poetry, fears or dreams. Getting the thoughts out on paper is what helps me. I just commit to sitting there with my journal, try not judge what comes out, and write for at least 30 minutes. Often one thought leads to another, and sometimes even poetry eventually comes out.

The other day I was thinking about whether or not I'm ready to "let Ken go". I was ruminating on how joyful it is to be in a new relationship, but how sad it is that Ken has to be dead and missing everything here in the world. I decided that whatever it means to let go of him, I'm not there yet. All that musing led to this poem:

Still

I'm not letting you go

You are still needed,

still giving, still providing.

Still. So still.

I'm not letting you go

either.

I could listen to you talk endlessly,

further, deeper, more.

We have movement

but he's got staying power

still.

Still, I'm not letting you go

until we stop moving forward,

stop laughing,

stop talking.

I can't imagine it.

Still, it might happen.

I won't let you go.

I'll let him slip and fade

If that's what has to be.

You can stay. You can go.

We're moving toward each other

in a room, in a house, in a city

in a new life.

I'm with you

While I'm here in this coffee shop.

You're not here.

I'm still with you.

He's still with me too.

He's still.

You and me?

We're moving.

I'm going with you.

He's gone. He's staying here too.

No More Boyfriends. Now I've Got a Manamine.

2011-04-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ken died when I was 44 years old. This led to some early and compulsive dating caused by my initial grief impulse that went something like this: HELP. I CAN"T MAKE IT ON MY OWN. MUST HAVE NEW HUSBAND AND FATHER FOR MY KIDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

After about two years or so that included many, many nights spent on Match.com, EHarmony, Green Singles, and J-Date, (Yes, I used them all, sometimes all at once) many hopeful yet ultimately fruitless meetings with men in coffee shops, a couple of very weird and not particularly satisfying attempts at an intimate life, and a couple of actual, though brief relationships, I got over the fantasy. First of all, my kids, who were 10 and 6 when he died, didn't share it. They weren't looking for a new daddy, they were still getting over losing theirs, one of the best men and fathers I have ever known. And I realized, in fact, that I was making it on my own. I didn't need to be SAVED.

This doesn't mean that I don't want a partner, that I like being widowed, that I've decided to give up on men, or even that I never want to get married again. Now, 5+ years after Ken's death, I've finally settled down into the life I have. This life, as of today, includes being with a man for the last 10 months. He's divorced, has two young kids, and we both have our own households that won't be merging any time in the foreseeable future. So what is he to me? The classic term is boyfriend. But come on. I'm going to turn 50 this year. Boyfriend sounds so high school. Lover sounds simply ridiculous. Partner is OK, but Mark isn't exactly my partner because a lot of our lives are lived kind of separately.

Mark is my manamine. He's no boy. He's my man.

What Widows Fear

2011-03-31T23:27:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-03-22T10:54:00.002-05:00

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

2011-03-15T21:26:00.000-05:00

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

2011-03-08T13:14:00.003-06:00

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

2011-03-04T09:18:00.001-06:00

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

2011-03-03T14:41:00.000-06:00

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

2011-02-24T13:15:00.001-06:00

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?

2011-02-22T07:48:00.001-06:00

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...

2011-02-10T09:29:00.000-06:00

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.

2011-02-07T22:19:00.000-06:00

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

2011-02-02T13:30:00.000-06:00

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.....

2011-01-28T08:36:00.000-06:00

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

2011-01-13T13:10:00.000-06:00

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

2011-01-03T20:43:00.000-06:00

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

2010-11-27T15:38:00.001-06:00

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.

_______________________________________________________

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:

_____________________________________________________________

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?

_______________________________________________________________________

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.)

2010-11-24T00:06:00.000-06:00

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

2010-11-12T15:59:00.000-06:00

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

2010-09-24T09:11:00.000-05:00

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.

______________________________________________________

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

2010-09-08T13:23:00.000-05:00

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

2010-08-14T00:23:00.000-05:00

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!

________________________________________________

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

I Laughed at My Husband's Funeral

2010-07-20T21:25:00.001-05:00

I remember laughing at my husband's funeral.

Did I hate him? Am I a callous, unfeeling, spiteful woman? Was I waiting for my chance to cut him loose?

No.

I loved him. I was happy with him. I wanted to grow old with him. I had placed him on a pedestal as my perfect husband and he rarely disappointed me. His death was like a roadside bomb on our compatible, peaceful path -- a path that was supposed to trail off into our future. As Ken descended into illness, and then to death, that bomb obliterated my ability to feel the horror of his impending then permanent disappearance. And so, I laughed, because it was surreal, I laughed because it was absurd, I laughed because I couldn't believe it was happening to me. Mostly, I laughed because I wasn't yet ready to feel the pain that if experienced before it's time, without being meted out in little pieces, would take me down and leave me flat.

I found myself at his memorial service with 500 others, flanked by my six-year-old son and my ten-year-old daughter, saying a very public good-bye, one of the countless good-byes to come over the years ahead as we slowly come to terms with his death, as I came to understand that he was gone, he was dead, and our life together was over. We married with just 17 close family members around us; I had to say good-bye with hundreds in attendance. I couldn't feel it. I couldn't grieve so openly, so publicly. So I laughed. (Probably, I didn't laugh all that much, but any amount felt inappropriate and out of place.)

When you are closely related to the one who dies, you have the honor of sitting in the front row for the funeral, best seats in the house. But your front row seats don't allow you to see everyone else behind you in rows -- the bigger picture: the neighbors clustered together, the friends from out of town, work colleagues, old girlfriends, little kids, clients, friends from old neighborhoods and college days: an entire world of grief. You can't grasp the whole picture the way people in the back row can. All I could do was hold on to my kids, and hold on to every word spoken by the seven eulogists, as if by hearing their tributes to Ken, I could pretend that all that goodness they spoke of was still right there in front of me too. People said there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Well, they weren't looking at me. I just wasn't ready to lose it, and I certainly wasn't ready to say good-bye to him. I guess if there were ever a time I needed a good laugh, that was it.

The rest of the good-byes would be much more private: going through his clothes, cleaning out his office, spreading ashes, holidays without him, birthdays without him, our children's milestones with him, half a bed stacked with newspapers and books, lonely days and nights and hours and minutes of remembering and of holding on and letting go over and over again. It is easier to grasp on to my feelings in these more private moments, little bits at a time, at my own pace.

Some losses are just too big to feel. What I found though, was that I could write about my feelings more than I could actually "feel" them. I could purge some pain on paper without having to dump it onto anyone else. I could admit thoughts in ink that were too hard for me to float out in public. I could read my words and find out what was going on inside me. The numbness I felt on the outside had words that went along with it, and the words were filled with emotion. Sometimes I would cry while writing them down. Often, I discovered plenty of hope mixed in with the sadness, ribbons of strength swirling through my enormous sense of defeat. Perspective and humor were there even in truly dark times. I could tell that though my loss was enormous, all was not lost. I could tell, because that's what came out in writing.

So, this is a call to writing about how you feel as a regular activity: writing as an exercise in releasing, understanding, and coming to terms with emotion. As runners like to say: "all you need is a pair of shoes" and after a few minutes of running, you release endorphins which flow through your body and make you feel happy. I say: all you need to write is a pen and paper, or a computer, and after a few minutes of writing about how you feel, you can make real progress in understanding your own life so that you can move forward and grow.

I may have laughed at my husband's funeral, but when I wrote about how it felt to lose him, I found the words to transcend grief.

Widow Birthday #5; Regular Birthday #49

2010-06-30T11:55:00.000-05:00

My birthday was Monday, the fifth birthday I've had as a widow. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, milestones of all kinds present opportunities to check out what kind of progress I'm making on the path through grief.

This was the first birthday I've had since Ken died where I feel more good than bad, more happiness than pain, more deep appreciation for my life than that feeling that what is missing is so vital to my being that without it my life is less.

Sitting out on the deck in my backyard on a beautiful June evening, the wind presented a sweet, warm and active breeze. My birthday candle, immersed in a gorgeous homemade chocolate cake made by my daughter and her friend, flickered wildly.

"Ken," I thought to myself. "Is that you? Do you want to blow this out with me?"

But the wind died down, the flame straightened, and I blew it out on my own.

Writing Works. Writing Heals.

2010-06-15T22:01:00.001-05:00

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.

______________________________________________________

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.

Waiting on the Runway

2010-05-01T10:13:00.001-05:00

Your death grounded me,

Left me flightless, stuck,

Couldn't get out, had to stay here

Where the weather was unpredictable, rough.

I sat on the runway

Couldn't take off for years.

Even when it started to clear up,

I found I had forgotten how

To start my engine.

Not ready to fly, admittedly,

I examined the weeds

Along the cracked, cold, concrete.

I searched the sky for a sign,

Tripped, stumbled, lived in

The quiet, the silence

That fell when you disappeared.

Clearing, clearing.

There are several planes in front of me still,

A back up.

It feels like it will never be my turn

To lift off,

But I can see it coming.

It's in front of me now.

Restoration

2010-04-15T08:46:00.001-05:00

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."

____________________________________________________________

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

Tough Act to Follow

2010-04-08T22:46:00.000-05:00

You were perfect for me.

After you died

I didn't like it

When people said

things like

he'll be a tough act to follow.

I didn't want to hear it.

I didn't want to close the door

that opened

that first day you walked into my life.

All my denial was a protection

From the emptiness that I must have known

was just around the corner.

It's like a vacuum humming,

a void, a stall, a broken shell,

a dream that can't be captured

upon waking.

Still, I feel a good measure of peace

for what I had, for all that is gone.

As for what remains, it is less.

It is a lesson.

I will be able to live with less forever.

It's a tough act

to follow.

They were right.

Loss Changes You

2010-03-15T16:31:00.000-05:00

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.

_______________________________________________________

How has loss changed you? Write about it.

Grief Changes

2010-03-02T14:40:00.000-06:00

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.

______________________________________________________________

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?

I Can Get Some Satisfaction

2010-02-23T21:44:00.000-06:00

Ken taught me a lot about satisfaction, in so many ways, many of them I am realizing now, while I couldn't while he lived. Nice, right? It took the death of my most excellent husband to teach me something about true satisfaction.

While he was alive, by my side, I didn't need to care so much about satisfaction. He had enough for both of us and everyone around him. I was "content" to be the one who always wondered if I was meeting my potential, doing enough, accomplishing enough. I was often filled with doubt about my purpose. I flustered easily, got excited about what was happening around me. Sometimes the excitement was positive and vibrant, sometimes it was just nervous, scattered, wasted energy. I was always scanning the horizon for the next event, opportunity, crisis. I was alert, ready, prepared, on the lookout for potential trouble. My to-do list bossed me around. I was on time. Not late. Punctual. On deadline. I was seeking the next moment instead of enjoying the one that was before me. Trying to be perfect, and failing perfectly at that.

Ken's stillness, his calm was always present for me. All he had to do was put his hand on mine and I'd get that transfer of warm, steady, calm energy. No matter what he was doing, the task was right. On the phone for an hour with Apple Computer? Why not. Has to be done. Balancing the Quicken account? Deeply satisfying. After all, it's a life task that needs doing. Children fussy for hours on end? Why not? That's what children do sometimes and that's why parents are there, to absorb and deflect. He was like a worry stone for me...make a connection with him and my blood pressure would plummet, heart rate decrease, perspective widen.

Ken lived in his own time zone, a mysterious, calm, cool, rock of assuredness and understanding. In Ken's world, all was as it should be. Things were meant to be understood, not judged. He could get an angry note from his boss ALL IN CAPS and shrug his shoulders. He could run late without sweating. At his memorial service, a friend told a story of sailing on Lake Michigan with Ken in a sudden squall. One of the passengers fell off the boat and as the distance grew between them, Ken surveying the surroundings said, "Wow, it's really windy out here," while turning the boat to retrieve her.

Today I'm the one in the water. Ken is gone, years now. Fortunately, at the moment, I'm not in cold, windy Lake Michigan. I'm alone in a warm Caribbean sea, all by myself, floating way out from the beach. No one knows I'm here but me. The water is clear and body temperature. I want to share this peace the way Ken shared his with me. But it's quiet out here and I'm all by myself. I can't see anyone. I splash every now and again enjoying how it feels and sounds. I'm sending out ripples.

Peace at Last (for now)

2010-02-17T22:45:00.000-06:00

Suddenly something has shifted. It's subtle, but I can feel it. I just feel so darn settled, at peace, calm, accepting, and OK. I'm living less and less in fear.

I'm happy with such small things lately: the sound of the furnace kicking in when it's cold and bitter outside; my ridiculous fleece pajamas with little moose on them; a phone call with a girlfriend who really gets me, who I really get; making a needlepoint pillow for my daughter. Watching my son's excitement as he views the sport of curling on the Olympics for the first time, making improvements on my house, planning a neighborhood party, beginning to imagine a future for myself where before there was only the past. Remembering the me I used to be before illness and death too soon made me someone else.

Grief is taking a new shape in a different sky, everything rearranging in blasts and gusts and silences. The absence of Ken is a permanent part of me now, just as those 15 years of being with him will never be erased. Now that his presence and absence have etched themselves through my skin and bones and heart, now that I know this, now that I trust that even in disappearing he remains, I can begin to loosen the grip of grief to cross safely into a place that remains unknown to me even as I enter it. With my eyes open, I still can't see where I'm going. I'm moving slower because I don't know this landscape. This is where I am and I can't be located. Certainty has been stripped from me: the promise of the husband, the marriage, the partner, the way it was supposed to be isn't. There is nothing to do but get up and see what's next.

My head's been down a long time. It's time to look up and imagine the future I never planned to have.

__________________________________________________

Take a few minutes and write about absence. Then write about peace. And then let yourself imagine the future on paper in words, if you can.

Breathe in the Present, Breathe out the Past

2010-02-01T17:15:00.000-06:00

Breathe in the present moment. Breathe out the past. Breathe in the present moment. Breathe out the past.

If you've ever taken a yoga class or participated in any guided meditation, you have probably tried this exercise. You sit or lie down on your yoga mat, ground yourself firmly to the earth below you, relax your muscles, and settle into the rhythm of your own breath. With each inhalation you take in the present, the now, the new, the here-ness of it all. With each exhalation, you let go of the past, the accumulated stresses, the repeated thoughts, the jumpy, habitual ego-mind, the then.

I'm all for living in the moment. I truly believe that it is only in the present moment that we are able to change and grow and continually create our life. But what happens when your present and your past become one and the same?

Sometimes I feel as though in losing Ken, my whole life, present and past has become one long meditation on loss, whether I'm breathing in or breathing out.

I breathe out the past, our years of happy life together, the roll of memories, the warmth of skin and dark nights and real contact, the acceptance and understanding, the deep connection, the humor, the shared world-view, the pain of cancer and cancer treatments, the emotional ups and downs and disappointments, the new profound perspective that only life and death matters can provide, the unexpected turn of fate, the ultimate defeat by death, the shock and anguish and loneliness and disbelief. The less-ness of living solo. I breathe it out.

I breathe in my soft, young, forming, vibrant children, my energy moving, flagging, cascading, circling, my questions, my observations, my creative force, excitement and doubt and belief, hope for what is still to come, the strength of being stripped of the illusion of safety, the raw edges of change and growth. Contentment with what is. I breathe in the present which every day still means the present without you. I breathe it in.

The past is you, the present is without you. It's all still about you.

I meditate on loss every single day, breathing it in and out, again and again and again. I don't feel miserable. I feel alive.

____________________________________________________________
This is Your Moment

What are you breathing in now? Name your present. Give it some words. Discover what you're taking in....

What are you breathing out as you exhale the past? Let it go.

________________________________________________________

Recovery. Renewal. Reinvention.

2010-01-25T16:37:00.000-06:00

I have just begun Year 5 of Life As a Widow. Year 4 brought some amazing revelations that included:

I Will Never Again Have the Life I Once Had with My Husband!

Life as I Knew It, Liked It, and Expected it To Be is Officially Over!

Rebuilding Life at Mid-Life Isn't Easy!

You might think that four years is a very long time to figure out all this, to get it, to embrace the reality of one's existence, but if you do, chances are you've never lost your spouse. In my experience, the pain of losing my husband when I was 44 years old was so great and so traumatic that I've had to hide the truth from myself, and then occasionally let it be revealed one little piece at a time.

Try this writing exercise (my responses are included in solidarity with my fellow widow friends):

After ___ years of living with grief, I finally understand that:

I still want to enjoy my life anyway, even without Ken.

I am made happier by much smaller things than before I lost my spouse.

There is still much to do and much to see.

Being creative makes me happy.

Even though I had a relatively short marriage, it was a wonderful marriage.

Most things aren't worth too much worry or stress.

I am still a lucky person.

I can deal with being on my own.

________________________________________________

Suddenly, as year 5 begins, I'm ready for something altogether new and different because you know what? Grief is hard work, grief is all-consuming, grief is a big drag. I'm tired of grieving. It's no wonder that some people just skip grieving completely and head immediately to the bottle, a brand new spouse, or their own life-threatening illness.

But me? I've put in my time and my work on this one. Recovering from grief has been my part-time job.

The tasks during different stages of my job have included: psychotherapy, grief support groups, writing, yoga, running, pilates, self-pity, meditation, excessive dwelling on finding a man, redecorating, renovating, making new friends, and even needlepoint. The great thing about taking on recovery from grief as a part-time job is that you get to design the job to your own specifications! No one can tell you how to recover. No one is qualified to evaluate your job performance. (They may try, however.)

Here's how some of the tasks I've undertaken as I've worked on recovering from my loss have helped me, lest you are interested in trying any of these for yourself:

Psychotherapy: Ok, I'm a big believer in this one; after all, my very own dead husband was a therapist. My therapist helped me understand that what I had been through was HUGE and that attempting to minimize my loss was not going to make it go away. She gave me respect for all I had been through and for the hard work involved in recovering from grief.

Grief Support Groups: I'm quite a social person so I found that listening to others talk about their losses made me feel less alone. I don't like to feel like I'm the saddest sack in town, so knowing that others are sad too, and working it through, gave me hope and stirred my empathic feelings for others.

Writing: I could not have survived my emotional pain without writing it down. In fact, writing is so helpful to me that I can't imagine suffering without having writing to turn to. If you feel emotions strongly, I highly recommend writing them down. For me, painful emotions lose some of their grip after being expressed on paper. As I've mentioned before, solid research has shown beyond a doubt that writing about your feelings is good for your emotional and physical health.

Yoga: I have now been practicing Kundalini Yoga for the last full year. I will admit that this form of yoga, which includes meditating, chanting, and singing, is not for everyone. It makes me feel great while toning muscle. I feel much happier and more settled in my life.

Running: Since Ken's death, I've taken up running just a little bit. I have run three 5K races in the last three years. This is not something I ever thought of doing. It's just nice to know I can.

Pilates: Strengthen your core and you just feel stronger all over. Pilates made me feel so good that it made me highly motivated to improve my strength in other areas of body and mind. My friend who so graciously invited me to experience Pilates has helped me recover more than she can ever know.

Self-pity: If you can lose your spouse and never feel sorry for yourself, you're a better, stronger, person than me. Or perhaps you're not a person at all. In fact, you might be a robot. Anyone who loses their spouse, gets to feel sorry for themselves once in a while. This might lead to whining, complaining, shopping, or being a big, dependent baby. Go for it. Once in a while.

Meditation: I find meditation to be an invaluable skill. You may not want to take it up as a daily habit, but learn something about it. It can calm you down fast. It clears your mind. It puts you in touch with your essential truth.

Excessive dwelling on finding a man: This was a part of my job that I would not recommend to others. We all take an erroneous path every now and then. For those of us in grief, it can be easy to imagine that there might be a fast path to recovery. At least I didn't choose heroin.

Redecorating and renovating: This is a good visual representation of the change you are going through after loss. I highly recommend changing your environment to suit your mood and brighten your surrounding. Every time I walk up my new walkway, or my new carpeted stairs, or gaze at my newly exposed brick, I feel good.

Making New Friends: Nothing and noone lasts forever. I think that the ability to keep on making new friends as you move through life is invaluable. People come and go. People die. But there are always good people around. Find the ones who make you feel good. Avoid the ones who don't. Keep reaching out.

Needlepoint: I joke that in taking up needlepoint I have succumbed to widowhood. But, the fact is, I find it really relaxing. I just hung my first piece of finished work on the wall. My son picked out the canvas for me when he was 7 years old. Now I'm working on one that my daughter picked out. Recently, I started taking a class to learn more stitches. Most of the women in it (but not all) are about 30 years older than me. I bet some of them are widows like me. They make me laugh.

January 14, 1996, 2006, 2010

2010-01-14T14:34:00.000-06:00

Today is my daughter's 14th birthday.

Today is the 4th anniversary of my husband's death.

Natalie was born at exactly 3 a.m. in a miraculous birth (especially for a first child)

that took only three hours. She weighed exactly 7 pounds.

She is a wonderful, sweet, kind, funny, beautiful, easy, insightful child.

I feel really lucky to have her in my life.

Ken died at about 6 in the morning in a hospital room down the road from our house.

I wasn't there. I'll always feel sad about that.

On that day, his death felt like an enormous defeat.

He had fought tremendously long and hard to live,

With optimism. With strength.

Four years ago Natalie walked downstairs on the morning of her birthday.

Alec, who was six, said: "Dad's dead."

Still, the house was filled with balloons.

Friends came over.

We went to a bowling alley.

The girls were treated to manicures and pedicures.

They slept over.

It was a real birthday party for a real girl whose father had died that day

When she turned ten.

Today, I woke up in my bed. It was just after 3 a.m. (the time that Natalie was born)

All the lights were still on in the house.

This used to happen all the time in the months just after Ken died.

I would fall asleep earlier than usual,

Then wake up in the middle of the night.

The lights would all be on, the dishes undone, my clothes still on.

I'd clean things up, maybe write an e-mail,

Go back to bed.

Just like then, here I was in the middle of the night

Fourteen years almost to the minute after Natalie's birth,

Four years almost to the hour after Ken's death.

Wide awake alone in this moment.

I cleaned up. Turned off the lights.

Went to the computer.

A chat box popped up.

It was my niece Anna who is living in Korea for the year.

While Ken was having cancer treatment in Texas 4 years ago

Anna had just graduated from college.

She agreed that her first "job" would be

Being my kid's mother, while I spent time in Texas where Ken was hospitalized.

That was our arrangement for six months.

I don't know what we would have done without her.

I liked last night. Waking up just at the time that Natalie was born.

The lights blazing, the house chaotic, like it was in the days and months following Ken's death.

With Anna there to chat with me.

I thought she was far away. But there she was.

Everything connected.

I felt it.

All in one day.

Happy Birthday Natalie!!

Ken, we made one beautiful girl.

The Years Go By.....

2010-01-07T11:35:00.000-06:00

Four Year-End Lists after the End of Our Life Together

Year One (2006):

I dream that Ken makes me take a rundown, shoddy, unsafe apartment off the highway. He is not going to live there with me. I feel that I have done something wrong and I don't quite understand.

In Shock.

Legal Work.

Accounting.

Estate Planning.

Revise the Will.

Scattering Ashes.

Memorials.

Holding on.

Worrying about my children and everything else.

Deep insecurity.

Disbelief.

Pounds shed.

Can't read, can't listen to music, can't watch TV.

Year Two (2007):

I dream of a deep fissure running through the foundation of our house.

I imagine I can fix this by finding a man to (gasp!) replace you.

Go on every dating site that exists.

Actually believe I can quickly find a wonderful husband for me and loving father for my kids.

Panic.

Return to therapy.

Feel overwhelming guilt that I don't have a job outside the home.

Avoid acknowledging that I have been royally screwed by fate.

Go to lunch constantly.

Enjoy the company of numerous wonderful women.

Year Three (2008)

I dream Ken and me go swimming together. I tell him not to go so fast. He gets out of the pool and walks away. I can't believe he is walking away from me like that. I just can't believe it.

Apply for and get a job; turn it down.

Realize that my work is getting my life back.

Devote myself to my own recovery.

Acknowledge that I need to avoid stress.

Get fit. Get strong. Physically.

Take my kids on a 2,000 mile road trip.

Begin to acknowledge the enormity of my loss.

Begin to feel the social isolation of widowhood.

Begin to feel the stirrings of peace.

Begin to feel the stirrings of hope.

Begin to respect my own strength in the face of this loss.

Year Four (2009)

I dream (or there is) a ghostly presence in my bedroom; a shimmering, lit, human form. There is a flash across my window, and it is gone.

I write about loss. I think about loss.

I immerse myself in experiencing the reality of grief.

I take up the spiritual practice of Kundalini yoga and love it.

Begin fixing structural issues in my house.

Get on the school board.

Fueled by hope, I begin a relationship with a man who doesn't have an ounce of Ken's integrity. Eventually, this is revealed and I finally get it: Ken is gone. My happy life with him is OVER.

Make the decision to travel with my kids to New Zealand next year.

Recognize that I was incredibly lucky to have found Ken.

Admit that I don't know what will happen next.

Let go.

Coming up in 2010....

Topics to include: Loneliness! Exploring new possibilities! Simple gratitude for simple things!

The Month That Won't Be Ignored!

2010-01-04T20:26:00.000-06:00

The month I can't ignore, but would like to, sort of but not really, spans two calendar months. December 14 to January 14. This 30 day period is like a contemplative hush occasionally punctuated by a mean and nasty buzzer that is as loud as a carbon monoxide detector next to your ear (with an ear infection).

Beginning on December 14 we have my dead husband's birthday.

Now, you'd think you could kind of skip right over a dead husband's birthday if you wanted to, right? One of the essential features of being dead is that you stop having your birthday. There is no shopping for gifts for the dead person, no singing the dead person happy birthday, no choosing a favorite restaurant and making reservations for the dead husband and his living wife, no being extra nice and leaving all crabbiness behind for your man, no theater tickets, no gourmet dessert, no special, sweet, soft surprises of any kind at all.

In fact, a dead husband's birthday is no birthday at all UNLESS he has an identical twin. In this case, which is in fact the case here, we get together to celebrate the birthday of identical twins which has become the birthday of just one man. There's a family gathering! There's a really nice guy having a birthday! There are presents to open! There is laughing! There is singing happy birthday! There are two children celebrating the birthday of their uncle and the outline of a birthday of their dead father. Now, come on, is there anything sadder on a birthday than an identical twin that has become one man? The answer to this question may possibly be yes, but I'll be getting to that later in this story.

Then you have the double duo of Christmas and New Year's Eve as a single parent and a single woman.

The coping device for this most festive time of year (no doubt for many people other than myself) is to alternate between attempting festivity, feeling genuine festivity, faking festivity, pretending not to care about this time of year, and caring deeply about this time of year. If all this mental and emotional activity exercised my muscles, this would be a month of incredible toning and shaping.

Next up, January 2, which used to be my anniversary, but I have re-named it my "sadiversary."

This year I would have been married 17 years. Isn't that an accomplishment? In just three years, I would have been married 20 years! What do you say to a widow on her anniversary? Perhaps Happy Sadiversary. This year I actually sat down with my kids and watched our wedding video. I looked very happy. It was nice to see that happy face again!

Finally, to finish up THE MONTH THAT WON'T BE IGNORED, BUZZZZ, BUZZZZ, we have January 14, the day Ken died and my daughter's birthday all wrapped into one fine day.

The day Natalie turned 10, she walked downstairs to hear her six year old brother say, "Natalie, Dad's dead." Still, we filled the house with balloons, went to a bowling alley with a bunch of girls, and even hosted a sleepover. (I will be forever proud of this fact, and grateful to my fine friends for propping me up that day in 2006.)

T.S. Eliot, in The Wasteland, declared in its first line: April is the cruelest month. I beg to differ Mister Eliot (but I do love your poem and you are an inspiration).

My Loss Is Like A Vacuum Cleaner, Sucking Me Dry

2009-12-17T20:16:00.000-06:00

I've noticed that I often compare my life since losing my husband to living on an alien planet. Where the hell am I? How am I ever going to build a new life here in this strange place? It's so damn empty.

What metaphors do you use when thinking about life after loss? Is your loss like a nightmare from which you can't wake up? Is it a black hole sucking you down? Does it look like a stark, white, empty room? How about a dark and tangled forest? Was it your last chance for happiness? Did you win the lottery only to have it taken away? Is it a car crash?

No need to be original or avoid cliches here. This is just fun and games in the medium of loss. Toss enough words around, change will happen. You'll move. Progress will be yours. Get creative with your sorrow, it's all yours.

I've assigned a certain mood and personality to my loss, and its shaping my world right now. So I think it's worth writing it out to see where the idea takes me. Give it a try.

My loss is like..........

My loss reminds me of........

**********************************************************

My loss reminds me of an alien world where I have arrived alone, surrounded by unfamiliar people and places. I didn't want to come here. I arrived forcibly, against my will. I don't understand the language or customs; I wonder if I ever will.

I miss my home planet. Even though I once took elements of that old life for granted, I like to think that if I ever had the chance to go back there, I would be blessed with a whole new outlook. But I'll never get to go back. I'm stuck here in this new world. The air doesn't suit my lungs. It's too hot, then too cold. I am uncomfortable. Over time, I need to find a way to love it here because wherever I am, I want to like my life. I must adapt.

The hardest part of living here is getting used to the pervasive sense of loneliness. The darkness. Even that can be conquered. I will keep searching this barren place because I know there is beauty here too. I've already experienced it from time to time. After the destruction that occurred on my home planet, I find myself braver and more willing to explore this new world than I might have been had the loss never happened. What could happen here that I can't handle?

They say take-offs and landings are the most dangerous parts of any flight. I made it without crashing, without everything blowing up. I survived. I'm alive. I get to keep on going.

Progress Examined Further

2009-12-08T20:51:00.000-06:00

Progress?
Breath by breath,
shower by shower,
dish by dish,
skin sloughs off,
pain doesn't hurt as much anymore.
I don't want to say it:
You're becoming an abstraction,
where once I was in your orbit, solidly,
my life
without you
lacks gravity,
a center,
a home.
Your absence has become
its own revolution.
Your hand on mine
kept me solidly on earth.
I won't forget that
as I drift away, spinning, searching,
no longer held by your heavenly body.
Without your weight, I'm shrinking.
No one can hear me when I call your name
inside myself; it echoes.
I am getting smaller and smaller.

This is progress.
In your absence, skinned, weightless, lessened,
I rise and shine. I bounce.

Progress: Measured by a Family Portrait

2009-12-06T20:15:00.000-06:00

Over Thanksgiving Weekend, I took my kids and the dog and myself into the city to get a family portrait taken. I wouldn't normally do something like that (kind of not my thing), but I'm not the greatest visual documentarian of our family's existence (that was Ken's job), and the photographer Rick Aguilar was offering the "mini-portrait session" for just $50 so I couldn't resist.

So there we were: the three of us humans.

The three of us. One mother. Two children. Together. Our family. Having our portrait taken. Enjoying ourselves. Laughing. Hugging. Sitting. Standing. Showing it like it is.

A family portrait may be posed, it may be unnatural, and it's absolutely a formal visual document of a point in history of a family's life.

I loved getting that cheesy family portrait taken and I know that three years ago, or two years ago, or one year ago, I was nowhere near ready to admit visually and with a smile on my face: this is what my family looks like now.

I wish more than anything that Ken were still in our family, that we had a mother and father in our portrait, that we had a husband and a wife in the picture. But I am the mother and I am not one of the children of anyone anymore. I haven't been anyone's child since the year 2000. At age 48, I may be a very slow learner, a later developer. But finally, I know it. I can't live in a world made of a wish anymore.

I am single. I am a single mother. This is our family. Nice to meet you.

Progress (Measured in Squirrels)

2009-12-02T19:38:00.000-06:00

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

2009-12-01T19:22:00.000-06:00

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.)

Gratitude

2009-11-23T13:20:00.000-06:00

Thought I'd try today to think about what I'm grateful for that is a direct result of losing my husband. This is a little thought experiment designed to see what happens when you take the worst thing that could happen to you and try to make it into something really lovely and grand and life-affirming. People always talk about the good, the growth, the spiritual awakenings that can arise from loss. Can I find good in the death of a good man? Of my good man? Can I find something good and special lurking here in the darkest room of my existential home? Is there a diamond or two to be found amidst the ashes of Ken's death? You undoubtedly know already, as I do, that the answer is indeed, yes.

Charles Dickens wrote in Great Expectations, "...suffering has been stronger than all other teaching...I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape." While I would give anything to return to the less improved, ignorant, but non-widowed version of myself, I take this moment to salute the sorrier, more broken, but slightly wiser me.

Today, I am more satisfied with the elements that make up my life. I no longer beat myself up about finding purpose or not somehow being "enough". Reading a good book under my warm covers. Replacing my furnace and installing new heating ducts...I mean, a warm home is really something that makes me happy. Volunteering my time to a good cause. Speaking my truth in the hope that it can help another. My yoga class. Dinner with my kids. Raking. Sitting at a swim meet all day long. Going to my college reunion. Walking around town and always bumping into someone I know. Feeling bad and getting over it. Trying hard. Contributing where I can. Laughing with friends. A phone call with my sister or brother. Dreaming. This is happiness. I get it. I'm lucky just to be here. So many people aren't anymore. My favorite person isn't here anymore.

Today, I worry so much less about the future. The apocalypse already came and went for me, and here I am. Bad things WILL happen, never fear, just brace yourself, and enjoy it all the more when there's nothing much to report. Peace and happiness lie in the everyday moments when crisis is either so far behind you that you can't really feel it anymore, or so far in front of you that you can't even imagine what it might be made of next time.

Today I know that even though I was tremendously unlucky to lose Ken so soon in our married life together, I was also incredibly lucky to have spent 15 years of my life with him. Incredibly lucky. Fifteen years is a long time. For 29 years I lived without him, and when we met, it was as though finally I had found the person who understood me and who I understood in a complete way that felt just right in all the most important aspects. I'm tough. I managed without him all those years, and here I am again without him, but this time, I have everything he gave me, including our two children and his family, where pieces of him reside. I'll never be as alone again as I was before he came along.

Today I am more compassionate. While I might not win any contest for being the kindest, sweetest, least confrontational woman you know, I do understand better now that we are all flawed, we are imperfect, we are bundles of impulses, chemicals, circuitry, conditioned responses. We try, we fail, we succeed, we screw up badly, our bodies or minds get sick, we are angels, we hurt and we rise again and again until we are silenced. We're all dying, but we all get to live for a time. It's short, even when it's long, it's just a moment, but somehow, against all odds, we're here.

Today I know beyond a doubt, and after watching my late husband suffer from cancer, good health is precious. If you feel good, don't just do it, revel in it, honor it, and do what you can to sustain it. Start small if that's all you can manage...drink more water, take a few more steps each day, keep on searching for your own path to better health.

So that's my short list of goodness arising from my loss. Greater general satisfaction. Less worry. A sense of being lucky. Greater compassion. Gratitude and great appreciation for good health.

"...suffering has been stronger than all other teaching...I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."

________________________________________________________________

What has suffering taught you? What have you gained from your most difficult experiences? Make a list. Write about it. Find your gratitude.

Loss Can Make You a Little Crazy!

2009-11-20T11:10:00.000-06:00

Writing about loss isn't about dwelling in pain or staying stuck. It's about releasing deep feelings so that you can move forward. I write this Heartbreak Diary of my own publicly, to encourage others to write about their feelings. My goal is to introduce as many people as possible to the idea that WRITING ABOUT FEELINGS IS HEALTHY. It's not necessary to write a public blog, or even share your words, although if that feels good, do it. Writing about feelings is simply an effective, free, easy method to improve both emotional and physical health. Your body needs exercise. Your emotions do too. Write it out...you'll feel better.

Loss has made me do some crazy things. In trying to regain balance, I've teetered, sometimes too far in one direction or another trying to find a steadier path. Today's exercise is called "WHAT WAS I THINKING!!!"

Has your sense of loss or struggle ever driven you to do crazy things? Has it put you off kilter? Have you tried to right yourself using less than balanced methods? Have you had unrealistic expectations? Have you tried some crazy shit? I bet you have. (Or if you haven't, maybe you should!)

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!!? Write about it now.

_________________________________________________________

What was I thinking when I left my young children with a babysitter, took off for the weekend a year after my husband died, drove four hours from suburban Chicago to rural Southwestern Wisconsin, imagining that a divorced organic foods activist that I met on JDate, who lived on a remote farm with two cats and life restrictions caused by environmental illness could be my next great husband?

What was I thinking when I imagined that tall, handsome "Ben", who confessed early in our relationship that he often "flamed out" on relationships quickly, that his father was married six times and possessed no moral compass, and who protested all too frequently that he "did not want to run away" from our relationship, could be my next great husband?

What was I thinking when I imagined that a law school professor who talked bitterly of his bad 20 year marriage, and spoke disparagingly of his own grown daughter, could be my next great husband?

I'll tell you what I was thinking....I was thinking: I had it so good with my great husband that when he died I couldn't imagine how I would live without all the good energy, spirit, intention, and love that he gave me on a daily basis, so in my struggle to survive my loss, I had to pretend it would be easy to do it all again, and quickly.

That's what I was thinking.

Now, what were you thinking?

Toleration, Sufferance, Endurance

2009-11-17T11:30:00.000-06:00

Toleration. Sufferance.

1. Patient endurance, especially of pain or distress.

Feel like bursting out of my skin.
Maybe I already have,
And there's nothing left.

Can't stand it anymore
This uncomfortable spot.
Sometimes too cold, sometimes too hot.

How long do I have to live this way?
How long must I wait?
Itching. Painful. Sore.
Edges raw.
Healing takes infinitely longer
Than I knew.
But then,
this is my first major catastrophe.
It hurts everywhere
I am exposed.

I'd give anything to be elbow to elbow with you again.
In quiet consultation, head to head,
Your steady hand on mine.
Two worldviews meshing.
The tight fit.
The safe zone.
Our place.
The length of you covering the length of me.

No more.

Endurance. en·dur·ance

1. The act, quality, or power of withstanding hardship or stress: A marathon tests a runner's endurance.

2. The state or fact of persevering: Through hard work and endurance, we will complete this project.

3. Continuing existence; duration.

But truthfully,
and, also,
I like myself.
I love my kids.
I like my house.
I like this world.
There's more to see.
There's more to write.
I still have an appetite.

_____________________________________________________

What are you tolerating? What is uncomfortable? What must you endure? Take 5 minutes and write about it.

What's too painful? Write about it.

2009-11-10T17:26:00.000-06:00

I don't think anyone would argue that there are certain activities known to be good for your health, like aerobic exercise, yoga, meditation, swimming, or stretching. I'd like writing to be added to the list. Research has shown that writing 15 minutes a day, about how you feel, promotes mental and physical well-being. If you've suffered a loss, it can be really cathartic to put your sad, angry, bitter, resentful, mournful, disbelieving feelings into words.

And who would argue that sometimes doing healthful activities can be painful? Ever run a 5K? Ever tried standing in the warrior pose for a couple of minutes? Ever stretch out your hamstrings? Ever try to sit still and meditate for 20 minutes? Ever do a series of squats and lunges? All of these activities can be pleasurable as well as so difficult you can't wait until they're over and you can go lie down. But keep it up despite the pain and you get toned muscles, healthy lungs, a mind that knows how to be at peace.

Writing is no different. Fifteen minutes a day of writing can be a breeze or it can be painful. Either way, it's good for you. It's like exercise for your emotions. They need fresh air too. Open up. Let them out for god's sake.

This brings me to today's topic: What's too painful? Are you out of work? Did your spouse die? Is your knee in such bad shape you can't play tennis anymore? Have you lost your great body? Did your boyfriend dump you? Has your son stopped calling since he left home? Do you never get invited anywhere? Is your mother immoral?

Think about it. What's too painful to admit? What feelings hurt? Write it down. Putting your feelings on paper gives them shape. You can make a story out of how you feel. You control the story. You can change it.

______________________________________________________

What is too painful? It changes over time but I guarantee that whatever it is that's too painful to bring to your conscious awareness deserves some attention and respect. Sometimes respecting your pain is letting it hide for a while, only sneaking a look occasionally in the cover of darkness. If your pain is holding you back or causing you physical discomfort or making you feel uncomfortably sad, it might be time to open up a bit and let some of it out.

When my husband was first diagnosed with cancer in 2002 it was too painful to imagine that he might die. Being hopeful was best, by far.

After he went through a grueling six months of chemotherapy and his cancer went into remission, it was too painful to think that it might come back.

After his cancer came back, it was too painful to think about our bad luck, so I spent a lot of time trying to tell myself how fortunate we were regardless or our bad luck.

After Ken had his first stem cell transplant, it was too painful to think about the toll this disease was taking on our young family, so we tried to live as normally as possible. Normal life was receding, but it was too painful to let it go.

After Ken's cancer returned yet again, it was too painful to give up. So he went to Texas for a second and very high risk stem cell transplant.

After the second transplant Ken lived in his hospital room for six months with a series of complications and bad news. It was too painful to believe that after so many years of trying so hard, and being such a good patient, and remaining a loving, stable, and good-natured force for those he knew and loved, it was too painful to believe that he might still die anyway.

After Ken died it was too painful to look at families that had one mother and one father; to see intact families together; to watch fathers playing with their children; to look at happily married couples.

A year after Ken died, it was still too painful for me to accept that my happy married life with him was over forever, so I began dating, believing that the best thing I could do for myself would be to try to quickly replicate the life I had just lost.

Today,

I understand that I was incredibly, amazingly lucky to have found Ken Jacobson in this big, wide world, and that when I found him I loved him and he loved me back. I am moving beyond pain to an appreciation for just how charmed I was for fifteen years of my life so far to have known Ken, to have been his wife, to have had children with him, and to have raised those children with him for a little while.

Excitement in the Unknown

2009-10-23T22:21:00.001-05:00

When I was younger I used to be so much braver about launching off into the unknown than I am today.

The death of my husband and of my married life has left me, at times, tentative, timid, with plenty of worries about my future. What will happen to me? How will I manage? Where am I going? What will happen when my children are grown if I am still on my own? Who is here for me? How can I re-start my career? Who the hell am I now as this single mother? If I let it, fear of the unknown will take right over.

Married life has many facets. One of them is predictability, at least after you've been married for several years. When I was married, our partnership was a certainty. At the end of the day, I could always count on Ken to come home and talk with me. My many concerns for our children were shared with him, as were the many joys. He understood me. I trusted him. We fit together. Married life has many facets. Happily married life is a true gift.

Life for me today is different. At the end of the day, it's me alone, and I don't really know what that means. I didn't plan for this. I'm not quite sure how to live life in this alien world in which I find myself. It's strange and uncomfortable for me to be without my mate.

So here I am in an unfamiliar place with less predictability than I had before where I feel much less certain than I used to be. There must be an opportunity in this mess somewhere!

What I'd like to do is try to recapture the joy of risk-taking, the excitement that lies in not knowing what will come next, the acceptance of uncertainty. What better time to begin to reclaim some of my old bravery than today, in the days following my 25th Northwestern college reunion?

I wouldn't have gone at all if my good friend Polly hadn't come up from North Carolina to attend, here in Evanston, where I've pretty much stayed since I graduated. In my college days I loved nothing more than going into a crowded room not knowing who I might meet, what conversations I might have, and what might happen next. I wrote a column in the college paper, anchored the news on the college radio station, went into Chicago on my own to watch theater and write theater reviews, took on internships in New York City and Huntington, West Virginia, had boyfriends, made new friends all the time, lived in different apartments, studied a wide variety of subjects, never really thinking about security, safety, stasis. So why was I stalling an hour before our class party reunion reconsidering whether or not I should go? Why was I cleaning the kitchen instead of getting dressed?

It was that old fear of the unknown, every uncertainty and bit of insecurity rising to the surface. Will I look older than everyone else? Who will I know? What if I hate it and don't talk to anyone? What if I have a really BAD time?

Walking into the packed restaurant that held the class of '84, I felt that 20 year old self of mine emerging almost immediately as I took off into the crowd to see what I could see. I talked to total strangers, made meaningful connections to the past with people I hadn't seen in years, networked, laughed, listened, and told some of my own story. I felt connected, a part, together, like I belonged. I felt lucky.

How I would love to be able to summon more and more the sense of freedom and belonging I felt when my young adult life was in formation, when possibilities felt endless, where adventure and opportunity were right outside my dorm room door for me, and where I never expected to know what would happen next, only that it would be new and interesting, as opposed to frightening.

And so, I turn to writing to ignite the spark with a few key questions that you might want to ask yourself if you want to remember and act upon life beyond the predictable.

_________________________________

What do you know for sure? What are you certain about?

What unanswered question is most concerning to you now?

What do you like about the unknown? What don't you like about it?

Describe a time in your life when you let uncertainty stop you from taking action. Looking back was this a positive or negative event for you?

Describe a time in your life when you readily embraced the unknown. Remember everything...how you felt, what you did, what you said.

____________________________________

Writing just 15 minutes a day can make you happier and healthier, but only if you write about feelings that matter, only if you write about what moves you. Today, I want to remember that not knowing what comes next can be exciting, and very often it is. I want to accept uncertainty and let go of the idea that I need to know how everything will turn out in the end. I want to remember that even though a wonderful, dear part of my life is over, I can keep on beginning again and again. I can start again, even now, even here in the middle of my life.

Describe Your Loss in Words

2009-10-12T14:24:00.000-05:00

Writing about emotional upheavals has been found to improve...physical and mental health...to reduce anxiety and depression, improve grades in college, and...aid people in securing new jobs.

from "Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions" by James Pennebaker, Ph.D

___________________________________

Writing has always been the way that I navigate through life. I naturally turn to a blank page to express my thoughts and emotions about significant events. Once these thoughts are on paper, they function as a way of organizing my internal experience; my own words become a personal map that indicates which direction I'm heading, and which route I might take to reach my destination.

I like to say, "Write it out, you'll feel better." And I mean it, at least over the long haul. Sometimes after writing it out, I feel a little worse for a while. But I do believe that when we write our truth, no matter how painful, we can move forward to new joys and new hope. I am writing my way through loss for everyone who has lost a part of their dream, but still believes there is more happiness out there and is willing to embrace it.

Almost four years have passed since my husband died, and I have just "gotten" it. His life is over. My life with him is over. I have spent the last few months coming to this realization through my writing. It has taken me more than three years to be willing to really look deeply at my loss, to more fully acknowledge it. Everyone is different and moves at a different pace.

You might try some of the following sentence completion exercises to see where you currently stand in relation to your own loss. If you do these same exercises in a few weeks or months, your responses will likely be different.

What moving forward means to me now:

1. Not being defined solely by loss, although losing my husband has become a part of who I am.

2. Being willing to take on new challenges

3. Accept that a new degree of loneliness has become part of my life for now

4. A sense of grounded-ness

5. A greater appreciation for the good I have

6. Acquired strength

7. A better ability to separate what is worth worrying about and what isn't

Life Before My Loss Was:

(Old Life)

marriage

a partner

love

a sense of security

connection/attraction

a sense of rightness and solidity

theater, symphony, dinners out with my guy

hiking and biking

travels to look forward to with my husband

a father for my children

raising children with two parents

someone who is always there for me

Life After My Loss is:

(New Life)

me and the kids

the house

the bills

the unknown

a future alone?

helping others through their loss

insecurity

envy

understanding

appreciation for being alive

gratitude

strength

a commitment to writing

My New Road Looks Like This:

It's long, and I'm on my own.

I'm pushing and pulling at myself to keep going.

I'm scanning the horizon for someone to join me.

I'm open to interesting, new opportunities.

I want to rediscover the love of the unknown that I had when I was younger.

I can't see the end of the road, and I have faith in life's goodness.

I'm committed to a good journey, even if it sometimes gets difficult.

I enjoy having fun and meeting new people.

Crossroad to a Different Life

2009-10-06T14:10:00.000-05:00

I am at a crossroad.

Down one road is my old life--the one that began when I met Ken. Down this road is the memory of a life once lived.

I'll never forget the day he buzzed up, walked the steps to my apartment, entered my world with his kind eyes, compassion, and soothing voice, and changed it forever. Three months after I met him, I wrote these words.

"I can't believe I've found you. My whole life feels transformed--everything softer, everything whole. I would have settled for less and thought I was happy. That's a scary thought. I think into the future. I imagine that we can have 50 years together and it sounds too short. I imagine you dying, and me never feeling quite as alone as I did before I knew you."

Just 13 years later, confronting the medical reality that he was almost certainly near death, we talked in his hospital room at MD Anderson's stem cell transplant unit. It was the end of four years of cancer treatment which began when he was 48 years old.

"I don't want to feel all the pain I'll be in if you die," I said. "What if everything falls apart?"

His simple reply:

"Sometimes it will feel like it's falling apart."

Those feelings have found their place for me in The Heartbreak Diary. Often, the only way I can relieve my pain and create meaning out of what happened to me, to the man I loved, and to our young children, is to keep on writing about how this loss makes me feel. My heart was shattered by Ken's death. The life I'd hoped to lead was taken away from me. I am heartbroken still, but the only way I can come to terms with it is on paper. In my everyday life, I keep putting one foot in front of the other, my children walk in the door looking taller than when they walked out, and though I'm moving forward, in a way I'm still living in the past. If I can write about my loss, I can keep on living.

No matter what type of loss you have endured, when you commit to keeping your own Heartbreak Diary you have a place to unload your sorrows. It creates a map made of words where your deepest feelings can be recorded to reveal their wisdom. It's like a roadmap out of sorrow to new hope.

No one can understand your own brand of pain as well as you can. You are the one best suited to honor your grief, respect your strength, pay tribute to your sorrow, and then watch as your words lead you to a new beginning. All you have to do is begin. Fifteen minutes a day. You need show it to no one.

I am at a crossroads. One road takes me back to the life I had before I lost my husband.

Ahead is a different road altogether: the road that moves forward, past the life-changing moment that was Ken's death. I want to believe there is more for me in this life. But it's hard. It's hard to imagine any kind of complete life without Ken. I'm going to have to be dragged by my hair, or under the chassis of a hooligan's truck down this new road. Only I'm the one who has to do the pulling and the dragging because no one else really cares what I do for the next forty years of my life. Like it or not, I'm like a pilgrim, a gold rush girl, a new immigrant crossing the sea, a colonist in a wagon heading West. This road has a new trajectory, (though from time to time it runs along the road of memory). So I stand here at a crossroads. One foot on each road. Pushing, dragging, propelling myself forward.

_______________________________

Moving beyond pain requires acceptance. Acceptance of what you've lost, acceptance of what you have that is good, and acceptance of a future that is unknown. What do you accept in your life right now?

I accept that Ken is dead.

I accept that my life with him is over.

I accept that my life as his wife is over.

I accept that I am a single woman with two children.

I accept that my children are my number one priority.

I accept that I have absorbed a lot of loss and disappointment.

I accept that my life has not turned out the way I had hoped.

I accept that it is very hard to find a good partner at this stage in life.

I accept that I am increasingly lonely.

I accept that I am lucky nonetheless.

I accept that I am in good health.

I accept that I must work hard to recreate my life.

I accept that I don't know what the future holds.

____________________________________

At a Crossroads

Moving into the future

without you is impossible

but necessary,

necessary to my existence

on this earth,

earth where you are scattered.

Once you were the most solid one

I knew here,

here where I must

move forward in pieces

on the unsteady ground

in the dark, alien landscape

you left with your light.

Light return.

Return me to a point

where I can at least begin,

begin to remember

I have my own light

that once brought you to me

where I stood

at a crossroads.

Me Alone

2009-09-24T19:22:00.000-05:00

No one is coming for me. At least no one I can see right now. It's like I'm waiting for a taxi to take me to the airport for a long awaited adventure; I'm standing in the street, a little desperate, as my window for catching the plane grows smaller and smaller. I contemplate missing the plane altogether.

Once upon a time, we loved to go biking in Wisconsin, just the two of us on road bikes in the beautiful countryside of the Kettle Moraine. We were happy buzzing down the roads, endless fields of corn and soy beans growing beside us, red-winged blackbirds chirping on the wires.

The stones on the road crunched and danced under our wheels until the time my tire blew out. There was nothing to do but wait for you alone on the side of the road with my lame bike while you rode yours all the way back to the house to bring back the car for me.

It would take a while for you to come back to me sitting there all alone on the dusty, quiet, lonely road. It was a lovely solitude knowing you'd soon be back. I could look down the black top and see you coming long before you were even in sight because you always came for me, patched my tires, heard my cries, saw my view.

You're not coming this time. The scared feeling I woke up with this morning is all mine to tolerate. I'm alone on this road as far as I look down. I'm the one who's coming for me now.

_________________________________________

Try this:

Imagine a moment in your life when you felt completely cared for by another person. What did he or she do to make your needs met, to make you feel secure?

Now remember a time when you made yourself feel comfortable, strong and safe in your world. What were you doing, thinking, and feeling?

What action can you take now to make yourself feel safe?

What thought can you hold in your mind to encourage and remind yourself of your own strength?

How does it feel to be here to take care of yourself?

________________________________________

Now I Will Be the One

I will be the one who is here

Now I will be the one who is

coming when I call now I will be

the one I depend on when

scared or sad or nervous or

inspired now I will tell my story

now I will speak aloud now I

will be heard now I will help

others alone in pain now I will remember

you now I will know you

are not coming for me

now like you did back then

now it's me not you anymore

now I know it's true it's me

Now.

Respect Your Loss

2009-09-17T22:00:00.000-05:00

It can be easy to find oneself lost in grief. Maybe it's even necessary at times to disappear into it altogether. If the magnitude of your loss is big enough, I think it's fair to say we might owe it to ourselves to give over to it for a time.

Let's look at the opposite of grief. What if I was newly fallen in love, or attained an important goal, or succeeded in accomplishing a great career move, or bought a piece of land to fulfill a long-held dream, or finally found myself a published (and critically successful) author? I would allow myself, and others would understand if I gave myself over to my newfound joys.

Don't our losses deserve the same kind of honor and attention? Turning our back on them too early before we've integrated their meaning can leave us cut off from important parts of ourselves. It's natural to want to celebrate a win, but losses ask for our respect too. They are just as much a part of a life well-lived.

I think I might hear an objection. Are you wondering what good it does to dwell on difficulty? I am not asking you to dwell or to feel sorry for yourself. The request is to take a very small amount of time each day to reflect on what you have lost. If you are willing to do this, I believe that instead of being diminished by your loss, you will give yourself the insight to grow from it. You will fully realize the strength and power that can be released when you honor loss as much as you honor success.

Here's a question to ask yourself: How can I honor my loss? Spend a few minutes answering this question and see where it takes you.

I will honor my loss by not turning my back on it.

I will honor my loss by using the wisdom I've gained.

I will honor my loss by writing about it.

I will honor my loss by saluting my strength in surviving the loss of my husband and the father of my two young children.

I will honor my loss by trusting myself to take care of my family.

I will honor my loss by using it to help others as I write my way through it word by word.

Surviving your loss:

The most impressive

feat of bravery

I've ever achieved.

Neither willing nor ready

Not prepared or experienced.

Kicked, shoved, beaten down

to the hard, concrete bottom

of the base truth: one life is over.

Slept fitfully or not at all

on the cold, empty floor

where I owned it all in disbelief.

Awoke to the sound of my own words:

I am still here,

ready, willing.

What Have You Lost?

2009-09-12T18:57:00.000-05:00

It has taken me about this long, three and a half years, to be willing to look more closely at WHAT I LOST. After Ken died, and during his illness, I worked very hard to stay strong, and this meant and still means only tolerating the reality of my loss in small pieces. It was easier for me to tell myself and others that even though I had lost big, I was still better off than many others. Viewing myself as fortunate despite my pain kept me from falling to my knees when I had children who weren't all that much taller than my knees. Now that my kids are bigger, now that time since Ken's death has grown longer, I am more capable of acknowledging the magnitude of losing Ken.

What does your loss look like? Does that sound like an obvious question? Understanding your losses, acknowledging them, and giving yourself credit for surviving them, can help you move forward. Writing about your loss is a powerful tool for recovery akin to exercise, or meditation, or talking to a supportive friend or therapist. It is a tool you can use to improve your life. It can free you from the heaviness of pain so that after spending 10 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour a day writing about matters of deep importance to you, you can move on with your day, your goals and your plans. Making your thoughts visible, makes your own wisdom available to you. Devote 15 minutes a day to healing your loss through writing. Keep a Heartbreak Diary. Write it out. You'll feel better.

____________________________________________________________

Can you "play" with the concept of loss? I think so. What does your loss look like? Describe it for one full minute, whatever comes to you, sensical or non-sensical, let's go:

My loss is a wall that cuts me off from the rest of the world.

My loss is a red light flashing on my head that screams: "Look at me, I'm a widow."

My loss makes me feel unlucky, unhappy and lonely.

My loss is a dream that more and more becomes my reality, but it takes a long time to wake up to this new life and accept it.

My loss won't break me, won't kill me, won't beat me down.

Let's "play" a little more. The flip side of loss is gain. What have you gained through your loss? Give it another minute and see what you come up with:

I've gained a sense of fearlessness because I know that loss can be managed.

I've gained a sense of resignation -- Aha! Life can be very cruel and there's nothing I can do to change that. I have to accept that.

I've gained a willingness to tackle more challenges because I have to, because it is necessary, because I want to.

I've gained a large, encompassing sense of peace.

I've gained a better perspective.

____________________________________________________________

I get it now.
You are really gone.
Grasping your infinite absence:
Like trying to understand
We're part of the Milky Way
While we stare at it overhead
On the darkest of nights.

You aren't coming back to me ever
Even if I hold your memory like a baby,
Even if I never stop writing you onto these pages.

And you are never leaving me either.
I can't write you out of me
Or find you when I pin my hopes
On the wrong guy over and over, I try.

You're staying here
Where you entered,
Where you launched
The gentlest, most peaceful takeover in the history
That continues word by word.

In the darkest night I am
Always alone now.
You are everywhere and nowhere.
I am lost in your magnitude
As I have been since the day
You crossed my threshold
And the night you crossed yours,
Never and completely disappearing.

How to Tell if You Might Benefit from Keeping Your Own Heartbreak Diary

2009-09-08T23:52:00.000-05:00

1. Your friends look off uncomfortably into the distance as you describe the barren reality of your life, again.

2. Your feelings chase you around without stopping, wake you up early, or prevent you from sleeping.

3. You've lost big or you're a big loser, take your pick.

4. You're trying really hard to accept the way your life has turned out but you're still not quite there.

5. You believe that the only one who cam make your life better is you.

6. You want to know the answers that only you can give yourself.

7. You believe it's possible that your own words and thoughts when expressed have the power to change your current circumstances.

8. You just need a place to bitch. You realize that a blank page may be a lot more forgiving than your friends and relatives.

9. You've lost a spouse, a child, a parent, a job, your confidence, your home, your income, your dream, your pet or your center and you'd like to feel better than you do right now.

10. You'd like to try what research has proven to be true: expressing your feelings in writing, (even if no one ever reads your words, even if you throw out the pages after you write them,) can improve your health and well-being.

You can write your way through loss to a better place. Want to give it a try?

Writing as Medicine

2009-09-07T22:04:00.000-05:00

Why oh why should I continue to write about the effects of Ken's death on my life?

After all, it's been three and a half years already. Isn't it time to live in the present, to launch purposefully out into the future? Wouldn't it be better to just stop thinking about it? Isn't it time to just MOVE ON? Turns out, I have no idea what moving on means. I put one foot ahead of the other. I have moments of joy and glee and good humor just like the next gal...maybe even more than the next gal, depending on who she is. I turn the calendar at the end of every month. I make goals and accomplish them. I am open to the goodness that exists. Yet still, I am compelled to keep on expressing my feelings about losing my husband.

Writing, as it happens, is an effective, useful way to recover from a personal trauma. Dozens of studies conducted over many years by James Pennebaker, Ph.D, a research psychologist from Southern Methodist University, have shown that writing about your troubles can improve your health and emotional well-being, reduce anxiety and depression, and even heighten your immune function. Proven: writing can help you heal.

I have written steadily about Ken's death, and before that, his four-year illness, since 2002. Our children were just three and six years of age when he was first diagnosed with cancer. He went through multiple rounds of treatment including two stem-cell transplants, one of them requiring that he live in Texas for six months with me going back and forth between a critically ill husband and my two small chidren back in Chicago. At the end of all that treatment, he died from complications due to his transplant. Despite this huge, on-going, long-term, major stressor, I have remained remarkably healthy. I believe that writing out my pain, keeping a Heartbreak Diary, is one of the primary reasons I have stayed so healthy after losing so big.

Three and a Half Years and Counting (Slowly)

2009-09-07T00:27:00.000-05:00

What moving forward from Ken's death means to me after three and a half years:

Not being defined solely by what I've lost (although it remains a huge part of my identity).

Beginning to be willing to take on new challenges.

Time to admit that I might find another partner and I might not. Stop obsessing about it.

Accepting that loneliness is a sometimes part of this new life.

Acknowledging the great strength and sense of groundedness that I've gained through this hardship.

An ability to not worry as much since nothing else even compares to living through Ken's illness and death.

A greater appreciation for the good that I have.

The desire to help others who are in pain.

Grasping my role as a single parent and growing in confidence that I can take on what the kids need to the best of my ability.

Accepting that single people are rarely included in couple activities.

The deep understanding that life is finite.

The realization that I am still fortunate even though I lost the best friend I ever had, the person I loved more than anyone else ever, the one who I trusted completely, who made me laugh, whose perspective I understood, who I had chidren with, who I lost three and a half years ago.

Obsessions

2009-09-05T16:04:00.000-05:00

checking email checking email checking email
checking facebook
I'm a widow I am involuntarily single
calling friends
checking email
looking for jobs I'm not ready to take
checking facebook
worrying about money
worrying about my kids
checking email
checking facebook
madmen
feeling unworthy
feeling worthy
looking for jobs I'm not ready to take
scheduling
planning
politics
checking email
checking facebook
reminding myself that I'm OK
I am a widow I am involuntarily single
checking on people who aren't OK
trying to contribute
checking email
checking facebook
growing older/feeling better/getting stronger
push-ups
squats
kundalini yoga
toning muscles
staying healthy
call my sister
call my brother
write it down
write it all down
men are not on my list of obsessions
men do not appear on this list
checking email
checking facebook
call a friend
tone my body
do some push ups
write it down
fix the house
checking email
checking facebook
check the answering machine
sleep

I give up

2009-09-04T21:35:00.001-05:00

I give up. I declare it here and now. I am giving up my obsessive pursuit of a new soul mate, a new partner, a lover, a new man to share my life with. It's too hard. I've tried. I've spent more nights than you want to know looking at pictures and reading profiles and driving into the city or meeting at Peet's for coffee with hope in my heart. I give up.

When Ken died, I couldn't think about the magnitude of my loss. I still can't, really. I could barely let myself think of that real man, that warm-bodied, soft-hearted, intuitive man with whom I shared a world-view, a good laugh, children, ..a bed, a life.

Instead, I had to skip over all the memories of our life together, my romantic marital dream, and try to imagine that I could just have it all again with someone different. How could I live without it? I had defined my objective: I will not be alone in the prime of my life, I will not be sexless and partnerless and alone.

Oh sure, if you dared me, I'd have a permanent status report on Facebook that would scream: Doesn't anyone know someone for me? I don't want to be single. I want to have a partner.

But no. I give up. And I open myself to what comes next whether it's watching Madmen alone at night after the kids go to bed or making it to the NYT bestseller list and launching a new career. I turn my back on the dream I had that I could have again the dream I once had which was the life I had once with Ken Jacobson.

2009-03-12T12:41:00.001-05:00

More than three years have passed since Ken died. I can finally say that I do feel better and that my life is somewhat less defined solely by what I have lost. For the first time in a long time, I have moments of complete happiness. Losing Ken has changed my perception of life forever. I now truly understand that even those things that feel "forever" like home and family and good friends and good health are actually temporary gifts that only provide us with an illusion of safety and security. I won't knock the illusion, but I don't believe in it anymore. Instead, I believe that it's incredibly important to know what you want and reach for it. And when you get it, love it now, because whatever "it" is, "it" will be fleeting. I've also learned not to be as afraid of losing anything. If I could lose Ken, and still come out OK, I can take anything. I'd rather not have had the lesson, I'd rather be afraid, but it is quite a gift that I accept anyway.

I wish that Ken could still be here because I know the world would be better with him in it than with him gone. When I think of my sister and brother and their families, all the Jacobsons, and all the great friends I have who have helped me through, I am incredibly grateful for their continued presence in my life. That won't be forever either.

I have learned so much from going through illness with Ken, and from the intense suffering caused by his death. But I know that ultimately I learned the most by being so close to him, by being in his orbit, for 15 years. I wish I could have been all that I am now with Ken. I wish he could have seen how I've grown to understand that almost nothing is worth worrying about, and that life is meant to be appreciated in every moment. I understand more now. I am more compassionate. I am less hard on myself and others. I worry about very little anymore. And damn it, now that the kids are older, I have had more time to take care of myself and I've become fit in a way that Ken never got to see. I know he would have appreciated it though! But I do wish I could have given him this better self that I have developed, ironically, through the suffering caused by his death.

There is never a day that goes by when I don't think about Ken, or at least try to think a little like Ken. He was the most evolved person I've ever had the privilege to love. Sometimes I used to think he was too perfect. And sometimes that pissed me off.

The worst consequence of his dying is that he left Natalie and Alec without his guidance for the rest of (most of) their lives..and worse yet, they are stuck just one parent...with me.

But lucky for me, in his perfection, when he left me behind, he truly left me nothing but good. Ken was a gift, he possessed incredible gifts of compassion and understanding. And I intend to pass that gift around. I won't do it as well, but I'll keep trying for as long as I'm lucky to live.

Grief Meet Hope

2008-08-07T20:34:00.001-05:00

Grief and hope try to be friends, but it isn't easy. Grief pulls back, gets scared, loses its mind in the past. Hope moves forward quickly, not even imagining all the trouble that might lie in wait up ahead. Hope is full of energy. Hope wants to branch out, try something new, get out and get going.

Grief takes a big long nap and is grateful for the quiet. Grief needs to lose weight and feels too heavy to get up and start all over again. Grief holds on tight to what is known. Grief demands an accounting of all that's been lost for fear that it will disappear altogether.

Hope says, "Fine, let it all come along for the ride. There's plenty of room. All are welcome here."

Grief wants very badly to believe that Hope can be trusted. Can they really co-exist? If they get together, will they be betraying anyone else?

Hope sings, voices echoing into the future, moving with confidence into unknown territory. Grief mutters in the background. Grief is simply exhausted and needs something to lean on.

"Lean on me", says Hope. I will always be outside your door and if you let me I will help you. It's what I'm here to do.

Grief rests her head on the pillow and pulls the covers up under her chin. She closes her eyes, invigorated by the darkness. She could stay here forever imagining how it used to be, how it could have been, how everything is alien now.

Hope sits on the screened front porch basking in the filtered warm sun, holding a cup of tea. Grief lumbers in, squints uncomfortably in the light. but takes a seat anyway.

"This feels like a good beginning for us," says Grief.

"No hurry," says Hope. "We can get up whenever you're ready to go."

Another Father's Day Goes By

2008-06-15T23:41:00.000-05:00

I'd say this Father's Day felt a lot better than the last two we spent without Ken. I didn't feel the need to engineer the perfect day designed to both honor Ken and minimize our own awkward or despairing feelings. I didn't do anything to distract us from the subject at hand: father's day without a father. I let the day be.

We went to the pool with friends. Invited Ken's parents over for a really nice dinner. And we decided we would try to behave as Ken almost always did...by being calm and understanding at all times. I'm not sure we succeeded in that, but what was I thinking? Ken's understanding, calm nature was to my mind what set him apart. He was dazzlingly calm. Blow me away calm. Impossibly calm. How could anyone replicate that? But somehow we were happy today. Progress has been made.

Two and a half years after Ken's death, I still live with his loss every day. It continues to define me. And it continues to shape me and change me into someone new, someone I wasn't before he left. I don't know myself as well anymore. So I've learned by living it that a loss this big somehow rearranges your whole sense of self and of the world. What I feel most often now is how everything is different, different than it was before. And I am different too. Atomically blown apart and rearranged and still settling.

I now know that Ken is gone. I believe it. And it's taken me this long.

Natalie said a few days ago: "I can't believe it's only been 2 and a half years. It feels like forever." And Alec said today, "I can't imagine what it would be like to have two parents."

Funny enough, I can take these sad statements and see them as positive. The kids are adjusting. They are resettling too.

We've survived another Father's Day.

We've survived. Period.

Poems of Partial Understanding

2008-04-15T13:18:00.001-05:00

I STILL (love you)

CAN'T (don't want to)

BELIEVE (the truth)

YOU ARE (still here)

GONE. (forever)

************************************

DEATH (sucks)

ISN'T (fair)

ONLY (lonely)

AN ENDING. (finito!)

IT'S (metamorphic)

THE BEGINNING (not again!!)

OF

SOMETHING (what?)

COMPLETELY (lacking)

DIFFERENT (not at all the same)

What I Am

2008-03-23T21:45:00.000-05:00

I am alone.
I am afraid to be alone.
I am OK alone.
I am one.
I am lonely.
I am incomplete.
I am without.
I am.
I am at wits end.
I am just at the beginning.
I am optimistic.
I am pessimistic.
I am lonely.
I am alone.
I am not alone.
I am.
I am lucky.
I am unlucky.
I am fortunate.
I am unfortunate.
I am nervous.
I am stable.
I am healthy.
I am in waiting.
I am alive.
I am friendly.
I am funny.
I am social.
I am a mother.
I am a daughter-in-law.
I am a sister.
I am a friend.
I am an aunt.
I am 46 years old.
I am a widow.
I am a writer.
I am relaxed.
I am responsible.
I am not working.
I am fit.
I am strong.
I am looking.
I am a woman.
I am missing you still.
I am here.
I am a human being.
I am one who has lost.
I am sad.
I am happy, but not as happy as I once was.
I am still grieving.
I am always going to miss you.
I am never going to be the same.
I am a different person now.
I am sorry you had to go so soon.
I am still here.
I am trying to be content.

Visit from a Bird or Bat (and a bear), and....

2007-07-31T21:38:00.001-05:00

At 5AM this morning, a fetish fell off my windowsill, awakening me from my sleep. A Zuni carved fetish, that is. The Zuni of the southwest carve animals out of stone, bone, antler and such. Each animal is said to have different powers...Ken and I started collecting these fetishes in the early 90s while visiting Santa Fe and Taos one February before we had children. Over the years, we'd give them to each other for gifts. Let's say it was one of those sweet things between couples, less sugary than giving each other stuffed animals but not as formal as a monogrammed bathrobe.

What was perplexing was that there was no way one of these fetishes could just fall off the windowsill all by itself. They are stable where they rest.

So I got out of bed to find that the fetish that had fallen off the windowsill was a white bear. We have three of them. And what do you suppose are the mystical powers possessed by the white bear? Healing, powerful healing. I had once sent a white bear to my friend Pam, who during the same time Ken was going through treatment for Hodgkins Disease, was fighting her own battle against leukemia. Before Pam died she passed her white bear on to Ken.

Since Pam's bear hadn't possessed enough power to keep her alive, I got Ken another whiter bear. Like many fetishes it carried a little bundle on its back wrapped with string. The bundles add even more power. Ken would carry the bear around in his pocket, take it to work, for his chemo treatments, etc. It got so worn from being carried around that the string became frayed and undone. It went through a lot trying to keep Ken healthy but it just wasn't strong enough, so I bought Ken a third white bear...white as snow, smooth as ice. The last bear. This is the bear that fell off the windowsill last night. (OK, so obviously these bears are impostors since two great people died while the bears sat back and did nothing, however, the story continues....)

I couldn't understand how this bear had fallen off the windowsill. As I lay on my bed pondering this I heard a sound of movement throughout the upstairs of our house...something moving through my room, Natalie's room, and Alec's room, around and around. A bird! Or was it a bat? I'm still not quite sure what it was but it was flying around our upstairs going from one room to another.

Normally, any living intruder in our home would be handled by the man of the house, but since that wasn't possible at 5 am this morning, or at any morning in the last many months, it was up to me and my pounding heart. So I waited until the birdy flew into Alec's room, closed the two doors to his room, trapped the bird in there, took a screen off a window, lay down on his bed, and waited for the bird/bat to fly out. I did it!

Afterwards, I felt kind of proud of myself. Kind of strong and capable. A real match for the winged one.

I felt just a little, just a little tiny bit of healing had taken place. With my two little children fast asleep, with no one to help me, I ushered a living creature out of our upstairs with minimal fuss. And I must admit I wonder...what was that flying through each of our rooms last night? A bird? A bat? Or some other flying wonder that came by to check on us?

My only regret? I wish I had at least said "hello." Just in case, you know?

Update on Life and Grief

2007-07-06T07:01:00.000-05:00

1. Last year I couldn't even plant a vegetable garden. This year I planted tons of stuff, but I haven't tended it so crabgrass is taking over. I'd say this indicates progress. Perhaps next year, I will feel lively enough to weed.

2. The second year is harder. General life viewpoint: Uh-oh, now what. This IS my life. Return to therapy.

3. Women have saved me. If it weren't for all the fabulous women in my life, I'd be buried under the crabgrass in the untended vegetable garden. Thank you wonderful friends and family.

4. I can mow my own lawn, but still not comfortable with changing the gas container on the grill...also haven't cleaned the grill. Perhaps grilling will go the way of the fully tended garden.

5. We are all making it, but life without Ken is not as good. Not as good. Not as good. Losing your husband is bad. Recommendation: avoid losing fabulous spouse.

6. Everyday I try to think about the good in my life, but I just can't help noticing that big old hole in the center. I will borrow a line or two that Alec (8) wrote in a poem this year: Black is a hole that only ends in darkness. Then again, he also wrote in the same poem: Water is a growing goodness that sees through anything.

Cheers.

Happy Birthday Natalie!!!!!

2007-01-15T19:17:00.000-06:00

Natalie turned 11 yesterday. The day before her birthday we arrived home to find a shopping bag with an incredible gift inside. There was a letter enclosed from a woman we have never met, but hope to sometime soon. "Kathie" knew Ken from SSA, the School of Social Work at the University of Chicago. Like so many others, she was moved by the fact that the day of Ken's death last year coincided with Natalie's 10th birthday.

In her letter, she tells us that around that time last year she was about to begin a new quilt so she decided she would give it to Natalie on her next birthday. Her husband would tease her about finishing it...and they began to refer to it as the "Ken and Natalie Quilt". Every time she chose a new piece of fabric, or added a piece, or tore a piece out, she'd think of Ken and Natalie.

Natalie loves the quilt that covers her entire bed and lights up her room.

"It make me feel really good that someone that I don't even know was thinking about me and Dad. It makes me feel really good when I'm lying in bed under it!"

When I told my friend Cindy the story she said that "it's stories like that that make me feel there's hope for humanity."

THANK YOU KATHIE! You brought a huge sunny patch to a day that's filled with both light and shadow. We are incredibly moved and incredibly grateful.

Swimming for Ken on January 14

2007-01-08T22:27:00.000-06:00

This Sunday January 14 is both the anniversary of Ken's death and Natalie's 11th birthday. Natalie's birthday party will be in the late afternoon and we're looking forward to it. Tonight I asked the kids what we should do to honor Ken on that day as well.

We talked about a few ideas and settled on going to Lifetime Fitness that morning where the three of us will share a lap lane in the lap pool and swim laps for Ken. Ken was such a joyful, strong, capable swimmer. So we'll relax, get our bodies moving together, and remember Ken for his good health, athleticism and strength...three qualities he maintained until almost the end of his life. We'll pick up where he left off.

It is painful to remember what was happening a year ago. One year ago today, we flew Ken home to Evanston. The realization had arrived that only through a medical miracle would Ken survive. The fact is that he spent the last six months of his life in a hospital room mostly unable to use his body for much at all, but he did it with immense grace and with great hope that he could overcome the struggle.

I remember the last swims he took in Houston before he entered the hospital. He was still free, and cancer-free as well. His body hadn't yet turned on him as it did after the stem cell transplant. He had a beautiful way of moving through the water.
So, if you can get to a pool on January 14, swim a few laps for Ken and remember how he moved through his life with little resistance, going with the flow, strong and capable, and always available for some excellent instruction if you needed help with your own stroke.

We Miss You Ken

2007-01-07T23:25:00.000-06:00

You are always with us.

Ken's Park Memorial

2006-12-23T17:24:00.000-06:00

Guess what? It's not too late to send in a contribution for the memorial for Ken that will be created this spring in McCullough Park right next to our house.

Here's what to do:

Please make checks out to: "Evanston Parks Foundation."

Please send the checks to: Steve Wernikoff, 2650 Eastwood Ave., Evanston, IL 60201.
Thank you very much to each and every one of you for helping to make this memorial happen!

Thanks also to everyone who particpated in Ken's cyber birthday party.

Up next: Christmas without Ken....My anniversary without Ken....and the anniversary of Ken's death on January 14, also Natalie's 11th birthday. But, of course, it's great to be alive!

No Gifts (at least not ones you can touch) Required

2006-12-05T13:31:00.000-06:00

So how shall we celebrate Ken's birthday, coming up on December 14?

For starters, for anyone who still tunes in to my much neglected blog, how about if your gift to Ken this year is to remember him and post your remembrance here for others to share.

Don't be shy! Let's get it going.

Let's bring Ken to cyber-life on December 14 with a big birthday party right here!!!

But, you know that Ken would want you to be moderate, so please, no excessive drinking before you write in.

My so-called perfect life

2006-11-02T11:23:00.000-06:00

One of my standard endearments to Ken had always been "you are my perfect husband." Awww. Ain't that sweet? But it's true. In Ken I truly found everything I had been searching for in a partner. Did he have flaws and did our marriage have it's challenges? Well, I guess, but not many. Although I must admit that sometimes I would level this complaint at Ken: YOU THINK YOU'RE PERFECT. But then again, most often so did I.

But then he got sick. And then he died. NOT PERFECT. NOT ANYWERE CLOSE TO PERFECT. THE OPPOSITE OF PERFECT. In fact, it's downright shitty. I got royally screwed. My life as I knew it is OVER. I am living what is the stuff of nightmares for many of you. I found just what I was looking for...I did such a good job finding my perfect husband and the perfect father for my children, then POOF. Gone. Different life.

This time last year, Ken was engaged in a splendid fight for his life. He fought so hard and with such spirit that though it was perfectly awful, he helped us believe that it wasn't. That it was OK. That he could endure. That all the suffering was worth it. He was still there for us, leading the way through the minefield of horrors, and so many of us followed along by his side.

So now we edge into some difficult territory...his and Paul's birthday next month...and then the anniversary of his death/Natalie's birthday the following month. He's missed alot of living and being Ken, he would have really enjoyed being here for all of it for he was truly a contented person.

I think that despite his death, despite living the reality of one of the worst things that could ever happen to me, I may have integrated some of his contentment into my being. I find that I am happy to just try to live a very simple life, to keep my stresses low and my own health a priority, to not expect too much from myself, to enjoy the company of wonderful friends during the day, and then to be fully there for Natalie and Alec when they come home from school. To be grateful for them. To laugh with them. To be content with our little family of three.

Something about our loss makes our little family ever more precious to me and it brings out more that is good in me. I wouldn't call anything about me or my life perfect, but I do try to see more that is perfect, just as it should be, in my children, in my friends and in my life.

Of course, there are those moments when all that is really lousy about my situation comes to haunt me. Usually this is in those early hours of the morning, before the alarm clock rings. Then everything feels so absolutely terrifying that I fear for my future and my children's future.

When the terror strikes, I summon Ken who truly never seemed to me to fear anything. He gives me strength still. I still follow his lead. His presence in my life is nothing that I can call perfect anymore. But I will take what I can and call it good, because what remains is all I have.

My own words fail.

2006-09-26T10:53:00.000-05:00

But here are some song lyrics that ring true with me these days....these days that feel like the first inkling of submitting to my real life...this new life....I'd say the shock is gone, the loose ends are being tied up, the memories being shared, catalogued, nailed into the wall. I can no longer deny my exhaustion or the slight taste of bitterness brought on by the once privileged life gone awry coupled with the huge responsibility of moving on anyway with grace. For someone whose life has always gone along pretty darn well I shake my own hand and say welcome to the human race. This is your introduction to grown up pain. For now I'll let myself be without goals, I'll let myself float along...........looking for fun where I can find it...it's been a long time since fun's been a priority. I tell myself that the fact that Natalie and Alec are happy and well despite their huge loss is enough of an accomplishment for now and I'll remember how Ken could always without fail take all my self-doubt, package it up, and throw it over his shoulder with a soothing smile.

Anyway...some lyrics that ring true with me these days
from Shawn Colvin's new album: These Four Walls

Fill Me up

Fill me up fill me up
I'm a long way from home
And I don't have a lot to say
Fill me up fill me up
Cause you're all that I've got
And I traveled a long long way

Cheer me up cheer me up
Cause I'm all alone
And I'm taking it day by day
Cheer me up cheer me up
Cause you're all that I've got
And I traveled a long long way

And from John Mayer's new album Continuum:

The Heart of Life

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good.

Remember Ferdinand?

2006-08-31T23:21:00.000-05:00

Last August Ken wrote the story of Ferdinand the Cancer Patient in which he described his experiences as a two time stem cell transplant patient. He wrote this, in part, because he was so aghast at the lack of concern for the emotional health of a person going through such grueling treatment.

The other message in "Ferdinand" tells of Ken's great appreciation for the life he had right here in Evanston, and of how much appreciated the community that surrounded us and the simple but profound pleasure to be found in the park right next door to our house, the same park where we'll soon be creating a memorial in his honor.

So, one year later, remember Ferdinand:

*****************************************************************************************************************************

The Story of Ferdinand, the Cancer Patient… not a children’s story

(A fictional tale, whose characters are amalgams drawn from 3 different treatment centers.) Inspiration comes from personal experience, and images of Ferdinand the Bull,by by Munro Leaf, and illustrated by Robert Lawson. Imagine sketches of grand characters parading in and out with fancy costumes, pomp, and ceremony.

This is the story of Ferdinand, who tried to mind his own business and smell the flowers. Ferdinand liked to sit in the park, on a bench or under a tree, and experience it all. He smelled the flowers. He watched and enjoyed the people. Everything was well in the park.

One day, Ferdinand did not feel so good. He didn’t have the usual kick in his step. His doctor said it was probably nothing but he should check it out. Ferdinand’s wife was worried, but not too much. She reminded Ferdinand that without a wife to worry, something might be missed. Ferdinand did his best to continue to enjoy the park, and to do the things that he had always done. The first tests showed probably nothing. The second tests were probably nothing. The third tests were more painful, and probably nothing. But days later, there was definitively bad news. Ferdinand had cancer. His life was going to change. But then he would get better, and get back to the park and the flowers.

Ferdinand was brought to a busy place to wait and wait. He waited in rooms with comfy furniture. There were old magazines there. There was a television that had a channel with only pictures of flowers. He was told to sit. Usually, his wife could sit next to him so that they could talk, laugh, and worry together. He was told the wait wouldn’t be long. They were even given discounted passes for car parking. It felt like a good deal. But the waiting was unending. It was more certain than anything. Ferdinand gazed at the tropical fish tanks, and dreamed of the park. He thought about his special little family. He thought about the work that he loved. He thought of the things he loved to do. He thought of his friends. He had a lot of time to sit and think.

Soon, Ferdinand came to recognize the patterns and the people who came to help him. Sometimes, they helped him and let him go back home to his park. Sometimes they kept him at their special place for many weeks, helping him with special treatments. Ferdinand wished he could return to his park. But he knew the people wanted to help him, so he tried as hard as he could. Some days, all Ferdinand wanted was to talk a little with somebody, and to be recognized as one, who was there every day doing his best in his own way. He wanted the people to know that he had a life out there in the park. But the helpers kept coming in, different ones different days and nights. They kept saying Ferdinand looked good. But they didn’t realize that Ferdinand had a lot to say and think about. Ferdinand’s park was too far away, so he had to remember it all by himself.

The helping people came alone or in groups. They had special clothes with matching outfits, gloves, and jackets. They wanted to help Ferdinand by talking, cleaning, poking, and listening to his breathing. They even woke him up in the night to show how much they cared. Just when Ferdinand was imagining how nice it would be to be smelling the flowers in his park, the nice people said that smelling flowers would make Ferdinand sick, so he could not have flowers anywhere nearby. Ferdinand was sad, but he knew that the people were trying to help him. Hopefully, someone would come to visit and tell him about the real flowers and the park. Ferdinand’s own new stories were not very much worth telling.

Ferdinand learned about all of the helping people.

The nurses came. They were young and old; big and small. They did everything. They wrote their names on the bulletin board. They told Ferdinand to rinse his mouth so that he would not get mouth sores. They were in charge of the poles holding bags of poison medicine. The poles beeped and chirped all day and night. At first, Ferdinand thought that he was hearing birds and children in the park. He pushed the nurses’ call button, and then the nurses would come in to adjust the beeps. Sometimes the nurses had good advice for Ferdinand, like how not to throw up his food. They collected and measured every bit of his pee and poop to show how much they cared for him, even more than most dog-owners did for their pets back in Ferdinand’s park. Some even shared their dreams for their own lives. Sometimes the nurses distinguished themselves in their knowledge or their compassion. Some nurses could barely figure out what Ferdinand needed or wanted. They might come to the door and giggle or frown. But Ferdinand learned to tell them what they needed to know about him. Not about his park, but about his pee, poop, pills, and poison bags on the IV pole.

Then came the PT’s, who wanted to go for a walk. They sometimes had ropes and belts strapped to Ferdinand, in case he was so weak that he would stumble. They only knew him as a weak fellow, and they had entire sheets of printed exercises. That was all they needed to know.

Then came the OT’s, with giant rubber bands. And they wanted Ferdinand to pull the rubber bands in his free time. They had big ideas for Ferdinand’s daily goals. It made them feel better.

A minister came now and then to say that god was there if Ferdinand needed him.

Every 4 hours, Ferdinand welcomed the most consistent of all the helpers, the people who take vital signs. They checked pulse oxygen, pulse rate, blood pressure and body temperature. They came every day and every night.

For special fun, there were women, who drew blood from Ferdinand’s body. Certain days they drew from his central line. Other days they stuck his veins directly. Sometimes, there were special blood draws for research blood. These helpers always came at 4:00 in the morning.

Respiratory Therapists came with breathing treatments to inhale. They listened to Ferdinand’s breath and cough. They came 4 times each day, even at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.

A social worker came to visit sometimes. He could talk about anything. Ferdinand would talk a little, but there was so much to say that he didn’t say very much. Ferdinand couldn’t just jump in like that.

There were lots of cleaners, who usually spoke Spanish. They made sure the bathroom was tidy and would change the towels. They would mind their own business.

Ferdinand never forgot the food service workers, even though he couldn’t taste or enjoy what they brought him. They offered him a sense of control because he could make choices. Too bad none of it tasted good.

And where would Ferdinand be without all of the people doing special tests on him? They took him to lie down on machines of all types. They ensured that no part of Ferdinand would be a mystery. They knew about all that might be wrong with Ferdinand. They needed to be careful because they knew so much. Ferdinand valued what they did, but often he was left to worry.

And now suddenly the trumpets are blaring!!! The staff are hustling and excited. The Doctors are coming on their rounds! Ferdinand is told not to do anything. The Doctors are Coming! The doctors might be in any minute. They might come in two hours. But we will all wait for them because they will talk to Ferdinand! Finally, the door opens and it is the doctor. With him is a fellow… and a pharmacologist… and a special nurse… But these people are not allowed to talk. The doctor listens with his stethoscope. He asks a question or even two. He says he will come again tomorrow. Ferdinand knows a way to ask him questions so that he will stay a minute or two longer. He likes the information that he imagines he will receive. Ferdinand appreciates the doctor because he seems to understand, even though he does not really say much. Before he knows it, Ferdinand is alone again. The trumpets sound for the next cancer patient down the hall.

Almost all of the helpers ask Ferdinand, “Is there anything I can get you?” If Ferdinand thought about it, there would be lots of things. But he can’t really think about that now because they can’t give what he really wants.

Ferdinand soon will go back to his park. Some people say that he will be better for his experience. They like to say that he will see more or know more than he did before. Ferdinand has changed, it is true. He can’t ride his bike as far. He can’t play as long or with such abandon. He can’t hear as well or see as well. He can cry a little easier now, perhaps. Ferdinand did not need the cancer to appreciate life or people or time. He was happy already. But now he will be appreciative and loving again. And he will love his park like he did before. Hopefully for a long, long time.

So Happy About the String Ball!!!!

2006-08-30T21:32:00.000-05:00

My kids school opening has been delayed until September 11 due to unfinished renovations. I know that there have been worse things that have happened on September 11, but this sure feels like a big crisis to me. And I know several other mothers who went to bed with a giant headache the day we found out that freedom would not come a' callin on September 5 as planned.

I admit it. I am done. I don't want to go to another...museum, park, restaurant, store. I don't want to draw, bake Sculpey clay, dance to music, go for a walk or bike ride or train trip. I don't want to say for the ten hundredth millionth time: NO, you cannot...watch TV, use the computer, play your game cube, man handle your sister, dramatically shriek as though the world is coming to an end, pour raw sugar down your throat...

I don't want anymore quality time. IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Isn't that long enough for anyone to completely put aside her own needs. Not that I remember what my own needs are.

This morning I sat on Alec's bed untangling and rolling up a big tangled ball of thick white string while he quizzed me about amazing facts from the Guinness Book of World Records 2007. I'd say this went on for a good hour. Like the kids, it's time for the string to move on to something more productive than what Alec has it doing: looping all around the upstairs like a big dirty mop. This was probably my biggest material accomplishment today: detangling string.

While sitting on the toilet, I also took some time to read and think about the poem "Solitude" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, which includes the famous line:

"Laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep, and you weep alone..."

And though I'm sure I'm infringing on copyright laws by writing it here she goes on to say:

"Rejoice, and men will seek you,
Grieve, and they turn and go:
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe..."

One more particularly stinging line includes this happy thought:

"Be glad, and your friends are many:
Be sad, and you lose them all,...."

So what's a sad, grieving girl to do?

Fortunately, there were actually two balls of string to untangle, so I've got that to look forward to tomorrow.

After the house is repainted: THEN WHAT?

2006-08-23T22:15:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've written anything. I don't want to write about the fact that I am finally starting to feel my loss, to miss Ken, to get it, to touch the edges of the big iceberg that's floated into the middle of our lives. I'm supposed to be the one who is handling everything SO WELL, who LOOKS GREAT, who IS REALLY MANAGING EVERYTHING WITH GRACE. And when exactly am I supposed to write, to think, to have a moment when the kids are out of school and I am the constant cook, entertainer, reader, planner, driver, supervisor, shopper, gardener, straigten-upper? And oh yeah I'd better make time to exercise. After all, I'm a middle-aged single woman...don't want to let my grief propel me into a long slide into bagdom.

See why I don't write anymore? Who wants to hear a bunch of complaining? Not me. Does anyone really want to think about dying when you're 52, being widowed at 44, being rendered fatherless at 6 and 10 years of age? The illusion of safety that an intact family provides is marvelous, a wonder, a treasure. I have no desire to strip that from anyone. Revel in it.

What we did this summer was: take two lovely trips while spreading Ken's ashes along the way. So, when people ask how are trips were...which story do they want to hear? Is it the beautiful beaches, the cool dark Canadian water, the fun touristy shopping OR the crushing reality of watching the remains of the one you love being set to rest in the gentle Laurentian woods and on the edge of the sea? Do you want to hear about our stay in a beautiful house a stone's throw from the ocean OR do you want to know about how Natalie wanted to pick up Ken's ashes after they fell upon the sand. Or how Alec doesn't like thinking about his dad dying and how he says he already adjusted to our new family of three.

What I did this summer must be a classic activity of the newly-minted widow (at least the type that doesn't have to hit the streets immediately looking for a job): I repainted the first floor of the house! Uncovered a wall of exposed brick! Rearranged furniture!

So....now what?

Honor Ken Who Loved to Sit and Chat

2006-08-04T21:53:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends of Ken:

The "planning" stage is over, and we are now operating on full cylinders for the "Ken Park Memorial."

Jill has met with designers from the Evanston Park District, and a basic plan is forming. The working plan is for the installation of high quality benches, trees/garden and a chess table to be placed in the southeast area of McCollough Park. The location is within 50 feet from Jill/Alec/Natalie's house. The memorial will be a beautiful place for people to sit and talk and enjoy a full view of the park activities.

We have received approximately $5,000 in pledges to make this memorial happen! We are now collecting the funds.

We have arranged to have the money held in a segregated account of the Evanston Parks Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) foundation. Donations are tax-deductible, and you will receive documentation of your donation for tax purposes.

Please make checks out to: "Evanston Parks Foundation."

Please send the checks to: Steve Wernikoff, 2650 Eastwood Ave., Evanston, IL 60201. Please send your checks to me by August 31, 2006, so that we can keep the project moving.

Thank you very much to each and every one of you for helping to make this memorial happen! And, of course, please send this message to anyone that you think may want to help contribute!Best regards,Steve Wernikoff 2650 Eastwood AvenueEvanston, IL 60201

Live in the present? How about the future?

2006-07-27T15:05:00.000-05:00

Summer is an interesting time for the moms I know. The working ones juggle work, nanny and camp schedules. The "non-working" ones drive around alot, manage social schedules, keep the meals and fun happening all day long. Schedules change. Camps begin, end, begin again. Vacations happen. Friends leave town. Come back. Leave again.

For me, the new widow, the routine of my past life, the one where I had a husband and an intact family, has been totally shattered. Now, overlay the unscheduled summer, and I am a woman uncomfortable in the present moment. All my routines lost. Everything familiar in flux.

We go on vacation, but when we return we have to confront all over again the truth of what has happened to us. Oh, right, he's still not here. He did die. I am a single mother. Natalie and Alec are fatherless children. I can't figure out why my computer keeps going black. Who wants to live in the present moment when this is what you must confront.

Six months after Ken's death feels harder to me than his entire illness...even than his death and the immediate aftermath. I was so filled with purpose then. I knew what had to be done. And Ken was still the center of my life.

Right here in the present...I am a single mother. No. I don't want to be this.
I am a widow. No. I don't want to be this.
Natalie and Alec have lost the best father a child could have. No.
I have lost my husband that was really my hero in so many ways. No.
The illusion of security is shattered for us. No.

Sometimes when Natalie wants to be doing something different than whatever activity we're doing at the moment, I borrow a line from Ram Dass. I say, "Natalie, BE HERE NOW." Nice advice, but I don't want to follow it. I want to be somewhere else. But here I am.

It's my party and I can cry if I want to...

2006-06-27T17:58:00.000-05:00

But fortunately, I may not have to cry this year thanks to Paula Hoerner and Cindy Johnson who are throwing me a girls only birthday party later this week. I'm not much of a "have a big party on my behalf" kind of gal...if Ken were alive, we'd get a sitter, I'd peruse Chicago Mag and then I'd pick a good restaurant and off we'd go. But you know the story: as it happens, Ken's not alive, and 5 months later upon me is the day that marks my very own entrance into the world of the living.

What better way to celebrate than with my friends. Without them, I'd really have reason to cry. Also, if you read the medical lit, there are just horrible statistics about spousal health after one spouse dies. My chance of getting sick has just sky-rocketed...but those social supports just might be the best preventive medicine money can't buy.

If you ever think there's nothing you can do when a friend has something horrible happen to them...or something bad...or even something just sort of lousy...here's what I've learned about the myriad ways people can help one another. While some are small and some are bigger gestures, what I've learned is that it doesn't really matter.

DON'T KNOW HOW TO HELP A FRIEND IN NEED? HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS FROM MY OWN RATHER AMAZING EXPERIENCE WITH THE GREAT PEOPLE AROUND ME.

(by presenting this list I do not claim to be the world's greatest giver, but I have learned a lot from so many...most right here in Evanston IL, but some from all over the place):

1. Call
2. Call again (Don't know what to say? Try: what's going on with you?" or "I've been thinking about you.")
3. Keep calling (even if he/she doesn't call back)
4. Write a note
5. Write again
6. Keep writing
7. Send a package with goofy items
8. Send a gift certificate for: food, massage, movies, spa pampering
9. Bring chocolates
10.Offer to take a child out to do something (actually, insisting is even better)
11. Offer to grocery shop (once again, insist)
12. Go for a walk together
13. MAKE THE TIME TO DO SOMETHING
14. Throw a party
15. Invite your friend over
16. Invite your friend to dinner
17. Bring over a home-cooked meal
18. Organize home cooked meals
19. Take your friend out shopping for something fun
20. Go to the movies together
21. Invite a few neighbors to hang out together
22. Get a pedicure together
23. Find out what your friends favorite dessert/treat is then bring it by once in a while
24. Walk their dog
25. Insist on babysitting
26. Work out together
27. Give homemade cookies
28. Help organize something: garage, office, garden
29. Offer advice if you absolutely think it's required.

Here's what else I've learned after going through Ken's illness and then his untimely death...

To me now, I can't think of anything more important than the little and big things we do for one another. It's hard to feel like you can do right by everybody, but in doing right by somebody, you can make a huge difference.

...and your little dog too...!

2006-06-23T09:21:00.000-05:00

Just how many losses can one family accumulate in the shortest possible period of time? Well, we're going to try and see.

Today I am driving out to the Woodfield Mall, meeting up at the Sears auto center, with Kim Bobka a dog trainer working with Airedale Rescue of the Midwest. Once there, I will give her our dog, our dog food, our dog bed, dog toys, and instructions for our dog. Our family of 4 people, one dog, will be down to 3 people, 0 dog. (With Natalie now in summer camp, we're temporarily at 2 people.)

Our dog Chloe attacked a small dog in our neighborhood park a couple of weeks ago. The little, old dog required 25 metal stitches.

It took me about 10 seconds to realize that Chloe's tenure with our family had come to an end.

Bringing Chloe into our family in March of 2003 was an act of hope for the future. Ken had finished his first round of cancer treatment the previous August, our beloved 1st airedale Haley had died in January 03, and even though we were concerned that Ken's cancer might be rearing its head again, we chose to imagine that this might not be the case...and so we quickly brought another dog into our lives.

From the beginning Chloe was a challenge: a dominant dog that wanted to be the boss. She required boot camp training and later an electric collar to try to wrestle her dominance down to the ground. Ken was her master...but soon the master was sick again...and again...and again...and then he disappeared altogether.

That's a lot of confusion for an animal that just wants to know who's in charge and what her job is.

Father's Day: No Dad

2006-06-22T20:39:00.000-05:00

On January 14, 2006 my husband Ken died of complications from his second stem cell transplant. He had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 2002. This blog Tales of Whoa describes my experiences and perceptions as a 44-year-old widow...charting a new life in mid-life. Ken's and my experiences from April 2005 through his illness, treatment, and then the aftermath of his death are described in detail on my previous blog which can be found at: www.caringbridge.org/tx/kenj. I continue my story here...

Ken's (Unsuccessful)Texas Transplant: The Aftermath

Our motto remains: FRIENDS ARE GOOD, AND FAMILY TOO!!!

Journal

Thursday, June 15, 2006 11:04 PM CDT

Tonight was the opening night of "Baseball in the Park" for our neighborhood. Everyone was invited to come play at 7PM in the newly named (by Charlie) "Ken Field". Such a great tradition, carried on by our neighbors Liz and Charlie Stone and supported by a whole cast of characters with beer, snacks, conversation...and, oh yes, a baseball game too. Guess who threw out the opening pitch...Mrs. Ken or should I say Ken's WIDOW. I have another friend who lost her husband when she was 36 years old...she told me she loved to use the word WIDOW just to shock people. I love her spirit. I also love that four years later she's sporting a new husband and a newborn baby...go widow go.

Alec had a tough decision to make since tonight was also the opening night of "Summer Chess at the Public Library", another regular summer event we've been waiting to begin. So he decided to spend half the night at the baseball game and the other half at the library playing chess. Good boy!

Then I had what I consider to be a great idea...what if, in addition to our lovely arc-shaped seating area on paved brick which we're planning to put in the park in Ken's memory, what if we add a couple of chess tables in the same area?

Next on the agenda is Father's Day. Yes, I've been planning again. We'll start the day with the Ricky Byrdsong "Race against Hate". For those of you non-locals, Ricky Byrdsong was a Northwestern University basketball coach, an African American, gunned down by a white supremacist on a mission. So this race is in his memory. I figure since my kids have had such a lousy break, it's not bad for them to see that they haven't been singled out for special punishment but that bad things do happen...and then we have to go on and keep on and race on and join in and so on.

Later in the day, we'll meet up with Paul and Rebecca and Ken's parents at Tommy Nevin's Irish Pub. Ken just loved to take in Irish music there so I think it will be a fine way to think about him on Father's Day, our mouth stuffed with fish and chips and music in our ears. Irish music touched Ken's soul. It really made him happy.

And if you might be wondering HOW I AM, I will say that I am sadder now than I've been in a while. I now believe that Ken is not coming back...and summertime which normally makes me so happy and has been for so long now filled with such good times and happiness is a cruel reminder of all that used to be. When we take our traditional trips this year to the Laurentians north of Montreal and then Rockport Mass, we'll all be revisiting years of happy memories without for me the most important person there.

Along with the swimming and the cooking and the canoeing and walking and hanging out, this year we will carry out Ken's wishes to have his ashes scattered in these two places where he spent almost every year of his whole life vacationing and having a good time with people who mattered so much to him. In a final written note he even left a message to our kids: "You can choose a place for my ashes too, even if it's a place that I already chose, that's OK."

Who but Ken?