grief

Better to Have Loved and Lost


Cliches about lost love never go out of fashion but they sure don’t fit all situations. I am continually amazed at the idea that some widowed people hang onto that somehow the death of their spouses is on par with divorce or separation or even the break-up of a romance.

Many of us are offered the dubious comfort of envy. Friends, relations, and even near-strangers, remind us that our marriages and the time we had with our lost loved ones is more than most people ever have the slightest chance to experience over the course of entire life-times it seems. Though not even a cold comfort, it is true. We were lucky and loved. What puzzles me is the idea that we “lost” at love. We didn’t. We were loved. We are in all likelihood still loved, truly and deeply, though it might be hard to reach those feelings when anger and pain and the feeling of being cheated are all we allow ourselves to feel at first, and in the cases of some – for a long, long time. But we are not losers. We didn’t end our relationships in front of a judge or discover one day after months, or years, that our inattention to each other had starved the emotions that once fanned desire. What we are is what remains of love after one of the pair is claimed by his or her mortality. It’s not pretty, nor does it feel good, but it is not losing. Nor is it consolation. It is what it is but leave the bitterness to those who are the co-authors of their love’s demise.

We chosen few have no reason to hang our heads or linger in bitterness. We are better for having loved, and being loved in return through all the heights and lulls that we know are soul enriching when others see them as valueless. I know that I gained more from the short time with my late husband than I will ever be able to explain. The love, as well as the pain and sorrow, separates me from those who are true losers at love. I gave my all. So did he. We played through to the true end. What more could anyone hope for?

Moving On


I am hardly an expert but I do know a thing or two more than I would like about endings and beginnings and about moving on. I spent a good deal of time closing up the rooms in the dreams of the future my late husband and I imagined together in what seems now to be a long ago time but in reality is just a mere five years past. During his long illness, there were many endings. Most too painful to recount. There is a time for remembering loss and there comes a day when the laundry list of hurts isn’t a useful exercise anymore and I have reached that point. Ironically there were as many beginnings during times of tragedy and loss, and there is even growth. I changed job sites and age levels in my teaching career. Began and finished a masters program. Made new friends. Set new goals, among them a decision to change locale and careers in the short term future. It’s interesting the chain reactions decisions of all shapes and sizes have on the course of a person’s life. Some people are blown far afield by unexpected circumstances and their reactions to them. Some are brought to a dead stop, letting currents take them and waves sweep them under. Some keep moving, re-plotting their courses as the conditions warrant until they find themselves on stable ground again. My plans changed course over the course of my late husband’s illness and in the aftermath of his death and again when I met my now husband, Rob. In a strange way, Rob has always seemed a natural progression, a given, in a new beginning we seemed destined to share, so despite the rather momentous hurdles of leaving family, friends, home, job and country, it’s been in some ways the easiest of my transitions from then to now.

Being a widow I have the dubious pleasure to know many others. Male and female. Much older than I am and some young enough to be my sons or daughters. We have endings in common. That’s true. But a small portion of us share beginnings too. Some are triumphs and some are not. There is one gentlemen I know of through a message board for young widowed I frequent from time to time. He has taken to posting emails he receives from an organization called GriefShare, which tries to help bereaved people work through their losses. Recently he posted the following message:

What It Means to Move On

Moving on does not mean . . .
• you forget the person.
• you never feel the pain of your loss.
• you believe that life is fair.

Moving on does mean . . .
• you experience a lessening of the pain.
• you can treasure your best memories of the person who has died.
• you can realistically accept the different aspects of your loss.
• you can form new relationships, try new things.

Moving on also means . . .
• you grow in grace and in your walk with God.
• you accept your loss and forgive others.
• you understand that both joy and loss are a part of life.
• you believe that God is good, even when life isn’t.

My husband loathes the saying “moving on” like many widowed he prefers “moving forward”, and I try to use the term in deference to him though to me it is a bit of a semantics thing. In many ways beginnings do mean moving on as opposed to forward because it is not about momentum or trajectory as much as it is about putting certain dreams, hopes and deep feelings away in much the same way you pack up mementos from your children’s lives or souvenirs from a trip. My mother has a cedar chest in the basement of my childhood home that is crammed with tiny clothes, blankets, report cards and such that belonged, and were important, to her and to each of us kids in times now long past. I seldom think about the old rag doll I named CeeDee that lies there wrapped, I think, in the remnants of my sister Kate’s baby blanket. I know that it sounds like apples and oranges, comparing the inevitable of growing up to the loss of one’s spouse, but they are not as different as you think. As my mother has been annoyingly fond of pointing out to me over the years, everything is a growth experience. Because I look as though I have achieved adulthood doesn’t necessary mean I learned all there is to learn. I haven’t achieved the enlightenment of Sidharrtha. Possibly because I haven’t the time to sit under a tree until it smacks me on the head like gravity struck Newton. But in a way, widowhood has been my apple. We learn from everything and everyone in our lives, with luck, and at some point we move on from them – willing or not. It’s not about forgetting or minimizing. Time moves and sweeps us along in its wake, but its different from just being pushed forward. Moving on implies that we have packed up those things from our old lives that are important and special in our own cedar chests, loaded them on the truck and once arrived, carefully put them away.

I have a habit of choosing my mottoes from the lyrics of songs. One of my favorites was written by group called Semi Sonic. The song is entitled “Closing Time”. It uses the idea of a pub closing down in the wee hours as a metaphor for moving on and out into the big wide world. The song on the whole has a rather positive message but the line I truly love is “Closing time. Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.” There is so much truth in that one simple expression. So much faith as well because I know many people who see endings as endings and nothing more, and even though I can see their side of it, I find that kind of thinking short-sighted. The reason being that endings and beginnings, as Shakespeare once put it are “neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” Funny that I should find a line from Hamlet inspiring because there are few plays I dislike more than that dirge, but it is true.

The Terry Fox Run


Thursday was the Terry Fox Run in schools all across Canada. The day is part of an extensive effort by the Fox family to honor Terry and his wish to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Terry began the original run called The Marathon for Hope in 1980, three years after losing his leg to bone cancer. He captured the hearts of Canadians by pledging to run across the country, taking pledges and donations for cancer research as he went. The marathon began with just Terry and a friend who would follow him in a van as he ran 26 miles every day. He started in Newfoundland and as the miles piled up he attracted followers and donations. Terry made it as far as Ontario before he was stopped by a recurrence of cancer. It was in his lungs. Terry reluctantly stopped running, but the next year Canadians picked up where Terry had left off and to date the Terry Fox Foundation has raised $400 million dollars world-wide for cancer research.

I knew Terry’s story before moving here. I was in grade 10 at high school the year Terry attempted to run across Canada. I can’t recall the context in which I learned about him. Maybe it was in school or perhaps I read about him in the newspaper. School children in Canada remember Terry by bringing “toonies” – two dollar coins – to school and by participating in running and walking events. Katy hadn’t heard about Terry Fox Run Day. It’s not something they do in schools in Iowa though Terry’s run is a world wide phenomena now. She was quite caught up. We had to make sure she had a “toonie” to donate. She had no idea what the day meant or who Terry Fox was though. I didn’t stop to consider that the children her age might be given too much information concerning Terry’s illness or death, but apparently they were. Since last evening Katy has quizzed both Rob and I about Terry, cancer, and why people don’t get better even with medicine. Since her father’s illness, and more-so since his death, Katy can fixate a bit when somehow she knows is ill or she hears about someone dying. Especially if that someone is young.

Rob was very matter of fact with Katy at supper yesterday when the cancer questions came up. Like me, he goes clinical and deadpan when discussing disease and death. Unlike me, well me most of the time anyway, he tends to give out more information than is technically necessary. “You need to give me a sign or something,” he says but it’s hard to put Katy off. She is a smart little girl and a persistent one.

The whole incident made me think about a recently published article about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and children of cancer patients. The study found that having a parent with a life-threatening illness can cause PTSD in children and the effects can linger for years. Many of the symptoms are things I have observed in Katy though to a lesser extent as time passes. Some of the symptoms were things I had suffered myself in the aftermath of sitting alone with my late husband the night he died. Like my daughter, I have a hard time with the knowledge of anyone’s illness or even suspected illnesses, but I am torn about shielding her too much. How much is too much? My father is dying. He has a progressive lung disease. I am told he is spending the majority of his time these days in bed and that he isn’t eating or drinking much. I spent enough time in hospice to know what that means. We are heading to the States for a visit in a few weeks and I don’t know really know what to expect for me or for Katy. It may well be the last time we see him alive.

Back in the day, people cared for their aged and sick in their homes. Both my parents can recall the deaths of their grandparents. My mother’s older sister will tell you that both of their mother’s parents were bedridden. Grandma was their only child and caretaker for not just her elderly parents but five children and a husband, who as an aside was having an affair with the girl she hired to help her out with the care-taking of everyone but herself. My dad was just three and sitting in the summer kitchen with his grandmother when she keeled over in front of him. The wakes were at home after family prepared the bodies. Wakes could last a few days, I am told, in order to accommodate family that needed to travel from a distance. Were my parents, aunts or uncles traumatized by the close proximity to death? My great-aunt was just a little girl when her three younger sisters died in rapid succession during the Spanish flu epidemic. She still cries when she talks about her sister, Emily, and what a beautiful little baby she was. No one was shielded. When my dad’s aunt died of cancer it was at home with her husband, two very young sons in attendance. Maybe we are too far removed from death anymore. We have been led to believe that death is an anomaly. Something that happens mainly at the very end of a long life. We certainly scrap against it and deny its possibility. Hide its raw reality from ourselves in any way that we can. When we do let it out in the open it is through stories like Terry’s because we want death to be meaningful and uplifting in a movie of the week sort of way even if it’s a lie that we tell ourselves.

I think death is traumatizing and it has always been that way. The difference between now and then is the level of involvement we allow ourselves.