HAP

Dear Kay, Marty really is a peach, as we used to say back in the day. Peace, Harry

Dear Stacyines, There is no magic to get you through this. Any place you have been together--any place you planned to go together--has the potential to ambush you. Let the tears come when they will. Holding them back seems, at least for many of us, to make them worse later. Be patient with yourself. Healing comes in baby-steps. Sometimes it seems those steps are so small--and the knock backs so great--that at best we are going nowhere--and at worst we are going backwards. But then we look up, sometimes months later, and are amazed at the distance we have come. Remember to eat, to stay hydrated and to breathe. There is nothing magic to it. There is only living second by second until you can handle minute by minute. Then minute by minute until you can handle two-minutes at a time, then three minutes, then four minutes. Sometimes things will move forward quickly. Sometimes they will move slowly. Sometimes you will feel you are going nowhere or backwards. But even the backward steps simply lay the groundwork for future growth. Be patient. We got through these first weeks and months. You will, too. Peace, Harry

Dear Kay, I don't remember the name of the thread where you wrote about what happened to you in that relationship, but I do remember reading it as a very important cautionary tale for those of us still in a vulnerable emotional state. It might be useful to some of our newer members to look at that post if you can remember the name of it. Peace, Harry

Friends, I've had enough. I've tried to be gentle. I've tried to be reasonable. I've watched Marty try to be gentle. I've watched Marty try to be reasonable. Now Walt has tried to be gentle and reasonable. After Marty's first effort, several people seconded her concerns--tried to be gentle--tried to be reasonable I've had enough. I have watched the departure of many of the friends I have made here in recent months. Perhaps other things have called them away. Perhaps they have reached the point they no longer need to be here--or maybe they have reached the point they can no longer bear to be here. I've had enough. Earlier today I posted a parable--a teaching story. Eighteen people have read it. Marty wrote to tell me she thought she got it. But the only public response chose to take it not as a parable but as a literal request for help with my house plants. I was tempted to sign off not with Peace, but with good-bye when I finished writing it. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps then people would have understood. I have tried to be subtle. I have tried to be gentle. I have tried to be reasonable. I've had enough. I have no problem with Jesus Christ. As a Buddhist monk once said to me after reading Matthew, "That man is either close to enlightenment or enlightened." His words are beautiful words about peace and justice and love. It is a beautiful story about the equality of of all humans, the equality of the sexes (look at roles of Martha, and Mary and Mary Magdalene, among others, and how important and non-secondary they are in Matthew). It is a beautiful story of one man's quest for spiritual enlightenment with a central theme of "what I am you can attain as well." He does not claim to be the Son of God very often. Instead he calls himself "the son of man." And that emphasis is a powerful call to a spiritual reform that, alas, was never attained. I have no problem with those who attempt to truly emulate Christ--who live their lives with love as the true basis of everything they do--who see that true vision of peace and justice and equality. Who understand that Christ's message is a revolutionary one that demands each of us attempt to stand on that cliff alone against the darkness--who try to be sons of men. I clasp those people to my heart as strongly as I do those who truly embrace and emulate the Buddha and Lao-tso and Gandhi--and the thousand others who were born in times and places where they were forgotten as soon as the bodies of their true disciples were cold. But I do have a problem with those who profess to be Christians but see themselves as members of some secret elect who believe they know who is saved and who is not; who see a woman as someone to be brought before men like a piece of property to be accepted or rejected--to be bought or sold--as though god were some kind of dating service or pimp who exists to serve their needs; who "surrender" their control and responsibility to the deity as an act of free will that sets them free from the very path Christ asks them to follow. And I do have a problem with those Christians who are so completely and thoroughly insensitive to those of other faiths and beliefs that they ignore the pain of those around them that their own words and actions create. I remember the persecution of the Jews that ended in Hitler's attempted genocide, but I also remember the genocides of the Jews that preceded it--and I will not forget that Hitler did those things "in Christ's name." I remember the conquistadors pouring molten gold down the throat of the Inca king, in the name of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I remember the Inquisition and the thumbscrews and the burning of Joan of Arc. I remember the slaughter of the Moslems in the Holy Land and the rape of their women in the name of the Merciful Christian God. I remember the murder of Thomas Moore by the Protestants and the towns their armies sacked and burned and the women they raped in the name of their version of the Christian God. And I have heard the words of a woman in Florida--that on the Day of Judgement she, and the other elect, will choose who to raise and who to leave in death. I have heard a serious candidate for president of the United States say that the Freedom of Religion clause of the first amendment only applies to Christianity. And I have heard a former vice presidential candidate refer to her state as the last fortress of Christianity in the end times. I have heard supposed Christians talk about the infidel Moslems--about how only Christians should be allowed to vote; how homosexuality is a choice and how all homosexuals should be damned at best--and killed at worst--if they cannot be converted. I came to this place to grieve--to share my grief with others who know the same emptiness and the same silence. I came to this place to find peace--not in another's religion--but in each other's hearts. I came to this place to remember my wife and the good that woman did while she was in the world. And for a time, this was that place. It is no longer that place for too many of us. I can no longer read a thread without running into "Our Lord and Savior" and being reminded by that phrase of all the evil that has been done in that poor entity's name. And all the evil that seems likely to be done in his name in the future. This place that once brought me peace now increasingly only causes me pain. This place that once seemed filled with love and respect seems filled now with something entirely other. My session today with the Dana-Farber online grief program talked about the need to ask directly for what one needs. So let me be as blunt and direct as I can. I do not care what faith you profess elsewhere. Here, we are all human beings united by our grief. Check your religion, your smug attitude. and your intolerance of the beliefs of others at the door. Weep here, commiserate here, empathize here, rebuild your existence here. But at the same time, have a little sensitivity to what others are feeling--to what others believe. Otherwise we risk destroying a truly beautiful and precious thing. Finally, my apologies to those of you who are the backbone of this establishment. From what some of you have written I know you are Christians in the best sense of the word. You are as embarrassed and upset as I am by the things done in your faith's name both here and elsewhere. It is not my intent to impugn your faith or your beliefs. Some folks have crossed a line, however, and I owe it to you and to myself to try at least one more time to stop what seems to be happening to this community of souls. Marty, if it seems to you I have gone too far with the above, delete any or all of it. You are the better judge at this stage. Peace, Harry

There is a plant I bought a short time ago. It is an annual with bright red sunflower-like flowers that I got on special because it is late in the season and the market for such things has pretty much dried up. But I looked at the plant and thought about the picture window that even in winter gets 5-6 hours of sunlight--and I thought about how drab the house can be in mid-winter even with the silk flowers my wife and I bought over the years to spark things up. It was the day after the Marathon Walk and I wanted some living remembrance of that experience. So, against my better judgement, I bought it and brought it home with me, intending to nurse it through the winter. Before I left the house last Friday for the weekend I gave all the house plants a good drink, knowing I would not be back until Sunday night. They have all been through worse experiences before--many went without water for two weeks at a time while Jane was in the hospital. But my new plant had not. Still, two days should not be an issue. But when I got home Sunday it had been. Its leaves were drooping and its beautiful flowers had shriveled. But I am a patron of lost causes, if nothing else. I gave it some water--not so much as to rot the roots, but enough to perk it up. The flowers did not entirely recover, but the bushiness of the leaves told me it would live. When I got up this morning it was droopy again. So I watered it again and it seems to be getting better. Clearly the thing is potbound and will continue this unacceptable behavior until I do something about its underlying condition. This weekend I will move it up a pot-size which will, I hope, solve part of the problem. Unfortunately, the pot it is in is the perfect size for where the plant now sits. A bigger pot simply creates another set of problems involving the plants around it that also need their share of the limited daylight. Were this a regular house plant or a non-annual, I would simply divide the plant, but I would still have the real estate problem--and i really only want the one in any event. But I have to do something or the whole plant will die. But if I do what I have in mind, some of the other plants may suffer. The conundrum is, can I rearrange the plants so everyone is happy? Or does the one have to go for the good of the many? Are there times, as my father would argue, that the good of the one outweighs the good of the many? How do i prevent this one plant from dictating the circumstances of the others? How do I get it to play nice? Or do I just let nature take its course? Peace, Harry

Dear Stacyines, Actually, given how the mind of a suicidal person works, we can't know what or why he did what he did. There is a substantial chance he did not think this at all. I have studied suicide long enough to know that what people popularly believe is often not the case. Every suicide is different. And one induced by drug use is often even more outside the normal range because the person's perceptions are further skewed by the influences of the drug. What we do know is that you have to deal with the reality of now--the reality of what you think and feel. If you are feeling anger toward your boyfriend, that is fine. It is part of the process for most of us at some point. But it is not true for everyone. Some of us get angry at doctors, at our families, at ourselves, at some other convenient scapegoat instead. Every journey through grief is different because our experiences before we experience grief are different. In broad strokes, there are similarities. But in the day-to-day details our walk through this forest can be radically different. The loneliness and the emptiness, I suspect, are the same for most of us. Our desire to avoid the things that remind us of those happier times also seems to be our common experience. I put off drives to various places for months because they would carry me too close to memories I was not yet ready to recall. There are still places I am not comfortable. And yet, every night I sleep in the bed we spent 21 years in, I live in the house we built together almost 17 years ago. And for all that I have moved the furniture around, I have only replaced that furniture that had worn out and that we had planned to replace soon anyway. On the other hand, I have known people who gave away their furniture and replaced it all--but who seem to have had no difficulty returning to former haunts. For all that there are grief groups all over the world, for all the basic similarities of our circumstances, the way we deal with those things is entirely different for many of us. My father, for example, lost my mother barely six months before I lost Jane. His response to that loss has been very different from my own. He tried a grief group and could not stand it. He tried different grief counselors, but could not stand that either. Instead, he works on major projects around the house, goes out to dinner with my brothers and sisters, watches the news. He does all the things the books say he should not do. And yet he seems to be moving through his grief just as well as I am. Perhaps better. But how much of that has to do with my mother's long battle with Alzheimer's, how much of it has to do with his engineering background, how much of it has to do with his being 82 years old and in less than perfect health himself, I cannot say. I think, sometimes, that we see our own paths in this land we have fallen into so clearly that we think our path is the same as everyone else's. But while there are similarities, our individual paths are distinctly our own. Yes, we all need to be reminded about self-care issues--eating, sleeping, drinking, exercising, re-establishing social connections; we all need to be reminded to be patient with ourselves and with others; we all need the hugs we are offered--both figurative and literal. But we all need to constantly keep in mind that our grief is not identical to everyone else's--that our answers, while they may be good for us, may not be good for everyone--or anyone--else. I am at war with the disease that killed my wife. It is the right thing, perhaps, for me to do. But going into that war with me may well not be the path for you to get through your own process. Fighting the thing that took your spouse may or may not be the right thing for you, too. Maybe the way for you is in the theater, or in water colors, or in raising exotic animals. Maybe it is sitting in a corner and reading romance novels. There is no right way to do this except the right way for you. One size fits all methods are as wrong in this process as they are in anything involving human emotional issues. No matter how well-meaning our prescriptions are, they are likely to be wrong when we know so little about each other. And joined as we all are in the commonality of our grief, it is easy to forget how little we truly know each other. Much as I have bared my soul here periodically, only two of you would recognize me in the supermarket. None of you know my faith, my political party, my upbringing, or really any of the things that have shaped me into the person I have become. No more do I know those things about you in the level of detail that would allow me to even think about being prescriptive beyond the issues of self-care and of patience and the importance of breathing now and again. I know just enough about human psychology that I can sound an alarm when someone's posts are sounding suicidal--but I can be no more certain you really are suicidal than a batter can be absolutely certain what pitch is coming next. There is no one, ultimately, who can truly experience another person's life. There is no one who can walk our paths for us. There is no one who can tell us the right or the wrong way to grieve. Those of us who are in the throes of grief can, sometimes, offer advice, can always offer encouragement if we are not too lost in our own moments to notice. But we cannot make decisions for you any more than we can live your life for you. Otherwise the joys of your progress will not really be your joys. Peace, Harry

Dear Stacyines, Guilt is a slippery emotion. We all feel it. And while we are under its influence we can do all kinds of things that are not good for us. I had a former student at the Pentagon on 9-11. He had gone outside for a cigarette. The plane hit the section of the building he was supposed to be in. He never got over the survivor guilt that engulfed him. A few weeks later he died in a car crash. I feel guilty about my wife's death with some frequency. If only I had pushed harder to get her to the doctor--to get a second opinion--and if necessary a third. But in the logical part of my mind I know I did all she would allow me to do--and that, in any event, with the very little we know about the disease even now, even a much earlier diagnosis would not have influenced the final outcome very much. And would she have wanted to live for a decade knowing she had that sword hanging over her head? I don't know. I am never going to know. Grief also demands comforting. A friend of mine wrote a paper on hugs many years ago in which she argued that physical contact is a thing we need to stay both physically and mentally healthy. And there is some evidence for that. Physical contact is a part of comforting another human being. There is a reason many people enter perhaps too quickly into physical relationships after the loss of a loved one. It is almost a cliche'. And that cliche is based on reality. Accept that kiss not as a token to inspire guilt but as a token of your human need for physical comfort in a time of enormous emotional distress. Frankly, I am amazed that kind of thing does not happen with even greater frequency than it does. That you were not exactly sober at the time should actually give you cause to praise yourself for not letting things go any further under those circumstances. I did not have a single drink for the first six or seven months after my wife died. I have since allowed myself three drinks total--and always set things up so that I could not have more than that single drink. I only allowed myself those drinks because I was not craving them as a release. I have too many alcoholic relatives to be comfortable with drinking much under ideal circumstances. I knew that in the immediate aftermath of my wife's death that would be far too easy a trap to fall into. I guess what I am suggesting is that you avoid alcohol--or any other non-prescribed drug--at least until you feel you are no longer likely to crawl into the battle and hide there. Be patient with yourself. Your grief is still too new for you to do much more than try to live minute by minute--sometimes second by second. Nine and a half months in I still have days where I live second to second. Those days are fewer now--but they are still there. Breathe. You have time enough. You will heal. But this is not television. It will not be over in a 40 minute hour. Be patient--both with yourself and others. I know we have several of us said this to you before--but it bears repeating: your boyfriend's death was not your fault. I know that does not do much to take your pain away, but it does not change its essential truth. Don't let his death bring about yours as well. I have a former student who lost a guy she told me before he died was her soulmate--that the way they saw each other was--she thought--very much the way my wife and I were. And then he died.She was a mess for a time. But gradually she came back to herself. With patience and some outside help, you will rediscover yourself as well. We all will. Peace, Harry

Dear Mary, I can only echo your sentiments both in terms of Marty's intervention and in terms of the increasingly religious tone. I, too, have found it increasingly difficult to participate here. Thank you for verbalizing those feelings. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I actually wrote what follows for my daily news piece on walkingwithjane.org. But when i finished it seemed highly appropriate for this forum as well. I sat down at the computer last night with the best of intentions. But what had started out earlier in the day as a two hour drive from Western Mass. through country I had not seen in decades at some point turned into a four hour nightmare involving a blown tire, a rim that had fused to the brake drum, an annoying offshore conversation with my auto club--that appears to have sent all its customer service--including emergency road side assistance --to people on the far side of the world whose acquaintance with the American Highway System consists of what they can see on Google Maps--visits from two very helpful state troopers and an official breakdown specialist, two helpful passersby, and, finally, 45 minutes earlier than promised, the guy with the tow truck. I think we forget sometimes the number of truly good and nice people in the world today amid all the corporate and political craziness that leads us to other conclusions. By this point you are wondering what all this has to do with neuroendocrine cancer and carcinoid syndrome. As I sit here on an overly warm and muggy New England morning musing about the events of yesterday I am also reminded of the incredible kindnesses Jane and I encountered during her last months: from the nurse who came in to sit with Jane right after her doctor told her he thought she probably had cancer, to the people at the inn who arranged a special room for us overlooking the lake for our last night of our last vacation, to the doctors and nurses every step of the way who quickly moved from caregivers with imposing titles and resumes to people we could talk to to, eventually, friends we could count on to tell us the truth about what was going on. I think about the people at work who nightly took the calls I made to the principal--or anyone else--and sent the information out over the network we had established for snow days so that everyone would know how things stood. I think about the friends who gave up their Thanksgiving so Jane's father and sister could be with her in her hospital room for one last family Thanksgiving. I remember the families of the other longterm patients in the ICU and the tight bonds we formed to support each other in our times of deep trouble. I remember the friends who came to visit, making the long drive through the traffic to and in Boston from our little corner of the world. I remember Helen driving me from Newton to Brigham & Women's and inviting me to sit and talk in her living room, just to get me away from that hospital for a few more minutes. I remeber the nurses who made sure I got something to eat every day, that I got into the shower every day--and that i tried to sleep some every night. And I remember the friends who came to be with me on that last day when my whole world was shattering into Humpty Dumpty style pieces. I remember Jen Chan coming through the door just before noon that day on her lunch break to sit with us, not as a doctor but as a dear friend--and saying on her way out to see her afternoon patients that her body would be with them, but that her mind would be with us all afternoon. I remember Javid Moslehi making that same pilgrimage later in the day--again, as friend not as doctor. I remember the chaplain I had met in the elevator dropping by to visit, even though it was not his floor. I remember John and Gail sitting there with us through the hours. I remember Scott staying with me far into the night to be with me at the end and to help make the calls that had to be made--and then driving me home and back again the next day so I could get my car out of another friend's driveway. And I remember the words Scott relayed to me from the young woman in the Shapiro Family Center who had talked with me every night after dinner after he told her the news that Jane had passed away: "Thank you. I am going to go cry now." There were constant kindnesses from both our oldest and dearest friends--and from people we hardly knew. And those kindnesses have continued since Jane's death--from the hundreds who attended Jane's wake and funeral, some literally flying across the country to be there, to the hundreds who have made donations of time and money and effort to the work of helping try to find an answer to this cancer, to the people who write me and call me and make sure I get out and go for a hike or out to a concert or a roller derby or a play or in some way take a break. There are times I feel like Prometheus, chained to his rock with an eagle gnawing on his liver. There are times I feel like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders. There are times I feel like Job sitting in the ashes of his burned out farm. And then a random act of kindness happens--sometimes not even directed at me--and I forget the pain, I forget the weight, and I understand Job's answer. To all of you, both known and unknown, my thanks. Just now three geese flew overhead so close I could hear their feathers keening above the sound of their honking. The number three has always held deep meaning for me--though not in the traditional Christian sense. But I will take that as a positive omen--that together we will all make this a better world through our individual random acts of kindness. Go do something nice for someone today. You can never be certain how that will help them lift the burden they may be carrying. Peace, Harry

Dear Dwayne, Hang in there. Peace, Harry

Dear Suzanne, Go read the second half of my note to Stacyines. You need it as much as she does. Peace, Harry

Dear Kay, Fingers and toes crossed. Think positive. And if they say no, they didn't deserve you. Peace, Harry

Dear Stacyines, If you are on Facebook, set up a separate page where you can post information about this. Post your story there. Also post links to news articles about the subject there. Have google set up news alerts for you so you can get stuff posted and linked quickly. You might also check to see if there are groups already working on this and volunteer some time with them. Certainly you could talk to someone at Narcotics Anonymous. I would think this would be right up their alley. If no one is working on this, you could set up a website dedicated to this thing. Visit walkingwithjane.org to see the site I set up to go after the cancer that took my wife to see what that can look like.That will cost some money though--and for now Facebook would give you plenty of exposure. When you get the FB page done, drop me a line and I will post a link on the FB page I have for my wife. There are a lot of guidance counselors and the like who visit that location. We average about 16,000 views per month. Talk to the people at both your school and his about talking to students there. Also talk to your school newspaper about doing a story on this. Talk to the one at his school as well. Then talk to the local professional press in both locations. I applaud your wanting to do something like this. But please keep in mind that you need to take care of you at the same time. Just because fighting the thing that took him from you makes you feel good does not mean you are healed. Keep seeing the counselor, keep going to group, keep reading and writing here. Get yourself into as healthy an eating, sleeping, cleaning and exercising routine as you can. Will you slip sometimes? Yes, I do all the time--my living room looks like a bomb hit it tonight because I got too busy to keep it neat this week. But keep trying to stick with things that are good for you. Avoid non-prescribed drugs and alcohol. They will only dull the pain and keep you from dealing with the things you need to deal with. There are going to be times when you feel better--but there are also going to be times you feel awful. Those waves of grief are normal. You are not going backward when they hit--though it really does feel otherwise at the time. Be patient with yourself and live second by second if you have to. Gradually you will feel more in control of your life, but it is not going to happen with anywhere near the speed it does on television. Be patient with yourself--and be patient with those around you. Unless they have experienced this kind of loss they have no idea what you are going through no matter how many times they say they do. This is not like breaking up with someone--the thing my brother tried to claim gave him the expertise to tell me what I should do and how I should feel. Cry when you need to cry. Laugh when you need to laugh. That last sounds peculiar, I know. Art Buchwald, a satirist who stopped writing before you were born, asked the columnist Walt Lippman--he died before you were born--after the Kennedy assassination in 1963, "Will we ever laugh again?" Lippman's response was: "No. We will laugh again--but we'll never be young again." Laughter is as necessary to the healing process as tears. I wish--we all wish--we could take this burden away from you. But you have now experienced something that will set you apart from most of your peers. The death of someone as close as your boyfriend seems to have been to you is an experience that is going to change you. It is going to make you more mature than your years. You have seen death--and in seeing it you have seen how fragile and ephemeral life is. That knowledge is a powerful force in our lives. It can either strengthen us or weaken us. And none of us knows for certain which way it will take us. But we can influence that direction. You have already made two decisions that will shape this experience for you and help to determine which of those two paths your experience will take you on. There are four things you can do from here: First, you can become a follower of life--one who has a belief in life and follows it as a religion. Second, you can become a follower of death--and become one who sees death the way others see life and follow it. Third, you can become one who is merely passing through life to death. The one you love is gone and you are just hanging around waiting for death so you can join him. The vast majority of people fall into one of these three categories long before anyone they know or care about has died. But one in ten truly lives. He does not hide from death, nor does he seek it or wait for it. Instead she lives in each moment. She smells the rain, rejoices in the snow on the sidewalk, truly listens to the songs of the birds, and weeps and laughs when the spirit moves her. And because she is concerned with living--not following life but truly living it--death ceases to be an issue--the tiger can find no place to put its claws--the rhinoceros no place to put its horn. My wife and I chose to live. Death came for her. It made neither of us happy. But we fought for her life with everything we had between us. We fought dirty. We tried to load the dice. But we also knew that death is part of life--and we lived her death like we had lived everything in life--with passion, with laughter, with tears and with the kind of love songs are written of. It were profanation of that love for me to stop living because she is no longer here. I will not follow life, nor death, nor merely pass through life to death. I will live with all the passion I can muster. I will look for the hummingbirds, walk beneath the sun and the rain and enjoy both equally, laugh when the world is at play, and weep when it descends into madness. But above all, I will keep that love in the world. I hope that you will do so as well. I hope that you all will do so as well. Peace, Harry

Dear Stacyines, I agree with Mary. Get yourself to a professional counselor ASAP. For tonight, you might hit up the local Samaritans. THey are trained for what I hear in your voice here. People commit suicide for lots of reasons. They are not thinking like the rest of us do. They do not think about the pain they may cause or the quilt. Trust me when I tell you you are NOT to blame for his death. Anyone who is trying to tell you otherwise is looking for a scapegoat for their own guilt about his death. They are hurting as you are hurting. But they think finding someone to blame will take that hurt away. Please forgive them. In their pain they do not know what they are doing. Forgive him as well: in his pain he did not know what he was doing. And forgive yourself--there was very little you could do under he best of circumstances. Over the phone, you had no real chance at all. My wife once asked me why I so rarely got angry with her. In her illness there were times she was downright cruel, she thought. I told her that whenever she got angry with me I knew I was talking to the cancer and not to her. People who are hurting do all kinds of things that can be hurtful to those around them without realizing they are doing so. All we can do is respond with patience and understanding. Sometimes that is not enough--and sometimes, being human, we respond to anger and hurt by responding in kind. We are not perfect. But it is what we have. What you have been through is enough to put you out on the edge. You need all the support we can give you--and that support will be there. But you equally need the help of someone who is trained to deal with this kind of trauma as well. Please, tell us you will start finding that person tomorrow morning. You need them even more than you need us. Peace, Harry

Dear Friends: The Marathon Walk yesterday was both physically and emotionally taxing. Physically for the obvious reason that 26.2 miles is a considerable distance even for the young--and the way I feel today I am clearly not yet young again--or even headed in that direction. Strangely, beyond feeling really tired and a touch stiff, the only real pain I am feeling is in my hips--and they really only bother me when I try to walk. I have never, in all the years I have been hiking and walking and running, had pain in my hips afterwards. Curious. But I could feel Jane with me on every step--and no matter how tough the physical pain was--they call it Heartbreak Hill for a reason--her voice kept me moving forward. For the first 60 percent of the walk I was largely alone. I thought the Caring for Carcinoid group had already left when I got there so I left at top speed to try to catch them. A couple miles down the road I caught up with Rosie who was carrying their balloon. She told me she had left early and they were still at the start waiting for me. Eventually she got a message to them and we met up about mile 16 for lunch. But that first 16 miles I had plenty of time to think and to remember the walks Jane and I had taken, the mountains we had climbed, and those final walks at Dana-Faber and Brigham & Women's--ending with the day I had to push her wheelchair across the street to the Shapiro Building the night before her heart surgery. And then there was that long figurative walk that lasted nearly a month as I walked with her to her death. I remembered our Thanksgiving dinner of cream of chicken soup for her and pumpkin soup for me as we sat together in her hospital room. I remembered how glad I was that she had come out of that first coma so that we could have that one meal together. It was, we agreed, the best Thanksgiving of our lives. I remembered her going into another coma the following Saturday morning. I remembered talking to Jen Chan about one final attempt to break the series of carcinoid attacks--and how happy we all were when it worked. I remembered the slow steady progress after she came back to us that night. I remembered the permanent pacemaker. I remembered making plans for what we would do in February--how we would go back to the inn on the lake where we had spent the last night of our last vacation and just sit there in that suite and stare out over the frozen water. And I remembered that Thursday morning when it all went to hell. I remembered the show we were watching, how her body started to shake, how we put her back to bed thinking she just needed a nap, how her blood pressure crashed, how Jen came in--and Jane woke up just long enough to here her say that all we could do now was make he comfortable. I remembered her waking up again at six o'clock that night, unable to communicate beyond blinking her eyelids. I remembered her drifting off to sleep, both of us knowing she would never wake up again. I remembered saying, "Good night, my warrior princess." I remembered weaning her off the ventilator, removing the feeding tube, reading to her and holding her hand and talking to her--and hoping against hope for the miracle that I knew would never happen the way I wanted it to. As the intensivist had said to me, "You both wanted to defeat this cancer. Now the only way for her to defeat it is to die and take it with her." That was what was happening. And I remembered how, during the first coma, when I thought she would be gone that day--that she would never wake up--I realized that I had always told her if someone took her from me the police had better find that person first--and how this disease was taking her from me and was creating that same imperative: kill it so it kills no one else. Out of those memories came a renewed sense of purpose. I did not care how painful the steps became nor how long I walked alone. I remember saying to myself at one point, "I don't care if I have to crawl the last five miles or the last ten miles, I am getting to that finish line under my own power." I knew that walk was symbolic of what we are up against in fighting cancer in general, and fighting neuroendocrine cancer and carcinoid syndrome in particular. After lunch I joined the rest of the Caring for Carcinoid group that was walking from Hopkinton and two people who were starting from there. They kept me talking about Jane, about NEC, about why this thing is so tough to diagnose, let alone cure. They let me forget the pain and keep moving forward. And then we got to Coolidge Corner in Brookline. This young woman came up as we finished taking a picture. She was somewhere between 18 and 25 to look at her. She wanted to know what the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation was. We started to explain what NEC is, but she stopped us. "I know what neueroendocrine cancer is," she said. "I have it. They took my appendix and part of my lower intestine out last year." This was, she said, her celebration of her survival and recoverey. She and her friend had walked all the way from Hopkinton. I did not ask her her name. I wish now that I had. And I wish she had been walking at our pace, because there are things I wanted to say to her afterwards--that I hope she meets the person of her dreams, that she marries that person and that she has children if she wants them; that I hope she lives a long life and that she finds as much joy in that life as Jane and I had over the 21 years, three months and eight days of our too short marriage. Her life is likely still at risk. We have no cure for NEC. But that operation has bought her time--time in which we can find a way to manage this insidious little demon, time for us to cage it and kill it. Time for us to arrange things so that they end differently for her than they did for Jane and me. At the end of the walk, sore as i was, I raised my staff over my head with both hands and screamed, "Victory." But i did not fall to the ground and die. I talked with the other members of the team. Found some yogurt, thought about a massage. Then I found a quiet corner and let the the emotions overwhelm me. I cried the good tears we all wait on. I got back on the bus. Road to my hotel room. Took a long hot shower--and slept. Peace, Harry

Dear Mary, If i could remove whole quivers... But I'll settle for the few arrows i may have the time and skill to pluck. Wish you were closer to hand. Your experience will make you a gift to the widows and widowers lucky enough to have you available. Peace, Harry

Dear Marty, Thank you for your concern. I am doing the best I can to keep myself healthy. Unfortunately, this machine has always been stuck in high gear. Jane was very much the same way. We were married in a very big church, though the number of folks there was very small. After the service was done we walked back down the aisle together at our normal pace. We reached the door before our best man and maid of honor had cleared the first pew. There were about 40 pews in the church. Given that at this stage in the year we would normally be getting 5-6 hours of sleep, the 7-8 I am getting seems like the height of laziness sometimes. Peace, Harry

Dear Friends, I have been absent for quite a while. I've had a lot on my plate that needed to get done. Some of it was physical, but some of it was emotional and mental as well. I am now two-thirds of the way through the Dana-Farber online grief trial. It has required a great deal of focus and energy. The first third was fairly easy because it focussed on things I was already doing. It was mainly about self-care: getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, eating healthy foods at healthy intervals--those kinds of things. The second third, which I finished tonight, has focussed on re-establishing social connections and dealing with things like avoidance and negative emotions. Some of those have required far more energy than I expected. Others have required me to get out and be with people in the real world--a thing that has consumed much more time than I think we generally imagine. And the amount of energy some of those things take is substantial. Worse have been the exercises dealing with avoidance. I gradually came to realize there were lots of little things I was avoiding that I needed to stop doing. For example, we used to walk down along the Taunton River with some frequency. Sometimes we would just sit there in the afternoon and watch the kids learning to sail. It came to me that I had not walked down there--had, in fact, gone out of my way to avoid driving down in that direction--since Jane died. I needed to reclaim that space for myself--and the only way to do that was to go down there and confront those demons. This is all further complicated by the fact my "firsts" are nearly all huddled in this last third of the year. Our anniversary was September 2, for example. I thought I was ready for that--and likely if it had been all that was there I probably would have been. But I got blind-sided by some firsts I did not see coming. August 16 was the day we got the official diagnosis. The 23rd was the day the local oncology center essentially told us there was nothing they could do for us and that we would have to go to Boston. Friday was the anniversary of our first trip to Dana-Farber as well as the nine month anniversary the day they told us in the hospital that there was nothing more they could do. Saturday was the nine month anniversary of her death. Next Friday is the day we learned how badly her heart had been damaged by the excess serotonin flowing out of her liver. That was the day she told me she thought she had no chance and I told her with the people we had on this team I thought her chances--while not good--were better than no chance--though I didn't put the number myself at better than 10 percent. But this time has not all been about grief and dealing with it. We launched walkingwithjane.org on September 2 just about 11 p.m.--a mere 11 hours behind schedule. I have talked to a lawyer about my will and about setting up a not-for-profit foundation to channel money into research into neuroendocrine cancer at Dana-Farber. I have raised just over $3500 through the Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk that will all be going into NEC research. I have set up the writing of a package for newspaper articles for International Neuroendocrine Tumor Awareness Day. I have begun the planning for what I hope will eventually become a national event set in malls across the country to raise awareness about the disease. And yes, I know that sounds like a lot--like I am not only burning the candle at both ends but in the middle as well. But I am sleeping 7-8 hours every night--often without waking up in the middle. I am getting a walk in every day--and I'd better if I am going to cover 26 miles 385 yards next Sunday--and doing my stretching and leg lifts and sit-ups. I am going out for coffee and the occasional meal with friends and former students. And otherwise making sure I eat three healthy meals every day and stay hydrated on top of that. The housework is often a little behind, but I can get the car in the garage--OK Irene forced that one on me--and the place is less of a firetrap than it once was. Still a ways to go in cleaning out closets--the big avoidance thing I am trying to work toward but am not ready to deal with just yet. Have I made progress? Yes. But I have given some of that progress back this week. As people here say with some frequency, two steps forward one step back sometimes. The grief wave this week has been bigger than I have seen recently. But when I look at it logically--given everything emotional in these two weeks--and never mind all the 9-11 stuff that everyone throws in my face this week--I would be more worried if I were not going backwards a little bit. (And I don't know about your neighborhood, but the commercialization of 9-11 I am seeing locally is really distasteful. Even full immersion baptism would not wash away the slimy feeling I feel when I see this stuff in front of me...no offense intended to the truly religious here--but that is how evil some of this stuff seems to me--come on, a Budweiser ad that centers on 9-11 that ends with their logo and "drink responsibly?" Or a display of red, white and blue flower bouquets in the local supermarket with some bit of jingoistic nonsense as a tag line? Or today's football games--and all the commentators bragging on how football stitched us all back together again after the tragedy. Right. Sure it did. Just like golf requires heroic actions. Bloody bread and circuses to take our minds off reality. Damn it, I have had--and currently have--students over there--and I worry about them every day.. We lost a woman in our community on one of the flights. I spent the whole day trying to hold kids sanity together that day, Jane and I both did--putting our emotions in a box until we got home and could safely let them out. You want an unsung group of people from that day--teachers across this country had to hold their own feelings together so they could help kids deal with the trauma of those planes crashing into those buildings. We do that every time there is a national tragedy. It is not, many folks beliefs to the contrary notwithstanding, a job that just anyone can do. OK, climbing off my soap box now.) So there you are. The good man has gone to war against the thing that killed his wife. As one of my students wrote to another earlier this summer, "If I were this cancer, I would be very afraid." I will keep working through my grief. I will not let it trap me except to the extent the grief waves are beyond my control. And even those I will patiently ride out, knowing they will not last forever. I will, as Jane said constantly, keep moving forward. There are people who need me--who need us--and I will not fail them, her or me. That means taking care of myself--eating right, exercising right, sleeping right--because I am no good to anyone if I am not healthy in mind and body and spirit. But it also means taking the necessary risks that life requires. Just because we have been wounded by grief does not mean we have a built-in excuse to take the rest of our lives off. To paraphrase Tennyson's Ulysses: Age and grief have wounded us, but while much is taken, much remains. There is yet some noble work that can be done. And to steal from the parable and Milton, I am possessed of talents that were death to hide. Better to lose those talents in the risks of the work than to bury them to hand them back whole and die for foolishness. I know that ultimately I cannot defeat death. But I can try to remove some arrows from his quiver--slip into his house at night and dull the blade of his scythe--perhaps steal the thing and hide it from him for a time. As a character from one of my favorite plays--Red Noses, a musical comedy about the bubonic plague in Europe in the Middle Ages--says, "When Death comes looking for you, don't go easily--fight dirty." I refuse to die while I am still alive. I am not a follower of life. I am not a follower of death. I am not merely passing through life to death. I am not just hanging around waiting to die. I have lived--Jane lived--as a person fully alive. My grief has disturbed that living for a time. it may disturb it again from time to time. But even in grief I never quite entirely forget that I am alive in that moment--that even grieving is living if we do not let it kill us. There are things this grief will teach us that we can learn no other way. So we have to embrace grief in the same way we embrace joy. It is a part of who we are. But it is only a part. We forget either of those things at our peril. Peace, Harry

Dear Dave, While tire planters are great for flowers, please do not plant anything in one that you are going to put in your mouth. Tires are made up of a complex of chemicals that should not be ingested under any circumstances. They leach those chemicals into the soil where the plants pick them up and concentrate them. If you then eat the plants you are consuming the often carcinogenic and downright poisonous chemicals in a more concentrated form than they would be in if you had eaten the tire. Flowers are fine. Roses should love them. But don't expect to eat the rose hips afterwards. Peace, Harry

Dear Tammy, No apologies are ever necessary--especially with what you are dealing with. I am five minutes from Charlton, so if you need anything, holler. I'll probably hear you. The phone is more reliable, though. I am doing ok. The D-F grief project is doing some good things for me, And Walking with and is sometimes keeping me too busy. So tonight I am taking a break. My brain and body let me know when I need to shut things down. Large numbers of hugs. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I took a blind leap last night. Someone told me a folk group and a jazz group were going to be playing in a local bar. So I went, thinking I might get through one set, then come home. I didn't leave until 1:30 a.m. They were both that good. I thought I would know no one and that I would be sitting alone in a crowded room, but several people I knew were there. We listened to the music, watched the Red Sox lose--the sole downer of the night--but even that was a positive because it was the first time all year I got to the end of a game, win or lose. It was a good night that reminded me I am still alive--and a bit more than the organizer I seem to have become. I slept until 9 a.m. this morning. I haven't done that for along time either. Peace, Harry

Dear Marty, Nice job. Peace, Harry

Dear Marty, By all means, go ahead. Peace, Harry

Dear Friends, Trust me. It is no better when you shared everything equally. When every job takes twice as long--well there is no planning for that. And when you have a task that takes two people--and she was always that second--or you were--words don't well describe it. And part of the reason everything seems to break down at once may be that during the illness the routine maintenance did not happen. Or, in our case, when everything was bought at about the same time, then everything wears out at about the same time. Peace, Harry

Dear Friends, I will add that sometimes it is necessary to live one minute--even one second at a time. There are days, even eight months in, where I exist minute to minute. They are fewer now than they were. But some days, it is what it is. Sleep is also an important thing--regular sleep. Try to get to bed at the same time every night. Get up the same time every morning. Six to eight hours a night is important. But don't stay in bed. Trying to sleep too much is as bad as too little. Establish routines. Make the bed every day. Do the dishes after every meal. Do laundry when the hamper is full. Don't beat up on yourself when you fail to keep your routines. That is going to happen. But get back to them when you notice you've slipped. Depression is easier to deal with when you don't add a pile of dirty dishes to the list. Avoid alcohol and drugs--other than those your doctor prescribes. They will mask the problems, numb the pain--but both will still be there when the drugs wear off. And feel all the worse as a result of your running away from them. Reader's Digest has one thing right: Laughter is the best medicine. Watch bad comedies--or good ones. Try to laugh at least once a day. And don't feel guilty about it. Your partner would want you to laugh, unless they were an ogre, in which case you would not be saddened by their loss to this degree. Anyone who was that good is, as my grandfather used to say, in heaven--and we should celebrate that fact. None of us really feel like doing it, but we should. So remember: Laughter is allowed--and you should engage in it when you can. Tears are also permitted. Crying, even in public, is good for you. The tears will come when they come. Let them. If people do not understand, the sad news is that for 50 percent of them, they eventually will. And when they do they will follow your example. We are, many of us, the pioneers in this land of grief. I was the first in my group of friends to lose his wife. What I do--how I handle all of this--will become the pattern for how they deal with their own grief. And when they encounter that grief, as both Melina and Mary say above, I will be better equipped to help them through it. Everything in this post and in this strand applies whether you are male or female. Gentlemen, the real test of manhood is not whether or not you can tough it out in public. Ladies, the real test of womanhood is not how many tears you shed in public. Both the test and the lesson are about compassion. Buddha says, "Life is suffering." Too many people only quote that line of Buddha's, thinking it is all Buddhism is about. They do not conceive that suffering is not the message but the method. We all suffer here. But it is our compassion that makes that suffering a burden we can bear. Share your burden. There are many hands here to lessen its weight. But also share your joys--even what seem to you your smallest accomplishments--for it is through those joys we gain the strength to ease our pain and that of others. Peace, Harry