How I got ... here

My crazy, active son

(link is to the pro photographer who took it - this was an 'outtake' shot)

To catch up, it's about four weeks after Ian's had heart surgery, and I've rushed him to hospital where he collapsed on arrival.

Once Ian was settled and awake again, we opted for me to head home and be with our son.  We were used to Ian being in hospital, so it was no biggie to either of us at the time for me to head off.  I had been advised he’d probably be moved to a high care ward as they weren’t sure what was going on.

At 3am I got a phone call to say that he was in ICU.  So I drop our son off at my parents (who were very conveniently located between our home and the hospital), and head into the hospital.  I was there for a couple of hours and he was scared, but still quite chatty. 

I went home for breakfast, then headed back to the hospital.  While Ian was relaying John’s antics to the nurse, he crashed.  At this point I thought I’d be a widow by the end of the day.   His cardiologist was interstate for the weekend, but flew home to manage his case.

Later that day, I wound up in a meeting with 5 heads of department from the hospital.  The first thing I was told is Ian had suffered a massive stroke, but they didn’t know the impact.  Then I got told, as they had suspected, Ian had the rarest of complications from his ablation – an atrial-oesophageal fistula.  A hole had formed between his heart and oesophagus.  This would kill him unless it was repaired, but the scar tissue from his past surgeries made everyone really nervous to try the usual repair options available.

Except the one specialisation that apparently gets everything that everyone else doesn’t want to touch – the radiographic surgeon.  They planned to insert a stent to block the hole under x-ray, and without inflating the area with gas to reduce the risk of a further stroke – a strategy they couldn’t find other records of.  And there was no guarantee he’d survive the surgery.

Our Minister and my step-mother kept me company while Ian was in surgery.  I was really relieved when I got the message he was back in ICU. 

Then started a three week battle to beat the various infections he had developed. 

Once he woke, we learned the extent of his stroke – language was gone, as was his left side mobility.  And he’d developed an interest in Australian Rules Football, which he’d detested prior (he was a soccer man and a Birmingham fan). Thanks to the efforts of staff, a stubborn personality and I’m sure his son, we managed to get to a good point medically, and he was released to the stroke ward.  

He did pretty well for the next 4 weeks or so, and then we found his oesophagus was growing through the stent and bleeding.  Back into ICU and yet more procedures.  The upshot- the stent could not be removed, and he’d likely die on the table during any attempt to do so.  So it had to stay put.

A few days later, Ian had his first seizure. 

Then we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. 

A few days later I was finally told there was no hope and given two options – either let his oesophagus rupture, which would be a traumatic end, or let infection win and give him a peaceful end. 

I chose the latter.

Ian passed away about a week later, on 14 June 2012. Ten days after our first wedding anniversary. 

We’d crammed more in 3 years and 3 days of knowing each other than many do in a lifetime.

Now 18 months later, I’m raising our crazy, active son the best I can, and facing my 40^th in 2014 with a life experience I never thought I’d have at this early in my life.

Sick

source

So, I was feeling really really strong after feeling not so strong. And then I got a stomach bug. And after a week of being stuck at home, semi-helpless, I felt my anxiety creep back in.

I don't get a little bug and just think "Oh, I'll be fine. It's just a bug," I think "I might be just a little sick, or...I might be very sick and will have to go through the illness and possibly my death without my partner with me."

This thought always sends me back to a place of powerlessness, even though I logically understand that I'm making up stories that have no basis in reality. Except, actually, my reality has been all about illness and death.

From the age of 5, illness has stolen my main caregivers and loved ones away one, by one. So, my fears might be seen as based in reality. My reality.

I go from feeling strong, capable and hopeful, to filled with fear and doubt with one small illness. That's all it takes. But the trick here, I think, is to keep feeling the fear and doubts and learn to tolerate them and live with them. They'll probably always be there. They're a part of me. But they're not me.

I'm bigger than them and I can exist with them without letting them guide my every action and thought.

And I can survive what life throws my way. Even if it's scary. 

Where We're Going

He died on a Tuesday. I can still remember screaming those animal sounds into the phone, tones I'd never heard come out of myself. Deep, guttural defiances... yelled at his dad on the other end of the line – every cell of me rejecting the words from his broken voice, “No baby, he's not okay...” The room is spinning. I remember flashes only. I remember pacing like a caged animal in the shock of it all, and coming back to the bedside where I stared at one of those old-timey pictures of us on the wall, in a teal frame, which I'd hung only days earlier. Suddenly, I am in the hallway, down on my knees, screaming still. Then on the floor, in the bedroom, calling my best friends, the first words I say, over & over, “You have to come over. You HAVE to come over!” followed by barely breathing words, “It's Drew. He was in a crash...... he... didn't make it...” I am lost in space. Gasping. Grasping at anything I can, but nothing exists. I am plummeting through an empty black void – a vast nothing. It is somewhere not earthly. In the explosive event of his death, I have left my body too. It is 8pm, June 12, 2012. I am 29 years old. And the love of my life, my future husband, is dead.

- -

It was a helicopter crash. He was working his first big contract up in Washington state doing agricultural flying. He was supposed to be gone for 3 months, but in the first week, while riding along with another pilot to scout out the job, the pilot hit a power line and they went down into a tree. Drew was killed almost instantly from a severe blow to the chest. I don't have to tell all of you how terrifying and disorienting those first weeks were… how lost I was. 

In the weeks before he died, we talked excitedly about the future and about getting married. I found the ring just a week before the crash and I later found out... he was planning to propose to me as soon as he returned from his trip. Although he never had the chance to propose, one night on the phone that week, he said to me, “what if I were to ask you soon?” I did the usual ruining-of-the-moment by trying to be logical about planning and coordinating... and then I stopped myself, and said with all the love in my heart and a big smile, “Whenever you ask me, I will say yes.” I  could hear his smile all the way from Washington to Texas, it was that big. That is why, although we never got to the true proposal, I will refer to him as my fiancé.

For a month I stayed with his family near Austin. I tried to go back home to Dallas,  go back to work and routine. I made it only 4 days. Routine wasn't helping me like people said it would. I was already unhappy at my job and could not see how I could ever deal with that on top of all my grief. I had friends, but no family in Dallas. I knew in my heart that staying wasn't right for me. I could feel him telling me to leave Dallas... not to run away from it, but to run towards what I needed, family. 

This was not my first run-in with death. I lost my Mom to breast cancer when I was nine, and my Dad to heart disease when I was 27. Being without my parents at such a young age has influenced and colored every aspect of my life and who I am. With my siblings also living far away, I'd become part of Drew's family pretty fast. So after he died - when they told me to come and stay with them at their ranch near Austin - it was a no brainer for me.

Within 3 months of his death, I quit my job, rallied all my incredible friends in Dallas to help me pack everything into boxes and get it into storage, piled my two cats and a carload of essentials into my hatchback and left Dallas in the dust. I got a part time job at an art gallery in Austin, which was something I'd always wanted to do. It was easy work that surrounded me with creativity and art and amazing people. It helped.

In the rest of my time, I did a lot of what I did when I lost my parents… I made art. Hiked around in the countryside, wrote endlessly, took a lot of photos, sat and stared quietly sometimes for hours at the hills and trees. I started painting for the first time in my life, and found it helped me to express some of the pain. I started selling some of my art here and there and showing it at a few galleries and shows. I started my Our 1000 Days blog to record my journey and our story. I listened to all kinds of music from classical to heavy metal, and took some art classes like welding and clay sculpting and jewelry-making. I went to a lot of art galleries and festivals just to be around art. I found that exposing myself to new things - whether appreciating art or watching documentaries or making things in a class - helped to give me a break from the emotions and helped me find some way to still see the wonder in the world. Sometimes, like with painting, it also ended up being a way to get some really deep emotions out. Art in all its forms has saved my life.

I don't know why I decided to change everything after he died, except to say that for me, that life died and I no longer had any desire to try and continue it. I wanted his death to change everything. I wanted it to propel me off into some completely alternate direction, some big great unknown. I wanted it to help me take the chances I never took, and try the things I never tried. I wanted his death to alter me beautifully and exactly as much as his life did. I realize this may not be the usual way people deal with this sort of thing, but I guess it is just my way of making some meaning from it all.

- - -

This pretty much brings us up to now. The gallery I've been working at is closing in just a few weeks, so right as I am beginning to write to you, there is another part of this journey that is ending. It's pretty scary, as that had become some part of my new normal… and other than doing some design work for my mother-in-law (although I am not formally their daughter-in-law, it's just easier for us all to refer to each other this way now, and so we do), I really have no steady income and no concrete idea where my life is going to go from here. It's all wide open.

But I have some ideas. Before he died I had only dreams of being a writer and an artist and making a different in people's lives with my creativity. Since he died, I have dropped everything to pursue those dreams (albeit at a snails pace, because I'm also dealing with the grief). I have sold some of my art, written many pieces that I am very proud of, and gained a great deal of confident in myself as an artist and someone who can help people. That's a big thing for me to admit… because honestly, deep down, there is still a part of me that doesn't believe I am big enough to ever help anyone. But slowly the part of me that knows I can is gaining momentum.

I have no clue how anything will unfold in the next year or two or ten. All I know is that I've lost my mother, my father, and the love of my life, all before the age of 30. I've been dealing with death and grief and learning to live through it for over 20 years already, and I'm only 31. I'd have to be a complete idiot not to take that as a sign to help others out somehow. So I'm setting my compass there and letting go, trusting that someone out there - perhaps a particularly handsome pilot I know - will be guiding me.

Compare

“We envy others, for we see their lives in broad outline, while forced to live ours in every detail.”

— Robert Brault

I'm leading a weekend with a group of widows for our organization and there was one commonality within the group:

All had felt that their life, choices, look, path was less than when they compared it to others. Even more so, that it was magnified after losing their stake in ground (i.e. spouse).

Having no where else to compare, they turned to the internet/social media (the route many of us take to seek out fellow grief travelers), to feel connected.

I think for many, we find those connections and they are undoubtedly solid and lasting, but comparison may have or find a way to creep into our lives.

My wish for you all is that you never feel the need to compare. Heck, if you had me read my own blogs 5 years ago, I'd become more depressed! Mostly because I could never envision the positivity that has ensued over the last few years, and I was at a place where I'd feel 'less than' on my journey.

There were even moments where I thought I was failing at being a widow because I wasn't following in the footsteps of many others or found myself going from grief stage 4 with a sudden drop to stage 1.

It was in doing a "Robert Frost" and never turned around to see if or how others were taking the route, that my journey through widow-hood, and life, became a much more pleasant one.

Know that your journey is yours alone. One that you do not have the right to compare to others. One that others should never compare to yours. You'll thank yourself for it.

Comparison has a way of being a thief of joy.

Zip up your purse and hold it close to your side. ;)

Toolbox

I don't do drugs of any kind. 

I rarely drink. Wine gives me headaches and makes me fall asleep, I think beer tastes like gasoline (not that I've ever consumed gasoline, but if I did, I know it would taste like beer), and I'm way too wimpy for hard liquor type-stuff. 

So, two and a half years ago, when life pushed me at 100 mph onto this freight train called grief, it was never even a thought in my brain to use alcohol or drugs as part of my coping mechanisms. This is not a judgement on anyone who has - it is just a statement of fact. 

I did, however, find other ways to cope. I latched on to other addictions, and used them as my crutches to hold me up when I couldn't walk. And in the beginning of this nightmare, walking felt like something I had never done before. My legs were jello and they felt shaky and foreign, like they belonged to someone else. 

In the beginning, and today, there were 3 things that became and remain my ways of coping. Three things, more or less, that I hold onto and use as the tools inside my toolbox, to help me get through each day:

1. WRITING - Two nights after my husband's sudden death, late, somewhere around 4am, I was furiously typing away at the computer at my parent's house. I was staying with them for the night in Massachusetts, and we had to be up in 3 hours to drive back from there to New Jersey, where my husband and I had lived for 7 years, for his funeral services. I remember my dad coming into the room saying: "Are you sure you want to do this? You don't have to, you know." I was writing his Eulogy, which I would deliver the next morning to that huge crowd of family, friends, and loved ones. And yes, I did have to. 

And from that day on, writing was never a choice. It was never something that I logically decided to do. It just came to me. It fell out of me. It let my soul free itself, and I could say whatever the hell I wanted. It felt awful and wonderful and scary and intoxicating. I started writing down everything. First on Facebook, then in my personal blog (www.ripthelifeiknew.com), then in the form of a one-woman play about his death, then in Widow's Voice, then in Modern Widow's Club, then - and now - in the form of my book, which has a tentative goal release date for late spring 2014. It started out as being a way to cope, to get things out of me that needed to come out. It became so much more, when other people starting reading my words and responding to them, and thanking me for simply writing the brutal truths about death and grief. Writing gave me a reason to breathe again, and everytime some new person tells me that something I wrote helped them or moved them in some way, it makes me want to take just a few more breaths, and then maybe a couple more. 

2. HUMOR - Whenever someone implies or asks the question of: "How can you laugh at something so serious and sad and horrible like death?", my response is usually: "How can you not?" I have always had a pretty twisted sense of humor. My husband had a very sick sense of humor. He was hilarious. He found humor in both silly things and dark things. He served in the Air Force, in Desert Storm. He was also a paramedic the entire time I knew him. He witnessed and experienced a lot of trauma in his short 46 years of life. Him and his EMS partners would cope with things like pulling little kids out of a car wreck,or watching a person die right in front of them - with humor. Everyone he worked with had that same sense of humor. Honest. Brutal. Funny. Him and I used to laugh probably more than we did just about anything else. So when he died so abruptly and unfairly, my humor kicked in right away, and I could literally hear him laughing his huge laugh, at how ridiculous this all is. Taking my pain and making it funny became a way of life. First I brought it to the stage, with my stand-up comedy. Then I brought that stand-up comedy to Camp Widow, where I presented my comedy workshop, and will again in 2014. I am always finding ways to make the pain funny, and when I do, I can feel him laughing with me. If I didn't laugh, I would probably die. 

3. SUPPORT - Before losing my husband, I didnt really have much experience with death. Sure, like most people, I had lost grandparents and a few other significant people  in my life. But nothing that was even in the same universe as the magnitude of this. So I didn't know much about grief. Even so, some sort of weird inner-instinct kicked in when it happened, and I immediately knew that I was going to need help. A lot of help. I knew that I would need to reach out, and find support in any way that I could. Family. Friends. Grief-counseling. Widowed Support Groups. Social Groups. Facebook Widowed Online Groups. Connecting with widowed people from all over the world. Attending Camp Widow. Saying yes to everything that was offered to me. Searching for more, and taking it all in. Because even with all that support, you can and you DO still feel alone. So alone. But sometimes if you are feeling very, very alone - and you can go to a place like Facebook and say it out loud and then have other people tell you: "Yes. I get it. I feel that way too" - sometimes, that can save your life. At least for today. 

So what is in your survival toolbox?

(Pictured: me and my husband Don, acting incredibly silly together.)

....and breathe ....

Today was school break-up day.  Party Day.  Unofficial last day of the school year (except for tomorrow which is clean and scrub every single thing in the classroom day).
I have been counting down to this day for the past month. 
My class are tired.
I am exhausted (and for those non-teachers who scoff, don't until you've done it.  I used to work in a "normal" job as a research scientist and I thought deadlines were annoying.  It's like that but with the entire emotional health of everyone you work with thrown in as well).


But, as always, I pulled myself together to make today awesome for my class .... and I got talking to a wonderful Grandmother who has helped out in our classroom this year.

We all call her "Bumma" and I am sad to say that I don't know her real name, just the nickname her Grandson gave her when he was little.

Turns out that Bumma is a widow too.

An older widow, that's for sure, but she KNOWS and talking to her was just what I needed today. 
We talked about how it is so good to keep busy and feel like your have a reason to wake up and get moving each day.
We talked about how much we miss them ALL the time and especially during the holidays.
We talked about it not getting easier, but that we have just learned to live next to the grief.

...and it felt so good to have that conversation.

I have one more day of school before we break for Summer holidays ... and my flagging energy has been restored by a little lady whos real name I still don't konw.

Thank you Bumma!

Tears Amongst Happiness ......

                                                                          source


...... is what I've experienced this week.
Yes, this is the time of year when I usually experience my annual "death march".  The time that my body marks, better than any earthly calendar.  The days leading up to Jim's unexpected death on December 18, 2007.

This has been a good year.  In many ways.
And yet, it seems unbelievable that I am coming up on 6 years.

It seems even more unbelievable that I'm not experiencing the usual depression and hatred of all thing Christmas-related.

But that doesn't mean that there haven't been tears.

The other night I was writing to a friend, telling her how happy I was that she was able to be traveling all over the world with her husband right now, with her kids in college.  As I started to write those words, the tears began to flow.  And I admitted to her that I am envious.
Envious because that is what I should be doing right now, with Jim.
But I'm not.

I'm still able to be happy for her, and to smile through the tears.

Tonight, I took my mom to see Billy Crystal's one-man show, entitled "700 Sunday's".
I had no idea what the title meant, I only knew that it was about his life.
And that he's incredibly talented.
And that I truly enjoy him.

But ...... here's what I found out:  "700 Sundays" refers to how many Sundays he estimates that he had (his favorite family day of the week) with his dad ...... before he died when Billy was 15.

He had a great childhood, to say the least, until his father died.
In the show, he talks about the night his father died, and how his mother came home to tell him about it, when he was in bed, asleep.

And as he talked about this point in his life, time seemed to swirl around me ...... and then it took me back to the wee hours of December 18th, 2007.
The night I climbed into bed with my 15 year old (and then my 13 year old) ...... and had to tell him that, in spite of what I had been told, what I had believed, what I had told him ...... his dad had died.

The tears would not stop flowing.  He talked about how his father's death affected his life, emotionally, physically and financially.  And suddenly, I could see December 18, 2007 ...... and its aftermath ...... through the eyes of my 15 year old.

I wish I could have seen it that way then ...... but I could not.  And, truth be told, if it were to happen all over again, I believe I'd react the same way.  I lost my husband, my first love, my best friend, my protector, my supporter, my cheerleader, my moral compass, the father of my children ...... my future, in one unexpected moment.
I doubt that I'd react any differently now, though I wish I could've.
It was what it was.

So tonight I laughed.  And laughed and laughed and laughed.
And I cried, and cried and cried.
It was a great show.  It was very moving and very emotional, which I did not expect.

Two years ago, this show would've done me in.
I would've been depressed for weeks.

But tonight ...... tonight I can see it for what it was.  A true story, with many, many laughs over happy memories.
A true story with many, many tears ...... because that's what life is.
Tears amongst happiness.

It used to be smiles amongst sadness ...... but that's changed.
I'm mostly happy.
Tears still come, as they have this week ...... and as I'm sure they will continue to come at this time of year.
But I am happy.  And I know that the tears will not come in waves that will pull me under.
Like they used to.

Everyone has happy memories.
And everyone has sad memories.
Which makes me ...... normal.

I thank God for normal.
Now.
:)