#writing about grief

Last week I recycled two posts. This was because my husband had passed away, and I was unable to think of what to write about. So today, I want to talk about memories and deep personal emotions and how they color our view of the world.

Greg had been suffering from Parkinson’s and for the last year, he’d been in an adult family home. He had been steadily declining and had three hospitalizations over the last six months. After the last bout of pneumonia, he was on hospice, and so I shouldn’t have been surprised by his death.

But I was.

Grief is a complex emotion to write about because people experience it in so many different ways. I now realize I have been grieving since the day he was no longer in my full-time care. Even though I went every day to visit him, there was a hole in our home where he had been.

His “ejector” chair sits in the corner by his side table, just as it did when he was still able to live at home. At times, seeing it made me feel angry, and I didn’t know why. But even though he would never come home, it was still his chair, empty of the man who had been my rock, my anchor. I sat in it, hoping to fill the silence, but it didn’t help.

My journey with grief began two and a half years ago on the day I realized he required more care than I could safely give him. I had hired caregivers to help mornings, and some evenings, but at night he suffered from hallucinations and exceedingly disturbed sleep.

He called for me at least once an hour all night long and I could get no rest. He had become unable to walk or help transfer himself to his wheelchair. Worse, he had lost the ability to smile.

He fell several times and had to be hospitalized. Still, I tried to care for him but it was becoming unworkable.

I began mourning the day I realized I had to cancel our reservation for our annual summer trip, that even an ADA room would not be enough, that he required 24-hour care by professionals. We would never again make the pilgrimage to our soul-home together. We would never again walk on the sand with his sister and her family, and never investigate the tidal pools at Haystack Rock together. We would never again rent our favorite condo, the one with the perfect view of Terrible Tilly, the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse.

At the time, the subconscious awareness of what we would never again do together darkened my view of things, although I never focused on the growing sense of loss. I had a schedule to keep to, daily visits to the adult family home to make no matter what. I had to schedule his doctor appointments and special transportation to arrange and pay for. I had to pay the bills and argue with the insurance companies.

I had all these things to keep me from contemplating why I felt so distracted and depressed.

Fortunately, I have a supportive family and a strong circle of friends who lift me up when I need a laugh. I have a career as a writer, and while my husband is no longer physically here to give me that smile and encourage me, I have a wealth of memories to cherish.

Now, instead of the frail shell of a man made immobile by the disease, I am able to see him the way he was before Parkinson’s stole his smile. Now I only see the kind and happy man who never failed to lighten the room. The man whose dedication to his family was boundless.

We were together for twenty-three years. I’m a pretty good cook, but occasionally, things don’t turn out the way I think they will. Greg ate anything I served and complimented it, no matter how awful I thought it was.

Those years have been the best because I had a life partner who was creative and generous, a man who cared about people he’d never met and who supported many charities. He loved traveling the Washington and Oregon coast and finding new places to visit.

He looked forward to our annual Valentines Day “Wine and Cheese” parties with our friends and happily spent time shopping and selecting good vintages and fancy cheeses.

I miss him and always will, but now I can see him the way he truly was, not as the man whose final days were so difficult to watch. Life is sometimes hard and often sad, but it is still good.

I carry him in my heart, so he will always be with me.

Credits and Attributions:

Haystack Rock, by Tiger635 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Terrible Tilly, Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, © 2019 by Connie J. Jasperson, All Rights Reserved (author’s own work).