Tag Archives: grieving

Aging, Buddhist life

Embracing Aging

1 Comment

This month I’ll turn 55. I hated birthdays as a child because of family dysfunction, but after my stroke when I was 27, birthdays finally felt meaningful. Making it to 28 did seem like something to celebrate. Now I celebrate all birthdays with gusto—mine as well as those of other people. So much can happen in a year and I love taking the time to reflect on that and appreciate it.

Even the difficult events and developments of a year can be seen as milestones worth savoring. Living three years without my husband is a grim milestone, but it’s also motivated me to explore being a hospice volunteer and becoming a living kidney donor, two things I’m very excited about. I’m proud of the ways I’ve grown out of necessity in my 55th year—for example, taking “date night dancing” off my calendar and reframing my relationship with my house. I don’t regret the growth, despite it all coming from adversity.

Aging means facing adversity. There’s no way around it; with aging comes loss—loss of relationships, loved ones, ambitions, and more. Sometimes because of those losses, we grow. Other times, the losses open up opportunities. Other gifts of aging come simply with age itself.

When I hit 47, the age my mother was when she died, I thought about how I was having experiences that come with age that she never got to have, like having a relationship with my teenage daughter. When my sister and I traveled together, I did so with the knowledge that my mother and her sister never got to do that. When I had my first hot flash, I laughed out loud, thinking, “Well, Mom, you never got that treat, did you?”

Once my husband died at 61, the lesson was sharpened: aging is something not everyone gets to do. The aspects of aging I might have complained about in the past now take on a different meaning: they are things he will not get to do. It’s easy to think of aging as a series of bleak losses. Our independence and health may ebb away or disappear suddenly. Loved ones continue to die. With those losses, though, we may find unexpected spaciousness.

I don’t mean that we ever stop missing or loving what we have lost, but that in addition to those losses, there are some gains. And those gains can be appreciated and even celebrated. I welcome my new interest in hospice work, which feels like a calling.

I’m trying to approach aging in both a practical way—it will happen whether I like it or not, so might as well make the best of it—and a Buddhist way, which is to reduce suffering by letting go of attachments. For example, when I recognize myself feeling attached to things my younger body could do easily that are now not so easy, I try to be grateful for the ease of the past rather than angry about the loss. Anger about the loss assumes I have a right to hold on to that ease. But it was temporary, like everything.

I do enjoy many aspects of aging. Feeling less pressure to please others is quite liberating. Being comfortable in my body, familiar in a loving and appreciative way with its quirks, is lovely. I wish my husband had gotten to experience more of aging’s rewards.

Many of the wonderful gifts I am experiencing with aging are available only because I’ve suffered losses. Several of my most cherished relationships deepened with my husband’s stroke and death. The older we get, the more likely it is that we will experience loss. Every loss will hurt—I don’t think that ever stops—and also present opportunities to connect with others.

The loss that comes with aging also provides motivation to reflect on what matters. I have clarity today about what matters that I couldn’t have had earlier in life simply because it took me 55 years of history on this planet to get there. That clarity was earned.  

grieving

Don’t be a jerk about grammar, especially when someone is being vulnerable

I’ve been thinking about verb tense lately.

As I slowly write my memoir of being my husband’s caregiver after his stroke, verb tense gives me regular fits. Yes, everything happened in the past, but it still feels so present to me. Using past tense verbs seems inauthentic, but using present tense seems grammatically incorrect.

Last week, Gina DeMillo Wagner’s discussion of why she wrote her memoir in present tense got my attention. She mentions that writing in the present tense “mirrors the experience of grief and trauma,” which helps me realize that some of my verb tense confusion may be attributed to my still-active processing of what the year before my husband’s death means for me.  

While I will likely continue to debate which tense to use in my memoir, Wagner’s post isn’t the only reason I’m thinking about verb tense. Another widow posted recently in a Facebook group about having her verb tense corrected during a conversation with a neighbor: she mentioned her dead husband in the present tense and the neighbor corrected her verb to past tense.

I was shocked and outraged on her behalf.

When someone is talking about their dead loved one, it is never appropriate to respond with a correction of how they did it. Asking for clarification is fine—“did that happen recently or in the past?” is totally ok if verb tense is confusing—but if you are able to figure out what the person is trying to communicate and you are correcting their grammar only because you feel a grammatical rule has been violated, my advice is to suck it up and let the violation go.

“But I can’t help it!” my grammar fanatic readers will cry.

Sure you can. I believe in you. You may not be able to help noticing the violation, but I am absolutely certain that you can keep it to yourself.

And here’s why you should: correcting someone else’s grammar comes across as judgmental and smug in the best cases and cruel and dismissive in the worst. It makes YOU look like a jerk. Most importantly, it damages the trust that relationships are built on.

Many years ago, I shared something very personal I had written with someone I trusted. They proceeded to disparage the typos, misplaced commas, and less-than-perfect word choices. Their focus on the perceived errors in my writing rather than on the expression of vulnerability made me feel like they didn’t care about me or my experience.

Perhaps their intent was to help me improve the writing, but the effect was that I never shared anything personal with them again. That relationship slowly dwindled away.

Another time, I was telling a story about something difficult I had experienced. I said, “So me and my friend—”

The listener cut me off. “So my friend and I,” they said with eyebrows raised condescendingly.

Being interrupted mid-sentence made me feel like the listener cared more about my usage than about the upsetting experience I was sharing.

I suppose it’s a win for the listener that after that I carefully studied the rules of subject and object pronouns and never misused one again. I would hope they consider it a loss that I also iced them out of my life. Another relationship lost over grammar fanaticism.

When you correct a vulnerable person’s grammar, you might as well say, “I see that you’re in pain, but that’s no excuse for dangling a modifier.” Or worse, “I see that you’re in pain, but I’m smarter than you.”

Or “I see that you’re in pain, but I’d like to make this all about me and my grammar pet peeves.”

Yup, you’re being a jerk.

I get as hearty a chuckle as anyone else when I see quotation marks, apostrophes, and other bits of punctuation misused, but I also recognize the conventions of these marks as arbitrary and socially constructed. I can notice these things, be amused by them, and still not make condescending and rude remarks. I am living proof that one can refrain from using their flair for grammar, punctuation, and mechanics to make others feel bad.

And I can let my compassion be stronger than my noticing of a rule violation. In the case of a death, people who are used to referring to a loved one in present tense may take a while to get used to referring to that person in the past tense. Give them the time, even if it takes longer than you would like.

Buddhist life, grieving

You’re not the only one who is lonely

In his compassionate and deeply thought-provoking book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy makes clear that nearly everyone is lonely at some point in their life but one of the cruel tricks of loneliness is making you think you’re the only one who is lonely. You are suffering through an almost universal experience yet believe everyone around you feels connected to others. The truth is that if you are lonely—whether it’s a longtime state or a fleeting feeling brought on by a particular situation—others near you probably are, too.

Loneliness often accompanies grief. If you are already lonely when grief hits, your loneliness may be compounded. We don’t tend to talk about either loneliness or grief, and by not talking about these outlaw emotions, we fail to develop not only our skills for talking about them but our ability to tolerate them in ourselves and others. When we see grief or loneliness heading toward us, we hurry to slam the door and lock them out.

We label people who are grieving downers and we urge them to “move on,” “get back to normal,” or cheer up. But being told to move on or cheer up just makes me feel lonely—it’s proof that the person talking to me doesn’t get it. When someone has told me to move on or cheer up, not once have I felt less alone, and more importantly perhaps, not once have I gotten closer to moving on or cheering up.

While I find those comments completely unhelpful and even alienating, I feel for the people making them. I think they are afraid. The next time someone says something like that to me, I hope I have the presence of mind to respond with, “I’m afraid of grief, too.”

It’s not just fear at work, though. I think people equate taking time with grief to a lack of effort or activity, as if the hard work of grieving has no value.

In a culture obsessed with productivity, taking time to grieve seems wasteful. It appears to be “doing nothing.” We think activity is inherently valuable while doing nothing is inherently lazy, but in fact, the opposite is often true. One of my favorite Buddhist sayings reminds me of the folly of taking action in lieu of reflecting: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

I guess you could say that in my grief process, I’ve done a lot of standing there. I have chosen not to distract myself with activity and instead to turn towards my grief and give it space. I’ve been a downer. And yet, more often than not, when I’ve talked about my grief with others, they’ve reciprocated in authentic and vulnerable ways. Being a downer and standing there with my grief rather than hurrying through it has become a connecting point between me and others.

Often standing there with my grief is difficult. For example, last week I took something off my calendar that was a reminder of the life I had with my husband before he died. Date night dancing showed up every Saturday on my calendar. Taking it off my calendar was the easy part. The hard part, the real work, has been sitting with the hard hollow that forms in my throat every time I see the empty space on Saturday on my calendar. Even harder has been not pushing past those tough feelings with distractions but rather sitting with them, feeling them, acknowledging them, turning toward them.

Standing there with someone else who is grieving means holding space for them, not trying to cheer them up or fix their grief. That person in front of you who is grieving feels lonely and thinks they’re the only person feeling it. But they aren’t. You feel it or have felt it. I know you have. Don’t just do something—stand there.

death

Wondering If You Should Attend a Funeral? and what to wear, do, and say if you go?

I find funerals and memorial events very comforting these days, but that was not always the case. I hated my mother’s funeral and those of my grandparents and other older relatives who died when I was a teenager and young adult. They seemed to me to be very uptight affairs, depressing, and overly long.

As I got older and no longer had an adult telling me I had to attend, I would worry about whether I should be attending, was I wearing the right clothes, did I say the right thing, and so much more. My view of funerals changed when I was in my early 30s and attended a very formal Catholic funeral for a colleague. As I was looking around, feeling very uncomfortable amidst the Catholicism, thinking I had dressed all wrong and probably shouldn’t even be there, my colleague’s sister approached me and asked how I had known her sister.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” she said when she found out I was a colleague. After hugging me, she asked me to tell her what her sister was like to work with. After I shared a story, I asked what her sister was like as a sibling, and the sister excitedly told me about some teenaged shenanigans the two had engaged in. When I left, I got another hug and a heartfelt, “Thank you for being here.”

That’s how I learned that funerals serve two important purposes that have nothing at all to do with religion or whether you’re wearing the right thing: they offer comfort to the loved ones of the person who died, and they provide other people who attend an opportunity to learn more about the person who died.

That realization helped me let go of my worries about whether I should attend funerals and memorials—if it fits into my schedule, I go. I figure if I can offer comfort and show interest and curiosity about the person who died, I’ll be welcomed, and that has always been the case.

I used to wonder if I knew the person who died well enough for it to be appropriate for me to attend. Now I understand that knowing the person who died isn’t even a requirement and I have attended many events for people I didn’t know to show my love and support for their loved ones. When a colleague’s child who I had never met died, I went to the funeral. When an acquaintance’s partner who I had never met died, I attended the memorial.

When my husband died, I wanted as many people at the celebration of life as possible. I was eager to hear stories about him that I might not have heard before and hear other versions of the stories I had heard. Several people showed up who had not known my husband but wanted to show their support for me, and I was incredibly grateful for their presence.

There may still be times when it’s best not to attend. If you are concerned that your own well-being will suffer, stay home. If your presence could cause some drama, stay home. If it is simply impossible for you to either offer comfort or show interest in the person who died, stay home.

If you go

What to wear: Events in churches and religious spaces are usually more on the conservative side, so I usually wear something fairly plain, dark, and professional-looking. Events held elsewhere are often more casual. Sometimes the invitation or announcement will mention a theme or dress code. For example, for my husband’s celebration of life, I included in the invitation that folks should wear whatever they thought Tom would most appreciate. This clued people in that the event wasn’t very serious—and folks showed up in wonderful outfits that he very much would have appreciated. I wore a short skirt, a cousin wore a pastel tuxedo jacket, many friends wore camping/rafting clothes or tie-dye.

Food and drink: If the invitation doesn’t mention food being served, assume there won’t be food. If alcohol is served, drink lightly. I did serve alcohol at my husband’s memorial event and needed to arrange rides home for a guest or two, which I would have preferred not to have to do.

What to say: It’s ok to not know what to say; genuine and authentic words of concern are better than platitudes. You don’t have to fix anything; in fact, it may be more important to hold space for people.

If you don’t go

Send a text the day of the event expressing your wishes for an event full of love (or whatever feels appropriate to you). There’s no need to explain why you won’t be there; you can simply say you’re sorry to miss it.

anxiety, grieving

Identifying a New Secondary Loss, Nearly 3 Years Out

The death of a loved one has a ripple effect. There’s the loss of that person and then there are the secondary losses—the shifts in routines that make a day feel off, the friendships that fade because the person who held them together is gone or people are too uncomfortable to maintain them, the end of hobbies that depended on the person who died.

I count my anxiety and panic disorder (APD) as a secondary loss. Although I wasn’t diagnosed with APD until after my husband died, now that I understand what it is, I realize I’ve had panic attacks since I was a teenager.

My late husband had such a calming effect on me that I only had a handful of panic attacks after we met. With them going unrecognized by me as a symptom of APD and then them fading away during my marriage, by the time I was diagnosed after he died, it seemed like a new condition.

Now through the lens of hindsight, I see the reemergence of my panic attacks as both a reaction to his death and a response to the loss of his calming effect on me.

Throughout our relationship, when I felt panic rising in my chest, I knew that a hug from him or hearing his deep unwavering voice would steady me. I came to count on him whenever I was navigating a personal or work situation that felt overwhelming. He seemed to always be in control, which made me feel completely safe.

One time, for example, I was driving in a snowstorm on a busy highway before my vision impairments were diagnosed and it was the phase when my doctors were just telling me I wasn’t “trying hard enough” to see. The light gray of the sky, the white of the snow, the surrounding dirty vehicles, the asphalt all blurred together into a mottled smear. I wanted to pull off the highway, but I couldn’t see where the lanes were. I started hyperventilating in panic and realized I was on the verge of passing out while I was driving.

I called Tom and he talked me through the rest of the drive, settling my breathing so I didn’t pass out. As long as I could hear his steady voice, I knew I would be ok.

Even with the stress of his stroke during the COVID pandemic, holding his hand steadied me. Even when he was asleep, I found comfort in simply being in bed up against his body.

And then he died—and my entire APD coping arsenal was gone. The thought that he’s gone forever adds to my anxiety and panic. My learning to manage it on my own has been messy.

I’ve had a lot of anxiety lately as the three-year anniversary of his death in June looms on my calendar. One day last week I left to catch the bus to my dance lesson in a hurry and forgot my water bottle. One of my go-to strategies when I’m feeling anxious is to very deliberately drink some water, taking a sip, feeling it in my mouth, swallowing it, and being aware of it moving down my throat. Once I realized the bottle wasn’t in my bag, I could feel the anxiety tightening in my chest—a tell tale sign that a panic attack is rising. That’s when I realized I didn’t have my drugs with me either.

I held it together on the bus, telling myself the fresh air when I got off the bus would help. Once I got off the bus, I knelt on the sidewalk, gulping air. My hands were shaking and it took effort to think. I knew I needed to get some water. There is a water dispenser at the dance studio, but I knew the studio would be buzzing with people and I needed to avoid that. Physical activity helps, so I just started walking and came to a coffee shop a few blocks from the studio, where I bought a bottle of water.

I sat outside the studio, ritualistically taking sips of water between measured breaths. By the time my lesson started, I was on edge but not on the verge of a panic attack.

The dance lesson helped, too. I’m working on tango right now and hearing the familiar music activated my muscle memory and my body started shifting its resources from fight or flight mode to the work of holding my upper body in the tango frame, which is also surprisingly mental. I’m early enough in my work on tango that it takes a tremendous amount of focus for me to maintain the form (shoulders down, elbows up, head up and left, arms strong yet flexible, back arched yet tall).

The secondary losses hurt and nearly three years out, I’m still identifying them.  

Buddhist life, death, grieving

Celebrating Special Occasions

Almost any time I have a glass of wine or a cocktail with someone else, I say “cheers” and clink my glass with theirs. I love the “cheers” and clinking ritual. It reminds me that I am lucky to be sharing a moment with whoever I am with and it adds a note of celebration. It’s impossible for me to say “cheers” and clink and not smile.

I recently began wondering why I only do that with wine or a cocktail—why not with cups of coffee or glasses of water?

The only answer I can come up with is habit, which means I can replace it with a new habit—“cheers”-ing and clinking with any beverage.

Ever since my stroke in 1997, I’ve tried to celebrate and appreciate every day. My late husband had a similar attitude. One of the first commonalities we found was that we both believed in keeping a bottle of prosecco in the fridge at all times, just in case. When there’s a chilled bottle of something festive on hand, it’s easy to find excuses to celebrate.

I think the death of a loved one is a reminder that our time here on earth is limited, which to me highlights the specialness of every moment. Any moment with a loved one could be the last one, so why not celebrate it? And if it turns out not to be the last one, well, celebrate that there will be more to come.

Another version of this philosophy is to use the good stuff everyday rather than saving it for “a special occasion.” I was raised in a family that saved many things for “a special occasion,” which meant that sometimes something got thrown out because it spoiled or broke before an occasion special enough presented itself.

When I was in  grad school, I read Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” in which two adult sisters present arguments to their mother about which one of them deserves the family heirloom quilts. One sister argues that she should get them because she’ll hang them on the wall where they’ll stay pristine and be admired. The other sister would put the quilts to “everyday use” as bed covers. The mother gives the quilts to the sister who would use them, noting that actually using them is the most authentic appreciation for them one can offer.

I was intrigued by the idea of using something as a sign of respect and it shifted my thinking about my own habit of writing in my books. I had grad school colleagues who sometimes bought two copies of a book so they could keep one clean and write in the other. They were appalled that I wrote all over my books, “ruining” them. But after reading Walker’s story, I realized that for me, a book that looks like it’s never been read is the ruined one. A book covered with scribbles has been loved and considered.

My favorite things of my late husband’s are the ones that bare evidence of his love for them—the sweatshirt that’s a little grungy around the sleeve edges, the flannel shirt that’s missing a button, the life jacket that looks like it had a few close calls.

The idea of using the good stuff everyday aligns with the concept of being choosy about how you spend your time and spending your money while you’re alive instead of aiming to leave a large inheritance.

For me, the point is to be intentional about appreciating the moments that make up a life and acknowledging that what makes an occasion “special” is my recognition of the specialness. If an occasion isn’t special, well, that’s on me for not noticing the specialness.

What, truly, could be more special than this moment?

Cheers.

grieving

Pining Away for Our Dead One’s Things

When my husband died, I had him cremated. In the course of making the arrangements, the funeral home offered to sell me all sorts of urns, memorial jewelry, and plaques, and finally, the director told me they could take my husband’s fingerprint and have it engraved on a necklace charm or something else for me. “You can purchase the urns or plaques any time, but of course, we need to know if you want his fingerprint before we cremate him,” the director explained.

I said no quickly and effortlessly to all of it. The fingerprint was easy to dismiss because my husband used to joke that he had no fingerprints. The carpentry work he had done for decades and the many accidents he’d had involving power equipment that shaved off layers of his fingertips had left him with nearly smooth finger pads. He joked that he could commit a crime and leave no fingerprints behind. When he got an iPhone with touch ID, the salesperson tried to help him set it up for 20 minutes before conceding that indeed, Tom had no fingerprint.

I didn’t give my no to the fingerprint a second thought until I went to pick up his cremains a few days later and realized his fingerprint was gone forever. Never mind that I knew he didn’t even have a fingerprint. Never mind that I could put a blank charm on a necklace and claim it was Tom’s fingerprint and no one, including me, would know the difference. I didn’t want a piece of jewelry with his fingerprint on it until it was a complete impossibility.

I was talking with a widowed friend recently who regrets throwing out a threadbare T-shirt of her husband’s. The T-shirt didn’t ring any bells with her when she found it in with is other clothing and it was too worn to give to someone else, so she put it in the trash. Months later, she noticed that he was wearing that same T-shirt in many photos and realized it must have been one of his favorites.

It doesn’t matter to her that she still has many of his other shirts. It doesn’t matter to me that I have a ring with some of my husband’s cremains in it and several bracelets with his handwriting on them. We want that one thing that is impossible for us to have now.

I think if she found the T-shirt—maybe she didn’t throw it out after all and it turns up later in the back of a drawer—or the funeral home called me and said, “We accidentally took your husband’s fingerprint,” we’d find something else to fixate on. She’d pine away for a watch of her husband’s that she gave away and I would wish to have back one of the dozens of tape measures my husband had, many of which I gave out as party favors at a gathering.  

It’s not about the fingerprint or the T-shirt. It’s about the deep aching loss of our partners, the wishing for one more day with them, one more T-shirt, one more hand hold, one more anything. Just one more. It’s about fighting the foreverness of death.

When I think about not having gotten my husband’s fingerprint, the thought, “It’s gone forever” rings in my head. I made a decision that can never be undone. My therapist says I am trying to find something I can control. I can’t control that my husband is dead, but I could control that fingerprint decision.

I used to tell myself I was being stupid when I got upset about the fingerprint. “You’re such an idiot,” I would say in my head. “You don’t need a stupid fingerprint charm, get over it.” Or worse: “Well, you should have gotten the fingerprint when you had the chance, dumbass.” But being mean to myself about it didn’t make the feelings pass sooner, it just made me feel stupid on top of being sad.

Now I try to show myself the same compassion I showed my friend who was upset about the T-shirt. If you’re trying to comfort someone who is struggling with the foreverness of death, here are some strategies to try.

  1. Because it’s an illogical longing, an approach based on reason will fall flat. Reminding the person that there are other T-shirts won’t make them feel any better. This is not a time to worry about what makes sense.
  2. Hold space for their sadness. Listen and offer support without judging or trying to fix things.
  3. Invite them to tell some stories about the thing they are pining away for. The last time I was upset about the fingerprint, my daughter asked me how Tom had lost his fingerprints, and soon we were laughing hysterically about him making boomerangs on a job site.
  4. Acknowledge that it sucks that the thing is gone. Don’t look for a silver lining. Don’t say “at least you have [fill in the blank].” These approaches minimize the pain the person is feeling.

Note that if you are the someone struggling, you deserve the same kindness and compassion your friends do. I mentioned above that I said things to myself that made me feel stupid, but I would never try to make a friend feel stupid on top of being sad. Why would I talk to myself that way?

death, grieving

It’s OK to Keep Talking about Your Dead Loved Ones

5 Comments

One of my favorite TED Talks on grief is Nora McInerny’s “We Don’t ‘Move On’ from Grief. We Move Forward with It.” I’ve recommended it to everyone I know because McInerny does a brilliant job of articulating the idea that grieving people don’t ever “get over” their grief.

I recently watched it again—for maybe my sixth or seventh time—and found a gem near the end that I can’t stop turning over in my mind. She says, “We don’t look at the people around us experiencing life’s joys and wonders and tell them to move on.” She mentions as an example that when a baby is born, we send a congratulations card, and then five years later when the parents invite us to a 5th birthday party for the child, we don’t say, “Another birthday party? Get over it.” Instead, we expect that people will continue acknowledging that child who was born and who changed the lives of their parents.

Perhaps this resonated with me because I’m coming up on three years since my husband died and I’m not at all done talking about my grief for him or remembering the life we had together. No one has directly said to me that I should stop talking about him or my grief, but I have had a few people make indirect comments about it to me lately.

“I work with someone whose wife died over two years ago and he still talks about her all the time. Don’t you think that’s weird?” a friend asked me recently. No, I said, I think that’s totally normal, and as I was about to remind my friend that I still talk about my husband all the time I realized, oh—my friend is talking about me. We had been discussing remodeling projects and mentioning all the improvements my husband had made to my house seemed totally relevant to me, but I had noticed that my friend’s expression had changed when I started talking about my husband.

Someone else messaged me in response to a post about my dead husband on Facebook. “I hope you’ll move on soon,” this friend said. I think she meant it in a concerned way.

Someone else asked me if it was normal for people as far out from the loss as I am to still be attending grief support groups. Again, I assume this person was asking out of concern.

In light of these comments and expressions of concern, I think of McInerney’s point that we don’t think it’s concerning when a parent keeps talking about their child, year after year, but we do want people to stop talking about their losses. I suppose we expect parents to talk about their living children year after year, but not their dead ones. We think it’s normal to talk about accomplishments and things we deem worthy of celebrating but we think death and other losses should generally be kept quiet.

If my husband were alive, I doubt my friend would have questioned my mentioning him in relation to my home remodels. Would anyone ask me to “move on” from posting to Facebook about my husband if he were alive? I suspect participating in a cooking club for three years wouldn’t prompt any concern about what’s normal the way attending grief support groups apparently does.

On a practical note, I don’t let these indirect comments get to me. I figure if someone doesn’t want to hear about my dead husband, they can stop reading what I post on my blog or Facebook and they can stop spending time with me. They can make choices. Frankly, I don’t really want to be around someone who doesn’t want to know about the grieving part of me. I don’t take it personally—I just know they are not someone who needs to be in my inner circle.

I also see these kinds of comments as further evidence that we need to learn how to talk about grief. This means building up our tolerance for listening to others share their dark thoughts and experiences, holding space for that stuff rather than trying to wrap it up quickly with a piece of advice or a pithy quote.

Over time, people who are less tolerant of me continuing to talk about my dead husband have faded out of my life, either because they don’t enjoy spending time with me anymore or because I have intentionally spent less time with them. Similarly, I find myself spending more time with people who don’t seem bothered by me talking about my dead husband, either because I have a better time with them or they appreciate my death-talk.

Some people lament that their circle of friends gets smaller after a death, but I see it as part of a natural sorting process. I don’t want people around me who are only going to show up for the happy stuff. And by seeking out grief support groups and blogging about grief, I’ve actually expanded my circle of friends in beautiful and surprising ways.

grieving

How to Write an Obituary

When a loved one dies, one of the first tasks that needs to be completed is writing an obituary. If you don’t enjoy writing or feel confident doing it, this task can feel overwhelming. Capturing an entire life in just a few sentences or paragraphs may feel impossible.

The first thing to consider is whether you want to write it yourself or delegate it. Writing an obituary can feel cathartic. Writing my husband’s obituary was a labor of true love. I wrote most of it myself, but his mother and brother helped me fill in the blanks about his early years and some of the best language is from them.

I found it very comforting to write it myself and have the clearly defined task to focus on in the first days after my husband’s death, but I’m a writer and I enjoy writing. If writing isn’t your thing, or writing an obituary sounds horrible to you, delegate this task. You know how all those people say, “Let me know how I can help” but you have no idea what to ask for? Well, here’s something concrete. You need help writing an obituary.

If you are the one writing it, keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Most obituaries these days live online, which means they can be updated or edited fairly easily. If you realize you left out something important or made a factual error, you can most likely correct it.

Understanding the main purposes and readers of obituaries can help you focus your efforts. I think there are two main groups of people who read obituaries: people who knew the person and people who didn’t.

People who knew the person often read it for information about a funeral or memorial service and to be reminded of the life and deeds of the person who died.

People who didn’t know the person may read out of curiosity or because of their connection to someone who was close to the person who died.

It is typical to include

  • The person’s full name, including nicknames. This can help people who are searching online find it quickly.
  • Their age when they died and often their birthdate and date of death.
  • The city or town they lived in most recently. This can also help people who are searching online for the obituary.
  • Places of employment, military service, and schools attended.
  • The names of surviving family members. This helps readers know who to send sympathy messages to.
  • Date and address of funeral or memorial service, if planned.

You can include much more, if you want. Some optional items to include are

  • Cause of death. This is completely optional and there is no right or wrong answer as to whether to include it. The decision is very personal.
  • Stories about the person who died. In the obituary I wrote for my husband, I included a lot of stories. I found it very cathartic to think about which stories to include, and I also enjoyed capturing his indomitable spirit and thought a lot about which stories would best showcase that.
  • Information about organizations people can donate to in the person’s memory.

Here’s a simple template for writing an obituary:

Name, age, city or town.

A few sentences or a paragraph about their childhood.

A few sentences or a paragraph about their teenage years, including high school attended.

A few sentences or a paragraph about their young adulthood, including places of employment, military service, and schools attended.

A few sentences or a paragraph about each decade or chapter of their life, including places of employment, military service, and schools attended.

The names of surviving family members.

Date and address of funeral or memorial service.

Although the obituary I wrote for my husband is quite long, it pretty much follows this template. There’s no need to reinvent a wheel here—the standard formula works well.

And don’t feel like humans are the only ones who deserve obituaries. Why not write one for a beloved pet? As I said, I found it very comforting to write one for my husband, so if you are mourning a pet, perhaps writing their obituary is just what you need.

grieving

Grief, Sleep, and a Heavy Box

For most of my adult life, I have been a great sleeper. I usually have had little trouble falling asleep and I’ve stayed asleep for most of the night.

After my husband’s stroke, the stress and what seemed like an infinite number of unknowns exhausted me and I continued to sleep well at night but I awoke exhausted and dragged my way through each day. That continued for the first seven or eight months after he died.

Then I had a period of not being able to sleep at all. Intense anxiety kicked in and every time I was about to drift off, my entire body would go on high alert and I would leap out of bed, gripped by dark fears. After a couple months of that, my doctor prescribed Lorazepam, which helped me start sleeping again. It took six months to get my anxiety to a point where I could at least get decent sleep a few nights a week.

In the year and a half since then, I’ve gone from needing eight hours of sleep a night to feel rested to needing nine or ten and then I often feel a wave of exhaustion around midday. Many days I take multiple naps, sometimes adding up to two hours a day or even more.

Lately I’ve been noticing that it’s often emotional tiredness that makes me want to nap. I think my body is actually getting enough sleep, but the effort it takes to keep moving forward when my husband is dead is exhausting.

When he first died, I did everything with the thought “Tom is dead” in mind. I would think, “I’m showering (Tom is dead)” and “I’m eating lunch (Tom is dead).” Over time, the prominence of that thought faded, but there is still a weight I feel like I’m carrying around and that is what ties me out.

I first read Jack Gilbert’s poem, “Michiko Dead” in 1999 and the image of a person carrying an awkward box that can never be put down stuck with me. These last few months, my mind has gone over and over again to that poem. I think I’m tired all the time because of that box of grief that can never be put down.

My thoughts now aren’t “I’m writing (Tom is dead)”—they are more like “I’m writing (why am I so tired . . . oh, it’s the box I’m carrying)” and that box is grief for my husband. Carrying it means I’m always working. The box is invisible to others and I’m so used to carrying it, I forget sometimes that I’m carrying it—but it still tires me out.

I try not to judge myself for all my napping. When the voice in my head tells me I’m being lazy, I try to respond, “No, it’s fatigue from carrying this box around. It’s ok to nap.”

Michiko Dead

BY JACK GILBERT

He manages like somebody carrying a box   

that is too heavy, first with his arms

underneath. When their strength gives out,   

he moves the hands forward, hooking them   

on the corners, pulling the weight against   

his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly   

when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes   

different muscles take over. Afterward,

he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood   

drains out of the arm that is stretched up

to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now   

the man can hold underneath again, so that   

he can go on without ever putting the box down.