Cry, Cry, Cry

It turned into quite a beautiful spring day. We spent a lot of time playing in the yard with Phoenix, yard games, basketball, and a few tasks. Weekends still feel off without Chris, but I'm doing my best to get through them and provide some fun for the kids while getting the usual jobs done. One thing that I've gotten used to doing that Chris always took care of is packaging up the trash and recycling to take to the town transfer station. The dump closes at 6pm on Saturday and it's good to get there before the last second rush. I wanted to get rid of the trash since Phoenix is very interested in the full trash bags on the porch. As the afternoon proceeded toward evening, I loaded up and J helped me with the trash and recycling, with the bonus of then going to the Swap Shop. This is a place where residents can leave items they are done with but could have use for others, and people can pick up what they want. J loves finding trinkets at the Swap Shop and happily poked around to see what was there. As she looked for treasures, I idly rifled through a box of CDs. I did a double take as I saw the album Cry, Cry, Cry. As I often do, I became lost in my memories.

Cry, Cry, Cry is the name of a folk group that performed in the late 1990's, comprised of our favorite Dar Williams and two other singers Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell. We didn't know much about this group until last year. Chris was always on the lookout for Dar's performances, and he saw that Cry, Cry, Cry was getting back together for a tour and had a performance in Northampton on 3/31/18 (the night before Easter). He bought tickets, reserved a hotel room so I wouldn't have to drive back late at night, and asked our niece to babysit overnight. It was our last overnight alone not counting the hospice house of course. 

We arrived in Northampton well before the show, checked in, then wandered around town to find a place to eat. We had been to Northampton to see Dar several times, at least three other times in this town, the first at the Calvin Theatre and then at the Ironhorse Music Hall a couple of times. That night was a relatively nice evening for the time of year, and the streets were full of people similarly enjoying spring. We headed for the Northampton Brewery but found it absolutely packed when we arrived. We shared a laugh because this was not the first time we had been shut out of this place before a Dar Williams concert. We tried to find a different restaurant but many were jammed with people and the show time was approaching. Finally we ended up at Amanouz Cafe, a Morrocan/Mediterranean place. As I often did in the last year, I ordered for both of us because Chris struggled to get the right words at times and it made situations like ordering stressful and awkward. On this particular weekend, Chris's word-finding issues were getting more pronounced and he was having a lot of vision problems. We were worried, but we enjoyed our time together.

The timing ended up to be perfect for the show - the doors were opening just as we arrived at the theater. In a turn of coincidence, we ran into some parent friends from Southborough. I remember being stressed because in our small talk, Chris could not come up with Dar Williams' name, calling her "the woman." Alarm bells were clanging loudly in my head. This was not like him. Dar's music was so special to Chris that it surprised me he couldn't say her name...

We took our seats and settled in together. Chris always liked to get seats close to the front for performances, his thinking being that if we were making the effort and spending the money to go, it was definitely worth it to pay more for better seats. We were on the side but close enough to really see the singers. We smiled when Dar took the microphone to speak and exchanged a look, one of those looks that couples share that convey the understanding of a lifetime together. We both were reliving many memories of listening to Dar's music and chasing around to catch her live.

We weren't familiar with the other two singers nor the Cry, Cry, Cry music, but in a way that made the concert more special. We sat back and let the new-to-us music wash over us. Chris had listened to one song ahead of time, The Ballad of Mary Magdalen, and he nudged me as the group began to play it. The song was plaintively beautiful, and the lyrics complex and interesting to think about.

The Ballad of Mary Magdalen

Chris loved the concert. He enjoyed it fully despite the worry and uncertainty of the moment in our lives. We both had tears in our eyes from the beauty of the rich harmonies and the bittersweet feeling of this maybe being the last time. In fact, it was the last time we saw Dar.

When I saw the Cry, Cry, Cry album in the Swap Shop I had to have it. I brought it home and played it immediately. As the first song filled the dining room, I remembered the feeling of that trip to Northampton. I had been so worried and stressed about GBM, the future, and losing Chris. I wish I could have set that aside and enjoyed that moment a bit better. There's no revising how I felt then, it was what it was. Now I can listen and listen, remember and remember, whenever I want. Some of the song lyrics touch off meaning out of context from the actual songs, and Chris would understand how I find him in these songs even though that wouldn't make sense to an outsider. He often talked about how he found music meaningful even if the context wasn't quite perfect for his connection to it. As I listen to one particularly gorgeous, harmonious song a repeated line makes me weep: 

I know what kind of love this is. I know what kind of love this is. I know what kind of love this is.

I do know what kind of love we have. This love is the real deal. The kind of love that lasted an entire marriage, through a crazy dramatic terminal illness, right up to the double doors when death parted us, and beyond. And beyond.  I know what kind of love this is. I am the luckiest person for having found this love. He also knew what kind of love this is, and what a gift to know that he did. I just want Chris back to draw sustenance from it with me in person...

I Know What Kind of Love This Is

There's another track that is fitting to my current state, hopefully, called By Way of Sorrow. The last of the lyrics are below. The music makes you want to tap your foot and the message is uplifting. Maybe if I listen enough I can believe that the sorrow and tears of the present are just part of a path toward something different.

All the nights that joy has slept
Will awake to days of laughter
Gone the tears that you have wept
You'll dance in freedom ever after

You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you'll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

By Way of Sorrow

A simple trip to the dump and Swap Shop gave me the gift of music, memory, and connections to Chris. I know that Cry, Cry, Cry meant something to Chris. He took a picture of the cafe where we had dinner as he did of the concert tickets. I have tucked them away in our scrapbook containing tickets and playbills from special times. I'll keep these things and always remember how special he was.

Not Wanting to Leave Chris Behind

Our canine family member was adopted 3/28 and the kids and I haven't looked back. Phoenix is wonderful! Most evenings after the kids are in bed she puts her paws up on my legs until I invite her up to curl against me in my lap. I have been known to let her lie on my chest as I read or watch tv. It is not conducive to writing, working, housework, or anything productive in a standard, future-oriented way. It's been about living in the moment with that pup and it's done me some good. The shine of new puppy life is wearing off though, or maybe it's the four potty accidents in one day that made me put Phoenix in her yard (pen) outside her home (crate) for the evening. She happily put herself to bed and I was glad. I needed to write. I finished off my last entry that was started before we adopted her, a couple weeks ago. I'm feeling something different tonight that I wanted to work on, though. Last night we went to family bereavement group and it was good. Mostly I listen to the other parents because A) I'm new and B) they are so much farther out than me. This group shows me that I'm just at the very beginning of this, with a lot of work ahead of me... I don't love that feeling. But the nudge to keep processing is probably healthy, and I know that writing for me is, too. So, here I am again.  

Yesterday marked three months since Chris died. I struggled with the 8th as it approached because it is starting to feel like a long time ago that he was here and we had normal family time. A large part of my mind is still consumed with identifying key dates and marking time in relationship to them. For example, it was five months ago today that we left on our last family trip. It was a difficult one because we fully knew it was the last time to visit MN family and our last trip, but it was still a good one. Chris and I enjoyed time alone together at some of our favorite St. Paul haunts - coffee shop, lunch/dessert cafe. I remember talking earnestly and deeply as we often did in the last two years. At other times the kids played with their cousins while Chris took it all in calmly. There was one last sibling dinner out, the energy muted a bit compared to other years. As we deplaned in Boston, Chris stumbled in the aisle as his right leg wouldn't cooperate for a minute. We knew it could mean nothing good and of course everything got worse rapidly after that... 

I do mark time since Chris actually died and sometimes still obsess over the darkness of December and early January, but I return more frequently to the lasts of the reasonably good time with him right up until November 30th. The time ticks quietly by. Five months ago we traveled as a family, nearly five months ago we celebrated Chris's 41st birthday at a favorite restaurant, had our last Thanksgiving, did our last Christmas shopping together, and enjoyed our last outing on a weekend as a family of four. Thinking about these precious times brings Chris back to my mind with vivid clarity which is a dichotomy of amazing blessing and devastating pain. I love him so much and feel relieved when I can close my eyes and hear his voice in my head, but then I have to open them up and see that he is gone all over again. It's those moments when I miss him so much it's hard to breathe. Still. Again. Whatever fitting word. The intensity of the missing has not lessened, if anything it is worse.  

Those five months since good times can be counted on one hand making it seem in the recent past, but that's almost half a year ago now... Whether distant or recent, the perception of time doesn't particularly matter. Chris is gone now. I still think of him every hour and long for him, I long for that elusive feeling of "us" that was the foundation of our life. I still love him with all of my heart, even more if that is possible. Now that I know how it all ended, I cannot believe the calm and peace that Chris lived with. Obviously I am biased, but I do not think most people could withstand what he did with so much grace. I am so deeply grateful for the love he showed under the shadow of the incredible sadness of saying goodbye. I want to debrief with him about everything that has happened. I want so much to tell him how I am amazed by how he handled everything.

Chris is gone. The world of Betsy and Chris is over. Us against the world is now me alone in the world.

I have to write those words tonight in effort to make my brain accept it. This need to push acceptance has been rattling around in my mind since I read a book that a widow generously sent me (her own memoir, Beauty in the Brokenness, by Dr. Angela Lindenmuth Marick). Her journey had some remarkable similarities to mine and I read with great interest, but her book laid clear one difference. She was able to accept quickly that her world as she knew it was over. She took off her rings early and that felt right to her. She found new love at three months post-loss and married about a year later. I'm just not remotely close to that.

I've been fighting honest, deep acceptance hard, for so long. I see now that in all of the struggles of 2017 and 2018 I could not truly wrap my head around the idea that Chris would really and truly die, leaving us behind. We prepared pragmatically and "intellectually accepted" it, but I myself could just not fully get there. Now, loving him and missing him so deeply makes me feel all the more that it cannot be possibly true that he is gone, that we are over. What we had was so special it cannot possibly fit the mold of everyday death, surely we were so close that we could escape the disintegration wrought by brain cancer. It's idiotic. It's magical thinking. It's protective neural circuits kicking in. It's a powerful force. Or maybe I'm one goshdarn stubborn person holding on with a vice grip... 

The season is definitely changing to spring around these parts. As it always does, it comes in bursts of gloriously warm weather followed by spells of cold, damp regressions to near winter. Two steps forward, one and a half back so it seems. Still, when one looks back, there has been progress toward spring. Longer days, crocuses, daffodils, mud. It would be great to draw a personal analogy here and claim slow progress in healing, but that is honestly not the case. Deep within me there is a recalcitrant resistance against moving forward because I do not want to leave Chris behind. I don't want his story to be over. I don't want our story to be over. If I could, I'd push every one of those daffodils under the soil and freeze the ground back to rock hard earth because winter was when I had him. What I can do is leave his favorite hoodie on his dresser and all of our pictures on the mantle, what I can do is remember and honor his incredible journey through the last decade. I'll eagerly be the last person thinking about him as the day draws to a close.

If I'm also the last person ready to accept that he is gone, so be it. He was here, he mattered, he made all the difference to me. We had an amazing life together, we understood each other, and we loved each other. I do not want to leave him behind, I simply cannot leave him behind just yet.  

Boss it Up and Cry

Recently a fellow widow posted a meme on social media that went something like this:

Are you going to boss it up or cry about it? First of all, I'm going to do both, says the widow.

That about sums up my life. There's just a ton of stuff that I have to do. There is no choice but to find a way to get it done. Accordingly, I have spent a lot of time bossing it up and I'm downright proud of the stuff that I've recently closed out. Case in point, I have never been so happy to write a check to the good old IRS and put a big bold check mark on my to-do list to categorize 2018 taxes as completed. I outsourced that but hey, it took work to find a good CPA and acquire some key documents in addition to the usual docs sent to me.

My new life is forcing me to be the boss. I don't feel comfortable in this role, but I'm the boss of the house, the kids, the dog (we got Phoenix!), not to mention my own life. It is so strange that it is not a team effort anymore. No more consultation, joint decision-making, or shared visions for the future. It's all there for me to steer so the ship doesn't go under, not to mention find some distant shore of my choosing. Once again, there's a tension between "having" to decide and "getting" to decide various matters. Some things are definitely have-to's (financial stuff) and some are obviously get-to's (dog, coaching baseball) but there are sometimes unexpected flip sides to both.

Despite the satisfaction and relief from getting some of death tasks done, each one brings a world of pain and a torrent of tears. So yes. I will boss it up in this new life. And, chances are, I'll be crying over my lost life and love at the same time. If I look a bit haggard, you'll know why. This is all exhausting.

Steps and Realizations

The obsession to write this whole experience down seems to have passed, at least for a while. I'm not sure what that's all about. Even tonight I wanted to write, but it's going to be a bad, perfunctory recording of a few thoughts. The deep processing I had been doing before is not coming easily right now.

As the days pass, I feel less tortured about the specifics of Chris's decline and death. This is a good thing. I do believe that writing helped work through some of that. Also, many kind friends have reached out after reading and your support has also helped to process what happened. I still don't like to revisit the memories of his last day, but I have allowed myself to remember how Chris communicated with me even when he couldn't talk. He slowly winked his good eye several times that day and by doing so, for sure he was sending me his love. Even though I didn't know at the time it was the last day and I'll never know if he knew it for sure, Chris took every opportunity to convey his love to me. I have a lot more peace about that now. He was loving and forgiving of me always. That day may be something that I need to struggle with from time to time, but I will remember how Chris winked and know what that meant.

Every day that passes takes us farther away from acute trauma, and also from Chris. That last fact is excruciating. I miss him so very much. The sadness is pervasive and sometimes overwhelming. Some days are really, really bad. Not long ago I woke up with a terrible cold and needed to get through grocery shopping, homework supervision, and cooking alone. It was not the end of the world but being tired and sick brought desolation home to roost. Nothing could stop the waterworks. In the last few weeks I have spent time with several really great couples, and I have some thoughts marinating about marriage and what I miss deeply about being married to Chris. Nothing is coherent enough to articulate yet. I cannot believe he is gone, that our marriage is over. It's just too painful to put into words beyond that right now.

To be fair, I have been doing a lot of things and taking a lot of steps. I think I am functioning quite well given the circumstances. Things are under control. 

I have had to take many steps to sort through taxes, assets, and legal dealings. With coaching from key friends with good recommendations, I've got a team assembled that seems to now be populated with competent and helpful people. I feel good about my approach to dealing with these unpleasant things and my ability to get on the phone to straighten things out. I've given up anticipating everything and instead just scrutinized the credit card statement to find the things I didn't even know Chris took care of, things like auto-renewing Amazon prime, an Angie's List subscription, and anti-virus software. These are steps that I am proud of. 

In a more interesting category, there's the big step of searching for a dog. The good news is that Phoenix is the one! We made it through the rescue agency's interview and home screen process, met her, and she will be ours on Thursday. While it will be a crazy amount of work for me, I'm sure it will be distracting and that's probably going to be helpful. The kids and I will certainly benefit from puppy kisses and play. Becoming a dog family will be quite a change. Once again it's a sign of Chris being gone, but I know he would be happy that we are working toward bringing more happiness to our home. As N said, it's the worst possible reason to be doing the best possible thing. It's a step that the three of us are taking as a reduced unit, and I know we need to be taking healthy forward steps as a trio. We can't always be looking back or just running in place. This should be good!

I have continued to take several steps to help myself integrate the loss of Chris. Mostly I focus on self-care. Walking with friends, discovering new conservation areas, and running are my mainline strategies. I know that I need interactions with others who are in a similar boat, and I've been pushing myself to reach out to various resources. There are several online support groups and I joined one. There's the Widowed Parent Podcast discussion group that I mentioned before; I have connected with a few folks on social media and get a lot out of it. A few friends have asked me whether I would like to be connected with other widowed parents and spouses of seriously ill parents, and I have been saying yes even as the introvert in me would like to say no. Without fail, I am not sorry when I say yes and have conversations with these strangers. I have communicated with several people who have been amazingly kind and supportive!

I carefully consider options for helping the kids take steps to integrate their loss. They are doing well for the most part. They really are great kids. Chris would be so proud of them, and he would be enjoying them as I am (mostly, ha ha). Still, the gravity of their loss is not something to take lightly. So, tonight the kids and I took a big step by starting a family bereavement support group. We have agreed to give it three solid tries before either committing to more or pulling out. The structure is such that everyone starts together as a large group and candles are lit for the people who have died. Then kids meet/play with other kids at roughly their ages while parents talk with parents. At the end, everyone comes together again to put the candles out before leaving. There is a focus on confidentiality and respecting the right to not share during group time. Apparently things went well for the kids. I appreciated my time with other widowed parents and learned from the things they chose to share. It was hard, though. Everyone was much farther out than me which I did expect. My feelings were complicated in ways I did not expect. Everyone was very kind, but the group experience put it in my face that this is not going away. I started imagining two years, four years, five years from now. This is permanent. I don't like that one bit. I have a long way to go toward true acceptance...

Collectively my steps bring forth new realizations, some of which I'm not ready for. I'm seeing that there is time to sit with the discomfort of the situation. Life will keep moving along but the pace and focus is different. Consciously applying the brakes and riding them for a good long while can be good, but being open to nudges can also be good. Phoenix will be one giant leap!

Phoenix

I want to write about Chris, but I don't know what to say besides the usual. It's all just a jumble in my mind now; there is less clarity as the days go on.

I miss him so much as the days of March move on. I remember what was happening last year at this time: it was the start of sinister GBM symptoms. Exactly a year ago seizure activity ramped up and Chris suddenly could not work due to a variety of other symptoms. There was a flurry of treatments and a dark foreboding cloud over everything. It was the start of living in the present because the future was too uncertain and not guaranteed. 

I do not understand why Chris died so young. Why him? He was so good, so responsible, so smart, so loving. He would have made such an impact in many ways had he lived longer without problems from the tumor.

Sometimes panic over his death still overcomes me, it is very strange. It already happened, I don't know why I would worry about it happening again. I guess that means I have not accepted it... My heart and mind are truly railing against the situation. How can this possibly be permanent? Come back... I don't want to think about what happened because it is too horrific and I don't want to think far into the future because it is too desolate. The beautiful days of my marriage when illness wasn't at the forefront seem distant, and I have a hard time remembering how it was, which also makes me sad. When I do access good memories, the pain of separation is unbearable. The only things that consistently help are exercise and dog searching, so I've been doing a lot of both. (Cooking, not so much...) 

With respect to the search, at the advice of a couple of wonderful friends I turned to shelterless rescue agencies for our search. Oh dear, here I go again... I've lost my heart to another lab mix puppy. I put in several applications and happily we were matched with her! I've been screened by the agency and in touch with her foster mom. We will be meeting her on Wednesday and if all goes well she'll be ours soon. I really, really hope it turns out that she's the one. My heart needs puppy mending and my mind needs the distraction of learning something new. When she gets bigger she can exercise with me, too.

She was born on the same day Chris died and her name given by the rescue agency is Phoenix. I won't call it a sign, but the symbolism of her name and her entrance to the world as Chris was leaving means something to me. Maybe she will help us rise up from the tragedy and move forward.

sweet Phoenix, please be mine, I need your velvet ears

(Look at those colt-like legs! There's a tiny white spot on her back!)

The Lows are Lower

A kind colleague asked me today if things were going okay since I looked a little... I filled in the unfinished comment: worn out by life? (Out of control? Disheveled? Defeated?) I appreciated the concern and assured my friend that things are going okay, but I am indeed worn out by life. This was a tough, sad week. I learned several things that I wished I hadn't. The main lesson is that in my fragile state, normal lows are knocking me lower than ever. 

I made a mistake yesterday of spontaneously chasing after what seemed like the perfect dog at a shelter that is a decent drive from home, on a school night. This shelter business is killing me! They require the whole family to be there and it takes hours just to talk to anyone about the dogs, and the information given ahead of time is sketchy at best and incorrect at worse. Plus they make it so you leave with the dog that day and pets are adopted quickly. You have to be ready to move quickly if you are picky, which we are. Anyway, we got our hopes super sky high again for a little lab mix puppy said online to be 13 weeks and about 10 pounds. I called about her and the advice was to Hurry! Come Quickly! Quick as you can!

(how can you resist this face?)

Of course we did, which was not quickly at all in Boston traffic. Once finally there, we fell in love with her and all of her siblings when we saw them in the little puppy kennels. We waited forever to talk to an adoption counselor and visited all of the puppies. The K pups were so cute (all siblings had K names), and Kaydee the best of all. Then we were basically staging our adoption picture in the waiting room because we were so excited. Finally we were allowed to meet little Kaydee outside her kennel in a play room. Oh my, she was sweet and cute and we were losing our hearts to her as she gave us kisses and played.

There was something not ideal for us, though. We saw that her legs were extremely short for a lab. The adoption counselor thought she had basset hound in her. 

(Kaydee's sister)

N and I met eyes and had an unspoken conversation - we don't like that body shape for dogs, we had already decided not that long/low dog type, so it will not be this dog after all. Later googling made us feel good about our decision. The bassadors are supposed to be wonderful companion dogs, but prone to obesity and back problems.

(adult "bassador" from the internet, is it a seal?)

We met a different lab pup who was said to be the same age but seemed much older. He was twice as big with nice long legs, but J was scared. No go. Mind you it was 7:30 at night by now... We left, dogless and bereft, and more than one of us cried a little in the car. Those kids pulled through - they really handled it well - but it was sure disappointing when we had brought a leash, dog treats, and a box with old towels for her to ride home with us.

I woke up this morning with a deep malaise. That Kaydee had wiggled her way right up into my broken heart and started puppy-ing a few pieces back together. To leave without her smashed them apart again and was a lower low than I expected. It took a while to pull myself out of bed and get anything productive going this morning; everyone just barely got off to school and the kitchen is still a wasteland. It was a lost puppy love "hangover." 

Something similar happened earlier in the week when I had expected something to go well in lab and it didn't. I really wanted to publish this student experiment I have been working on for years, this was the last week of the project and it just wasn't great. I did some trouble-shooting and editing of the procedure for Wednesday's section and it DOES work (I feel quite indignant!), but the students needed more explicit guidance than the procedure the way I had written it at first. I had been looking forward to writing a paper on it this summer, but now will have to re-think that or at least re-frame it. What should not have been a big deal felt like an enormous disappointment, dejection would be accurate.   

There were some parenting lows. There were some crummy parts to my legal dealings. I have realized that strangers make assumptions about me as a single parent, as a widow, as a woman making decisions alone. None of that is fun. But mostly there is an overwhelming sadness under everything. I miss Chris so much. He made me laugh and not take myself so seriously. He always listened and softened life's lows by sharing them. I just miss him. 

Trying Not to Fold

It has been a very difficult few days. We did get through the birthday. Chris's family really showed up for us; they made the house happily buzz and N feel special. Several family members and friends called, too, honoring their commitment to Chris to be there for the kids. Thank goodness because if left up to me, I think I only would have shed endless tears which isn't exactly the right tone for your child's birthday. The next day marked 2 months since Chris died.

I'm really struggling hard now. It's getting worse, not better. The nadir better be approaching because this is close to unbearable...

Going out to see family or do activities in Boston is incredibly difficult. The eastward drive alone brings back so many memories that it is hard to concentrate. When we are in crowded public places, I can't help but think that this dreaded thing did not happen to most or any of the people I see and I wonder why it did to our family. Why Chris??? It's not comfortable to see how big the world is and how full of unfamiliar people, and it brings me a lot of anxiety about the future. I have noticed that anxiety of any kind pokes at the place in my mind that revisits Chris's last moments, agonizes over what happened, and wishes to do things differently. It's so easy to enter that downward, futile spiral.

Recently when picking a few things up at a craft store I saw a cheesy sign that said Home is Where You Are. I had to leave the store. Immediately. I left the items in my hand right on that shelf and walked out because I simply couldn't see that phrase for one more second. It was too painfully true, home was with Chris and he is gone. Boston/Cambridge/Southborough felt like home when I was with Chris and now I feel displaced. Will I ever feel at home again? Right now I am so completely unmoored that I cannot imagine feeling securely at home anywhere.

Reading grief memoirs and resources had been helping until suddenly it is not. From the reading I see that my loss experience is not unique at all. At first this was comforting but lately it is not at all helpful. The whole framework of my life is blown up and it doesn't fit with any situation I know in town or at work. It feels unique to me. Maybe deep down I actually want a pity party that yes, this is terrible, and no, nobody knows what it feels like. I don't want to feel like just one ant in a teeming colony.

Writing had been a balm in February, almost an obsession to help process my grief, but now I see that nothing I wrote is original. Cliche or otherwise, I don't have much of anything to say this week because I do not have the energy to try to process anything. The pain is too raw; my insides actually feel ripped apart. I am so deeply sad... The part that is coming clear is that there is just no end in sight. I'm actually very early on in this journey even though it seems like a terribly long time.

As every grieving person apparently is, I am incredulous that the world just keeps turning even though mine is obliterated. The chemistry community moves forward and more ELT papers come out, Chris's company is hiring new people, friends are having babies. What did we do wrong to be derailed in this way? Does anything important to me mean anything at all? Does anyone think about Chris anymore?

Intellectually I know that we did nothing wrong. It was a cruel mistake of biology that was not repaired. Still, I cannot leave it alone. I decided to re-read Chris's words on CaringBridge. Opening the site has become difficult because he doesn't write there any longer and people don't really visit it (of course not, there's nothing new to read!). Since Chris died I visited daily or more often, but that started to feel counterproductive and pathetic. Journaling here filled that space a bit. But today as I went back to read Chris's entries the words took on new meaning for me. He wrote them to record the experience for friends and family, for the kids, for himself, and I'm starting to wonder if he knew that his words would become a lifeline to me, too. The entry he wrote exactly two months before his death, just as things were on the cusp of getting really bad, spoke to me now as I'm two months past his death. 

Chris wrote on 11/8/18:

Rich Cowles captured the situation well with this comment: "We don't get to pick our cards, we just get to play them..."  ... I certainly would not have chosen to have a brain tumor and this is a tough situation particularly as the cancer is progressing. ... starting in mid-March the symptoms became rapidly worse with a negative impact beyond the normalcy we had been able to have. ... Things are difficult, but it makes me appreciate the good cards I still have, like talking and spending time with Nathan, Julia and Betsy. Again as Rich said, I wouldn't have picked this but it is what it is...

Oh, he was so brave. The entire last year of his life was so, so hard. Starting about one year ago, Chris lost so much but he never lost sight of the importance of making the most of his time. He never gave in to the temptation of folding. I can imagine a little better now that I am in the after just how much emotional pain he must have been in. I understand now his urgency to write on the site; I had not fully gotten it at the time but I tried really hard to support Chris and help him write those entries as he wanted them done. How precious that shared writing time was, and how incredible his words are. Chris wanted them to be better, more articulate and profound, but to tell the truth I think they are amazing just how they are from the situation he was in.

My cards are different from his, they always have been. I'm a different person than Chris. No matter how much I loved him or how comforting I found our marriage or how much refuge I took in our partnership, we were always two individuals. It's also fair to say that, while different, my cards are still pretty tough in their own right. Not the hardest hand in the world because I do recognize my significant privileges, but still fairly rough in the context of my peers. I never would have picked them. I'm going to have to try to channel Chris's attitude and appreciate the good cards I still have. Nathan and Julia, and my memories of Chris. He was able to do that with a worse hand. 

It is what it is. I never liked that saying; it seemed too pessimistic or fatalistic in the past. Maybe now there is something in it that could be helpful to me, though. There is no changing what happened. It wasn't my fault. There is no need to blame myself and try to rewrite the details of the end; it simply was. I did the best I could, personal faults and shortcomings and all. Those personality flaws do not magically go away in times of duress and Chris always loved me despite them all, why would the end be any different? The thing is that IT IS SAD, that's what it is. It is really, truly, devastatingly sad. It is not comfortable in any shape or form, but fixing blame on myself won't change that. Nothing can take the sadness away. It is what it is.

My hand of cards is starkly different from Chris's because it is not the end of my life unless I choose to make it that way. I gleaned this nugget of wisdom from the Widowed Parent Podcast. (This is a niche podcast that has become an important source of community to me. Sometimes it is hard to listen to because I am still grappling with acceptance of my situation, but it has opened doors to me. Even if I cannot fully digest the content now, the episodes are there to revisit in the future. It makes me think and it provides coaching for my parenting now that I do not have my co-parent to help me do better. Also, the host orchestrated an e-discussion group complete with a video conference call. With trepidation, I "met" seven other widows and happily found solidarity with them.) There was an episode in which the host interviewed a life coach who described thinking that her life was over in the early days of widowhood, but she was able to turn her thoughts to a post-traumatic growth mindset. Her outlook evolved to this: your life is only over if you choose to believe it is over. I felt like kind of a loser as I listened because I am firmly entrenched in thinking that the best days of my life are indeed over, but also I had a little spark of hope that maybe someday I could make changes and find some happiness, maybe even overhaul my life and start a completely different chapter. Maybe. At some point in the future.

It is what it is. According to the wisdom of the movie Love Actually, it was always going to be a totally $h*t time. I'm here to emphatically say IT IS - that was in the cards and it came true in spades. Despite my current state of despair, I'm also here to say I hope it won't always be. I hope I can find it within me to rise to the occasion of working toward a positive goal again. Yay me! I hope for future positivity! Now that is pathetic. But, it's where I am right now. It is the only way I can play these cards in this particular moment other than folding. I hope that counts for something, and I hope Chris would understand.