First, let me apologize for not writing recently. The last
phase of Pat’s illness cascaded so rapidly, beginning with a nursing home
calamity in October and ending with his death just five days before Christmas.
There was no time or energy for writing it all down. He died on the solstice, as the dwindling light gave way to the new lengthening of days.
In future entries, I will try to catch you up, dear readers,
on what transpired for us during those weeks. It’s important, because it’s the
last part of the dementia/Alzheimer’s journey and I learned a great deal. Not
only about the end stage of the disease and the difference between dangerously
poor “skilled” nursing and excellent professional care, but also about the
spiritual transition that my dear husband made in that time, and the emotional
stress, wonder and exhaustion that I experienced as a caregiver--my own
spiritual journey through the last days of our marriage.
“This is life.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
--Frederick Buechner
Writing the words, My husband Pat is dead, makes
it real. It’s no longer a possibility or even a probability; it’s what is.
I am in a strange spiral of feeling and not feeling, of not
knowing whether to cry or hide or be with people or act as if I’m okay or
actually be okay, or fall apart. The problem is there’s no real way to process
death except through time, a long time. You know death has happened, it’s
unmistakable. The body on the bed is the empty container and the bright spirit
has gone away.
But your beloved has been imprisoned behind a wall of loss
and fear and frustration for years because of dementia. You are grateful he is
finally free of confusion and terror and pain. You are so relieved to be done
with the terrible burden and hopeless decisions of caregiving. Joy for him and a
kind of gladness for yourself complicate your grief.
As people share their wonderful memories of Pat—his ready wit,
his far-ranging knowledge, his energy, his remarkable artistry and skill as a
designer and builder—I feel sometimes like they’re talking about someone I knew
a long time ago. Or else, the memories of how much I admired and loved him in
the early years of our relationship overwhelm me. I lost so much of Pat before
his body finally gave up.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve been truly carefree,
truly happy—years and years. Part of me—most of me, honestly, doesn’t want to
go through the long months of grief’s stages—denial, anger, depression and
acceptance. I’ve been through them again and again and again, every time Pat
took a step down. I just want to be happy, to live something like a normal life
once more. But I can’t be happy in a way that doesn’t take into account the
reality that I love this man and I can no longer touch him or converse with him
or take his hand.
So far, grief isn’t quite what I thought it would be. It’s
more of a daze, a confusion, a disorientation. For two weeks over the holidays,
I nestled in at my cousins’ house in the joys of their Christmas, trying to be
part of it and yet separated from them by the strangeness of a holiday
following hard on the heels of death. As if I were a foreigner dropped into the
midst of a celebration I know a little about, but don’t really understand.
That’s not quite it, either. Because I understand it; I just couldn’t feel it.
Or I felt it for a moment and then remembered Pat’s still form on the hospital
bed.
I’ve known for some time now that I would be a widow before
2013 ended—when my eldest sister died in 2011, I told my other sister that Pat
would die within the next two years. Was that foreknowledge or self-fulfilling
prophecy? I think it was the former. My tenure as a wife was so attenuated by
this utterly hateful disease, this destruction of Pat, of “us,” of life as we
knew it.
A cousin said, “You’re a widow now. Your status is different.”
Widow is an ugly word, with its connotations of lifelong grief, shriveled
prospects and withdrawal from life. I don’t want that label. I got to be “wife”
for twelve years; I don’t want to be “widow” for the next forty. Call me a
woman who lost her beloved to calamity. But still a woman, still living and
warm and filled with passion—for life and adventure, for enjoying the destiny
that God will unfold within and around me. I need to live fully again—it’s what
Pat wants for me, what I want for myself.
First, though, the dark midwinter. The rest and the nurture
of those who love me. Sleep. Walks alone on the beach. Riding a beautiful horse
as the day draws down. Good food and gatherings with a score of relations. Preparation
for the celebration of Pat’s life, with all the hilarious and touching stories
that will be told about him. Preparation for the next part of my life. The
acknowledgement of this moment, this turning point, as the “pearl of great
price.”
I really must live through this holy liminal season, allow
it to have its transforming grace and not rush the future. There is a weird
kind of peace and goodness to be found here. To just stop and breathe and for
the moment, do whatever I feel like doing and nothing more.
Mornings are usually okay. I wake up fairly early and walk.
The Southern California sunshine bathes my eyes with an energizing light. It
feels good to walk, to greet other runners and walkers, to admire architecture
and flowers. Sometimes I don’t want to stop walking. It would feel good just to
keep moving all day, to keep sorrow and memory and the hard jobs of memorial
plans, obituaries and burial options at bay.
But I come home after a mile or so, eat, read, meditate and
pray. Then I try to face the day. Some mornings,
I just can’t, so I crawl back in my warm bed and sleep till noon. But most of
the time, I launch into dozens of calls to plan Pat’s memorial, deal with banks,
make an appointment with Social Security, contact the hospice that took two
weeks to get the death certificate signed. It’s not like there was any question
about why Pat died. But it took two weeks to get the doctor’s signature so the cremation
done.
Note to reader: Try
not to die during the holidays, especially if Christmas and New Year’s fall
mid-week. Getting bureaucratic things done when four holidays and two weekends
intervene is almost impossible. For that period of time, I tried not to think
about my husband’s body lying in a refrigerated space somewhere in the city.
It’s not that I thought he still occupied it, but it just seemed awfully
disrespectful. Even at the end, nothing is easy. Expect this, if you can. I
understand now why our forebears had the body in the ground in three days. This
modern limbo is unnatural, stressful.
By evening, I’m usually exhausted. I find myself sobbing in
the car on the way home from the grocery store. Or in the grocery store itself,
hiding behind displays of canned goods, when I realize that Pat and I will
never again buy coffee together, or oranges, or vanilla ice cream.
Week before last, I went with my cousin Sue to a New Year’s
Eve Labyrinth walk at the cathedral. We entered the high shadowy chapel where
the gothic arches were still decked with garlands and wreaths. A man handed me
a white rose. I set down my purse and stepped into the circle of votive candles
around the labyrinth. Based on the medieval labyrinth on the floor of Chartres
Cathedral, it’s an intricate pattern that doubles back on itself, loops around
in broad curves, doubles again and again, and finally guides you into a central
space shaped like a six-leaf clover.
At first, I was aware primarily of the flute and violin
music, live and a tad too loud. And of bumping shoulders with other walkers who
were ahead of me in the narrow doubling lanes. I wanted to do it right, to feel
something—who knows what? It wasn’t till I reached the center that I realized I
would have to walk out again by the same convoluted route. If the walk to the
central medallion symbolized this past year with its terrible and miraculous twists
and revelations, the center itself was the moment of Pat’s death, the moment
when my identity changed from wife to widow.
The thought of walking back out into the world, of leaving
behind the comfortable and comforting identity that’s been mine for twelve
years, of leaving life with Pat behind, glued me to the floor, there in the
middle of the labyrinth. Taking the next step seemed unbearable. I clutched my
white rose, trying to look like I wasn’t crying as tears rolled down my face.
And then I took a deep breath and began the journey out of
the labyrinth. This is my choice, the only choice that can lead me back into
life. I have to trust God that I am not lost in a maze of grief, running up
against dead ends, unable to move back into the river of the living. A spiritual labyrinth has a plan; its purpose
is to get you deeper and deeper into the heart of God, so that you can then
walk out knowing that each twist and spiral ahead is mapped already, guiding
your feet into a future that Love has created for you.
This is what I learned on New Year’s Eve, the year my
husband died.
