young widowhood

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?

The Fenns – Chapter Six


From Coffee Cans to Green Dresses

“I can’t believe we have to report back to school this week,” Karen lamented. She had talked Julie into coming with her while she ran back to school errands.

Julie hadn’t wanted to. She’d done her own back to school shopping at the beginning of the month. Unlike most teachers, she was one of the few who enjoyed opening up her classroom in the early part of August and performing the types of basic housekeeping and readiness activities that everyone else saved for the first days before the students arrived so that they had all in the ready but the actual lesson plans. Julie preferred to gear herself up for the inevitable with cleaning, unpacking and organizing so that when the first day back for teachers arrived, she could devote the little time there was between meetings to preparing to teach something substantial. She had a reputation for being one of “those” teachers, who spent a few minutes on the rules before plowing right into the work and who might even give homework on the first day. In truth, Julie assigned homework on a needs basis. She didn’t believe in it and was so dismissive of its necessity she didn’t even argue the point anymore. Her rules were simple in any case,

“Don’t piss me off,” she told each class. “I’m an easy person to get along with so long as you understand that I have plans and subverting them irritates me.”

But Karen dangled Target and a non-fat chai from Starbucks in front of her and like Pavel’s dog she responded, rationalizing that a teacher could never have too many boxes of Kleenex and economy sized boxes of number two pencils.

“Do you remember that boy a few years back whose nose ran constantly. Thick, green and as constant as a leaky faucet?” Karen asked after Julie shared her theory on tissue.

“And he’d wipe it on the back of his hand and then spend the next thirty minutes rubbing it to paste with his index finger and dust it off onto the floor after?” Julie asked for clarification purposes. Nose picking, she’d discovered to her disgust, was a life long habit for some.

“That’s the one,” Karen confirmed. “He used to get sent to me just about every class period during the cold and flu season because no one could believe the kid was simply a walking snot spigot.”

“I had to train him to use tissues,” Julie said. “I thought he was embarrassed to use them at first and call attention to the chronic snot stream, but the playing with boogers thing suggested otherwise.”

Karen nodded. “Do you remember his parents?”

Julie did. She’d seen more examples in support of Margaret Sanger’s birth control theories than she cared to recall over the years. There was the 26 year old man with the twelve year old son who she encountered during her first years as a middle school teacher. The twin boys who were about as close to being raised by wolves as she had ever seen. Their mother was a schizophrenic that social workers thought could be trained to be a good parent. She kept those babies locked in a bedroom closet for the first 18 months of their lives until family members were finally able to secure custody of them. One truly memorable parent encounter occurred at her very first parent/teacher conference. She sat across the table from a shaggy haired boy who seldom produced anything other opportunites to be sent to the vice-principal, although he did a credible job for her, and his Hell’s Angel mother. Jet black hair cut in the obligatory mullet of the working poor, her Hank Jr. concert tee was hacked at the shoulders and the neckline so her red bra-straps could peek out. Her right arm sported a full-sleeve tattoo of a thorny vine climbing up to culminate in a rose. On her left shoulder was the picture of a very little girl with nothing to identify her but the dates of her birth and her death. She sat stone-faced while Julie walked her through the reports from the various subject area teachers and the boy did a slow slide down the folding chair until he was just about eye-level with the table. After she finished, Julie asked if she’d any questions and the woman turned to her son and with a disgusted sneer announced, “Well, that’s it for you. No more cigarettes until these grades come up.”

But Snot Boy’s parents were a horror on another level. Julie understood where Cigarette Boy and his Biker Mama came from, and why they were likely to never rise above themselves or their circumstances. Snot Boy’s parents were nice people. They wanted to be good parents, but they just weren’t smart enough. Julie wasn’t sure just how mentally disabled the couple was, but it was more than evident that they were. She suspected that the boy was not, and he would go on to prove her right, but sweet as they were and try though they did, Julie couldn’t help but wonder what this boy might have been and could have done in the hands of more capable parents.

They were each pushing carts, but Julie’s was a prop. When Jimmy had been first ill, the only outings she had aside from the time she spent at work was when she needed to go shopping. For groceries. For household necessities. For clothing. Once Jimmy’s illness forced her to take an extended leave from work, shopping was sometimes her only brush with humanity at large aside from the few friends Brecca had who would brave their hospice-like home and, of course, Karen and her sisters, who barely counted as at large.

She followed Karen around from one aisle to another without much enthusiasm or even feigned interest. Karen noticed but pretended not to. She could be hard on Julie. When she felt her friend was slipping too far into herself which, in Karen’s opinion, was not good for her or for Brecca, she could be as brutally edged as Gemma, but she recognized that there were times when Julie just needed to be a widow, addled and absent. Karen, however, did not think she needed to allow Julie to do this in the cloistered atmosphere of her home all the time and coaxed and prodded her into the world as much as she was able.

They rounded a corner, passing the pet aisle. Decorative pet food containers caught her eye and she stopped for a moment.

“Thinking about caving and getting Brecca that purse puppy?”

“We looked for urns here.”

“You were going to bury Jimmy in a doggy dish?”

“The woman at the funeral home mentioned that some people saved money through cremation and that we could use containers that could pass as urns, so we came over here one evening and looked around. Jimmy thought that the doggy treat canister was about the right size, but we couldn’t figure out how to get the dog image off the side. I mean if we had a dog, we could have just said the dog was representative of Jimmy’s great love of dogs, but he didn’t even like dogs. He thought his mother would have gone for it anyway because she’s just that dense, and you know, she collects anything with a dog on it. She would have thought it was …… I don’t know, something sugary and hard to keep down. We almost bought the coffee container at the Starbucks but in the end I just couldn’t see myself burying my husband in the yuppie version of a coffee can.”

“He did love their mocha lattes,” Karen pointed out.

“Yeah, but I think people would have noticed the Starbucks’ logo at the wake and judged me. I mean, aren’t we supposed to pull the credit card out of ice and spend money we don’t have to bury the ones we love? Lavish funerals are representative of our love for someone, right?”

“Not everyone thinks like that,” Karen assured her.

“Most everyone does,” Julie disagreed. “And if it’s not money, it’s the number of times you choke back tears or break down completely or it’s how often you visit the grave later and decorate it with crap that just gets ruined in the rain or the snow if it’s not blown away by the wind or stolen by teenagers who think it’s funny to steal knick-knacks from the dead.”

“Let’s check out clothes,” Karen suggested in such an obvious attempt to change the subject that Julie smiled in spite of rising irritation, allowing herself to be led to the women’s department where designers trolled for dollars from women they secretly deemed too fat and frumpy to wear their knock off’s. Julie had lost enough weight from her already slender frame over the months that she could wear just about anything she took from the racks, but she hated clothes shopping with Karen. She could mix and match a hundred outfits in the time it took Karen to second-guess her way to a single shirt or pair of pants. She was grateful that Karen would listen to her talk about things like having considered burying her husband in a coffee can without cringing or telling her she shouldn’t be dwelling on it any more. Past is past, Gemma would say. Let it be and think happy thoughts was the general response of most others she might encounter. And with a pinch of pixie dust, I could fly, thought Julie. Like a pig.

“Do you have anything summery casual yet not mommish?” Karen broke in.

She was rummaging through a rack of skorts, rearranging as she did so. Karen was a store employee’s dream. She put things back where she found them and tidied up after other customers who dropped or reshelved items without regard to where they’d found them or in what state.

“I need something like that?” Julie asked, wrinkling her nose at the selections Karen held up for her approval. “And does anything say ‘mom’ like a skort?”

“I am not toned enough for shorts and little skirts and dresses screams out denial,” Karen said. “And yes, you do. You agreed to go to Summer Fest this weekend, remember?”

She didn’t and couldn’t imagine what state of weakness she was caught in that prompted her to acquiesce to such a thing.

Summer Fest was a weekend long ritual marking the end of summer. The downtown came alive for a weekend with morning farmers’ market and a day long craft and arts market, punctuated with street performances ranging from puppet shows to juggling troubadours reciting Shakespeare and magicians who lured children with balloon animals and pulled chocolate covered coins from behind sweaty little ears.

In years past, Jimmy and Julie would stroll the farmers’ market in the morning, studiously avoiding  the throngs in the afternoon by hanging around the marina on the only asset of worth Gemma walked away from her marriage with – a boat that served as the family’s equivalent of summering in the Hamptons.

“I’d have wrestled that worm I was married to in a blow up pool of jello for that boat,” Gemma declared.

And when the sun would begin its stealthy descent behind the bluffs, they would all make their way to the Clock Tower Square for the live bands and dancing.

“I don’t need anything new,” Julie said.

“I can’t imagine how you couldn’t,” Karen said. “Everything you own hangs on you like bad wallpaper.”

She dove into a nearby rack and emerged with a Marilyn Monroe over the subway grate dress in a pale green that Julie knew would pull the muddy grass color out the hazel mish-mash of her eyes. Not wanting to, she wanted the dress anyway. Like many random things of late, it tugged at dormant dreams and wants and needs.

“This is perfect,” Karen declared, holding it up against Julie’s slumped form. “You have great shoulders and you’ve always looked great from behind – even when you’re so thin, you are covergirl ugly.”

“How could I not be sold with such a winning sales pitch?” Julie asked, taking the hanger by the neck but holding it away from her as though it smelled bad.

In the fitting room, Julie craned this way and that. She was too pale. Too skinny. Her hair was in need of an expert and not her customary sheering on the fly in the en suite with whatever pair of scissors she could find. But all those things aside, Julie liked the way the skirt flounced around her knees, brushing her bare thighs in a way that reminded her it had been a long time since anyone had seen them.

Later that evening, alone again because the newly single mother of a teenage daughter spends a lot of time being envious of the latter’s social life, Julie danced around her bedroom in the dress. Slowly she swayed like a little girl pretending Swan Lake until she ran out of space and fell backwards on the king-size bed, the blades of the ceiling fan shadowing her in turn.

The Fenns: Chapter Three


Finnegan Waked

Largely unnoticed but for a quick shoulder hug from her Nana Grace, Brecca wove through the maudlin forest of her father’s friends and relations, searching for her mother.

For most of the evening, Julie greeted those came to pay their respects at the large double doored entrance that separated the funeral home’s foyer from the impossibly long, wide room where Jimmy lay in state. Because normally the bereaved widow waited at the casket for They’d walked up to him side meshed to side when mourners, this breach of etiquette caused a log jam with visitors clogging the foyer and stretching out into the unusually warm spring night. Jimmy’s mother alternated being tears and artfully concealed fuming but her appeals to Jimmy’s father and the funeral director to convince Julie to follow protocol were ignored. Only Gemma dared approach her sister and retreated with a shrug when she saw the set of Julie’s jaw and color of her eyes. Gemma knew that square clench and storm gray stare. She’d never prevailed against it when they were children and wasn’t going to attempt to better that score now.

When they’d first arrived with Brecca’s slight arms locked around Julie’s waist and Julie leaning her head atop Brecca’s and her right arm draped in a protective loop across the back of the girl’s shoulders, they found that Jimmy’s family had arrived ahead of them and were already staking claims near the simple wood casket he’d chosen for himself months earlier.

Brecca had helped Julie and the hospice nurse on duty clean and dress her father in the half hour after his death before the funeral director had arrived with the hearse to take him away. Minus the suffocating hiss of the oxygen machine and the gurgle  Jimmy’s throat emitted that reminded her of the burble of a hair clogged drain, the house was still, only the muted thump of the first strains of Welcome to the Jungle on a maddening Guitar Hero loop from the hillbillies next door to remind them that the world hadn’t actually come to an end.

The Jimmy who lay breathless and waxen in front of them was less Jimmy than his newly vacated form had been two days earlier. Painted, stuffed and sprouting hair in places that Julie was sure were long bare, he looked like the portraits of her great-grandparents. The ones colored after the fact with bright pastels in hopes of rendering life less black and white.

“Doesn’t he look wonderful,” his mother, Maggie, sighed as she attempted to wiggle her arm through Julie’s and failing at that settled for a double bear hug of both she and Brecca.

Brecca felt her mother stiffen and push her a little to the side to break Maggie’s hold.

“Yeah. Life like,” she replied.

Brecca knew the tone and caught the smirk on Gemma’s face before she hid it under her hand.

“See Dan, I told you. He looks as good as he did alive. Before, ya know,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to address her ex-husband who sat without comment or expression on a love seat with his wife, Grace near the middle of the a row of seats clearly meant for family in the receiving line.

“I don’t see why we need a receiving line,” Julie had argued with Jimmy the day they’d sat on that same love seat, surveying the room while the funeral director went to find a catalogue of caskets for them to look through.

“Catholic wakes. Receiving lines,” Jimmy said. “It’s the way it’s done.”

“Since when you are so Catholic or traditional for that matter,” she groused as he slid an arm around her and pulled her close enough that she could feel drainage tubes hidden underneath his baggy quilted flannel. He kissed her cheek and snuggled her, the plastic tubing of his oxygen line cold against her skin.

“Funerals are for the living,” he replied.

“Well this living person doesn’t need a receiving line or wake either,” she said, not wanting to fight and yet starting one without being able to stop herself.

“Babydoll,” Jimmy’s tone was more breathy and she knew he was agitated, but how could he expect her to play perfect hostess for his loutish, disloyal friends and cater to his nerve shredding mother within days of his death?

Angry with herself and him, she brushed away hot tears with the sleeve of her favorite gray sweater and pursed her lips to keep back sobs that always were frustratingly near the surface.

“Brecca and I are the only living people who should matter,” she was finally able to whisper.

Jimmy chuckled softly, kissing her curls this time.

“Aw, baby, it’s not that simple. You’ll see.”

Julie saw the family lining up. Maggie positioned herself at the head and beckoned Julie to fill the next spot with a  circular wave of her jingly ringed hand. The late afternoon light caught the zirconia and J.C.Penney gemstones creating a kaleidoscope effect that distracted Julie for a second before she smiled that divorced from her flat dewy eyes imitation of civility and said,

“I’d rather meet people at the door.”

She took Brecca’s hand firmly in her own and walked back them back they way they’d come. The room was filling and taking their cue from the family lining up like actors taking the stage, they began to make their way up to pay final respects. Few realized that the widow was striding past them but those who did stopped Julie  and tentatively offered condolences. And told their stories.

Her own memories of funerals were similar to Jimmy’s. Dead bodies on display, family meet and greets that flowed easily from weddings to funerals with hardly a second thought about the morbid similarities and that the first might simply be practice for the second. There had been no receiving line for Jimmy and Julie. They saved themselves the trouble by eloping.

“We were married by a transgender Elvis impersonator at the Graceland Memorial Love Chapel in Memphis,” Jimmy used to tell this story hard on the heels on Julie’s recitation of his Harlequin romance proposal because the contrast amused him.

What Julie remembered most about funerals where the tales told and the way lives she thought she knew revealed their shady places through others’ memories. It was as if a person was a jigsaw puzzle with pieces scattered across their lives that only come back together in the end.

At her own father’s funeral, Julie stood in the exact spot Maggie had offered her, behind her mother, and listened as one person after another revealed a man she  always suspected that she never really knew. What she didn’t know at the time was how much of the information was news to her mother too.

Brecca slipped through the side door to a long hallway that ran past the viewing room to the foyer, looking back towards the building’s entrance she saw people lined up in both directions, into the room where her father lay and out the front door into the cold inky night. In the other direction was a dimming hall that  seemed narrower for lack of light, but no sign of her mother. The last she’d seen of her was a half hour earlier when Julie had sent her to the courtesy room set up for the family.

“There are sandwiches and things. Get something to eat and sit for a while,” Julie told her.

“I should stay with you,” Brecca said although she wanted to be away from the introductions, dank embraces and the inane surprise about her growth.

“Wasn’t I supposed to?” she blurted out without meaning to and prompting her mother’s suggestion in the first place.

It was Karen who took her firmly by the shoulders and shepherded her past the group of men who made up the nucleus of Jimmy’s friends. Older looking than Brecca remembered but still sporting t-shirts bearing the names of sports teams under suit coats that hung loosely or clung to bellies that overhung jeans that would have been reality checking on women of the same age, they ducked eye contact and whispered among themselves like school boys. She cast a glance back at Julie, who smiled with the only genuine light Brecca had seen in her all day as Karen whisked her away and down the same dim hallway she faced now.

The family room was off to the left, and Brecca peeked in, seeing only Bailey and his younger brother Roth, still munching and watching television as though they were in their own living room.

“You need something Brec?” Bailey asked. He sat up straight and leaned forward on the sofa expectantly.

“Have you seen my mom?”

“She was here a while ago and then left,” Roth replied though he didn’t take his eyes from the television.

“She was with our mom,” Bailey added. “I thought they were heading back to the … room? What do you call it anyway?”

“I don’t know that it has a specific designation,” Brecca said.

“They call them chapels,” Roth supplied helpfully.

“How do you know that?” Bailey asked.

Roth picked up a brochure that was on the coffee table and tossed it in his brother’s lap.

“Says so right here,” he said.

Bailey leafed through it, frowning before tossing it back.

“What’s the point of advertising in a room that’s only used by customers?”

“Do you guys know where else they might have gone,” Brecca wasn’t in the mood for brotherly banter.

Bailey shrugged and sighed. He hadn’t done a thing right in days and was still pitching a perfect game.

“Sorry, no.”

Voices further down the hall caught her attention and with a small wave she followed them to a ladies restroom. It was locked but she could clearly hear women’s voices inside.

“Mom?”

Silence and then a click before the door opened slightly and Karen peered out. Seeing Brecca she opened the door wide enough for the girl to slip through. Julie was sitting in a club chair in the corner.

“I told you she would be the second to notice,” Julie said.

Gemma was perched on the vanity and Karen seated her self on the closed lid of the toilet.

“I’m sure people are asking for you,” Karen said. “Right, Brec?”

“No, I came on my own because I didn’t see mom at the door.”

Gemma laughed, but Julie’s reaction was as hard to read as it had been since it was obvious that Jimmy wouldn’t wake up again 5 days ago.

“Kare-bear, your faith inspires me,” Gemma said.

“Now that I’ve proved my point,” Julie added, “it’s time to call in quits for the night.”

She stood with a slight wobble that everyone noticed but let go without comment and stretched out an arm for her daughter. Brecca responded quickly and was snuggled up under Julie’s wing as Karen and Gemma headed out the door ahead of them.

“Just have to make it through tomorrow, Mom,” Brecca said.

The naive sincerity in Brecca’s voice brought tears to Julie’s eyes for the first time that day.