The more I am around other people who have lost their spouse, the more I understand how unbearable it is. I always think it’s unbearable to me because it is. But sometimes I tell myself to get over it, that it happens all the time and people move on to different parts of their lives. Jackie got over JFK and married that old Greek guy and reinvented herself as Jackie Onassis. Why not the rest of us? Then I realize just exactly what it is that we are up against and it becomes so obvious why everything after loss is so difficult.
The word “loss” is used so much I wonder if we sometimes need to be reminded of its meaning. It is a little word with devastating significance. “Loss” can be defined as “the state of being deprived of or of being without something that one has had” or “deprivation from failure to keep.” Or, there’s this, “the experience of having something taken from you or destroyed.” Those are very dark, sad and foreboding descriptions of the word we have experienced. No wonder we feel like shit so much of the time.
In my opinion, and I have stated it before, there is no greater loss than the that of a spouse. Period. I should qualify that by adding “assuming you are still in love with your spouse when he/she dies.” Under the circumstances of losing while loving, there is no greater pain in the world. Nothing more unbearable. How can anyone be expected to lose the one person they trust with their entire being, their whole existence? To have them taken from us, to be deprived of something we once had. It is so hard to explain the emptiness created, the vacancy in our hearts that aches with each breath we take. I can’t speak for everyone, but I sometimes get an almost claustrophobic feeling, a sense of panic, when I face the reality that I will never see my wife again. I have to sit up or somehow change my position, take a few deep breaths and maybe drink some water to get past those momentary fits of anxiety. When my mother died, my daughter explained her death to her 4-year-old daughter partly by saying, “We’re not going to see Grandma Jean anymore.” I’m not going to see my wife anymore and neither are all the other people who lost their wife or husband. We’re not going to see them anymore yet we are in love with them still. Very cruel, very harsh and very painful realities to face. So difficult, it sometimes seems an impossible task.
How do we deal with this? Where do we take our relief? Some of us have tremendous support systems surrounding us with life lines and compassion in every direction. Some of us have very little of that. But even with the most supportive of support systems, unless a person has experienced the exact tragedy of losing a spouse while still in love, they will not completely understand the cavity we have in our heart. They will never quite get why we feel the way we feel and why we cry the way we cry.
I am one of the lucky survivors with one of those tremendous support systems. My children are wonderful as are some very special new friends I have made. Some of the people I thought would have been more supportive have kept their distance and I understand that. Some of them are dealing with their own loss of the same person, some of them aren’t comfortable talking to me about my situation and feel better staying away. Others probably figure I should be over my loss by now and everything should be returning to normal. But the ones who know me best are the ones who share my loss. The men and women who are “without something they once had” are the people who understand me best. They know what I’m talking about when I talk about missing intimacy and I know exactly how they feel when they talk about being suddenly alone. There is a unique bond between people who otherwise might have nothing else in common. And that bond is all about understanding, listening, hearing, sharing, and healing together.
I am in a spouses support group and have heard stories and felt the emotions of others like me. We are from different areas and generations but we are all in the same boat going upstream without any paddles. We are all in the fight of our lives and we have all lost while being in love. Of all the places I have been and all the people I have talked to since I have become a surviving spouse, that group might be the most healing. I did not know any of these people before but after only a few weeks of meeting for 90 minutes, I feel like we are kind of family. It’s funny how these people know me better in this role than some of my friends and family do. I say things to them i don’t say to other people. They never knew my wife, never saw our love for each other, but they didn’t have to. They had the same thing I had just by a different name. And now they are searching for ways to get relief from “the experience of having something taken from you or destroyed.” The experience of losing while loving.
Throughout much of the time since September 18, 2013 and now, I have discovered many hidden treasures and messages that I thought were too coincidental to be coincidences. And I have learned that there are no coincidences so I take things pretty literally. I had an epiphany a few nights ago while trying to sleep that had to do with two of those discoveries. Individually, they were both very powerful to me. But up until those sleepless hours that night, I had not related the two.
There is a flower that adorns many of the pages of this website and is used as the header logo on all of them. I have stated before that flower was drawn by Coleen while sitting at our kitchen table with our granddaughter, Samantha. They were coloring and talking and Coleen was doodling at the same time. That was perhaps the last time the two of them shared that activity as Coleen was already very sick and it took a lot of effort for her to even sit at a table. I discovered that flower along with her sketches of a tree and even one of me in a pile of papers laying in the kitchen before Coleen died. There was also a drawing of our house that Samantha did in beautiful colors. I didn’t know what to do with them all but I knew they were special, so I carefully put them aside and in a safe place so I could see them later.
When I started this website I wanted something unique to use for some of the graphics. Something that would say “Coleen” every time it was seen. I thought immediately of the flower she had drawn and scanned it into my computer and used it for the logo and other appropriate areas. I could never get the quality of it quite right, though. It wasn’t until I was asked to prepare an announcement flyer for a breast cancer function that I recruited help with making the flower more beautiful. I wanted to use the flower on the flyer, but it looked lousy. So I asked my Photoshop guru son, Patrick to help. He sent me back the flower in all its magnificence and it is on the flyer and I was able to update it on the website as well. It looks so much better and captures the true beauty of the moment when it was created.
That is the first part of my story. The second part is about a quotation I discovered shortly after Coleen died. It was written in her cursive hand on the back of a calender that contained 365 inspirational quotes. Apparently that wasn’t enough for her because she found one from Abe Lincoln that she thought should have been included and wrote it on the back cover. It was on her nightstand and although I don’t know how often she read it, I do know that she lived it every day of her life. It was almost her mission statement.
“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”
I am very proud of the flower and what it represents. It is almost an entire legacy unto itself as it speaks so clearly of Coleen. I also love the Lincoln quote and anyone who knew Coleen would attest that it fits her so well. Perfectly, in fact. And sometime that night, it dawned on me the significance of those two seemingly unrelated discoveries. I can sometimes be really slow to recognize things right before me. Things that seem very obvious to others come much more deliberately to me. I was lying awake thinking of that flower when the quote popped in my head. “Doesn’t that quote say something about planting a flower? Being planted where it might grow? And don’t I have a drawing Coleen did of a flower? And why can’t it be the same flower?”
It now is the same flower. It represents everything about her and is even more of a tribute than before. Last week after Patrick sent me the enhanced flower, I thought about having some pins made of it. People wear pins on their collars, hats, lapels or most anywhere for all sorts of causes or reasons. Maybe there is more to this message than it seems. Maybe if someone wearing a flower lapel pin was asked what it meant, they could answer it is a tribute to a woman who died too young from breast cancer and would want to help people stay alive longer than she did. They could say it is her way and our way of recognizing passion for life, love of family, and desire to help. It is the flower that was planted where a thistle once grew and has now become a symbol for healing and discovery. For all of us.
I have reached the point in my new life that I think I’m ready for female companionship. Maybe even have a girlfriend. Some might be surprised by that admission, others might be relieved. I myself am confused and somewhat torn by these feelings and the daily conflict I face between letting go and hanging on.
Coleen and I had a wonderful relationship for 33 years. We were madly in love and shared a life that others would be envious of. Now, I am envious of that life and jealous that I don’t have it anymore. Coleen knew I would feel that way and that is one of the reasons she instructed me to find someone after her. By telling me that, she was relieving me of the guilt I would foster in myself by taking that course. She was giving me her permission to let go.
I wondered when the timing would be right for me to put myself in play and actively seek out another woman. I admit to thinking about becoming active for a while, a couple of months at least, but always questioned if I was being too quick in looking for love after Coleen. I felt guilt about doing something that I would have done with her if she hadn’t died. But she did die and that’s the conundrum I faced and still face. I must let go in order to move on.
And what of the woman I find and invite into my life? How fair is of me to ask her to understand me at this particular place in my time? She meets me as a single man slowly recovering from the loss of his beloved wife. I think I am in the right condition to begin a new relationship, maybe even a romance. Yet I know that I am still hanging on to Coleen in different ways. And although my house is slowly becoming my home, it still has much of Coleen and the 27 years of her life here to overlook. It wouldn’t bother me so much to enter a woman’s house after her husband died, but girls are different and I know that would be an issue for most of them. I have been told by a friend that I might want to look for a different house because no woman will ever be completely comfortable where I live. Or how about the rings I wear on a chain around my neck? Coleen’s engagement ring and wedding ring have been dangling around my neck, flirting with my heart since about a week after she died. I don’t ever want to take them off. But what should I expect a new girl to think when I take my shirt off someday and display those rings? How is that supposed to make her feel?
Sometimes, I think I would be better off if I met a woman who had lost her husband. Since I became a widower, I have felt that losing a spouse is the worst kind of loss. There is just nobody in your life that you share the things with that you share with your spouse. All your emotions, troubles, worries, joys and intimacies are placed in the trusts of each other until death do you part. And then what happens after death parts you? A sorrow and vacancy overwhelms us and we want to do what we have always done and that is turn to our spouse for comfort. Only we can’t. A victim of the same pain, a fellow survivor would be able to best understand what my dilemmas are. We would be well equipped to comfort each other, share our loss and our healing. I would not be asking as much of her as I would be asking of an otherwise single woman.
During the past few months, I have developed several activities that not only keep me busy but interest me immensely. I am on a board of directors for a new nonprofit, do a lot of writing here, take yoga classes, get reiki and massage therapies, attend a support group, and have contributed time to my church and some cancer organizations. I am very inspired by these interests and plan on not just continuing them but to also expand them. I want to become more involved in helping people understand loss and their healing and find ways to develop new projects, market and grow the nonprofit, advocate for breast cancer concerns. Of course, most of these interests and inspirations were born as a result of losing Coleen. I would argue that although inspired by her, my participation comes from my enjoyment and ability to bring special talents and skills to those projects. A new girl in my life might think otherwise. She might see my interests as a another way of me holding on instead of letting go.
Some people have already expressed discomfort with the idea of me being together with someone other that Coleen. We were not the perfect couple but we got along well and had a lot of fun together. We presented well and made people very happy and comfortable around us. Coleen and I had many diverse interests and explored those individually but we did so many things as a couple. We were Coleen and Rob to almost everyone. In my new life I am just Rob and that is hard enough for people to accept. It is already a harsh and constant reminder that Coleen is gone. Imagine the uneasiness I will cause when I introduce my “friend” to them. They all know it’s coming but nobody wants to see that.
How fair is it for me to ask a woman into my life and she has that issue to deal with? How comfortable will she be in that situation when I introduce her to my daughters or son or friends or sister-in-law? Or if I am with her and run into one of Coleen’s friends or someone we knew as a couple? I envision that scenario as being not only inevitable, but extremely awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Am I being fair to ask a girl to enter my life and be put in such stressful situations? How about the old friend? She would be troubled seeing me someone other that Coleen. And I would feel bad about being the catalyst for all this discomfort.
Ultimately, I guess it’s going to come down to me being comfortable with myself, my situation and my new friend. Once I am that, I can share or pass that comfort on to everyone else. I don’t want to fall in love right now. It’s too early for me to do that and I am too selfish with my time and interests. But I would like to be able to spend time with a new girl, get to know each other, do some dating and see what happens. I know I have a lot of luggage with me that I have to deal with and that she will have to deal with and I’m worried about how fair all that is for her. I worry about how I will affect my family and friends by being with another girl. I worry about how I will react when I start getting closer to her, when I feel myself slipping away from my past and reaching out for newness. I want to let go but a part of me wants to hang on, too. I never wanted to think about love without Coleen, let alone love after her.
Look at me with my new iPad Air. I look a lot different with it and I am not 100% sure how much I like it. I went to the apple store with the intention of purchasing a MacBook Air which is a small netbook. I have been doing a little research on the subject and originally wanted to get an iPad. But after talking to Patrick and Katelyn, two of the most loyal Apple enthusiasts I know, I was leaning towards a new MacBook instead.
I guess a good question to ask is “Why buy anything?” I felt it was time. I seem to have taken on some new endeavors that I think will require me to have better mobile access to information and display. I have not yet performed any speaking engagements or conducted any meetings, but I want to be able to do those things someday with some respectability. I would like to present myself and my cause in some kind of professional manner that says I know what I am talking about.
As I talked to different people about whether to buy a notebook or a tablet, everyone asked me the same question before giving me any advice. “What are you going to use it for?” Even today when I went to the Apple store thinking I was going to leave with a new netbook. The salesman there asked me that question and when I answered that I wanted more mobility to blog and make presentations of websites and information to groups, he pointed me directly to this iPad. He thought it was a much better value for my purpose and I was certainly influenced by his expertise. When he told me that it is Apple’s policy to allow up to two weeks for me to change my mind and return my purchase with no service charges, I figured I couldn’t go wrong. So I bought the iPad and a cover for it that is also a small keyboard and stand and brought it home. I am using it right now for the first time, typing on the keyboard which is connected via bluetooth technology to the iPad. I must admit that I don’t hate it. The keyboard is small and would probably annoy people with actual typing skills. I have none of those so it doesn’t bother me so much.
The Apple guy also explained to me how easy it is to use iPad to make presentations. With iPad, AppleTV and a projector I could entertain a roomful of interested people and make a pitch for money, compassion or understanding. And I could carry it all in a small backpack. I don’t have any presentations scheduled right now but it’s good to know that I have the infrastructure to handle what I need whenever I need it.
I keep reaching for the mouse. There is no mouse. This is a touch screen which eliminates the need for a mouse because you simply touch the area where you would have clicked your mouse in tech generations prior to this. But with the addition of the keyboard, I now have the best of everything. Admittedly, the iPad is a dummied down version of computerization. The netbooks I was looking at are much more powerful devices and offer much more in the realm of computer experience.
All in all, after typing this entry I have decided to keep my iPad for at least a few days to see how it fits me. So far I am more pleased with it than I thought I would be. The typing part is not great but better than I expected. And it is so lightweight and portable. I guess in a way it’s like having a very large iPhone except for the phone part. But because of the size and the speed, iPad is truly a different device. Today I will be taking it with me to help someone with a website and I’m looking forward to seeing how well it performs in a mobile application. Since I bought it with that specific purpose in mind, I expect it to perform well.
I met a man last week who lost his wife about four weeks ago and he is interested in a website to honor her memory. Sounds kind of familiar. So I told him I would try to help him get started. I don’t know how difficult that will be but it probably won’t be easy. His loss is so fresh and I know how angry and hurt he is. Hopefully I can put him on a path where he can write about her and share their memories. I know first hand how that can help the healing. I might even have invented it. So I had to include that mention of helping someone with their loss to qualify this article for lovelosshealing.com. Otherwise I would have been writing only about buying an iPad and that is pretty boring.
I am both excited and nervous about my first public speaking opportunity. There is going to be an education day for metastatic breast cancer patients on April 25th. It will be a conference focused on the care and concerns of women and families dealing with beast cancer mets. Speakers will be talking about nutrition, treatments and ways to make things more comfortable and positive.
I kind of stuck my nose into this event, volunteering to help in any way needed. I feel a strong tie to this group of women as they have the same disease and diagnosis that Coleen had. They are all staging the same battles Coleen fought, they have the same demons and the same hopes. Coleen was part of the support group that inspired this event and many people that will be attending knew her as a friend and sister in survival. I was never at the support group meetings but I know that Coleen would have made her presence known at them. She was not the kind of girl to keep things to herself and whatever resources she had would have been shared with everyone. Coleen would have had compassion and hope and encouragement for all the women there. Last year she organized a field trip to Rochester to attend a similar event held by the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester and drove several women from the support group there. It was just one of the many ways she had of reaching out to help people and make everything a little bit better.
A few weeks ago, the support group heard the message of “Letting Go” that I discovered in yoga class. Coleen’s friend (and mine) Barb, read it to the group after I sent it to her. Barb told me that everyone loved the message and it made everybody cry. The support group facilitator is also the person organizing the “Strategies for Hopeful Living” education day. Her name is Chris and I have met her on a couple of occasions. Chris extended me the opportunity to close her conference by reading the “Letting Go” message to the audience. She knew it would probably be a difficult thing for me to do and after presenting the idea, she asked me to think about it. Which I did for about 20 seconds before replying that I would be very, very honored to do the reading.
Talk about a tough debut. That reading is emotional all by itself even if there is nothing going on in your life. For me, knowing the mystical way I first heard it and what the words mean to me, it will be a challenging read. At times I am very strong emotionally and at other times, I kind of come apart. I feel up to the task, though and I am thrilled to be able to contribute to such a wonderful occasion. I will be doing it in Coleen’s honor and to help with everyone’s healing. Including my own. And I’m sure I won’t be alone that day either.
I helped design the announcement flier for the conference, too. So if anyone wants to attend, here’s the info.
