Yesterday I heard a story about a mom, a dad and a little girl and I thought others should hear it too. It’s a story about cancer and courage and perseverance.
Eight years ago the mom, Heather, was diagnosed with mesothelioma which is a rare cancer that kills most people within 2 years of diagnosis. Heather was 36 and had just given birth to the little girl, Lily and was only given 15 months to live. Heather had successful surgery that included removal of her lung and on February 2, she, Lily and Cameron, the dad, celebrated her eighth cancer free year.
This family celebrates with something they invented and call “LungLeavin’ Day.” Every year on the anniversary of Heather’s surgery, they gather around a fire in their backyard along with friends and family. Everyone there writes their biggest fears on a plate and then they take turns smashing those plates into the fire. They started LungLeavin’ Day as a celebration of life and a way to confront their fears but have now turned it into a fundraiser for mesothelioma awareness. This past year over 75 people attended and they raised more than $4500.00 for the cause.
I love to hear stories about people who have beaten their disease and their diagnosis. I have such admiration for the courage and strength they display and the inspiration they create for others. The Von St. James family has setup an interactive webpage that tells the story of their battle with cancer and of LungLeavin’ Day. It is very well done and you should all take a look at it. Cameron also has a blog of his own where he posts about being a dad, husband and caregiver.
Congratulations to Heather, Cameron and Lily and to all cancer survivors and families. Let’s make more of them!
Our bedroom closet was not large yet it housed an amazing amount of possessions. Most of those were Coleen’s. She dominated the closet with her clothes and items she would store in there. Coleen was not the most organized person I have met and she had a propensity for keeping things she should have gotten rid of. I suppose we are all guilty of that to some degree, but she had more stuff in the closet than she ever wore or used. Since her death, the closet has been an almost sacred area to me. One of the places I least want to tread for fear of memories and emotion. Yet each day I am in that closet several times either getting clothes or putting them away. And each time I enter, I focus only on the immediate task and try not to look around very much. And each time I close the closet door behind me, I tell myself that I have to get in there and clean that closet out … someday.
For reasons I am not yet prepared to discuss, I decided to deal with the closet a few days ago. I have written before about the emotional impact I have gotten when I disturb Coleen’s things. By converting “our” closet into “my” closet, I was in effect taking another step in making our house my home. Those are always steps I would prefer not to take, but I’m eventually better as a result. The times when I have cleaned her car, moved her books, rearranged her dresser and put things away have created some of my most emotional moments. I fully expected a healthy dose of that as I began the task of removing Coleen’s belongings from our bedroom closet.
I was most fearful of the clothes she had on hangers. I took them down and transferred them to a closet in a different room so they could be gone through more thoroughly. I was not ready to determine a final disposition for them yet. Wisely, I did not look at each item individually as I grabbed them in bunches of six or so. But I couldn’t help but spot some of my favorites as I removed them from the closet. And I would think of her wearing something and be reminded of the occasion or occasions and of me holding her in it. I touched the fabric of some of them and could almost feel her underneath, my hands holding her and our lips touching. Our eyes closed then opening to look in each others eyes. I saw the tops she wore in regular rotation and those funky scarves she loved for warmth and style. And dresses she was in for only a time or two but always for a special occasion. She had a sexy black cocktail dress that she wore to a wedding and on a cruise we took about 20 years ago. I have a photo of her in that and she was so beautiful and young.
As you might have guessed, that was exactly my fear of the closet and why I waited so long to take it on. So many wonderful memories and reminders of such a beautiful life together. I managed to get all her clothes out of the closet, and cleaned out a shelving unit before I moved to the floor. She had a lot of shoes there and bags of random items, most of which would be thrown away. But there was something leaning against the wall that I didn’t recognize. It was wrapped in brown paper and was rather large. I thought it might have been a sketch or something artsy. Coleen’s friend Sue was an artist and often gave Coleen some of her work and I assumed that was what this was. I removed it and placed it on the bed. It had been wrapped very carefully, almost professionally, and that made me even more curious.
I finally got the paper off and found a beautiful handwritten calligraphy of a poem and realized that I had seen it before. The poem was called “Celebrate the Journey” and was one of Coleen’s favorites. And I remembered seeing this artwork years ago when she brought it home with a big smile on her face. Coleen had a friend named Carol who was an unlikely cancer survivor. Carol had a gift of calligraphy and Coleen asked her to work her magic with this poem. Carol did a remarkable job and Coleen was going to have it framed and hang it somewhere prominently. She never got to that. Instead, she put this beautiful piece of art in the closet, where we seem to put so many of our good intentions. Where we put so many things that we want to get to, but end up soon forgotten. Where so much of Coleen’s life resided for me to rediscover that day.
The artwork was beautiful. But the poem was the message. As I read it, the inevitable tears came to my eyes. Once again, I felt like I was receiving another message from Coleen. A message telling me to celebrate the journey and also telling me to tell others the same thing. That seems to be the constant to these messages I find. They are all directed at me but they always need to be distributed to others as well. Sometimes I think I’m just the messenger, the conduit to receive and redistribute and help others. I don’t know how else to look at the discovery of this poem as anything other than a message. It was meant for me to find, to read, to be inspired by and to share. So here it is:
Celebrate the Journey
Who knows why life unfolds
the way it does; why we chose
one path or another, share the
way for a while or a day, then
say goodbye. There is no
predictability here, and less
control than we might wish.
But there is the quiet urging
of the heart, the knowing in
the soul, the wisdom that’s
beneath the mind, accessible
if we breathe and turn inside.
When the tide of change rolls
in we can resist or be at peace,
struggle or release. The stuff
of life may not be ours to
understand. It’s enough to
offer love, to receive the best
and worst, to embrace and
say farewell. What matters
most is to celebrate each
moment of the journey.
“Celebrate the Journey” was written by Danna Faulds and was in Coleen’s favorite poetry book, “One Soul.” This book contains over 100 pages of poems from the heart of yoga and Coleen would often read it in bed and at times when she needed peace. I recall her pointing this particular poem out to me on more than one occasion.
It also represents what I think of as a personal failure in caring for Coleen during her final days. I never thought of reading aloud to her from this beautiful book until I saw it the day after she died. Instead of just holding her hand and telling her I loved her, I could have been reading these wonderful poems to her, too. She would have liked that and I will never forgive myself for that oversight. Ironically, after I did find this book, I was trying to recall which of the poems Coleen liked so much. After finding the artwork in the closet, it dawned on me that poem was the one I had been looking for all along. Maybe she was pointing that out to me as well.
I could have cleaned Coleen’s things from the closet earlier than I did. Or I could have procrastinated some more. But whenever it was that I decided to do it, I would have discovered the words and art of Celebrate the Journey. I guess it’s all in the timing of things and I don’t think I needed to hear the whispers of the message earlier. I must have picked the perfect time to clean the closet.
Two days ago I attended my first bereavement support group. It was exactly what I expected and it was nothing like I expected. Is it impossible to be two entirely different things at the same time? Under normal circumstances I would answer yes but we all know that these are far from normal circumstances.
I have been seeing a social worker through Hospice for individual grief counseling for the past four months. She has been very good for me and I enjoy our sessions. I think she would report that I seem to be doing well and have made significant progress since first we met. I would agree with that assessment. I have also attended a Hospice sponsored seminar about grief and the holidays. Of course most of my grief healing so far has happened with my writing and under the influence of my friend Rebecca, her wisdom and reiki. I know those methods are not often employed by victims of loss, but I am not only an advocate for how effective they can be, I am also a success story.
Many of the writings I put here have references to Coleen. Most do, actually. And that is as it should be since I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for her and my loss. This story is no different. The support group was held in the offices of the Life Transition Center located at 1140 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, which was once one of the many mansions along that street. I mention the address for two reasons. Previous to being the home of Life Transitions Center, this building was owned by Gilda’s Club, a non-profit organization that offered various supports and programs to people with cancer and their families. Coleen used the meeting rooms at Gilda’s Club many times to host the educational programs she held in her role of Patient Services Manager for an oncology organization. Yes, in a cruel irony, Coleen was an oncology social worker and spent many of her working hours helping cancer patients get through the stages of their diagnosis and disease.
I had never been inside this building before although I have driven past it many times. I thought of Coleen when I realized where the building was and what it used to be. And I thought of her as I arrived and walked in the front door. Here I was entering this beautiful building, a place where she had been so many times, for the first time. And I was there because of her and, in certain ways, for her. As I entered the meeting room, I took a seat and just looked around at the beauty of the room, the height of the ceilings. I closed my eyes, smiled, and let the presence and the moment take me over. It was only for a minute, but I let the thought of sharing the same space with Coleen again sink in. It was at a different time, but we both were in the same building, the same room, and I once again felt her presence with me. briefly, strongly.
I had been looking forward to being in a group environment since the early days of Coleen’s passing. I felt very strongly that losing a spouse was very a very different loss from any other and because of that, wanted to be in a group specific to widows and widowers. Not to diminish losing a parent or a sibling or even a child, I just wanted to share my time and experiences with others like me. This group contained three women, four men and we had all recently lost our spouse. The time since our losses varied from one month to 86 days to seven months, but in all our cases, we were all very wounded and needy. One of my lessons learned is that I feel better when talking about Coleen, our relationship and my loss. It is good therapy for me to bring her up and discuss those subjects. My trouble with that is in finding people to talk with, people who will let me speak my truths. I know that is why writing is therapeutic for me because it lets me get thoughts, memories and tears out without needing a listener. But there is nothing like talking to people who are interested in what you might have to say, people who are with similar pains to yours. I was excited about being in a room with my brothers and sisters in loss so that I could both hear and be heard. I wasn’t sure what I was more interested in, getting help from them or being helpful to them. Having never been in a group environment before, I guess I didn’t realize that’s pretty much how the whole thing works. You give, you get. You speak, you listen. You comfort, you get comforted.
I had so much to say. The group environment allows for everyone to talk and have an equal amount of time but selfishly, I wanted more than my share. All of the survivors in that room had stories of their husband or wife and their loss. Each of those stories was a sad one and by listening to the survivors tell them, I learned more. I wanted to tell more of what I have discovered in my journey, speak of some the lessons I have learned since Coleen’s death. I thought by sharing some of those lessons I could offer some help and comfort to others. I also knew that it would make me feel better by talking about my discoveries. By speaking my truths to people in my situation, I would be able to heal and be healed.
So when will I stop learning about loss? When will I stop healing? I had a friend in high school named Paul who was a very accomplished pianist. Paul took lessons twice a week and one day I asked him how long he planned on taking piano lessons. Paul looked at me like I had two heads and replied, “I’ll always take piano lessons. There’s always more to learn. My teacher is 82 years old and he takes lessons.” All through my life I have remembered that conversation with my friend Paul. I have pulled it out a few times before when the lesson seemed appropriate, but it has never been more appropriate than right now. Just like Paul, I will never stop learning of loss and healing. And perhaps, just like Paul’s teacher, I can somehow teach and learn at the same time. All of us in the support group are there for help. But by just being there and telling the stories of our loss, we are helping everyone else in the room. We are helping to heal each other as we heal ourselves.
At the end of the session, I read a quote called “Letting Go” that I discovered last week at yoga class. Everyone there seemed to like it and I liked sharing it with them. I want to share more but I don’t want to become one of those overbearing people who act like they know so much. Since the beginning of my process and through all the messages I’ve been sent, I have always believed that I have been given an assignment. Coleen was a healer. She spent much of her time helping and comforting people and I believe she left me the gifts of her enthusiasm and passion. I want to use those gifts to bring comfort and peace to others. Without being a pain in their ass.
This week we are supposed to bring a photo of our spouse to support group and a memento of some sort. I haven’t decided which ones to bring yet, but they will come with stories to tell. This week I will also make sure that my fellow surviving spouses get one of my cards with the website listed on it. I didn’t want to hand them out right away last week because I thought that would be a little too pushy. I’m ready to do it this week, though. It’s a good way for me to communicate with others. A good way for me be healed so I can help heal.
One of these days I ‘m going to go back through all the writings on this website. I’m going to review all the notebooks I’ve written in and all the scraps of paper I’ve scribbled on and saved in a big pile. I am going to read all the writings in my journal. I’m going to do all these things to refresh my memory on all the ways Coleen has communicated with me since she died. She has been very creative in getting messages to me and in making her presence felt and I am thankful that I am aware enough to notice those contacts.
I believe she was reaching out to me again last night when I was sleeping. I know I dream a lot but I am not good at remembering dreams. There always seems to be some kind of blockage with me when it comes to them. I wake up with a sense of having traveled somewhere and experienced something, but I can rarely remember what or where. Once in a while I wake up in time to capture what I was dreaming and that happened to me last night. Months ago, I met with Coleen’s friend Jillian and she told me things to expect from Coleen, her spirit, her spirituality. Jillian told me not to be surprised if Coleen came to me during the night when I was in our bed sleeping. She said that when we sleep, our conscious state is very near to energies on the other side and we are very receptive to contact from those energies.
My experience is that Coleen comes to me in the night. I first noticed it a few days after she died. On previous nights, I went to bed exhausted and fell quickly asleep. I would wake in the morning and find my blankets and sheets virtually identical to the way they looked when I climbed into bed. I slept so soundly that I hardly disturbed anything. Then one night that all changed as I tossed and turned and was unsettled all night. I felt a presence there with me, almost like wrestling me under the sheets. When Coleen and I slept together during her last few months, I was very careful to be a still in bed as possible. She struggled with sleep and was sometimes in pain so I wanted her to be as comfortable as possible. That was hard for me when all I wanted to do was hold her and tell her I loved her. I had control over very little, but those were two signs I could send her telling her how I felt about her. I know she knew, but I really wanted to hold her more than I could. So I tried to sleep as quietly as I could and I think I made a new habit of that which carried through to today. That night when I was wrestling myself, I know I had company in my bed.
I was troubled for a while because I was not having dreams with Coleen in them. Even though I don’t remember dreams that well, I didn’t think she was in whatever dreams I was having. That had changed recently though. During the past couple months I have awoken with remnants of dreams that Coleen was in. They are bizarre, never making much sense. None of them have had any special revelations that I can recall although for all I know, she is telling me all the secrets of life and I don’t remember. It is interesting to me that when I see Coleen in my dreams, it is always the pre-cancer Coleen. It is her with dark hair, almost shoulder length. It is her younger, healthy, vital, sassy and beautiful.
This morning I woke up early, around 5:00 AM. I was just lying in bed for a few minutes when it dawned on me that I had been dreaming. And my dream was about Coleen and me. She was talking to me, like she always did. She was giving me some advise, like she did to everybody. She had some knowledge to share and I was the one who needed to know what she knew. I’m still a little awed that I have recall of this dream, so it must be pretty important. Coleen was talking to me about a friend of ours and telling me that she and her husband, another friend of ours, were getting divorced. Coleen thought I might want to stay close to that situation because she thought that girl and I might be good together. Now, I know that scenario is crazy because that couple is not going to split up. But dreams happen for a reason so there must have been some message there for me to figure out. I’ll have to work on that. Leave it to Coleen though to try her hand at matchmaking from heaven. On her husband. When the two of us talked about me finding someone after her, I half expected her to tell me who I should get together with. Maybe last night she wasn’t telling me who, but perhaps who not.
There was another sign from Coleen last night that was not a dream. I was out most of the day and came home around 7:00 PM. It had snowed a lot all day and before going inside, I shoveled the snow from my front sidewalk and porch. As I finished, I glanced skyward and damn if I didn’t see the moon in its waxing crescent, smiling down on me. Now the weather has been winter for weeks and the sky has been perpetually cloudy, so to see the moon after so many nights of it hidden was a gift to me. But our sky was not really clear, and as I looked above, wisps of clouds crossed the moon’s path. As they did, it created a flickering effect with the moonlight and I imagined the moon winking at me. Smiling and winking. Alas, I welcomed that feeling, along with the accompanying chills up my spine, for only a minute or two before big clouds hid the moon from me once again. I don’t know how long the moon was visible before I noticed it, but I suspect it wasn’t long. I was in the right place to see, recognize, feel and enjoy the sign it sent. Now I just have to figure it all out.
I always knew that one of my discoveries on this journey would be of meeting a woman. In calendar days, it hasn’t been all that long since Coleen passed but in emotional time, it has been much longer. I have missed everything about Coleen including the things she did that sometimes annoyed me. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to see a pile of her worn clothes on a chair in my bedroom or to hear her tell me I’m drinking too much. I obviously miss the physical intimacy we shared but more than that, I miss the daily intimacy that a relationship brings. The everyday things like phone calls, planning, making dinner, and talking about family are some of the things that go into a relationship and I have done little if any of that.
Coleen told me to find someone. We talked about many things leading up to her death and one of those was her wish for me to find someone. “You’re going to need companionship. It won’t be good for you to be alone.” Those were pretty much her exact words on the subject. At the time I just kind of laughed at the thought of finding someone after her and the difficulty of that task. Coleen once said, “I’m not everyone’s cup of tea,” and that was very true. But she was my cup of tea and I knew it would be challenging, to say the least, to find someone after her.
I have met with a few women during the past month, mostly through an on-line dating service. I have not met anyone of interest but have learned some things about myself. Of course I would learn things about myself in those situations. My sense of awareness seems so heightened 100% of the time these days, I’m always on high alert for discovery, especially when it comes to me. I am much more relaxed in people situations than I have ever been. People always described me as extroverted when in reality, I considered myself more the opposite. Sure, I could comfortably talk to anyone and could fit into most social settings. But I wasn’t always comfortable inside when doing that. It often felt like there was an internal conflict going on with me trying to be outgoing at the same time my other part just wanted to roll up on the couch and watch a movie. My son Patrick has always had great confidence in me as an extrovert. He has seen me in many environments including at work, where I played the roles of boss and also head salesman and public relations guy. So he saw me in all my roles of life and was impressed with what he considered to be talents of mine.
In the past I would question that. But sitting here today, I very much agree with Patrick’s contention. I am now not only much more extroverted, but very comfortable with it. I was at a musical venue Saturday watching a band and during one of their breaks, I introduced myself to the singer. I talked with her for a few minutes and told her how much I enjoyed her voice and her music. In the past I would not have done that. I would have thought about doing it but I would have talked myself out of it. Later that day I also introduced my self to the band’s namesake and keyboard player and we also had a nice chat. Those are just two examples of me “putting myself out there,” as my friend Rebecca puts it. There are many other instances of that behavior from me, things that happen almost daily it seems. It might just be the way I talk to the check-out clerk in the grocery store or someone at my gym, but it is now a regular and noticeable practice. I am just more comfortable with people and that is all a result of being more comfortable with myself.
That new confidence and belief in myself led to a success story of mine that happened yesterday. I met a woman from Hospice several weeks ago with a very impressive message. I thought her message should be heard by others and contacted another woman who facilitates the metastatic breast cancer support group Coleen attended. I put the two of them in touch with each other and then got out of the way and yesterday, that support group heard the message I thought would be important to them. And they all loved hearing it. That is one small event but I am proud that it happened and that it happened because of me and my newness. I want to contribute to more things like that and I’m certain that is part of my new destiny.
So why wouldn’t that new self-assuredness surface in everything I do and everyone I talk to? It does. I don’t know if people who have known me notice it. And the people I meet now have nothing to compare it to, so they think I have always been the way I am. Which I probably always have been, it’s just that I never knew how to let go enough of my self-doubts to let my true self surface. How easy do you think it is for a guy like me to talk to a woman I have never met? In the past I would have spoken intelligently enough but inside I would have been distressed. In the present, I am comfortable and confident. I think I am interesting and funny and have enough of an edge to keep people just a little bit off balance. I like that. Someone recently told me to look at these meetings as if I was interviewing someone. That I had a job opening to offer the right applicant. I’m not sure I can be quite that egotistical but I do like the concept.
I have rambled a lot on this post, going from dating to being extroverted and back again. They are seemingly unrelated subjects that have become related for me. The point of this is how my character has evolved and I have used the dating thing as an example. Or perhaps the real point is announcing that I have put myself in play and I am quite comfortable with myself in that role. Either way, it’s a sign of progress like when you see that sign on the highway that says your exit is 494 miles away when it started at 750. It’s just all part of the journey for me which keeps changing course and taking new direction. More interesting, more confusing all the time.
