grief

A Bit Down


“You look down,” Rob remarked after dinner last evening. “Anything wrong?”

I didn’t really want to go into it, but it’s no use trying to pretend with my husband. He reads me too well.

“I was just thinking about Wally’s son,” I said. “His visitation is tonight and funeral tomorrow.”

“Wally was Will’s best friend,” Rob reminded me, “not yours.”

“I know. It wasn’t my responsibility to keep him in touch or to make sure that he saw Dee,” I said. “But it’s not like I didn’t know Spence. We saw those kids quite a bit in the early years of our marriage. I knew that little boy.”

And he’s dead now – which went without saying.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that his death represents more severing with the past for me and it’s on that level that I am most affected. Cold? Maybe. And maybe not. I am sorry for Wally and Cherish’s loss in that empathetic way of parents. Losing a child is a horror that being widowed can’t even compete with, but I haven’t see Wally in over 4 years and the last time I saw Cherish, just before Christmas of 2006, I was handed a load of crap about Wally needing space still.

Okay, maybe not a full load of crap. As I mentioned, Wally did eventually reach out a year later. It’s not my fault he couldn’t deal with the fact that I had naturally gone on with my life. People from back in the days of Will expected me to sit and wait for them to catch up emotionally not remembering that I dealt daily and they dealt when they couldn’t avoid it. Definitely on different timelines.

And Spence’s death comes pretty close on the heels of the beginning of year 5.

Yes, I do keep track of the number of years my first husband has been dead. Sort of.

About a week before the anniversary in late January, Rob asked how I was doing with the date looming.

“It’s still a bit off,” I said, “but I’m okay. It’s not until the 26th.”

“23rd,” he corrected me.

“Oh yeah, the 23rd. I always forget.”

And I do. Always forget the exact day. With Will having been not really figuring in the day-to-day of my life for so long, his death was almost anticlimactic. I’d been on my own for over two years. In a lot of significant ways, I am really gearing up for my 7th anniversary though widow purists would not agree.

I think the events of this week have brought up, yet again, my sore points. Will’s friends. Their abandonment of him. The way they have rewritten history to avoid acknowledging the extent his illness mentally maimed him so they feel better about what they did, didn’t and continue to do. And the way that I am still maligned in their circles as though I could have done anything differently or better that would have changed outcomes.

I do so hate being spun around. I am not Lot’s Wife, after all, I don’t miss anything back there enough to turn around on my own.

Oh well.

Tragedy Makes Ya Think


My dead husband was an only child and as they sometimes do, he acquired friends and raised them to sibling status. Most of his picks for brothers baffled me, but I could see why he chose Wally*.

If the universe has a calm, soft middle, Wally originated nearby. Nothing flapped his feathers and his vision – with one notable exception – wasn’t wont to be clouded by emotion or easily prejudiced by he and Will’s peers, who spun like seedlings from a maple tree in the fall.

Will had a temper that sparked easily and burned as hot as it did slowly, and when that happened, Wally was the extinguisher.

I don’t remember when we met exactly. It was after our engagement. Wally and his wife, Cherish, were in Kansas City and traveled back one weekend specifically to meet me. We went out for dinner, shot pool after, and – as I remember it – I passed muster.

They had three children already. The girl, who was about 6, and the reason they ever married in the first place, and two boys – a toddler and a baby. The baby arrived after Will had moved in with me in late fall of 1998. I remember the phone ringing late one night after we’d been in bed a while and answering it to hear Doug asking for Will.

Will had his doubts about Cherish. Actually, all of Wally’s friends had their doubts about her, but Will was probably the only one who kept most of his objections to himself. Still Cherish had kept the two apart as much as she could until I came along. Apparently, she approved of me and my influence, and as a result, we visited them several times over the next couple of years. We even helped them move from K.C. to St. Louis and then from there to Davenport and from there to my hometown of Dubuque – which is where they were living when Will was diagnosed with his illness.

I wouldn’t say I got to know them all that well, but we spent time together. I spent time with their kids.

The little boys were sweet, like toddler/preschoolers are. The littlest one was full of the devil, but in that boyish way that makes it okay.

Wally took Will’s death hard. He could barely stand to be around Dee and I. During that first year, I heard from him once. He called for directions to Will’s grave. Because he was Dee’s godfather, he sent a Christmas gift (he forgot her birthday) via Cherish when she came back to Des Moines in December of 2006. I didn’t see the kids on that visit.

And then I didn’t hear from him again until just before Christmas of 2007. He called and my number was no longer in service as we’d moved to Canada – which he didn’t know because I never bothered to contact him and tell him I was remarrying.

I suppose I should have. Wally was Will’s best friend and my daughter’s godfather (something I argued against and lost because I knew that godfathers who weren’t relatives didn’t have the same stick that relations did – but Will was adamant). But I didn’t contact any of Will’s family. It’s not as if they made an effort to stay connected to Dee and I, and honestly, I just didn’t want to deal with Wally – or any of them. I was tired of other people’s grief needs. They were an imposition and really, not my problem to fix, and I really resented Wally’s avoiding us. Will would have done whatever he could have had the situations been reversed. He wouldn’t have let his feelings get the better of his sense of duty and obligation. I was so tired of people who’d basically jumped ship during Will’s illness laying claim to greater grief rights than Dee and I had. We sucked it up and dealt. Why didn’t they?**

Wally called my mother and asked for my new number, which she gave him minus the details. He called but got our machine, and I called back and got his voice mail. I told him where we were and that I was married again. And I never heard back.

Today, my best friend called to let me know that Wally’s youngest son died last night. He was eleven. He’d had the flu and collapsed in their bathroom. Wally tried CPR, but he was gone before the EMT arrived.

I know what Will would have done. He’d have dropped everything and he would be there with Wally right now. Because they were best friends – brothers and that was just how Will rolled.

But I don’t know what to do or why I am crying even. I remember this olive skinned six year old with the biggest chocolate brown eyes and lashes that brushed round cheeks that sat like little apples on either side of the shyest sweet smile. A mop of hair that bounced when he was in motion, which was always. It feels like a long time ago. And it was.

My friend was in tears when she called. She must have wondered at how calmly I took the news, but I have no connection to these people anymore. I haven’t really since Will got sick – almost 7 years ago.

I think what makes me most sad is knowing that I have let Will down by not staying in touch – making the effort that would have allowed me to reach out to Wally.

I’ll send a card and a check which is, believe me, the very least a person a can do. Wally and I aren’t friends but I can do that little.

*Not using real names but they are close enough that anyone who knows Will can figure out who I am talking about.

**I have come to realize that I am made of way stronger stuff than a lot of people are, but at the time – and sometimes still – I had no patience with those who were built of softer stuff than  I am.

The Other Side of Sadness -Updated


Update: This post was linked by a reader over at the YWBB (aka widow board) in response to someone asking if it really takes 3 – 5 years to “get over” the death of a spouse. I read the responses, and while everyone who replied made a point to stick to his/her own experiences, there was still a bit of self-serving justification going on and the real issue was never addressed.

You don’t “get over” the loss of someone you love. Over time it becomes a part of you like every other experience you’ve ever had – good, bad or unexpected. And as someone pointed out here in the comments, life is not a process so it makes sense that grief – like joy – is not something we 12 step through. Loss is an experience. More quickly than most people realize, we move on from even the worst events and back into the mainstream of life. And life changes. Even if my first husband hadn’t died, I would not be the same person today as I was the day I met him. Life is change.

It’s disingenuous to say that it takes years to find happiness, meaning or a new life. That happens quickly and in spite of ourselves. Whether or not a person chooses to cling to grief or not is the heart of the so-called “time line”. Bonanno makes this point himself in the book. People who chose to hold onto good memories and push on for the sake of the lost loved one generally are back to whatever normal means sooner than those who cannot get past the event or the feeling of unfairness. He also points out that people who experience complications in grief usually had underlying issues to begin with that the loss simply made worse.

I won’t post on the widow board, but if I were to answer this poster I would say this:

Life is what you decide to make of it. We carry loss with us always but whether or not it defines or dominates you is up to you. And even in the first months to the end of the first year, most people experience happiness and find meaning. Anyone who tells you it took three years or more to feel anything other than misery or that year two was worse than year one either had issues before or is not being all that honest – with you or with themselves. You can be happy. The choice is yours.

I just finished reading The Other Side of Sadness by George Bonnano, an associate professor at Columbia. It basically sets the record straight on all the ridiculous notions that surround grieving.

For example, “grief work”, the idea that grieving requires a thoughtful and painful laundry list of activities that a person must do before he/she can move on with his/her life. The notion exists thanks to a throw-away idea by Freud. How he can be the father of all that is counter-intuitive and the father of modern psychoanalysis at the same time is one of life’s minor mysteries, but essentially he briefly pondered the notion that in order for a grieving person to move on in life, that person must “detach” from the deceased and that this process was “grief work”. And that’s about all he said on the subject but those two words have been a millstone for me. I’ve been told more often than I can count that my wanting to move on was keeping me from grieving properly and wasn’t possible.

Bonnano has done quite a bit of research over the years, and he has discovered that pretty much the opposite of “grief work” is not only the norm but is healthier.

People who endeavor to move on and be happy – usually because they feel the deceased would have wanted that – have better lives and outcomes than those who succumb to the idea that grief is a process that must be worked through.

“Do you feel vindicated?” Rob asked me after I told him about what I’d read.

And I do.

Take that widow board with your nonsense about distractions and “grieve now or grieve more later”.  Neither of those things is true. Distractions are what healthy people do to keep from being overwhelmed in the beginning. It’s about balance. And the notion that grief can be suppressed and come back to cause havoc later? Based on a flawed study back in 1944 that was later proven to be wrong in its conclusion.

The book acknowledges that grief has ebb and flow and never completely disappears, but it debunks the notion that a person can’t get along without grief counseling. In fact, it says that 6 months should be the cut-off point as far as seeking help for complicated grief goes. Before that, sadness and emotional swings are normal.

And that’s the heart of the book, that grief is normal.  Human beings are built to grieve and if we simply followed our natural instincts, we’d be better off.

So, there is no grief process. No 12 steps. Distractions are good. Being determined to move on is the norm.

Any questions?