Everything happens for a reason??

Um, yeah, no, as my friend Marie would say.

When something bad happens, often people, well meaning people might say, 'everything happens for a reason.' I believe this is just the 10% of our brains we use trying to make sense of a sometimes senseless world. My spouse died from complications of cancer treatment at the age of 53. What is the reason? I've had friends lose a spouse when they had young children at home. Where is the reason in that? I had a miscarriage. Not sure I know the plan there. And people I know have borne the unbearable death of a their child. Certainly no one can see the reason in that, yet, we persist in looking for meaning.

I was raised in deep Baptist tradition. We were taught that everything that happens is part of God's plan. And I believed that. Until I didn't. I learned about free will, if we had a choice, then how did our free will fit into a master plan? And I learned about hunger, hatred, war and abuse. I wasn't sure how any of that could fit into God's plan. See, my god is a loving god. So I searched for a way to make sense of all the bad things in the world and still cling to my belief in a loving God. 

In the early 80s I first read Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  His son was diagnosed with a rare disease at about three years old and they knew he would not live past his teens. Kushner, a rabbi, asked many of the same questions I have struggled with. But finally, he writes, We too need to get over the questions that focus on the past and on the pain—“ Why did this happen to me?”—and ask instead the question which opens doors to the future: “Now that this has happened, what shall I do about it?”

I do believe in God. And I think God is really, really busy with really important things. And so he allows us to make choices, and live with those choices. He allows diseases to progress. And he allows us to discover ways to fight and treat them. He allows hatred, just as he allows love. It is our job, in this life, to love one another, to love ourselves, and take care of each other.

Yet, still when I hear that my life is aligned with some cosmic plan, it breaks my heart. Why do I have to go through the sadness, the loss, the grief and loneliness for some cosmic plan to reveal itself? What wonderful plan could possibly be worth it? Even so, in Jim's illness, and since his death, we never asked, "why me?"  Why not me? 

I've often said the few things I regret in life are the things I didn't do. That even bad breakups where I thought my heart would never recover, led me to the life I loved....my life with Jim. Even so, I can't conceive of a time where I will look back on his death and see the cosmic plan. I don't want to think that there could ever be a moment where his death seemed okay, justified or even right.  

Today's meditation manta was, There is a way I can fulfill my true purpose in life. It is still so hard to see how, or maybe why, my true purpose will be fulfilled without Jim. But not living this life to its fullest would be an insult to Jim's memory. He so embraced life and to his last breath, he did not want to give up. I strive to live with the same enthusiastic energy and joy. 

Kushner summarizes,

In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened. Are you capable of forgiving and accepting in love a world which has disappointed you by not being perfect, a world in which there is so much unfairness and cruelty, disease and crime, earthquake and accident? Can you forgive its imperfections and love it because it is capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because it is the only world we have?? Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be? And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world?

This is Country Music

I was a lifelong Foghead, from the first day KFOG played We Built this City. I listened to classic rock but not hard rock. Sometimes classical. That was about it.  When I married my husband at the age of 37 I was pretty set in my ways. I wasn't very good at compromise. Fortunately Jim had more experience in that department.

He grew up listening to bands like AC/DC but by the time I met him he mostly listened to Country. Luckily we had our own cars, so in his car, the radio presets were country and hard rock, mine were set to KFOG, NPR and KNBR for baseball. I really didn't need the other three buttons. Once in a while we'd switch cars, and I'd usually leave the radio where it was...until some song came on to make me cry.  I distinctly remember the first time. The song was The Little Girl by John Michael Montgomery.

She said, I know that man there on that cross

I don't know His name, but I know He got off
Cause He was there in my old house
And held me close to His side
As I hid there behind our couch 
The night that my parents died.

After I changed the station, I called Jim, and all I yelled into the phone was,  "I hate your country music" and hung up. It became kind of a running joke with us, dubbed 'a country music moment.' I learned to appreciate some country music and when we got married, "our song" was Mary Chapin Carpenter's Shut up and Kiss Me.  My tolerance built up over the years and as KFOG changed their format and became too predictable and commercial, Jim became less tolerant and finally changed the station that piped throughout our home system. Now every morning as we got ready for work, we listened to Gary and Julie on KRTY. When our son got married, we chose Keith Urban's, Memories of Us, as 'our song.'  When Jim got sick, I began to pay more attention to the lyrics and more and more, the songs spoke to me and Memories of Us took on a new significance.

I'm gonna be here for you from now on
This you know somehow
You've been stretched to the limits but it's alright now
And I'm gonna make you a promise
If there's life after this
I'm gonna be there to meet you with a warm, wet kiss

I'm counting on that warm wet kiss.

After Jim died, music was a solace, and at times a curse. I found new meaning in lyrics. Songs made me cry - well, everything made me cry. For a while I had to turn off the music altogether.When Linda and I first went to Lima Family to plan my husband's memorial service, our adviser said they have canned, quiet organ music to play as people come into the service. That sounded benign and easy. Then my brother, Rev.Dave, suggested I find one song to play during the service, then one more to start and one to end. Thus started a musical research project. Mary and I spent hours on YouTube and MetroLyrics looking for songs. We cried, we laughed and finally I narrowed down the list, ending up with an hour plus of music I thought would make Jim happy. With iTunes and YouTube, compiling the playlist was pretty easy. Even songs not on the playlist took on new meaning, a song about a break up because a song about death. KRTY became the soundtrack for my Journey Out of the Valley.

Best start putting first things first.
Cause when your hourglass runs out of sand
You can't flip over and start again
Take every breathe God gives you for what it's worth
Don't Blink ~ Kenny Chesney

When Jim lost the ability to breathe, I told him to breathe with me, that I would be his breath. In the months after his death, I kept reminding myself to center my soul with my breath and try to stay present. In those early days, when grief was a raw, fresh wound, I could barely catch my breath. I really didn't know how to go on.

I want to know,

How do I breathe without you?

If you ever go,

How do I ever, ever survive?

How do I, how do I, oh how do I live?

Without you,

There'd be no sun in my sky,

There would be no love in my life,

There'd be no world left for me.

And I,

Baby I don't know what I would do,

I'd be lost if I lost you,

If you ever leave,

Baby you would take away everything real in my life,

~Trisha Yearwood How do I Live?

Drink a Beer by Luke Bryan hit the top 10 charts in the month Jim died. His sister Pat and niece Kelsey suggested we play the song when I brought some of Jim's ashes home to Iowa. Standing at his parents' grave side, we passed around bottles of Jim's standby, MGD, wept and sang along.

Funny how the good ones go
Too soon, but the good Lord knows
The reasons why, I guess
Sometimes the greater plan
Is kinda hard to understand
Right now it don't make sense
I can't make it all make sense
So I'm gonna sit right here
On the edge of this pier
Watch the sunset disappear
And drink a beer

One of those songs that isn't about death but had significance is Home by Blake Shelton.  In it he sings plaintively about wanting to go home. It makes me so sad every time I hear it, because those are the last words Jim was able to say to me. He wanted to go home.  It just breaks my heart every time I think about it.  In the larger sense, he did go home.  And I try to find comfort in this. But the song still reduces me to tears. Every. single. time.

Let me go home
I'm just too far
From where you are
I wanna come home
And I feel just like
I'm living someone else's life
It's like I just stepped outside
When everything was going right
And I know just why you could not
Come along with me
That this was not your dream
But you always believed in me

The grieving process is not a straight line. You move in and out of a whole spectrum of feelings.  Some of them took me into pretty dark places.  Songs like Whiskey Lullaby and Better Dig Two were some of those.  But then, even though it sort of made me feel guilty, I wanna feel better. Guilty because I felt my grief was my connection to Jim and I did not want to ever lose that connection. But still, I knew I needed to LIVE!

There's a bottle on the shelf, talkin' to me
Sayin', "Come over here, you can have a drink"
We can make it through this lonely night together

But that's a road I don't wanna go back down
And I hate myself for what I'm thinkin' now
Hey, it's just one night, it's not like it's forever
I just want to feel better

All these pictures running through my head
From the way he loved to the way he left
Not a single day goes by, I don't miss him

I just want to feel good, feel alright
Feel anything but what I feel tonight
I just want to move on with my life
And put the pieces back together
I just want to feel better

I know there's gonna come a day
When he's still gone and it's okay
~Maggie Rose

Another song that can inspire me, of course, is Live Like You Were Dying, by Tim McGraw

He said I was in my early 40's,
With a lot of life before me,
And a moment came that stopped me on a dime.
I spent most of the next days, lookin' at the x-rays,
Talkin' 'bout the options and talkin' 'bout sweet time.
Asked him when it sank in, that this might really be the real end.
How's it hit ya, when you get that kind of news.
Man what ya do.
And he says,

I went sky divin',
I went rocky mountain climbin',
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull name Fumanchu.
And I loved deeper,
And I spoke sweeter,
And I gave forgiveness I've been denying,
And he said someday I hope you get the chance,
To live like you were dyin'.

I could go on and on but it's late and I need some sleep. I have continued to add to my Out of the Valley playlist as I continue on my journey. So just one more,  and it is so Jim... he did just say Bring it on and he was such a scrappy fighter til the very end.  

Doctor said he ain't got long
He just smiled said bring it on
If you think I'm scared
You got me all wrong
A little cancer can't break me
My heart's right and I believe
We all hit our knees
Started prayin'
Naw he never gave up
Said the Good Lord's waitin'

An' that's One Hell of an Amen
That's the only way to go
Fightin' the good fight
Til the Good Lord calls you home
So be well my friend
Til' I see you again
Yeah this is our last goodbye
But it's a Hell of an Amen

~Brantley Gilbert

Stages, phases, tasks, storms and waves

In the 70's as a sociology major, I studied the research of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who had worked with people receiving news of their own impending death. She determined they went through stages, which, she wrote, often overlap, occur together and some reactions are missed altogether. The stages included shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

Later people mis-attributed this stage theory to any loss such as the loss of a parent or spouse, even the loss of a job or the end of vacation (I think far past the point  where the extension has jumped the shark). In his introduction to the re-release of Kubler-Ross', On Death and Dying,  Dr. Alan Kellehar writes, that it is only by overlooking this principle aim of Dr. Kübler-Ross’s book – that of the privileging the voice of the dying – that a whole industry of mythmaking has resulted. On Death and Dying was never a study of bereavement.  It was research and observation of individuals' reactions to the experience of dying Yes, those people grieve, but it is not the same as the grief of those of us who survive the loss of a loved one, and our experiences may not, and likely will not, match those she found in her studies.

Other researchers said no, its not just a series of steps the griever goes through, it's more of a curve.I don't agree with this picture.  I think it is far less linear than stages imply. The curve implies once you are done with shock, you move to numbness, then denial, then later depression, finding hope and finally loss adjustment.

  To me it's more of a squiggly line. I may move from loneliness to depression, then back to numbness and jump over to helping others, and so on again and again.

Others have shown a spiral, where your life entered a kind of tornado, and your new life comes out the other side. I've felt like grief comes in waves. Sometimes a tsunami like surge, other times just a gentle lapping at my ankles. But just like the ocean, you should never turn your back on it.

If you Google "stages of grief" you get over 23 million results. The number of stages range anywhere from 5-20

We all grieve in different ways and there is no one right way. Dr. Alan Wolfelt is an author, educator and grief counselor. His model includes needs, tasks that need to be addressed before reconciling with our new reality can happen. They don't happen in order, and you may need to come back to them again and again. He writes of the mourner's six 'reconciliation needs' which include:

1. The need to acknowledge the reality of the death 
2. The need to embrace the pain of the loss
3. The need to remember the person who died
4. The need to develop a new self identity
5. The need to search or meaning
6. The need for ongoing support from others

This model, for now, make sense to me. 

• Acknowledging the reality - In the beginning, my mind would play and replay the events leading to Jim's death. I was pretty sure I had 'acknowledging the reality' down. I never ever thought that Jim was not dead. I knew at a cellular level he was gone. In the groggy, floaty space of morning I never thought he was next to me. Yet, I sometimes had to remind myself, 'it is always going to be like this, he is never coming home.' And I still look at my phone to see if there is a message.
• Embracing the pain - Although I was raised in a family that did its best not to express emotion, I have been pretty effective in breaking that mold. In fact, even as I child I was teased for being the sensitive one. I discovered it is not a weakness to be sensitive and I am glad I can show my feelings. When I am sad, I cry, I give myself to loss, just as I gave myself to love.
• Remembering - Photos, mementos, even the Car, give testimony to a different form of a continued relationship with my husband. I cherish memories of our life together. Some people may try to avoid talking about him, or want me to put away things that remind me of Jim. They are afraid to bring up his name or his death for fear it will make me sad. As if I am not already. I remember many years ago I was out of the country when a childhood friend died in a motorcycle accident. I was afraid to mention it to his mother when I got back. Silly me, as if she could ever NOT think about it, not remember. When I did share my condolences, my shared memories were a comfort to her. 
• A new self identity - You confront your changed identity every time you do something that used to be done by the person who died. This can be very hard work and can leave you feeling very drained. This is the need that I struggle with the most. I still, in my heart, for now, feel that Jim is my husband and I am still married. I've read several books on grieving but it took me months before I could read one called Widow to Widow. I was not ready to call myself a widow. I am still married, just married to a dead man. Later, I could check the box for widow but when the form only had two choices I was so mad. It was a government form, so I couldn't say married, yet I certainly wasn't single. Who am I going to be? Yeah, this need is not met yet. This task is 'in progress' as they say.
• Search for Meaning - It is natural, when someone dies, to question the meaning of life...why are we here? why did this happen? what is the point? For me this is a life long task, one not necessarily linked to my grief. But really, when I am mindful, I think it is pretty simple.  We are here to love our selves and to love each other. To be happy and to help others be happy.

• Need for Ongoing Support - I am so very fortunate in this area. Despite my childhood's attempts to squelch all talk, or acknowledgement of anything emotional, my support system is amazing. Wolfelt says To be truly helpful, the people in your support system must appreciate the impact this death has had on you. They must understand that in order to heal, you must be allowed—even encouraged—to mourn long after the death. And they must encourage you to see mourning not as an enemy to be vanquished but as a necessity to be experienced as a result of having loved. I am blessed to have love and support from near and far.

Wolfelt tells us what I know to be true, you never 'get over' grief. You don't recover. The intense pangs of grief have subsided, but occasionally sneak up on me still. I will forever hold in my heart my memories of Jim, and I am able to make plans for the future. My journey will never end.  But I do believe, in time, we do (and I will) reconcile with my grief.

Something yet left to do.

Many years ago, just before my grandfather turned 90 he asked me, "Why am I not dead yet?" I told him 'clearly he had something left to do.'

After my husband died, I wondered the same thing.

At first it seemed inconceivable that I could survive the wrenching hurt that permeated my being. How could anyone? Yet I knew people that had, and did.  But I am not them. I could not imagine living another day without Jim. I suppose like anyone, I'd hoped we would grow old together and die in our sleep on the same night. I knew that wasn't likely. I knew by our family histories that the likelihood was that I would outlive him, yet I never really grasped what that would mean. I could never have imagined the emptiness, the profound sadness, the complete and utter hopelessness of my grief.  So how, when that grief was upon me, could I possibly live through it?

I really did want to be dead. I never wanted to end my life, I just simply did not want to be alive. Why was I not dead? I did not feel life, nor did I want to feel alive. In those first months my numbness probably served as a protective shield from the reality of my life ahead. But in the grey fog of those days, I just wandered, and wondered, 'why am I not dead yet?'  Heaven or not, I wanted this life to be over. If heaven is real, then I knew I'd be reunited with Jim. If the after-life is something where we just exist on another plane, I assumed I'd be on that plane with him. If we are reincarnated, then the sooner I died, the sooner I could start a new life with Jim in another time. And if there is no heaven, no after, then I would be together with him in the black nothing...and at least this pain would end.

I was pretty sure no one wanted to hear about it, and so I never spoke if it. I didn't want friends and family worrying about me any more than they already were. But in my heart there was darkness.

Later, as the searing pain subsided, to be replaced with more of a dull, ever present ache, I didn't want to be dead as much as I just didn't care. I ate because I knew I should, I tried to be social when I felt up to it, I returned to work. I slept. I slept a lot. I wasn't depressed, I have been depressed and this was something different. I was just sad. The life I'd loved, and come to depend on, was gone...over.  I continued to try to bravely put one foot in front of the other. I was in my 'fake it til you make it' phase. I finally did talk to my grief therapist about my feelings, and she assured me they were quite normal. She knew I wasn't suicidal, and so we talked about the sadness and emptiness.

But I still wondered, why am I not dead?  I had reasons to live...I love my family - of choice and of birth. I enjoy my career, although I found facing expectant 10 year olds day after day to be exhausting in those grieving days. I also knew that if Jim would here he'd metaphorically kick me in the ass and say, "why are you wasting your time? I'd give anything to have one more day to enjoy this thing called life! Get out there and LIVE!" We worked hard to save for our future and it has occurred to me that the future we'd dreamed of is now mine, and it is now!

I talk about it now because I think it is important to face up to the whole range of experiences that I had and continue to go through. I also hope that by my naming it, others who are or will go through a profound loss will see that perhaps these feelings are a normal part of grieving. Marc Brackett, of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, says, “Labeling your emotions is key. If you can name it, you can tame it.” And Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and co-author Tina Payne Bryson write in their book, The Whole Brain Child:

“When (people) learn to pay attention to and share their own stories, they can respond in healthy ways to everything from a scraped elbow to a major loss or trauma. ...to put things in order and to name these big scary right-brain feelings so they can deal with them effectively…When we give words to our frightening painful experiences—when we literally come to terms with them—they often become much less frightening and painful.”

I no longer wonder why I am not dead. Clearly, I have something left to do. I know I have a lot of life yet to live and strive to live every day to its fullest, no matter how many days I have left. There are some days where all that means is that I just get up and get dressed, Other days, living life to its fullest involves an amazing adventure. And both are okay, it is all part of this journey I am on. My journey out of the valley.

I just want to hear your voice.

When Jim died, I never expected to find him in my bed when I woke in the morning.  I did not experience denial, at least in the 'stages of grief' way I'd expected. I did not think he was coming home. When I woke up that first morning after the day he died, and indeed every morning ever since, I just knew he was gone, dead, at least in the physical world.  I knew it in my soul, in my heart, in my very cells.  

As life started to begin around me and our family and friends went back to their routines and jobs, I tried to regain my footing.  It was extremely difficult to leave the house. Every time I drove away, tears would fill my eyes. I felt I was driving away from the place we'd been closest, and the last place he'd really been alive. And every time I came home to only my dog, I'd cry at the emptiness of our, my, home. I would curl up on his spot on the couch, where he'd spent hours during his illness. I felt close to him there. I slept on his side of the bed, on his pillow.  

I tried to imagine him in the bed next to me, but it was no good. I knew he was never going to lie next to me again in this lifetime. So it came as some surprise to me when I first left for a night away and got to where I was going, that I checked my phone, expecting a text from Jim to be there on the screen. When I'm away from home and something makes me think of Jim, I want to text and tell him.  When I am home and walk by my phone on the kitchen counter, I always stop to check to see if he's sent me a text. I know this is impossible, yet I still continue to habitually check. What is it about the phone? In every other way I know he's gone, but I still expect him to call.

When I go away for the weekend with girlfriends and we arrive at our destination, they call or text to let their husbands know they've arrived safely. And I just stare at my blank screen, no one to text to tell him I'm okay. When I get in the car to head home, I grab my phone to text Jim that I'm on my way home, like I did almost every day for 17 years.  And I stare at my phone...what was I thinking?

In the first two years of our marriage, I was traveling 70-90% of the time. A few years later he was gone 2-3 nights a week for work.  It got much better when he decided to work for Slalom and he hoped to wind down his career over the following five years or so. But no matter who was away or for how long, or how far, we would check in with a call or text at least two or three times a day.  Perhaps that's what it is about the phone.  It was always our connection whenever we were physically apart. So at some level I may be hoping that we can connect again. And so I check my phone. And stare, unbelieving, but knowing.

I'd like to say that this has gotten better over time.  Maybe someday.  Until that time....

It just doesn't matter

Two years later, and it still bugs me, "Did he smoke?" As if his smoking makes cancer so much more justified. I even get the, 'oh now it makes sense' look when people hear my 53 year old husband died of cancer, as that explains why someone so young would die. There is no way to make sense of it, no explanation that makes it okay.  

Do you ask a type-II diabetic , 'why do did you eat so much sugar? Do you ask an overweight person, Did you know your weight could cause heart attacks? '  Do you ask someone with brain tumors, oh did you think too much? Are we really blaming people for getting cancer? Why are they asking? Why does it matter?  My response is, "Yes, he did, but it doesn't make this any easier."  I suppose it is our search for meaning - our desire to explain the unthinkable - to be sure, well, it couldn't happen to me, because I don't ____ (insert vice here).

Do I wish he would have not smoked? yes. Might it have made a difference? yes. Do I hope our loved ones who smoke will quit? Absolutely!

Please understand, whether he smoked or not does not make his death from lung cancer any more bearable. I always knew cancer, and a premature death, were a possibility, always. But it does not make it one bit easier. Not one bit easier. Not. One. Bit.

When someone who is not a health practitioner asks, did you smoke? were you in the sun a lot? did you eat too much fat? There is no action, nothing constructive that can come out of the answer. Charlotte Huff writes in Slate, 

Judgments about behavior not only unsettle and stigmatize the patient, but reflect the interrogator’s own insecurities. Frequently, those disease detectives are attempting to regain a sense of control amid the inherently random and sometimes unjust world that we all reside in, according to researchers who have studied stigma. Psychologists refer to this as the “just-world hypothesis,” a bias in thinking and perception that was first described by psychologist Melvin Lerner and colleagues more than four decades ago ...

“I think that in one part there is a fundamental assumption in our society that the world is a just place, and that bad things don’t happen to good people,” says Gerald Devins, a stigma researcher and senior scientist at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto. “And I think when bad things happen to good people, it’s threatening to everybody.”

“Secondly, you can say knowledge is power in a sense,” Devins says. “If we feel like we understand something, it gives us the illusion of control.”

So instead of asking what caused his death, ask how you can help. Ask if you can cry with me. Ask me to go to a nice dinner with you. Ask if there is anything I need. Don't ask how he got cancer. It just doesn't matter.