The Storm of Grief #cancer #losingaspouse #metastaticcancer

I started writing about my grief process because I couldn't find an article or a blog from someone who had lived through it. I could find the stages of grief, what to do to distract yourself, but never the meat of the situation. I needed descriptions of the thoughts that go through your head, the processes so incessantly repeated over months, they become habit. The newly discovered talent of denial. The fear, the anger, the angst and the tears.

I also needed to know that I wasn't alone in discovering that the things we should have discussed were skirted like the plague. Because if we had discussed end of life issues, it would mean that hope was lost and we were preparing for the end. Something that could not be contemplated. 

Dennis and I had divided responsibilities. So much so that I literally did not know where anything was. I couldn't find a checkbook or the pink slips or even the deed to the house. I couldn't find the pink on the boats or our insurance both house and otherwise. I was completely lost and in a state of panic. I had heard of this happening, but I believed we had years left to play catch up. Now I needed to write a check and couldn't find a paper check, and when I did find the checkbook, it was empty. 

Hyperventilation became my norm. 

I knew there were bills to be paid and instead of logically thinking things through, I hit the closet with all the strength I could muster and that's not a lot given Crohn's disease and dysautonomia. Box after box came off the shelves. I opened file cabinets and threw the files on the floor. I am talking years worth of stuff. But there wasn't any organization I could understand. I always knew that Dennis could walk into the bedroom and come back with everything I needed. However his filing system left me dumbfounded.   

The kids thought I'd gone bonkers, which of course I had. I had been living on adrenaline for months. First this hospital, this treatment, this test, more nights in chairs in hospital rooms. I did not feel the pain of sleeping in hard plastic chairs or on the floor. Who does that? I should have figured out that I had gone nuts, but I had no clue. Covid-19 came with strict rules. You enter the hospital and if you want to stay with your spouse you do not leave. The kids saw him through windows, clean clothes were handed off in secret. One night I crawled into bed with him. I didn't give a damn who saw us.

Back to the bedroom and the insanity that I didn't know where anything was. I kept thinking these kinds of things happen to other people, not to me. But why not me? Because I am a 21st century woman who has a computer and and and. Damn, I didn't even have the password to our accounts at the bank. 

More tears, anguish, and hair pulling. Why did I do this? Why didn't we go over things before he passed. Because we couldn't. I could not bear to have him think I didn't have confidence in his recovery. That was a huge thing to him. Every day he would ask me if I thought he could make it. I always told him yes. 

After the kids convinced me that I needed to rest, I ended up in a hiccuping exhaustion and fell into bed. I realized that I thought, in some weird indefinable way, that Dennis would return to help me find the missing paperwork. Of course that isn't a reasonable thought, but in my messed up mind, filled with grief 24/7 it made perfect sense. He had to come back. He just HAD to. 

I had developed the habit of reaching over to touch my husband at night, just to make sure he was safe. This touching happened many times over the course of his illness, but had taken on extreme importance after he lost the ability to walk. Two weeks after he passed, I reached over to touch him.

A man's voice, kind but instructive, said, "Dennis isn't here anymore."

Now this voice did not come from inside my head. I heard it with my ears. I fell back to sleep, comforted. However, the following morning I woke up pissed. I didn't know who the voice was that decided I needed to be told about my husband's whereabouts, but it sure as shit wasn't some disembodied voice. Over the course of three nights, every time I reached for my husband, the voice repeated itself.

I cannot tell you how angry I was at this amorphous being. I lived with an ongoing argument in my head or verbalized to my grand-dog because, again, in some weird way, I believed Dennis was coming home and this guy had no right to tell me different. Dennis was where he was, right here in the bedroom. Maybe I couldn't see him, but he was there. 

​On Tuesday of this week, at least I think it was Tuesday, my daughter told me I could pick up Dennis' cremated remains. As soon as she told me I burst into tears that eventually turned into hysteria, that place where you suck in air like a dying fish. When done, my head looked like a tormented tomato, flushed and swollen. 

My daughter-in-law came with me. Our first stop was at my doctor's office. Crohn's and my autonomic disorder were taking their toll. I have a strong will and I tend to overdue and pay the price later. My most wonder doctor asked me if I had designated another person to help make medical decisions for me when the need arose. It was then that I realized I would need to update our trust. Another insurmountable mountain that loomed impossibly large. 

Afterward we went to the funeral parlor to pick up my husband's ashes. As crazy as this sounds, I let out a HUGE sigh of relief. Now I knew where Dennis was and he was going home to my dresser. The voice did have it wrong and I could prove it. He was right here in my arms. 

I wanted to be alone so I asked my daughter-in-law to go home. I came inside the house and put the beautiful box I'd picked out, right where I wanted it, on my dresser. I slept thru the night for the first time in weeks. This happened for three days. 

Yesterday, as I sat looking at his box, I was struck with the realization that Dennis was not Dennis in a box, no matter how pretty the box. Dennis was gone and once I realized that, I became profoundly sad. This is different than depression. It is like waking up from a nightmare only to realize that the nightmare is real and it cannot be changed. Tears are still there, only now there is a gentle weeping that comes between the storms of grief.  Dennis is gone and last night, I didn't reach out to touch him. 

I am accepting that the adrenaline is wearing off. There are no more crisis' that take me from hospital to hospital. There will be no more will he live or will he die? Will this work or won't it? 

I am just beginning to understand that the oncologist missed a tumor that literally broke Dennis' back. I realize now, that had he lived, he would never have walked again. I don't know how he would feel about it, but I do know that we would have embraced his paralysis with love.

While I wonder how the tumor was missed, I also realize that physicians are only practicing medicine. Even the emergency room docs missed it. Maybe it wasn't that the tumor was so big, but that the tumor placement was in a bad spot. I will never know, because I do not want to ask. 

Profound grief and sadness are part of the recovery process. The mind thinks weird things and the imagination intrudes on waking life. I suspect that full acceptance will get here someday. I just don't know when. So for now I weep, in between the storms of grief. 

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