My Story — Epilogue

As a conclusion to my story (read parts I, II, III, and IV if you missed them), I thought I would bring you up to date and give you some idea as to how I see life these days, now that I have a wedding band on my finger once again.

First off, I can't stress enough how much of a difference my free Vipassana 10-day silent meditation course has made in my life. No, I don't meditate on a daily basis, at least not in a formal way. It is more of a life perspective, a new, better way for me to look at the world. Had I not invested that kind of time and effort in fully healing from my grief, I highly doubt that I ever would have attracted my new wife.

I've been asked some interesting questions by a close widower friend of mine. Do I truly love my new wife? Yes. I didn't jump into a relationship because I was lonely and had a hole in my heart to fill. Do I love her the same way I loved my late wife? No. She and my late wife have little in common. And I am at a much different stage in my life than when I was first married at age 22. I believe we love people individually. I love my son much differently than I love my new wife, or than I love my sister, brother, father, or mother. And that's fine.

At the wedding, I was more emotional than I had anticipated during the vows. But I did not hold back any of that emotion. I have learned by now to let my emotions express themselves as they will. And besides, those vows were not empty words to me this time, or rather, concepts that I had not yet experienced. "In sickness and in health." Well, I have a much better appreciation as to what "sickness" can mean now. "For better or for worse." I have plumbed the depths of worse, survived, and am now thriving. Yet the mere act of uttering the words brought back memories to reflect that hard-earned experience, resulting in the flood of emotion. And I was reminded that all our problems in this life are a result of our memories. And that was OK. I was aware of this, and I went with the flow.

Am I happy now? Yes. But keep in mind, I was happy before I met my new wife. Or rather, I was at peace. And I am at peace still. Life is different now, sure, but life is always changing. I no longer cling to moments of pleasure and recoil from moments of discomfort. Well, not too much anyway ;-) I observe them and let them go. And yes, I fully participate in them! ;-) Vipassana hasn't made me a doormat. Oh no. It has allowed me to fully enjoy a precious moment and then let it go, thereby freeing me up to fully experience the next moment.

This is a big change from a few years ago. I am now acutely aware of just how much I was living in either the past or the future. Mostly the future. Things were going to be so much better in the future! Well, as Yogi Berra said, the future just ain't what it used to be ;-)

Over the last month or so, I've spent a good deal of time pondering just what grief and bereavement are. I think I've come to the conclusion that they are a devastation of our ego. It is our ego that is shattered. So much of who we thought we were was knit together with the life of our dead spouse. When our spouse died, our ego was undone — shattered. It reacted violently, causing a painful frenzy of thoughts about the past and a gut-wrenching deluge of anxieties about the future. It is almost like our ego is bent and determined to ensure we never spend a moment focused on the now, the present moment. Why? Because that is the beginning of the end of the ego.

Being present with right now, the present moment, is the key to fully healing from the pain of bereavement. If you examine the list I made at the beginning of June of ways to facilitate grieving, notice how each one of them is intended to focus your attention on the present moment. It is only in the present moment that we can be at peace. And really, it is only in the present moment that we can be at all.

My Story IV

This is the last part of a recent speech I gave about my grief journey. Read part I, part II,and part III if you missed them.

I've gathered many insights along the way, and I'd like to quickly share 8 of those insights with you now.

The first one is that humans are notoriously bad with causality. Why did Deb get cervical cancer? Who knows. Why did she die at age 32? Who knows. Spending hours and hours thinking about these types of "why" questions didn't really get me anywhere in my grieving. Eventually, I learned to make peace with ambiguity. I don't need to know why.

The second insight is that I needed to learn how to love myself first. I had spent so much of my time caring for Deb and my son that I hadn't taken any time for me. I had to learn how to treat myself well, and that meant doing things that made me feel good, not necessarily those around me. I also learned to say "no" to pressures from work and friends to do things that would take up my time. I needed all my spare time to grieve.

The third insight is that grief is largely a feeling process, not a thinking process. Intellectualizing my grief was not very helpful, but expressing my grief with my body was helpful. The techniques I learned from The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing were very helpful. I found I could help the process along by managing my sensory environment and making choices that relaxed my five senses. I put artwork on my walls; I listened to smooth jazz at home and classical music at work; I learned a bit about essential oils and made sure my house smelled nice; I ate good-tasting food, even if my senses were dulled for a while; and I wore clothes that made me feel good about myself. I smiled a lot, whether I felt like it or not. And I walked outside in nature as often as I could.

The fourth insight is that stress exists because we insist. You'll recall that when I was trying to sell my house to move to Central America, I experienced major bodily stress. As soon as I abandoned all those plans, and decided to go with the flow of grief, that bodily stress went away. It was an important lesson. Even today, whenever I feel stress, I stop and examine how I am trying to resist the flow of life. When I stop resisting, the stress evaporates. I learned how to go with the flow.

The fifth insight is that we are goal-seeking entities. We are designed to always have a goal out in front of us. Once I started diligently learning about grief, I realized that my new goal was to be at peace with Deb's death. The question I started asking myself all the time was, "how can I be at peace?" With this question as my goal, I started finding answers.

Sixth insight: I learned this concept from the Vipassana meditation course I attended in Quebec and subsequent studying on the subject afterwards. Our thoughts and feelings are impermanent. The whole purpose of our brain is to generate thoughts which lead to movement. The pattern is: a thought comes up, which leads to a feeling somewhere in the body, which leads to action of some kind. But because grief is primarily a feeling process, we don't need our brains to generate thoughts to have feelings – we already have way more feelings than we know what to do with! But how do we quiet the mind? What I learned by sitting in that gloomy hall for 10 hours a day for 10 days was how to allow a thought to come up and pass away without acting on it. I was fine to just be, I didn't have to do anything. To put it simply, we are human beings, not human doings.

Seventh insight: I learned this from a Hawaiian healing method called ho'oponopono. When I look back on my life, I see that every single one of my problems originated from my memory. Looking back on the past and comparing it to the present is a recipe for misery. So, I learned a technique for dealing with my memories and letting them go. I can make a choice: I can live in the past, from my memory, or I can live in the present, from my 5 senses. The healing technique is very simple. Whenever I find myself reliving a memory, I say 4 simple phrases: I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you. This helps me let go of the memory and reminds me to live in the present. You can read more about this amazing technique on my blog.

And lastly, I've glommed onto a set of simple, yet profound, guidelines for running my life. When I go to do anything, I remind myself that I'm going to do it as follows: in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, and for the good of all. The result of following these simple guidelines? A peaceful, stress-free life. I love the expression, "how you do anything is how you do everything."

I’ll leave you tonight with one more insight that I learned second-hand. This one comes from Ecuador. A shaman there was recently asked what he thought the biggest problem was with North Americans. He thought for a moment and said, "They don't respect endings." Why? Probably ignorance. Endings are really beginnings.

My Story III

This is part III of a recent speech I gave about my grief journey. Read part I and part II if you missed them.

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Ten months out. I am always on the verge of tears. I cry at my desk at work. I cry eating supper at home with my son. I cry reading grief books on the bus on the way to and from work. I'm now a regular here at BFO. I tell the group session, "I feel like I'm in a nightmare that's never going to end."

Thirteen months out. I begin a BFO closed group session, meeting with ten other widows and widowers every week for ten weeks. I find it very, very helpful. Not so much because of what is being said there, but because I am now focusing heavily on healing. And I begin looking every day for helpful insights that I can share with the group.

Fourteen months out. I can't sleep. My skin is crawling, and I want to tear it off. This feels horrible. But I know what this is. By now I have read about how the chemical addiction withdrawal symptoms of grief can be eerily similar to those that heroin addicts experience when they go cold turkey. But why am I feeling like this now, at 2 am? Oh yeah. It is now Mother's Day.

Seventeen months out. I am spending the weekend with the woman I had tried to have a relationship with the previous year. She is still a very nice woman. I am still not ready for a relationship. But now, I can see that while we have a great deal in common, there are some key areas in which we are not very compatible. I am not falling in love with her. We discuss it, and she agrees that we are good friends but that's it. We part amicably, no hard feelings. I am still alone, still a single dad. I am still in pain from time to time, but the pain is less.

Nineteen months out. After some encouragement from a friend here at BFO, I start a blog and begin writing about ways to recover and heal from grief. I do this for a number of reasons, not least of which is that I want to give back and help others. You can't forget the title: My Spouse Is Dead dot com.

Twenty-one months out. I attend a silent meditation course to learn a particular meditation technique called Vipassana. I have never done any kind of formal meditation before, ever. For 10 hours every day for 10 days, I sit in dim silence and practice. Going in, I had thought that being alone with myself for this long will be emotionally traumatic, but it is not. Instead, it is an amazing experience that proves to be a major key to my healing and recovery process. I never look at the world the same way ever again. I am now at peace. The pain is gone.

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Those are the highlights of my grief and healing journey. I’ll pass around a few of the books that have been helpful to me along the way. I have a complete list of all these books on my blog, along with summaries and excerpts. The The Grief Recovery Handbook; How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies; The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing; The Sedona Method.

Part IV is next...

My Story II

This is part II of a speech about my story (read part I here) that I gave recently at Bereaved Families of Ontario:

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One month out. I receive the first "AfterLoss" newsletter the funeral home signed me up for. I don't want to read about how people grieve. I just want to get on with my life. I sure don't want to read about pain and how it will go on for a long time, or how grief is forever. I don't really feel pain. Besides, I have been busy grieving ever since Deb said goodbye to me. I'm pretty much finished now. Or so I think.

Three months out. My very annoying alarm clock goes off at 8:00 am, signaling it is time to get up and go to work. Beep, beep, beep. I stare up at the ceiling and think, "Life is pointless." I do this for the next 3 and a half hours. At 11:30, I finally get up, turn off the alarm, get ready, and go to work.

Four months out. I've been noticing that my perception of time is off, like everything is delayed a half-second or so. Colours seem dim, no longer vivid. Food has little taste. I feel very strange. Later I will learn that I am still physically, emotionally, and chemically addicted to Deb, and that I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms. I am numb.

Five months out. I meet a very nice woman online, and I ask her out. Why am I dating at five months? Death did us part. As I said, my emotional connection to Deb was over 15 months before she died. And due to cervical cancer, any physical connection between us was impossible. And I want my young son to have a new mom. And besides, I know that I am happiest when I am loving someone else. But right now I am not experiencing happiness. Instead, it feels like someone is taking a big yellow marker and highlighting everything that I have lost.

Six months out. I'm starting to become unglued. I have been pushing forward with my plans to move to Central America, a huge dream of mine for many years. But as I get ready to sell my house, I begin having anxiety attacks. I can feel my blood pressure rising, and I suspect I might soon have a heart attack. Full stop. I listen to my body. I stop all plans for selling my house and moving. I break off my fledgling relationship. I shelve any plans I have for the rest of my life. I later learn that planning for the future is a major grief trigger. I stare grief in the face. Looks like I'm going to have to grieve after all. But what is grief, anyway?

Seven months out. I am in deep pain. It feels like someone ripped my chest open with a jagged sword. I walk down the stairs here for the first time. I don't want to be here. I am a little scared about what I will learn about myself here. I toy briefly with the idea of writing "Cornelius" on my nametag, like Tyler Durdon does in the movie Fight Club. In the group session, I hear stories of other widows and widowers who are experiencing similar things to me. And I hear a story from someone with circumstances worse than my own. This somehow makes me feel a little better. Maybe even a little smug.

Part III coming soon...

My Story

In less than 48 hours, the title of this blog will no longer be appropriate for me ;-) That's right, I am getting married. I can remember sitting on my couch about two weeks after I attended my 10 day silent meditation course, thinking, "I have never been so at peace, being alone, in my entire life." And of course, I met my fiancé just a few days later :-)

A lot has come together for me since I learned how to meditate and quiet my mind. Not just meeting and falling in love with my soon-to-be-wife, but also being at total peace with Deb's death. I can listen to her voice or watch a video of her and feel nothing but peace. Such a far cry from two years ago!

Because I'll be busy (!) for the next few days, I thought I'd share a speech I gave in June to Bereaved Families of Ontario. I talk a bit about my journey and the many lessons that I have learned. I hope you will find it helpful.

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Hi, my name is Vic. I'm a 36 year old widower. Tonight I'd like to tell you a little bit about my story, share some of my experiences, and reveal some of the valuable insights that I've gleaned from my grief journey. At the end, I'll be happy to take any questions you may have, but I'll tell you right up front, I am an expert on one person's grief, and one person's grief only: mine. Still, there are some common threads that bereaved people tend to share, so it is my hope that you are able to take even just one thing home with you tonight that would be both helpful and healing.

First, a bit of back-story. I was married to my wife Deb for 12 and a half years, and she died at age 32 of cervical cancer. We found out in childbirth. Or rather, I had my first inkling that something was wrong just a few hours before my son was born. We were working with a midwife at the hospital, and when she was checking for dilation, she noticed something. "Probably just a polyp," she said, smiling. But her eyes weren't smiling. This is my first clue.

September 2003. Two months after my son is born, Deb finally has her consultation with her gynecologist. She meets me after work with the stroller, in tears. Cervical cancer. At this point in time, we aren't thinking about death. It is caught in the very early stages, and besides, young people don't die of cancer. We are more upset about the upcoming hysterectomy and the resulting loss of fertility. No more kids.

Six months later. We get the results of a PET scan: no traces of cancer. The operation, chemo, and radiation are a success. But we do not celebrate. These tests aren't foolproof. Somehow I know that things are going to get worse. How much worse, I have no idea.

Christmas, 2004. The results of a test are in. Yes, all this recent pain is a result of the cancer that is back, hard. We are looking at major, major surgery and heavy chemo. The oncologist says, "There's more to tell, but that's enough for now." This is my second clue.

Late January, 2005. The doctor says, "You have a mean survival time of 3-6 months." When we get home from that terrible hospital meeting, Deb looks at me and says, "Well, I guess this is goodbye." And the emotional connection I share with my wife is over, just like that.

March 29, 2006. Fifteen months, countless chemo, radiation, and surgical procedures later. I'm leaning up against the back of my car in the parking lot of the hospital, eating a banana. I have been up for over 48 hours. I have just kissed the lifeless forehead of my now dead wife minutes before. Strangely, I feel nothing. My thoughts at this time are, "Well, that's over. Now I'm a widower. Now what?"

Part II tomorrow night...