holiday

07/03/2014

Fireworks of Grief

July Fourth weekend, 1992. 

Their home phone rang as my parents walked back in the door after visiting Mom’s aunt over the holiday weekend. It was Mom’s doctor — not his staff — on the other end. “Where have you been? We’ve been calling for days. We’ve got you scheduled for surgery.”

Mom hadn’t told me about the biopsy — or even about the lump that prompted it. She hadn’t wanted me to worry. My first inclination of something wrong was when an uncle called to ask me if I’d heard the results. “No,” I’d assured him. “There’s nothing the matter. They’d have told me. You must be mistaken.”

Back in January she’d had her annual exam and mammogram. All was clear. In April she’d seen a small lump in the mirror (it was visible but not palpable) and she’d made an appointment. Her doctor recommended a biopsy. She had the biopsy and left town for the weekend.

The cancerous cells had already burst through all the lymph nodes.

Surgery, radiation, and chemo followed.

My husband and I moved our family from Arizona to Florida to care for her as she recovered while Dad continued working nights. She did well and returned to work.

20150704_multiburst fireworks

photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com

July Fourth, 1995, after watching the fireworks, we walked in the door and found Mom (who’d stayed home with a slight headache) slumped against the hallway. It was the first visible symptom that breast cancer had resurfaced, this time in her brain and spinal column.

The following week we learned it was terminal.

It’s been 19 years since that second devastating Independence Day. In the intervening years our family sometimes rekindled the positive traditions of early times. After my husband’s illness and death, though, the redoubling of grief made — still makes — the Fourth (like most widowed holidays) harder to manage than it used to be.

It’s not easy to construct new traditions. It’s not easy to “get over” grief when you miss loved ones who “should” be sharing special days. Please be patient with your grieving friends. Invite the bereaved to join you in your celebrations. Ask them about the traditions they cherish. Acknowledge your awareness of them, let them know they are not forgotten, even though they may be alone in their loneliness on Independence Day and other holidays.

05/23/2014

Honoring Memorial Day

Memorial Day was originally intended as a day of solemn remembrance.*[See the end of this post for a link to a short video about the day’s origins and evolution.] Once called Decoration Day (on which widows, orphans, and other war survivors decorated soldiers’ graves), its purpose was to honor and reflect on those who died while in service to their country.

Memorial Day, military, honor, remember, sacrifice, survivors

Memorial Day honors the sacrifices of those who died in service to their country. Please remember the loved ones they left behind, too. (This photo called “Memorial Day” is from history.com.)

Within my extended family, the day also developed a broader meaning as descendants of my great-grandparents gathered every year to honor the memories not just of all our honored military dead but of all deceased family members. In my grandmother’s hometown, kin from all over began the day at her parents’ graves, filling the weathered cemetery — for one day each year — with as many folks above- as below-ground.

My long-widowed grandmother’s features took on a different expression there. Hindsight — now having lost all my own grandparents, mother, and husband — allows me to better understand the nostalgia, the sadness, the love, and the gratitude that shone from her lined face during this annual meeting of family from afar. It was a chance for Grandma’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews (and all their “grands,” too) to greet and get to know (by place and by story) her long-lost grandparents, parents, siblings, husband, daughter, and — in later years before her death — grandson.

The cemetery on that day was not a place of sadness — though there were tears — but of reunion (both in the here-and-now gathering and in the looked-to-someday future).  After beginning the day with respects paid on the sacred ground there and with family news updates shared by all, we relocated to the place and time I looked forward to when I was little: the park. Nearby, the entire city park (rented by the extended family for that day every year since long before my birth) was open to exploration.

When I was a child, Memorial Day meant family reunions with buffet-style picnic foods (including as many dill pickles as I could eat from a jar that was nearly as big as I was). It meant wondering why the grownups cheered and jeered (in good fun) during their annual singles versus marrieds softball game. Close cousins and distant kin walked around wearing similar noses, foreheads, and jawlines while gesturing in mannerisms either inherited or learned in a trickle down the pyramid of  Great-grandma Inez’s and Great-grandpa Edwin’s descendants.

As a widow, my appreciation of Memorial Day has shifted. I’d always been taught to acknowledge that the price of my daily freedoms was paid for by the lives of those who served my country long before me. My parents taught me reverence for our flag, not as an item to be worshiped but as a tangible representation of the blood sacrificed by those who served. War was awful because of the lives it ended; warriors — of whatever nationality — were respected for their service to their nation(s). Although my family celebrated with fun traditions on such holidays, in a very real sense Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day were holy days, too.

Now that I’ve experienced the loss of my own husband and witnessed my children’s thus-altered lives, my appreciation for the families of fallen soldiers has increased hundred-fold. I’m not a military widow, though I have been honored by friendships with many who are.  I do not know their pain, but I have greater reverence for theirs because of my own.

How can you  honor and support such families on Memorial Day? Start with acknowledging their soldiers’ service and their families’ losses. Express appreciation. Share memories. Speak up. Such days are not for politicizing the “should”s or “should-not”s of specific military campaigns or politics. They are days of succoring, support, and solidarity.

If you have other suggestions, please share them below!

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*See the video clip at http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history

03/14/2014

Why My Grieving Friend “Still” Cries–A Walkthrough

Do you worry that a grieving friend or loved one still cries?*

It’s true that time will help, but it takes longer than you expect. Your friend’s 2013 loss is “still” very recent. That she still cries is normal. She’s still stepping through the year of “firsts.” Every season, every holiday, every public (and private) anniversary, birthday, or commemoration has to be re-framed without her loved one’s presence. Some of it may be on a conscious level, but much of it is a visceral adjustment.

Until August I walked with a cane for 10 years after a misstep — a very costly misstep.** (Stay with me, please. You’ll see how this relates to grief by the end.) When I first injured my ankle, it hurt all the time. All. The. Time. When it didn’t keep me from sleeping, pain invaded my dreams and awoke me from them. It wrought tears I didn’t realize I was crying, and it happened as often when at rest as when I tried using it.

I did all the right things — ice (at first, then heat), anti-inflammatory medicine, elevation, and rest. When days brought no improvement, I sought professional treatment. X-rays ruled out fractures and physicians confirmed the appropriateness of what I’d already been doing. I hobbled around in a pressurized walking boot for nearly nine months, but when my ankle emerged from its plastic-and-Velcro womb, I’d delivered only atrophied muscles, tired tendons, and limp ligaments. Months of intensive physical therapies followed, and TEN spinal nerve blocks later … I still needed medication 24/7 to manage the pain.

I can’t remember how many prescriptions doctors had me try before finding one that let me go about my day-to-day mom duties. Some were ineffective or made me so loopy I could scarcely walk down the driveway, much less drive from it. One worked fairly well (for a few weeks) before painting my leg with a red, itchy please-scratch-with-sandpaper rash. Another worked perfectly — I felt almost zero pain and I could drive safely — until the day my hands began shaking and my hair abandoned scalp by every brush- and finger-stroke.

It was between the second and third years after my missed step when I found medicine that relieved enough pain for me to function without involuntary tears — as long as I walked only upon 100 percent flat surfaces and carried nothing as heavy as a full milk jug. Stepping across grass, sidewalks, parking lots, dirt and/or sand, ramps, the slope of my bathtub, and thick carpeting still overrode my damaged ankle badly enough to alter my life every hour of the day — even with the more effective medicine — and the pain still invaded my dreams by nightmares and awakenings.

In the eighth year I tried acupuncture. Friends had recommended it earlier, and I’m not sure why it took so long for me to try it considering all the other methods and approaches I’d embraced. I wasn’t ready until I was ready. After the first treatment I cut the dosage of pain medicine in half. After the third treatment I stopped using it altogether.

That doesn’t mean I no longer felt pain in my ankle — far from it — but I became better able to handle it. Even so, I still had to tread lightly and carefully using my cane over all but the smoothest indoor surfaces — until this 10th year’s miracle allowed me to step freely again.

My grief as a widow has been similar, though the emotional pain was/is/was far worse than the physical. I consulted with experts (other mourners) and sought treatment (with a grief counselor) and I still face many sleep-interrupted nights due to grief. At three and a half years into my healing, I’m still figuring out how to balance my “dosage” of day-to-day living with my adapted way of walking on the uneven surfaces of widowhood.

At less than (or more than) a year since your friend’s loss, she is still adjusting the Velcro straps on her walking boot with every hobbled step she takes. Time will help her toward healing, but she must also maneuver through the emotions and realities along her altered footpath. She’s got a long road ahead as she learns to walk with a new gait. Offer her your arm — and your ear — in patient support, but “still” your tongue about how long it’s taking her.

___

A couple of important notes on this post:

*I adapted this post from my answer to a friend’s query on behalf of a loved one.

**The miracle of how I got rid of my cane is a separate story, one for which I am truly grateful!

03/09/2014

Why Daylight Savings Time (Still) Gives Me (More) Grief

I don’t know anyone who likes the twice a year body-clock havoc wrought by Daylight Savings Time. I never did — even before my husband’s death.

I thought it would get easier with time, but here I am, not long before the “official” hour to reset my clocks, writing about how much this spring’s time change “still” hurts. This will be my eighth widowed shifting of the digits. I thought I’d be used to it “by now.”

Changing my clocks hurts for two main reasons. The first is as personal to me as my grief is (and let me be clear — all grief is personal). The second applies to bereavement in general.

My husband was a stickler for timepiece accuracy. I am not. He liked having the seconds on the clock line up with “official” time. I prefer clocks set at least three minutes early to nudge myself toward being on time. Our first Daylight Savings Time weekend as newlyweds brought confusion — and comedy — as we both set and reset our few shared timepieces. As the number of clocks in our household grew over the next 24 years, so did our semi-annual scramble to set them according to his time or mine. It became a twice-yearly game (except when we lived in sensible, non-DST Arizona), and it was a fun prelude to the discomfort of adjusting our sleep-wake cycles.

The first time I changed our clocks by myself after he died felt wrong. It felt like cheating on our game. I couldn’t bring myself to change them all. How I wanted to walk into each room and find that room’s clock set to exactly the right time!

It felt just as improper the following spring — and the fall after, and the spring and fall after that. It felt equally wrong last spring and fall. It still feels awful.

Tonight’s anticipation of Daylight Savings Time brings me to the second, more general reason why DST and Standard Time changes make “the grief monster” more fierce.

When grief is new, every event that marks the passage of time — including the semi-annual time change — lands like a portcullis between life Before and life After the loved one’s death. Each event is a mile marker documenting the ever-increasing distance separating one soul from another.

With time markers such as holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries of all sorts, there are usually emotional histories and future plans connecting them. They each carry a particular pain of their own. But the regular shift from Standard to Daylight Savings Time happens year after year after year … just because legislators decided it should.

For those less new to their grief, it’s true that time will help it become less raw, but don’t try to tell them that unless they ask. Instead, listen to them. “In time” their grief will become seasoned. “With time” their grief will soften. “Over time” their grief can heal–but only in the way a deep, lacerating cut can heal — with a big, permanent scar. “Recovering” from bereavement doesn’t mean the bereaved will ever be able to turn back time to life Before, but it does mean they’ll someday be able to “spring forward.”

“Springing” may be a bit much. Reassure your mourning friends they’ll eventually move forward when they’re ready. Meanwhile, even “inching forward” shows progress.

02/24/2014

When Will Things Be Back to Normal for My Grieving Friend?

When will life get back to normal for a grieving friend? The short answer is simple: never. It won’t ever be the same.

The long-term answer is more complex. The reality is that when their loved ones died, so did the “old” life they knew. Almost as soon as the funerals end, friends of the bereaved settle back into “normal” routines. For them, “life goes on,” but for the bereaved it does not. (Please see my earlier post: Do NOT Tell the Bereaved “Life Goes On”.)

A couple of month after my husband died, I came across an old copy of a Life Change Index Scale.* It was a chart listing the “points” attributed to various stressful life changes. (Not life pauses or hiccups or bubbles. Changes.) For each pertinent event I’d experienced within a year, I was to add up the associated numerical ratings. At the bottom of the page, the scoring caution went something like this:

  • under 150 meant 30% chance of illness in the near future
  • 150 – 299 meant 50% chance of illness in the near future
  • 300+ meant 80% chance of developing illness in the near future

I actually laughed at my result. My score was over 750.

The reason I bring up this scale is that in every version I’ve seen since, the highest stress point value (100) is attributed to the death of a spouse. The deaths of other close family members are also highly ranked (63). For me, seeing those numbers on a black and white chart validated how off-kilter I felt. The first two words of the title — Life Change — acknowledged the irrevocable shift from my “old normal.”

Eventually, your grieving friends will forge a “new normal” path through life. This will likely take years. Yes, I said years. The minute by hour by day by week by month by year adjustments are huge, and the human mind and body can only handle so much at a time. Be patient with your friend, who probably won’t seem like himself or herself for a long time.

Early in my raw grief, I wondered when I would feel like myself again. Most people who’d been widowed much longer than me assured me that it would happen, but they alerted me not to expect it too soon. At first, I felt despair when they cautioned it took about three years for most of them. Three years?!? I didn’t know if I could make it feeling so horrible for three more days — how could I fathom feeling this way for three years?!?

The first year was difficult beyond description. My mind and body were so overloaded I have huge gaps in my memory. I look back over the things I wrote for myself in journals and in correspondence with other widows and widowers and, until I read my own words, I have no recollection of how I got through some months.

The second year was also brutal. During the second year I no longer felt the numbing effects of “widowed fog.” I’d thought the Year of Firsts was hard as I went through the first of every holiday and family commemoration without my husband. I’d experienced the same every-event renewal of loss the first year after Mom died, too. But during my second year as a widow, I was more aware of the increased responsibilities on my shoulders. I was more aware of how their father’s death impacted our children’s lives. I was beginning to learn to process the emotions I’d tried to ignore for the sake of getting through year one.

For me, the shift into “new normal” clicked into gear a couple of months before the third anniversary of his death. I’d known all along that — eventually — I’d be okay again. My faith had been at the core of that understanding, but it was an ethereal assurance. It took 34 months for me to begin to feel I was actually becoming okay again. That doesn’t mean I no longer dissolve into a puddle of tears from time to time, nor does it mean I don’t miss him anymore. I do both. Sometimes I still slip back into non-functioning hours when mustering the strength to hide in the pages of a good book is my best self-preservation tool. But even as I turn each page, I know when I reach the end of the chapter I’ll be able to step back into my life, my different life.

Please understand this about your grieving friends. They need time. They need your patience. They need your acceptance of how their grief impacts their lives.

I will always be grateful for those who didn’t rush me that I “should” feel or do what they thought appropriate. I will always appreciate those who did not shame me by inflicting “by now” or “already” assumptions upon me. I will always be indebted to them for listening to me without judgement. Please, do the same for your friends who’ve lost someone they love.

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*One such scale is available at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~eap/library/lifechangestresstest.pdf