The next chapter....

There are certain phrases in my new life that irk me. One of those is how we as grievers are expected to find things such as: "closure" or "acceptance." And we are expected to follow some neat little path until we reach these things. Then we are told that we should "move on," but just as long as we don't do that too quickly or before the other people in our lives are ready.

Moving on. What does that even mean? Am I supposed to suddenly wake up one day and forget that I was married? Should I pretend that my husband never existed? I think these ideas are born out of other people's ideas of how they would react if they were in our shoes. For others, I think they are uncomfortable with us around-- we (the widowed) serve as these inconvenient reminders of our mortality. So they dismiss us and our emotions, rather than having to face their own insecurities and fears about death. Some of this does come from people who genuinely care about us, and just want us to be "better," and so they look to make sure we are progressing properly through our grief, or showing signs that they no longer need to be concerned. And of course, the moment we start to date again becomes the ultimate sign that we are now "over it." Whatever the motivation is, however, it is all misguided. There is no "moving on," and there never will be any "closure" or "acceptance." For one thing, as it was in my case, things just ended one day without any warning. There was no good-bye, no last words, or thoughts, or promises, or anything. Not even finding out what happened brought me any comfort beyond knowing that even if I had been around I could not have saved him. So no, I do not feel as if there will ever be any "closure." And furthermore, how am I ever to find a seemingly healthy young man's sudden death "acceptable"?

We do keep moving forward, though.

Grief is an interesting thing.... grieving is indeed a painful process, but it is in fact a process. It is our body's way of healing. But I believe it will always leave a lasting impact. During his life, my husband had to have both of his knees operated on -- nearly 10 years apart, but nevertheless it was the same injury. Both kneecaps had to be reattached, as he tore them off in two separate accidents. I did not know him when he injured his first knee, but helped nurse him through the second surgery and recovery. It was a slow painful process. He was bedridden for almost a month and continued to wear a leg brace beyond that. Slowly he re-learned how to walk, but he was never able to move very well again and his knees remained stiff and sore the rest of his life. No doubt they would have eventually become arthritic if he had lived longer. In addition, he had two identical, lasting scars that ran from the top of both knees to his shins. Reminders of what his body had endured. I have similar scars. The only difference is mine are invisible. They exist within me, buried deep within my heart, mind and soul. And like the physical injury that my husband sustained, mine have left me forever altered. I move, think and act a little different. I am a different person.

Nor does the grieving ever end. I am certain that I won't ever come to a point in my life where I say "well, now I am completely over the untimely death of my husband." No, it will always be with me and I continue to live with it every day.

What I have done, is try to learn about this process and to use it to help change me for the better. It is exactly because of what I have endured that I have become the person I am today. I like to think that I won't repeat my past mistakes, and that I no longer take what I have for granted. I try to always remember that anything we have today can be taken from us tomorrow. I try to live every day in gratitude for what I still have, valuing and loving the people that are still here with me, and honoring those who are gone.

This is far from easy, however. It only becomes more complicated because now I also have chosen to open myself up to someone new. This in no way means that I have suddenly become "better," nor that I no longer grieve for and miss my husband. But it certainly changes things.

I often think that it must be hard, to be in my boyfriend's place. And I am continually amazed with how kind and loving he is, and patient, and how he just accepts that I have this whole past of mine that I keep with me. When I am sad, because I am missing my husband, he does not become jealous, but rather will hold me and hug me and tell me that everything will be ok. And he listens to me as I cry and tell him what it is that I am thinking about that has reminded me of my old life. He lets me keep my husband in my heart, and has accepted that he will always share that with him. So never doubt that there are truly wonderful, and good people out there, and that there are real men left in this world. Because he is the best kind of man you could hope to find -- one that does not try to "prove" himself, but one that lives in a way that demonstrates his love and respect for me every day.

In other ways I also think that Boyfriend has gotten the better deal, or at least the better woman. I no longer find myself upset about trivial things.... those things as wives we are known to constantly nag our husbands about. Not only do I not even care about those things anymore, they don't even register in my brain anymore. I have learned, in the hardest way possible, that in the end there is absolutely only one thing that matters in this world, and that is love. So I make sure never to forget to remind him of it every time I say good-bye, because I never want a day to come where I missed my last opportunity to reaffirm my love for him. This experience has taught me how to quickly hone in on what is important in any given situation, and to sift out the extraneous. I make sure that each day leaves us feeling positive about the interaction we've had with each other, and that I've done my best to remind him how special he is and how much I value him and am grateful to him. You've no idea how easy and rewarding a relationship can be when you make this your focus. If you've not figured this out yet, I sincerely hope you do before having to learn it the hard way, as I have.

The place I find myself having the most difficulty, however, is my attempt to blend and balance the two parts of me. The part of me that was a wife, and the part of me that is now a girlfriend. I want to make sure that Boyfriend knows that he is the most important person in this present life of mine, and my future one, because he is my here & now. He needs to be put first in my life, even though he has come second. In our most intimate of relationships we all need to feel like and know that we are the most important person in the other person's eyes, so it is only right that I do so. This does not mean I forget my husband, nor does it mean that I will ever stop loving him, but I have come to terms with the fact that he is gone and will never be coming back. So I try to walk this fine line, but I always worry that I will upset someone. Mostly I worry about the extended families -- which is ridiculous if you think about it, because I find myself worried more about them than either myself or Boyfriend at times.  But I do. I worry if I show too much happiness, or move too quickly, or have too much fun, or express too many feelings about Boyfriend, then my husband's family or friends will be hurt or mad at me. Then I worry that if I accidentally talk about my husband in front of Boyfriend's family that they will think I am not ready for a relationship, or just using Boyfriend, or could wind up hurting him, and that this will upset them, just as I am trying to get to know them and them me. Then I worry that my own family will think that somehow one or more of my relationships should not be taken seriously, or that somehow one or the other "doesn't count" as much as the other. And in my life, I am surrounded by examples of long marriages.... and so by comparison feel inadequate not even making it to 3 years, even though this was not my choice. And sometimes feel pangs of jealousy that in my reality, even if the best happens, I will never have an opportunity to share a 50th anniversary like my in-laws did because I am now too old to expect I have that kind of time ahead of me. And if that is not enough, I then have all the normal worries you would expect from a new relationship. So, not too much pressure on me or anything.

I am aware that I put a lot of this on myself, and that no one (to date) has actually said anything (though, I could not tell you what they privately think about my decisions). I guess the sensitivity comes from some of the things I went through early in my grief, and my hyper-awareness of other's feelings and wanting it all to mesh somehow. I worry that there will come a time in the future where one or more facets of my life won't be able to deal with the complications anymore, and I worry about any fall-out from that.

I don't honestly know what my husband would think of all this. We never discussed our eventual deaths while he was alive..... I did not even know what his final wishes were, leaving me to fumble my way through my lame attempts to "do the right thing." In so many ways I feel like I failed completely. I feel like I not only failed him, but that I failed myself. I've done the best that I can to pick myself back up and make amends. I fear that it will never be enough. The only thing I can do, is to make sure I do not ever repeat the same mistakes in life. I do not know what happens to us when we die -- where we go, what we think or feel, or even if there is an anything out there beyond. I hope there is, but I don't think any of us knows for certain (no matter what our faith or beliefs tell us), and can't know until it is our time. I'd like to think that there is a place of unlimited love and understanding -- so that wherever he is now, he is able to be happy that I can go on and make a new life for myself. I'd want him to do the same if our places were switched. And someday -- though I pray with my everything that it is many, many, many years from now -- when I must face a second loss, or perhaps it will be my turn, I wish for there to be the same for whichever one of us is left. And that above all, we can hold on to that one thing that matters in this world..... love.

Mile Marker 22

So I made the trip again -- the one back to my home state. This time I was not alone, I had boyfriend with me. The last time I made the trip I did it in a crazy whirlwind of emotion and shock, just months after my husband's death. I have no idea what I was attempting to do, but I rented a car and made the 15 hour drive in one day, had an awful weekend back home feeling like my friends, family and the world had abandoned me. I then turned around and drove back in a day -- sobbing most of the way home. I needed to make some new memories to wipe out the ones from that trip.

To me, I think I hold the idea of what this trip means because it was the last one I made with my husband. We went back over Christmas time in late 2009. We were just finishing up a year that we had moved from NY to the DC area, and I had started a new job. It had been a chaotic time, and we had not been back to our mutual home state for over a year. We wanted to go back and visit family & friends. It was a nice trip back & in retrospect I was glad that we had the time there that we did. He actually spent the majority of  the time reconnecting with old friends. I am glad he was able to. I think, though we did not know it at the time, it was also his good-bye to many of those people.

But to me, the part of trip that I ascribe the most meaning to was the trip back home to DC. In my own head I often just refer to this time as "the beginning of the end." Looking back, those few weeks leading up to his death were as foreboding as anything you could make up. It all started at mile marker 22, on the Ohio turnpike. Why this sign is seared into my brain, I don't know, but it is there as plain as it was when it happened. That is where our car began to overheat. We drove on for a bit, thinking it was not so bad & we were so close to an exit that we could just make it off the road & into a garage.....

Then the engine started to smoke, forcing us to pull over on the side of the road -- quite literally in view of the exit sign, but too far away to make it. My first instinct, of course, was to panic. "What the H*** do we do now?" I thought. A much calmer-in-the-face-of-danger type, my husband got out to see what the problem was. It was bad, there looked like a cracked hose of some sort & liquid coolant was spewing all over the engine. We needed a tow truck, it was freezing cold, we had nowhere to go, and did I mention our black lab was also in the car with us? Oh, and we were also broke at the time. I mean totally broke. We had just enough money for gas and tolls to get us home & that was it. How were we going to fix the car?

Eventually a trooper came up behind us and assisted us in calling a tow truck. The driver towed our car, at my husband's request, to a car parts store -- in hopes we could fix the thing ourselves. Well, that he could anyway. As we were driven along to the nearest exit, a great revelation hit me -- I knew where we were. We were literally just a few miles away from where my mother's family lived in Ohio. This became a very important thing, because as it turned out not only did we have a cracked hose, but a blown head gasket. The whole engine would ultimately need to be replaced. What we did first was call my uncle, who came and rescued us and took us to my grandmother's house. She then called a friend of hers who worked on cars. My husband and this guy then spent the next week (yes, week) trying to fix the heap of junk that was our car. After it became apparent they couldn't, we took it to a dealer who then made a deal with us to get the engine replaced at a much cheaper cost than it should, and much cheaper than we could get a new car for, so out of desperation we took it. Big. Freaking. Mistake.

So, now on borrowed money we got a rental car, and husband drove me 9 hours overnight so I could make it to work the next morning. He then drove back to Ohio to wait for our car. This took another week. Only then did he finally make it home. We spent the next week in crisis mode, trying to figure out how to pay for everything and develop a plan to keep ourselves afloat for the next month or so, as he was waiting for a new contract to come through and would not have any additional money until then.

The following week started off as any other week. On Tuesday I made some spaghetti and meatballs. We shared our first relaxing night alone after the whole ordeal, watching TV and eating dinner together. He went to work (in our basement) when I went to sleep (a normal routine for us, as he always preferred working third shift). All I remember about Wednesday morning is that I was rushing around and almost missed my train to work, so the last words I said to him were "I'm late," as I ran out of the car. I didn't even bother saying good-bye, let alone giving him my usual good-bye kiss. I got the phone call from the ER about 6 hours later.

I made the trip back just a few days later, with my mother, who had flown out two nights night before to come help me figure out what to do. I do not remember this trip at all. I eventually made the return trip with my Dad, after we had buried my husband. Then a few short months later I made my crazy-assed trip out on my own, with my dog.

This one needed to be different. I needed to be healed. It was almost as if I was looking for redemption for a road trip I will likely need to make fairly often in my life, as I find myself more and more settled in my new home state.

I don't have so many old friends to visit, as they have all drifted off. I don't have so much in the way of husband's family or friends either, save for a couple I have managed to stay in contact with. So my obligations are few -- family mostly. The rest of the time I am free to decide who I want to see, what I want to do, and where I want to visit. A far cry from the crazy times I would be here with husband and he would have what seemed like hundreds of people to visit, and too many places to go in the few short days we would visit. The pace now is more leisurely.... more serene.

I wanted boyfriend to see where I came from. I wanted him to meet the rest of my family. To meet a bunch of other people who shared my past, and my funny accent. This is what I am missing in my new life, especially around here, a connection to that person I used to be. That person I lost somewhere on the Ohio turnpike, around mile marker 22.

The DGI

As you will no doubt discover, one of the ways I made it to where I am now is by reaching out and finding people I could relate to -- other young widows. I did spend some time in in-person support groups & going to counseling, but the largest community of similar people I found has been through various online forums/groups. For one thing, widowed people in general are a small subset of society (ironic, considering that anyone who marries has the potential of becoming one if divorce doesn't happen first). But as you get younger in age, you find fewer and fewer people. For example, for me to be widowed at age 29, I was in a statistical group that was less than 1% of all people in my age category. So the odds of finding even one, let alone hundreds of other young widows in my real life seemed remote indeed. Through the marvels of the internet we are able to find each other & connect in ways that would have never been possible before. I sometimes marvel at what people did back before there was such an easy way to connect with people.

Well amongst this group of "people who get it" we have a (probably seems somewhat rude to people outside of our group) way of referring to the insensitive world around us -- DGI  (Don't get it). I think at times we scream out about the DGI's as if they are these horrible people who derive pleasure from causing us so much pain. But what I think they really are, are just ordinary people who have never experienced a close, personal loss,* and so they really "don't get it." But they can't. At least not yet. Honestly, no matter how much people around us seem so oblivious to our pain, there is no way I would want them to get it -- because in order to you have to also experience the pain and loss that we do. After all, I was a DGI for 29 years of my life. I'd like to think I treated people with sensitivity, but how do I know? How could I? So it is fairly unreasonable to expect others around us to always get it.

Not to say I think people get a free pass on being assholes. Or to be so oblivious to people around them they lack any empathy for how their words & actions may effect someone. But I do think perhaps we need to cut some people a little slack.

Early on, every little thing hurt. Each insensitive remark cut through my entire being like a knife, making my body hurt and bleed from within.

"He is better now in heaven/ with God/ not in pain / etc."

"You are still young, you can find someone else."

"Well, you were only married 2 years, it's not like you were together for 20."

"At least you didn't have kids."

"At least he didn't suffer."

I could go on, and on and on. And if I asked any of my widowed friends to chime in, the list of things people say to us may horrify you.

But as you go on, these things sting less and less. Yes, they are still upsetting. And sometimes they downright hurt. But you are able to let things roll off more easily... they don't set you into a downward spiral of grief. I think part of this is the healing process. Your early grief is raw, emotional. I remember walking through the world like I was an observer, not really a part of it. I would look at people around me in disbelief that they were just going about their daily lives. I wanted to shake them and scream "Don't you know? Don't you know that my world has ended?!?" But they don't. And as you start to realize this, is when you realize that your grief is starting to become less fresh. There is no timeline for this, and each person experiences these things at their own pace, but for healing to really happen, this will have to occur at some point. You start to notice other things too, like the ability to be happy for other people again, and not jealous that there life is going on while yours has just ended. It doesn't mean you are "over it" or have "moved on." It just means you are healing, and that the raw, emotional pain has subsided. The grief will probably always be there, though, to some degree the rest of your life. Rose Kennedy once said it best: "It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."

And sometimes people find just the right words that cut like a knife, sending you back to that dark, spiraling place of grief -- and even if you know how to deal with it, and you can recover more quickly than those early days.... when they find just those right words, it still stings like it did the first time you heard someone say something insensitive -- this is why we call them DGIs. And yes, it is sometimes a label given out of spite, but some people deserve it.

"You know.....," said the loudmouth in my office this morning, "Sometimes people just drop dead. And sometimes this happens to young people too."

Some of us will never need a reminder of this fact.




*By close and personal, I mean losing someone who dominates your everyday life. I hate the "grief wars" that go on sometimes -- the "my pain is worse than your pain" syndrome, because we all feel losses and grieve people we love and care about, but I do believe there is a difference between, for example, losing a grandparent vs. losing a child, spouse, etc. The reason I see a difference is the impact on your day to day life. If you lose a parent (as an adult), I have no doubt you are devastated. And grieve. But the way you live your life, the things you do from morning until night are not completely torn apart and taken away from you like happens when you lose someone you live with.

Live, Laugh, Love

"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails." ~Bertha Calloway

I've decided to start a blog.

I've had the urge to share my story for some time now, but was not sure what format or media I wanted to use to get it out. A blog seemed like a good idea -- it will let me ramble in an informal manner. I also don't have to follow any rules about organization or order. I am not sure what exactly I hope to achieve by this endeavor, other than getting the many thoughts, that often race through my brain, out. Perhaps this is my own cheap therapy, of which I will inflict upon whoever happens to see this. Perhaps I will serve as a voice out there someone else can relate to. Perhaps no one but me will ever bother to read what I write. I am not sure it really matters.

But I should introduce myself first.

I am 31 years old and I am a widow. My husband of just over 2 years died January 27, 2010. I don't know what time, I was at work. I did not find out until several hours later and by then he had been moved to the morgue where his body was allowed to turn cold and stiff. I never said a proper good-bye.

That was how it ended.

It began much differently, over 10 years now, and several states from where I currently live. Back when I had just moved out of my parent's house & had just started college. I was a 19 year old kid, who at the time was certain I had life figured out, but more than anything was pretty naive, young and confused. But it didn't matter. I was at that perfect age where you had limitless freedom, endless idealism, and a core belief that you could do whatever you set your mind to do. The only problem was that when one tends to have those beliefs, one rarely has a paycheck to fund any great endeavors. So I worked a menial job as a cashier in a grocery store. It barely paid rent & I spent a good year living on ramen noodles, but at the time it didn't seem to matter. It was during that period that I first met Mike.

He worked at that same store, just for the briefest of moments. We sort of talked to each other on breaks, but it was nothing memorable (as in, I don't remember anything we talked about). He was older than me, and done with college, but not yet employed doing anything in his field (industrial design). I don't even remember being that impressed with him, other than feeling a strange connection and desire to be friends with this super friendly guy who always smiled at me. We spend the next two years running into each other off and on around the side of town we both lived on & hung out in. It was that part of town populated by coffee shops and bars, and the residents were either college kids, burnouts, or ex-hippies that had never really outgrown the 60's. And yet, this is the place where I spend some of the best years of my life, and the place that ultimately drew us together. I don't even know what changed, but after this long period of superficial meetings and spending time in mutual hang-outs we all of a sudden decided to take a leap of faith. I gave him my number at the end of a night of driving aimlessly around town, not really sure if he would ever call. Well he did. And one thing led to another -- although not really very quickly. Just as our friendship was slow to evolve into a relationship, our relationship was slow to evolve into a life. A life I thought I had planned out with just the right amount of care and abandon that would lead to a life I wanted to live.

College eventually became graduate school. And Mike & I eventually moved in together. After finishing with my double-masters degrees we moved to NYC to pursue the dreams we both had that would be forever suffocated in the little upper-midwest city we lived in. We were married in September of 2007.

Looking back, that was probably the high-point. I lost my well-paying job in late 2008 & was forced into some low-paying work in Long Island that had me making an 2 hour commute each way. But in early 2009 I had an opportunity for a decent job working for the federal government in DC, so we made the decision to cash in the rest of our savings and take another leap of faith in a new city. Things seemed to be looking up, but after so much time of unemployment, underemployment, and set back after set back, we found ourselves scraping bottom, just hanging on for survival. And yet, we were hopeful. We were hopeful that after a really bad bout of bad luck, that opportunities were on the horizon that would finally allow us to dig out of the pit we were in, and get back to the life we wanted to live.

And then in a moment........ it was all taken from me.

I later learned that he died from what was discovered to be an enlarged heart, probably genetic, and probably little we could have done to prevent it. Yet, racked with guilt over the years we lived without access to medical care and the constant stress our financial problems put us in, it took me a long time to forgive myself for his death. There are times when I am not sure I have fully forgiven myself.

I sort of exist in a weird place now where my past, present and future often co-mingle. Although I feel I have gotten through the darkest days of my grief, it is still there.... like a quiet shadow in the night, that will still jump out and surprise you when you least expect it.

I have done a lot to get through this period of my life, and have moved forward in ways I never would have foreseen. My old life abruptly pulled out from under me, I was forced to find a new life and a new future, or be pulled down in the undercurrent. In many ways I live now a life that is richer, fuller and more full of love than anything my old life was capable of. Death has a way of turning your world inside out and upside down in ways you cannot even imagine until you experience close loss in your own life. I live now in a way that I am fully aware that this is all just borrowed time, borrowed life, and borrowed love. It will eventually all come to an end once again. It is because I now live in this world, with full awareness of the fragility and preciousness of it, that I am able to fully embrace life and new love in ways I was never capable of before. I hope that these are ideas I can share more of in future posts.

I have several items in my house with have an oft used quote: "Dance as though no one is watching, love as though you have never loved before, sing as though no one can hear you, live as though heaven is on earth." The overuse of this quote can take away the impact of it, but for me it reminds me that the most important thing we can do to honor those who we have loved and lost, is to go on and love some more. Maybe that is all I am trying to do. Love my new love and through this new life I now embrace, honor the past that I shared with Mike.

So now hoping that anyone who reads this can figure out how to "live, laugh and love," I will end by saying welcome to my new blog and through it, my new world.

On our honeymoon in London, Oct. 2007

~Ann