22 Months of a Life I Didn't Want

22 months of a life I didn't want. 22 months since I last held my Jim. 22 months since I was the be all and end all in someone else's life and he was in mine. 22 months since I had the most wonderful partner to share life with in all its ups and downs.

Nights are perhaps the loneliest

I'm not really sure where this post is going so please bare with me. In the last few months I haven't been able to write here or to paint and it has been bothering me. And yet LOTS of other positive things have been taking seed, even blooming, even as accompanied by tears. 

Meditation has carried me through.

Strength: The issue of my home is nearing resolution and I've learned how to repair and take care of all sorts of things that Jim used to do: wrangle legal issues, fix lawnmowers, purchase cars, contract with plow guys, roofers, repair folks, do electrical work, grill meat, fix plumbing, chainsaw and clear brush, install electronic dog fencing (over and over again), organize our funds and pay taxes, change water and air filters, and rebuild our pond. Those are just a few things in a very long list. With those now in my tool belt, the wrenching anxiety of early widowhood has subsided. I never wanted to be the person who took on all of these things on top of my own tasks.

It's a lot to care of alone but my heart is here.

Letting Go: In the last few months, realizing that items are better used then held on to without purpose, I've begun to sell or try to sell some of the items I most associate with Jim—our kayaks, his books, the trailer, a few of his bikes. I'm still trying to figure out what to do about his workshop, his computers, his musical instruments, the thousand or so player piano rolls, and our camper. My friend Kathy Sehr profoundly helped me by coming by and installing a new modem and router as well as cleaning out some of his hard drives and backing them up—this was huge for me, thank you Kathy. 

Jim led such a large vibrant life—so many folks he loved, so many hobbies, so many deep interests resulting in so many patents, creations, and the spaces and tools to create them. As Tegan said the other day, the smartest man she knew. And of course that means a man of many experiments and outputs. I never wanted to be the person who dismantled Jim's life.

Risk: The first year of grief, I was bushwhacked by anxiety, true deep, can't move fear. It was something I had only encountered a few appropriate times in my life. This however was different. It would wake me in the middle of the night pinned to my bed unable to breathe. Mary-Francis O'Connor's amazing book "The Grieving Brain" (I highly recommend reading it) puts is this way,

"No one expects their dining room table to get stolen. And no one expects their loved one to die. Even when a person has been ill for a very long time, no one knows what it will be like to walk through the world without this other person. My contribution as a scientist has been to study grief from the brain's perspective, from the perspective that the brain's trying to solve a problem when faced with the absence of the most important person in our life. Grief is a heartwrenchingly painful problem for the brain to solve, and grieving necessitates learning to live in the world with the absence of someone you love deeply, who is ingrained in your understanding of the world. This means that for the brain, your loved one is simultaneously gone and also everlasting, and you are walking through two worlds at the same time. You are navigating your life despite the fact that they have been stolen from you, a premise that makes no sense, and is both confusing and upsetting."

Reaching out to other widows and widowers, I discovered this was a universal experience for us folks who have lost our life partners. They offered me simple solutions that I found worked: concentrating on the breath, having a list of friends and family that I can call no matter what time of day or night, even keeping a window always cracked open, plus more (message me if you want a fuller list). With facing head on this challenge, I have now found that conversely I am no longer afraid. I am actively trying out things that I fear.

The month before he died, Jim had a very short list of things he wanted me to do after he died: his memorial bike ride on the islands (check), get the house situation put back to rights (check), sell the Honda, date, and find joy again. All of those things initially panicked me. One by one I am checking them off and adding new items I want. 

The work with PMC and Champlain have been two of those. What I decided I didn't want to do was sell the Honda. Jim thought I would never drive it, indeed it did frighten me linked so closely to the man he was and my loss but instead a magic happened when I first sat in it. Playing loudly Sara Bareille's "Brave"on the stereo, I found that the Honda is the place where I can most fully find the living Jim. In fact it has become so wonderful for me to drive that for my 65th birthday, I am having it repaired and repainted! This Friday it returns home. Look for me out on the roads that day!

The Honda in pieces. Some things can be fixed.

Jim was insistent I date again. It was a long conversation, much like O'Henry's Story "The Gift of the Magi". Me grieving his cancer, his eventual death—wanting only him—and in wonder of his acceptance, him wanting me to be ok, to find joy and love again. So recently, I dared myself and tried online dating. Again going against what Jim thought would be good for me (he wasn't always right), I found I did not like it. I put dating aside pretty quickly after a coffee or two—but at least fear was not the reason.

What I am excited about is that I am planning on traveling again. I think the recent travel for Champlain, most notably going to Florida, has given me confidence that I can travel alone again. Before we found out that Jim was ill, I had been planning to travel to see Machu Picchu. Well this month I signed up to join a small tour in October with Roads Scholar. Though with a small group of strangers, I am over the moon excited about this! 

I never wanted to have to take on the legal, financial, and emotional struggle that has been involved in getting the house situation resolved. I never wanted to bury my husband or face life without him. I never ever wanted to date. I did want to go to Machu Picchu but not alone. Yet now I know I can.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from our trip  a few years before it burnt down. It is being rebuilt too.

Purpose: In the last year and a half, I've returned to Champlain and have been working with PMC on very big, community influencing initiatives. This has a been good for me and hopefully them. At first I needed the space to continue to grieve fully, but I have been able to come up from that foggy place and focus like a flashlight on solutions and opportunities. I've missed discussing these with Jim. He was my "extra brain". Out of the corner of my heart's eye, I can still see him urging me on. I never thought I'd still be working now, I always thought we'd be retired together. I never wanted this but at the same time I am very grateful to have this—an outlet for loving purpose.

Friendship: This brings me to the essential part of my continuing, of my being able to rise up from the murky depths of sorrow—my family and friends. Since Jim took to bed, I've been surrounded by folks who loved us and now dear folks who have since become friends. The first year was extremely difficult  as when I needed folks most, due to Covid, contact was limited to outdoor or virtual visits. I needed touch and hugs and casseroles but those were impossible then. I might be broken for a longtime due to that utter aloneness but a thing blossomed in me: I have a clear, immutable understanding and expression of what is truly vital in life. That knowledge sits on my surface like the sweet, yet delicate skin of a new born. No longer am I able to provide space for pettiness, narcissism, or denial. Instead I have spacious room for truth, empathy, and listening. What I am finding is that with the folks that have gathered around, we are able to go much deeper in our conversations, to be truer to each other, and to find pathways together. Surprisingly I have new best friends alongside my old best friends. And yet, I am always one step away from fearing, from knowing, that life has a way of taking those I love away. Perhaps that makes time and friendships more precious. I wish I didn't have this understanding, I never wanted this fear but I am grateful for the love.

Jim's last Mothers' day wish for me.

Mothers' day bike ride with Tegan. Miniature ephemeral drawings by Tegan

Living fully: What I never wanted was to lose Jim. Honestly because both of our mothers died before our fathers, I think we both assumed it would be like that for us. I mean, really, he biked across the country by himself at 50! For a very long time in my grief, I was constantly looking for him expecting him to just walk in the door. As Mary-Francis O'Connor explains, my mind map was broken. Where was the table I took for granted? Where was Jim who I adored and who adored me? In the last 4 months or so, the poles in my brain flipped, where once I had physically felt my heart torn open, bleeding (like those Catholic statues of the Sacred Heart), I found instead Jim inside my chest cavity like my cut apart wedding rings in their boxes. There he is, I fully remember him and hear him, brought back to life tucked safely inside me. Yes, it is not the same, will never be the same as sleeping next to, being held by, experiencing life besides Jim. No one would ever want their beloved to be gone. Countless love songs opine that. Yet my heart is learning how to live with and carry my grief. His wisdom and love is forever with me.

In line with what Mary-Francis O'Connor's writes in "The Grieving Brain", my brain and heart have been confronting a perplexing reality. Cancer made Jim age frighteningly quickly in 2 years and 7 months: sleeping constantly,  covered in chemo rashes, losing his hair, going from 190 pounds down to less than 120 pounds, dependent on oxygen, becoming extremely weak, unable even to walk up the stairs without me at his side. And then he died, simply gone like a hawk into the sunlight. It was incongruous to see my life partner like that, to see myself the opposite, able to care for him, to go on without him. An entire me died when Jim did. There is a battle that goes on in my thoughts: I am not dead yet. I am not that old yet. I am amazingly healthy. I may live another 20+ years full of health. I may not. It's a reckoning of my soul. I see the time limited nature of life. I lived Jim's example of embracing life right up to the end. His example, is now my motto. I am finally walking that walk again even if with missteps along the way—out from the cocoon of cancer and death and into the blue skies of being. I want a full, meaning-rich life.