Monthly Archives: October 2024

grieving

When will I feel normal again?

Whenever I meet someone who is newly widowed, they ask when they will feel normal again. I remember asking that question of my new widowed friends, too. We all want to know how long it will take before the crushing pain in our hearts cools lets up a bit. I worried during the first year that I would die from heartbreak and I see other widows posting similar sentiments in the Facebook widow groups I belong it.

This journey is different for each person, but for me, around the three-year mark I started to feel kind of normal. I still felt grief but it was no longer overwhelming. I’m almost 3 ½ years out now and yes, I still miss Tom horribly, but I’m so used to him being gone that missing him is just part of my routine.

In the early months, grief was all-consuming, filtering every of life. Even basic tasks like cooking, getting dressed, and answering email felt impossible, and work held no meaning. Simple objects like Tom’s last glass of grapefruit juice in the fridge or clothes that still carried his scent became precious artifacts. I couldn’t bear to think of moving them, much less getting rid of them. Every day I was pushing through thick brain fog.

Around the six-month mark, there was a pattern of waves—intense periods of mourning followed by calmer stretches where the brain fog lifted slightly. I was able to take some small steps forward, like giving away some of Tom’s clothes and dismantling the makeshift bedroom in the living room and moving back down to our old bedroom. Every “first” without Tom—holidays, birthdays, traveling—brought fresh waves of grief.

Over the course of the second year, those waves continued, but the calm stretches got longer. I’ve heard many people say the second year is harder than the first, because the numbness of the first year has faded but the pain remains. That feels true for me. Those calm stretches got longer, but when the fresh waves of grief hit, they hit hard. During the calm stretches, I began feeling engaged with work again and did some entertaining. During the grief waves, I was completely flattened. I tried to imagine going rafting, for example, and just felt sick at the thought.

During the second year, I worked to develop new routines around my new life as a widow, which meant letting go of routines I loved that were built around my life with Tom. I still miss the old routines. For example, getting him out of bed after his stroke was a complicated procedure, so we learned how to enjoy our coffee together before he got fully out of bed; I helped him sit up and swivel around so his feet were on the floor, then I brought our coffee into the bedroom area of the living room and he drank his coffee while he was sitting on the edge of the bed and I sat at his feet while we discussed the upcoming day.

Letting go of that routine after he died was tough. I kept the bed in the living room for months after he died and sometimes sat on the floor to drink my coffee, in the same spot where I had when he was alive. After I moved back to our bedroom in the basement, I experimented with drinking my coffee in different rooms and during different activities, like reading or puttering around the house. I drank my coffee outside. I tried switching to tea.

At about 2 ½ years out, my morning coffee routine stabilized into one I still observe today. I journal and talk to the dogs while I drink my first cup of coffee. Talking to the dogs kind of takes the place of talking through my day with Tom. It’s a nice way to begin each day, feeling connected to the dogs and myself (through the journaling).

By three years out, grief had become a familiar companion rather than an overwhelming force. The pain hasn’t lessened, but the ability to carry it while living fully has grown stronger. Dreams of Tom have become frequent, offering new ways to feel connected to him. Grief no longer filters every experience, but it’s always there, laying at my feet like a sleeping dog.

I have been told over and over that time heals grief and every time, I call bullshit. Time does not heal the grief. I have worked hard to get where I am, with regular therapy, multiple support groups, and tons of reflection through daily journaling. I’ve had the help of many friends and family members who have been unwavering in their support. I have not “gotten over” Tom’s death by any stretch and I don’t intend to. I love him as much now as I ever did—if anything, my love for him has grown stronger over time. I have reshaped my life around Tom’s absence, missing him, honoring him, and accepting that I won’t see him again in this lifetime.

For me, that’s how “normal” looks, and I like it.

caregiving, death

Love, Food, and Loss at the End of Life

Margaret is dying. She’s almost 90 and has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a condition of the lungs that limits airflow and causes shortness of breath. She’s been on hospice care at home for many months and is ready to die.

Usually when I visit her, she has very little appetite. Her children want her to eat and offer her meals, snacks, and beverages every few minutes while I am there. “Mom, how about some toast?” one asks. Margaret shakes her head slowly. “I’m not hungry,” she says softly.

“Just a bite of toast, Mom? Please?” the daughter urges, putting a plate of toast in front of her.

Margaret takes a bite of toast, looking down at the plate. She gestures slightly with the toast and asks me, “Is this the toast?”  She no longer remembers the names of many things.

“Yes,” I confirm. I deliberately do not encourage her to eat more of the toast.

Later I mention to the children that appetite loss is normal for people approaching death. I’ve told them this before, but I know that watching your mother die is difficult and I don’t know what they remember of our previous conversations. I tell them again as if it’s the first time.

I know firsthand how hard it is to watch a person you love refuse food, especially when shared meals have been important to family life for years. Margaret’s kitchen is stocked with beautiful blue Le Creuset cookware, indicating that food preparation has been taken seriously.

One of the ways I demonstrated my love for my husband Tom was by cooking for him. When we met, I was learning how to cook meat after being a vegetarian for 25 years. As a hard-core carnivore, he was happy to give me assignments: learn ten ways to make chicken, talk to the guy who owns the local meat shop about the best cut of beef for slow cooking, and of course, come up with 7 different recipes involving bacon to celebrate Bacon Week (which doesn’t technically exist, but did in his house, and ran from Christmas to New Year’s).

After his stroke, I knew his recovery was going well when he started asking for very specific foods and dishes: tangerines with crème fraiche, a combination of red and green grapes, chicken pot pie with fresh thyme. He had a sweet tooth after the stroke and loved root beer floats and chocolate eclairs—so I kept root beer and ice cream on hand. I discovered the Whole Foods bakery made chocolate eclairs on Tuesdays and Fridays and I got them delivered. He took joy in eating, thanking me for whatever I gave him and often bragging to his medical team about how well I fed him.

About a month before he died, his appetite began to wane. He no longer got excited about his morning coffee and sometimes wanted to go to bed without dinner. I made his favorite dishes—macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, chilaquiles. I made a side of bacon to go with whatever I cooked. Sometimes he didn’t care. He took a few bites of a chocolate éclair and lost interest. Even juicy fresh fruit lacked appeal for him.

I was crushed. For twelve years, he had loved my cooking and I had loved cooking for him. Cooking for him was one of the ways I made him feel special—not just serving his favorite foods, but setting the table nicely, using cloth napkins every night, sometimes lighting candles. I showed my love for him in a hundred little ways, but cooking for him was one of my favorites.

I now realize that there were signs he was dying well before he died. Like Margaret, he lost his appetite and all interest in food. He wanted to nap even more than usual. At the time, I thought he was just anxious about his upcoming surgery, but now I think he was turning away from this life and preparing for his next adventure.

Just like Margaret’s children, I kept offering food. I thought if I just came up with the right food to offer, he would eat. When he turned down a root beer float, I offered cherry pie. When he showed no interest in fried chicken, I suggested nachos. But none of it interested him.

I wish I had respected his wish to not eat and asked him instead, “What do you want?” If I had let go of my focus on food, he might have asked me to hold his hand or shared a memory with me.  

This is the question I bring to Margaret: “What do you want?”

She doesn’t want much—mostly to nap. But sometimes she wants to talk about what death will be like or whether she’ll be reunited with her dead siblings. Often she wants to sit together in silence.

At the end of life, those activities may hold more meaning than eating.

Accessibility + Dis/ability

You Are Not the Only Disabled Person at Work

In work meetings, in the classroom when I’m teaching, at social events, and at conference sessions, I often wonder if I’m the only disabled person in the room. Because disability is so often not apparent and it is seldom spoken about, even when I know there must be other disabled people in the room, I feel isolated and self-conscious about my differences. I feel unspoken pressure to mask my low vision.

That feeling of being alone is powerful. It has swayed me at times to not advocate for myself, convincing me that asking for fairly simple things like more lights on in the room or larger print on slides is disturbing the peace. I have felt shame that I alone want brighter light or larger print. And then often, after the event where I felt such shame, I have learned that others also thought it was too dark or the print on the slides was too small, but we all felt enough shame that we sat quietly in the dark, unable to read the slides.

Ableism and other forms of oppression thrive when the people being oppressed think they are alone. The more alone we feel in our oppression, the less likely we are to ask for help or accommodations.

I want to note that this feeling of being alone is not anyone’s fault. The isolation is a function of systemic ableism rather than of individuals trying to oppress me. Most of the time these days, when I do ask for changes in lighting, people are happy to make them. Most colleagues and presenters keep their grumbling to a minimum when I ask that they make their slides high contrast or use larger fonts.

But the good intentions of people do not make spaces, meetings, and presentations more accessible. The onus is often on the disabled person to educate others around them and ask for accessibility measures. Annika Konrad calls the resulting exhaustion access fatigue.

At last year’s International Writing Center Association conference, I attended the Disability Special Interest Group meeting. I looked around and saw people I had known for years who I never knew were disabled. Others I knew as disabled but hadn’t ever talked to them about disability. Simply being in a room full of other disabled people reduced my anxiety fatigue right there on the spot.

The following semester, I taught a class on disability rhetorics. The majority of students who took the class identified themselves as disabled to their classmates. Students commented many times throughout the semester on how profound it was to have a community of disabled peers. They said that for the first time in their lives, they didn’t feel shame and isolation. They didn’t worry about being the only person in the space with so-called “special needs.”

Seeing the impact of disabled community at the IWCA meeting and in that class motivated me to create a disabled employee affinity group on campus. An affinity group provides a safe space for disabled people to connect, share experiences, and support each other. Simply knowing you’re not the only one is empowering. Although I know logically that I’m probably seldom the only disabled person in the room, being part of a workplace affinity group helps remind me that when I ask for accommodations, I am helping other disabled people, too. I’m not the only one who benefits from brighter lights or larger fonts on slides. Instead of feeling selfish for requesting accommodations, I can understand what I’m doing as advocating for accessibility and inclusivity.

An affinity group makes disability in the workplace visible, both for current and prospective employees. The existence of the group is proof that disabled people work there. It tells disabled people considering applying for positions that they will have a community there. It provides a way for members to support each other, share experiences, and help others navigate the mysterious process of asking for official accommodations.

One aspect of workplace accommodations that is shrouded in mystery is what can you ask for? Many folks don’t know what kind of accommodations you can ask for besides ramps and sign language interpreters. An affinity group provides a space for members to talk about what their accommodations are and how they got them—or how inadequate their accommodations are and how to get more impactful ones.

In a culture that prizes independence, disabled community provides interdependence without shame.

Aging, caregiving

Use Silence for More Authentic + Vulnerable Conversations

I visited a hospice patient last week who is slowly detaching from this life. I know from my end-of-life doula training that this is normal. As they get closer to death, people often turn inward, eating less, talking less, seeming less engaged with the world outside themselves. I see this happening with Margaret.

When I arrived at her apartment, she was sitting at the table, staring down a plate of scrambled eggs. Her head hung. There was a fork in one hand, but that hand rested on the table and the fork dangled a bit precariously.

“Mom doesn’t want to eat,” Margaret’s daughter told me. I have assured the daughter on previous visits that it’s normal for people to lose their appetites and that if Margaret doesn’t want to eat, it’s ok. But the daughter would really like her mother to eat.

I asked Margaret if she was hungry.

“No,” she said quietly, not making eye contact. “I’m having . . . a bad day,” she said slowly, still not making eye contact.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“No,” she said. Despite having said she wasn’t hungry, she started tentatively eating the eggs. While she ate, we sat in silence. Each bite seemed to take her full concentration and I didn’t want to break it. When she finished eating, I helped her to her recliner, where she dozed. My entire visit passed in near silence. It was peaceful and when I left, Margaret’s daughter commented that her mother was less agitated than she had been earlier.

I’ve always loved silence, but for most of my life, I tried to avoid it unless I was alone. Unless the person next to me was a stranger or we were watching a movie, I felt compelled to fill the silence with conversation. Unless I was alone, silence felt awkward to me. I think many of us are socialized this way.

At work, I’ve championed silence. In the writing center I direct, I teach tutors to allow silence in their sessions to give their clients time and space to reflect. I set a timer for ten seconds and we sit silently for the full ten seconds. It’s hard. We are not used to ten full seconds of silence.  

When I teach, I allow at least ten full seconds of silence to pass after I ask a question. My students sometimes comment on how uncomfortable the silences in my classes are. But more often, students thank me for providing the silences, saying those moments are productive for them.

Since my husband’s stroke, I’ve been allowing more silence into my conversations. My husband needed the processing time, and I’m finding that it’s not just folks who’ve had strokes who benefit from that time.

Being with someone in silence is a great way to hold space. Filling the silence with insignificant chatter does not invite authenticity or vulnerability.

If you’re not used to being silent with someone else, it may take practice before it feels configurable to you. That’s ok. I’ve been practicing for years and still succumb to the pressure to fill the silence sometimes.

If you want to get more comfortable with silence, here are some strategies to try:

  1. Practice counting seconds in your head after someone speaks and before you speak. Notice how many seconds (if any) typically pass in silence between you and the other person. Aim to extend it by one second. It may take many days or weeks of practicing this before you’re ready to extend it by another second, but that will eventually happen. Then add another second. You will notice your conversations stretching out, like a cat settling into a sunny spot. You will feel calmer. You will be listening better, thinking less about what you’ll say next.
  2. When the silence begins, take a deep breath. Use the breath to buy yourself a few seconds, but also to ground yourself in the present moment. I do this when I’m teaching. After I ask a question of the class, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I start counting in my head to ten. I don’t allow myself to speak until I’ve gotten to ten.
  3. Remember that silence is communication. It communicates patience, leisureliness, respect, attentiveness. It can de-escalate tension. In fact, silence has been key in helping me cope with tension and conflict without getting defensive. Recently, when I’ve been in situations that could escalate into an argument, I’ve taken a deep breath and made myself count to ten before responding. Interestingly, my responses in these situations tend to take the form of questions rather than defensive statements. I ask for more information instead of telling the other person they are wrong.

Others may not like the silence and that’s ok. They may not be used to it. They may be like the students in my classes who complain that the silence is awkward. Perhaps it is. But for me, allowing space for authenticity and vulnerability is more important than avoiding awkwardness.

Accessibility + Dis/ability

Shorter Days Bring Disability Worries

Colorado, where I live, officially has four seasons, but for me, there are two seasons: light and dark. My low vision is a complicating factor all the time, but when there’s more darkness in a day than light, I am in a constant state of anxiety.

Around this time of year, when the days start getting noticeably shorter, I shift from appreciating the crisp autumn air and beautiful fall colors to dreading the dangers that come with more darkness for me.

Darkness is coming. Like a character in a fantasy drama series, I have that thought with a shudder when the leaves start turning.

I start making mental notes during the day about the uneven sidewalks on my block and the construction zone near my usual bus stop so I can avoid them in the dark. I try to remember where the tree branches hanging low enough to hit me on my walks with the dogs are, knowing I won’t see them when I walk the dogs at night.

When the days are long, I love walking the dogs and look forward to our jaunts. But from now until the time change in March, at least one of their walks will take place in the dark and I will breathe a sigh of relief when I make it safely back home. My late husband gave me a headlamp to wear when I walk them in the dark, which helps, but not enough to make me feel confident of where I’m stepping. Also, because I am sensitive to bright light, sometimes the illumination of the flashlight hurts my eyes.

Every year when we change our clocks in March, I breathe a sigh of relief. I survived another dark season. I prefer the weather of the dark season but the dark itself sucks so much energy from me. The fear of not knowing what I can’t see weighs on me a little more heavily each year.

Mental health conditions, like Seasonal Affective Disorder and depression, can become more intense when light is limited. I know a lot of people who say their depression and anxiety get worse around the winter holidays, with the pressure of mandatory cheeriness and expectations of increased socializing. If you’re grieving, the holiday season may make you miss your loved one more intensely.

And it’s not just the increased stretches of darkness that make the dark season challenging for people. The cold temperatures that typically come with darker seasons can trigger symptoms of many neurological conditions, as well as asthma, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis.

The dark season was more treacherous for my husband after his stroke, too. Pushing a wheelchair through snow or over ice is tough. One time my mother-in-law had to push me while I pushed his wheelchair up an icy ramp—otherwise the wheelchair and I would start sliding back down. Slush would clog up the wheelchair’s wheels. Melting snow created frigid puddles that we couldn’t navigate around.

As we head into another dark season, I hope you’ll give yourself and others grace. There’s a lot to love about the dark season; I’m a devoted fan of hot chocolate, snuggling under a thick blanket, holiday music and festivals, and the glittery look of fresh snow. But for many of us, the dark season comes with an extra dose of struggle.