HAP

Dear Sad, Ah, but we would. At the risk of sounding cruel: Stop drinking. Alcohol is a depressant. It is making you feel worse, not better. Force yourself to eat regularly. When you have nothing in your belly that makes you feel even more depressed. Low blood sugar leads to depression. Eat regular, healthy meals. Get out of the house. Go for a walk. A 30 minute walk will trigger some endorphins in your brain. That will make you feel marginally better. You won't feel great--that is in the future, but for now, marginally better is something to aim for. Get off the couch and move. Drink some water. You are probably moderately dehydrated. That will make you feel more depressed as well. Someone here is always telling people to make sure they drink plenty of water. They are right to do so. When I was in the hospital with my wife someone who had been through what I was going through told me that no matter what the outcome finally was with my wife, I was to go out and rent some good comedies. I did. And every once in a while they made me laugh. Feeling marginally better, even for a few seconds, was something I could build on. I know that sounds bizarre, but laughter is what you may need right now. Go do some volunteer work if you can. Getting out of your own head will help you for a little while. And if all of this is too much, pick up the phone and dial the Samaritans. They are a national hotline for depression. They do great work. They will listen to you and not judge you. They will be a physical voice, which sometimes you may need more than these disembodied words on a page. Go find a physical group locally. Or find a grief counselor. My local Hospice has one on duty--and she says to call her whenever. I am not saying this to be cruel. I have been where you are. No one saw that because I had not even found my way to this group when I went through what you are experiencing. I bounced from room to room like some deranged pinball. I lost hours--sometimes whole days--and I was not drinking. There are too many people in my family with drug and alcohol issues in their past--and I did not want to join them. But the thought of drinking myself to oblivion is still way too strong for me to even think about it. I desperately want to go out tomorrow after work and drink something with more kick than root beer. I thought a week ago I'd be able to do that. But this week has not been good--and I will forgo that drink again this week. My friends understand that. When they stop understanding that they will cease to be my friends. We are all here for you. We will miss you if you disappear. We know what you are going through. You can get through this. We all have. We have good days. We have bad days. We have lots of in between days. We are all here to help each other. You have done the hardest thing already. You have asked for help. That says you want to move forward. But you have to do the moving forward. We will catch you if you fall--god knows people have done that enough times for me here in the last two months--but the steps have to be yours. Peace, Harry

Friends I wrote this for Jane at Valentine's Day. It catches my mood tonight and reminds me that more than formality remains in my life. She died five months ago tonight. I went to the cemetery today, railed at the gods, then came home and filled two of the cutting garden beds with glads and marigolds, impatiens and petunias. Then it started to rain, so I watered them in and came home. I hope you will all find some comfort in these words. They remind me of who we were--and that there is still a light in each of us to guide our boats home out of these stormy seas. Peace, Harry For Jane, Valentine’s Day, 2011 Forgive this mourning-- Snow stretches across my soul-- Ice storms pummel me. The monument smiles, Beckons like an angel’s tears Blocked by departure. Death shutters my soul-- But glitters of frankincense Purge the heart’s darkness, Rekindle the note En sof sang within our lives, Reignite our souls. All my love, always and all ways, Harry

Dear Phil, Sorry i have not replied to this. My life has hit another rough patch that I posted on the end of Hummingbird. I did major surgery on our bedroom today. I am hoping I will finally sleep better having done that. You have not posted for a while. Are you OK? Or, like me, have you been trying to work things through? Peace, Harry

The Shakespeare reminds me of my favorite Spyder Robinson quote: Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is multiplied. Harry

Dear Melina, It's been a rough few days on my end, too. I read your post last night, but just could not find the strength to do more than nod in agreement. Even though i know there is work for me to do, even though I get thrown every conceivable sign that Jane is ok, even though I try to laugh and keep moving forward, every day is a strain. Trust that there is purpose to what you are experiencing. Trust that there are signs of hope around you--even though you do not perceive them. A wise man once told me: The best steel must pass through the fire. The darker the moments in my life have been the more fire I knew I was being put through. Those fires strengthen the blade. And the better the blade, the more fire it must face--and the greater the work that lies ahead for it to do. The heat of the fires you are encountering now tell me you have important work to do. It may not always seem that important to you, but it will be for someone. At the top of my profile is a quote I first heard when my wife was in the hospital. It has become a motto for me in the days since her death: Be kind to everyone you meet for you cannot know the burdens they are carrying. Your kindness to me in the first days I was here may be a piece of that work that you do not know that you are doing but may be important in the other person's life. The corollary to that quote may well be that we never know the extent--or the power-- of our impact on another person's life, so we can never know how important anything we do for someone else may be to his or her future. Christ says it well: whatever you have done for one of these you have done for me. He means, I think, that you need to treat everyone as though you thought they might be God--not because they might be but because we all are a part of God and need to be treated with a special kindness. Here, we all know at least one of the burdens we are all carrying. But for each of us that is both the same burden and a very different burden. But that is not the only burden we carry. We come to this with different life experiences and a raft of other burdens that shape how we carry this one. Your isolation in Norway creates additional burdens for you because you feel isolated by the fact you are a stranger in a strange land. And you came to this new burden, from the sound of it, at the same moment you suddenly found yourself with a nearly empty nest--your children grown and moving out on their own. But despite those burdens and your own pain, look at your last post--asking Kay about her problems and troubles--sensing that there is more to her situation than she lets on. Your compassion--and your ability to listen--are both things of great value--not only here but in the wider world. So be patient with yourself. And be patient with the world. What you are supposed to be doing may never be clear to you because you are too busy doing it to notice how important you truly are. Peace, Harry

I lost my mother a year ago in February. We lost Jane's mother five years ago in September. It feels strange not to have someone of my own to wish happy Mother's Day--but i hope all of you with children had a truly wonderful day. Harry

Dear Sad, Are you there? You have a whole bunch of folks here worried about you. Let us hear from you. Harry

Friends, I don't know exactly where this post is going to go. I have had a tough few days. I am functioning on about three hours of sleep again. I tried to make it an early night last night. I could barely keep my eyes open as I read through the latest postings here. I wanted to answer several, but my brain was not working. I was exhausted. "At last," I thought to myself, "I will get a good night's sleep tonight." So I went to bed. And stared at the clock until 1:40 a.m. when I finally managed to doze off--until 5:30 a.m. I stared at the clock again until about 8:30, when I finally pulled myself out of my depression long enough to get up. I had plans to work outside today. But I looked at the bedroom after I ate and could not stand the clutter. I have been very bad at my resolution to maintain some neatness and order in my life the last couple of weeks. Part of that has been the increasing demands of the yard work--but this week I have been fighting this building and awful depression caused in part by sleeplessness, in part by the fact Tuesday is the five month anniversary of Jane's death, and in part by a conference I took my students to in Boston Friday. Each year, the New England Scholastic Press Association holds its conference in late April or early May at Boston University. Part of the conference is an awards ceremony at which my students generally do very well. This year was no exception. But when i got off the bus I had a hell of a time getting myself to get in the car and go home even though I was meeting friends for dinner later that evening. Instead i watched two innings of a baseball game our team was losing 15-0 when I arrived. I know why. Every year I would go home and share the joy of the win with Jane. But she was not there. She is the only one who knows what my students mean to me--what their victories cost me mentally and emotionally. And I did not entirely want to go out with my friends. Neither has ever married and both have mothers in nursing homes who are fighting different forms of dementia. We pick one up at the nursing home where his mother has been for the last three months. The place has much the same feel as the ICU where Jane died. There are alarms going off every few minutes. I hate being there. But John was Jane's best friend for years and was one of the people who stayed with me the day of Jane's death. I can't walk away from him and feel like a good person. Gail was another person who was with me at the end. We go to dinner once a month to catch up with each other. The dinners are good therapy for the all three of us. We can all moan about what is going on in our lives--very little of it pretty--and know that the others get it to a large extent. I wonder sometimes how much Jane understood some days in the hospital. She would seem fine mentally for days at a time--but then could not always remember any of what had happened yesterday. It sounds so much like what the two of them describe going through with their mothers. But i didn't want to go this time. They both taught with us, but sharing the news of my students win does not affect them the way it did the two of us. Our neighbors returned from their winter in Florida yesterday. They had read about Jane's death in the paper while they were down there--and sent a sympathy card. But they knew only what the obituary said, so I had to walk them through the whole thing yesterday. I cried my eyes out. They told me she had seen them just before they left and told them she likely would not see them again. This was in October when she kept telling me she was going to beat this thing.Then I went out to by some flowers for the grave. Jane is buried next to her mother in the same plot at the cemetery. Each year Jane and I put flowers on her mother's grave. I knew that if I did not put flowers there for her mother there would be none. Her sister can rarely bring herself to visit the grave. So i went to Home Depot and bought some purple petunias for her mother and some blue snowdrops for Jane and made up planters for them both. The pansies and daffodils I put together for Jane a month ago still look pretty good, so I left them there, but brought a dish garden I had put there of spring bulbs home to form the entrance--eventually--for the memorial garden I want to build here. I sat on the ground in front of the headstone for nearly an hour, alternating bouts of crying with bouts of sanity. I get the signs many of you beg for nearly every day, but as I keep telling her, I know she is ok. It is me that is having the problem with this. I miss her physical presence every second of every day--but worst when I first wake up and when I first go to bed. So as depressed as I was last night, I was even worse this morning. I looked around the house and could not stand what I was looking at. The front end of the house--the area people can see--looks ok. The clutter makes the place just look lived in. But in the bedroom, the study, and Jane's craft room it has begun to look like one of those hoarding houses with trails running through it just wide enough for a person to pass through--if he be careful. How did I let this happen? I got hugely angry with myself and started screaming at myself. I went outside just long enough to water the plants I have in the ground--the flowers in the nursery bed are doing poorly. The birds pulled them all out one day this week--apparently looking for worms. Then discovered I had a huge amount of laundry to do on top of everything else. I thought my washer was dying last week so I only did what I absolutely needed to do. That was apparently a false alarm. Likely i just had a load that got badly out of balance. Finally I got back to the bedroom and started picking things up. I decided that maybe if I moved some furniture around--as i had done in the living room, dining room, and kitchen, the bedroom would become a little less scary place--and maybe I would sleep better. So I pulled the drawers out of the chest and set them in the hall so the chest would be light enough to move. But to move the chest I had to move some other things, which meant i had to move some other things, which meant i ended up rearranging all the furniture but the dresser--which is too big for me to move by myself--and occupies the only space in the room where it will actually fit. Then another fit hit me and I decided i would empty one of Jane's drawer's in the chest. In that drawer I found a note. It said "Look in the bottom drawer." I expected to find some note there. Instead, I found her college yearbook, which contains no pictures of her, her middle school yearbook, her college diploma, and a certificate honoring her for her inclusion in Who's Who Among American College Students. I went though every sock and shirt in the drawer looking for something else--then called her sister to see if she had any idea what was going on. She was as mystified as I was but suggested maybe the short notes I had found--thinking maybe i had put the drawers back in the wrong order I had emptied another drawer and found a similar note buried under some t-shirts in that drawer--might be notes she had written to herself to remind her where she had hidden her degree. Under the chest, however, I did discover the letter I had written her when her mother died. She had hidden it there--or perhaps it fell behind there at some point. But it reminded me that we shared a knowledge-system. It was yet another sign that she is ok--and wants me to be ok. I bawled my eyes out. Suddenly I am crying constantly. The keynoter at the conference had me in tears in the first five minutes: she showed us a series of stories about a woman who was dying of cancer and was trying to get her parents a visa to come from China to the US to see her one last time. It was a beautiful story--but not one I suddenly discovered I was ready to deal with. Of course by that time i had emptied all the drawers in the chest, so rather than put the clothes back in the drawers I boxed up most of them and moved them into her craft room to go to Salvation Army or St. Vincent dePaul when i can actually bring myself to part with them for real. So the notes served that much of a positive purpose. The bedroom looks very different now than when I started. Maybe I will be able to sleep in here tonight and truly sleep. Maybe not. But i made some progress today. The bedroom no longer looks like a hoarder lives here. Of course the living room is a bit more cluttered. And we won't discuss the study and the craft room--or the fact my peppers, tomatoes, and marigolds did not find their way into the ground--nor did the cursed lawn get mowed--back up to the height of my ankles despite having been mowed Thursday. I should probably post this as a new subject, but I am going to leave it here because of a couple of things I need to say about responses to previous posts on the hummingbird note. Marty--Good Gravy, I did not even see the hummingbirds until you mentioned them. I am such an idiot. I just got so caught up in what she was saying--and the fact she was in the education business, that I never noticed the more obvious background. That just goes to show what kind of state of mind I seem to be in this week. Susie Q--Good point. I really have to stop beating up on myself. I do need to keep my priorities straighter. Clutter is sometimes a small price to pay for he time I need to try to get my head screwed back on straight. The tears are every bit as much a part of that as everything else is. Lainey--I think you may be right. The retirement thing is throwing me for a loop as well. I have a tough enough time getting through a weekend. What happens when there is no Monday morning. The summer may prove a problem even with solid plans for the fall. I will have to find some things to keep me moving forward. Finally--to all--I caught a piece of When Harry met Sally on PBS Saturday night. The whole thing made me cry. I felt like I was back in 1984 right before Jane and I met. I was watching It's a Wonderful Life alone on New Year's Eve and wondering why I was alone. It's been a wonderful life since then. Maybe this is God's way of reminding me that this is a wonderful life and that the next chapter will be equally rewarding. It does not seem that way just now--but i always seem to get thrown what I need when I need it. This group is very much a part of that tradition. Thank you all for listening. Peace, Harry

Dear Marty, mfh, and Rachel, Marty you are right about her background being interesting. Educators are a strange lot. She does raise some interesting thoughts. I don't think I am quite there yet. I may never be there. But I think she is right about the need to keep moving forward. I can't see myself being paralyzed here forever. Jane would not want me to do that. I think sometimes she is finding even this amount of time disturbing. I just keep explaining to her that I can only move so fast through this--and that some of it is just never going to go away. This is far more difficult than either of us conceived it would be. But if I could move the furniture around in the living room and dining room--and move the small appliances around on the kitchen counters, then eventually i am going to be able to confront these drawers and closets. And eventually I am going to figure out what to do with these rings. I read another piece somewhere else about a widower who did a gradual step-down kind of program: He took the wedding ring off for a few hours at first, then a whole weekend... To the extent the rings are symbols of what we were to each other, I think they stay where they are--at least for now. After all, the writer of The Big Step left hers in place for 10 months before she got there. And she is a lot younger than I am and was married for a far shorter time. I do think I am going to have to let go of the engagement ring around my neck sooner rather than later. It keeps getting under my back at night and I worry about damaging the fitting--which would be worse than not having it on my neck. But I can't get myself to go there yet despite that nagging concern. I am just not ready to let go of even that just yet. But does the symbol hold me back? I don't know the answer to that. It needs thinking on. You see mfh is right too. Jane and I both waited a long time for each other. I will not meet her like again. I do not think I will ever remarry, regardless of what I do with the rings. We loved too deeply and too well. And Rachel, i cannot bear the irony. Your honey died on our anniversary--on what turned out to be our last anniversary. We melted into tears that day. I am melting into tears now. Thanks for your thoughts, Peace, Harry

Friends, My sister-in-law and I did the full 20 miles of the Walk for Hunger Sunday. My body may eventually recover. We called our team Walking with Jane. I will use the same name for the Relay for Life walks in June--and the rest of the summer. But honestly, the walk did us both a lot of good. And I did not feel that badly afterwards. But sleep is still slow to come. Still the hummers are here in force and back to their territorial wars. I had hoped to stop those by adding two more feeders to opposite corners of the yard. Two of them nearly killed me when I was making up flower baskets under the porch. They were so caught up in the chase that I heard the buzz of their wings--and felt the wind of their passage--as they screeched by my head. So much for peace through plenty. Their antics make me laugh and shake my head. I went in for my six month check-up today. The nurse did the usual EKG. When she was putting on the wires she told me my wife's rings on the chain around my neck were cute--and quite moving. I realized then that because I wear them under my shirt generally people don't know they are there. Not that I make a secret of it or am embarrassed that they are there--I just don't want to lose them or damage them--and they feel safer under my clothes than outside them. Jane told me she would haunt me forever if I buried her with her wedding ring and engagement ring. Which raises a question: I still wear my wedding band on my left hand. I told my wife I would move it to my right hand if she ever died--a statement I repeated the day before she died. But I have never been able to bring myself to do so. And her rings have been around my neck for months. Does anyone else do this? Harry

I know this is late to the party--but I have the same issues--and i don't have responsibility for children to add to the mix. My mind is marginally better than it was when I first got home, but i still forget everything I do not write down--and sometimes forget I even made the damn list, let alone where i put the cursed thing. The microwave thing sounds like a good plan though. It certainly will save on tea kettle expenses--assuming I can remember that the next time i want a cup of tea. And you remind me I have not thanked the group lately for just being there myself. Thank you all! Harry

Dear Sad, We have all been where you are now. Nothing makes sense and the knot of pain does not seem to ever get any smaller or less intense. The grief is, at first, more than it seems like we can bear. Even five months into this--I lost my wife of 21 years on December 10--there are days that it is a struggle to convince myself to get out of bed. There are nights I come home and don't want to eat because I don't see the point to it. The loneliness seems unbearable. And the closer I get to the tenth of each month, the more pointless everything seems. But then something happens. The tenth of the month is never as bad as my expectations make it out to be. I see a rabbit in the yard. Or a hummingbird lands on a feeder almost close enough to touch--or goes screeching by my head as I work in the garden. A student says something so brilliant--or so dumb and inappropriate--that I have to laugh at the simple joy of that moment. And then I feel better--not always for long, but better. I try to build on those moments of not-quite-joy. I relax into them and accept that they are just as real as my grief. I may never be young again--my hair was already gray when my wife got sick--and the experience no doubt has taken more than a few years off my life--but I will laugh again. To do anything else would be to betray who my wife and I were--and still are. Just days before she died, she was still telling jokes that made even her doctors and nurses laugh. She was my best friend, and when they told us there was nothing more they could do, we both wept. But she was so brave in the face of it that I can be nothing less in dealing with this enormous, unrelenting grief. I cry nearly every day. I am angry far more frequently than I have ever been in my adult life. My patience has evaporated. But the work we had to do is still in front of me and the memories of her soul curled around mine sustain me in that labor. And the anger recedes a little every day. The pain does not lessen--not yet at least--but each day I become marginally better at coping with it. The tears are tears for my own loneliness. Every day i see some sign that tells me she is ok where she is and busy preparing for the work that comes next for her. And I rejoice in that knowledge--and curse at myself good-naturedly for the selfishness that pain evinces. I miss her so much that I don't want to go to bed at night--because that reminds me most forcefully that she is no longer physically here. But one of us was going to have to face this grinding loneliness and uncertainty. And in many senses I am much better able to deal with this variety of pain than she was. The bad news is that one of us was going to die before the other. One of us was going to have to bear this pain in this way. I said to her once that we loved each other too much--that if anything were to happen to one of us the other would face unbelievable pain--and that I worried sometimes about that. She laughed a bit, then realized I think that I had said something that was true--though she did not entirely understand. I badly under estimated the level of that love and of the pain that would come with that loss. When I first came here I was as lost and hurting as any person can be. With the help of these good people, I survived those early days after the numbness wore off. You will, too. But survival does not mean you will be the same person you were just weeks ago. You will be different. You have experienced things that most folks have not. And experience always changes who we are. Be patient with yourself. You have been burned in a very hot fire. These burns will take time to even begin to heal--but they will heal. You will not forget the pain, but you will gradually get better at coping with it. And some day it will be you who is helping some other victim of this fire find her way out of the darkness of the despair you are feeling now. They will be as lost as you feel now. They will hurt as you hurt now. And because you understand that pain you will know what they need to hear in that moment that will help them heal. I am a long way from whole. The pain still sears me. But nearly five months in I know I will survive this. I know the cancer that killed my wife has made an implacable foe determined to put it to the sword. But I also know that I need to help others get through this pain of being the one who lives. What you decide to do with your life matters--and will matter to others--but first you have to take care of your own wounds if you are going to help to bind up the wounds of others. Peace, Harry

I had to mow the lawn when I got home tonight. If you live in the East you know how much rain we have gotten the last few days. Amazing how fast grass grows in the Spring. I have to admit I was pretty depressed when I started. Arthritis and damp weather are an awful mix under the best of circumstances--and these have not been, for me, the best of circumstances. My miniature greenhouse blew over Thursday afternoon and I had to fix it in a downpour. I'm miles behind on everything. I am having trouble sleeping again--and wonder what awful dreams I am having that I am almost afraid to go to bed no matter how tired I am. Even this note is getting written after I promised myself I would be in bed by nine tonight. And I just can't shake this depression that has been building all week for no better reason than that the hummers are beginning to come back. And I had a swarm of hummers around the feeders as I mowed tonight. Crying and mowing is not probably recommended in the safety manuals--but there I was crying at every sighting. I even stopped the mower once because i was too close to the feeder and did not want to frighten anyone away. It was all so truly bittersweet: our little friends back for the summer bobbing and weaving around the feeders--and me wanting desperately to hug Jane in the sheer joy of it--and not being able to. It is the absolute definition of melancholy. Each visit brought joy--and the deepest sense of physical absence. I want to laugh the greatest joy and cry the greatest sorrow all at the same time. I am going up to Boston Sunday for the annual Walk for Hunger. Jane and i always wanted to do it, but this time of the school year is tough. We donated every year instead. But this year I decided, screw it--who knows what shape I will be in a year from now. We put off so many things until after we retired. Now those things eat at me the way they ate at us both the end of last summer. Too many "Next year in Jerusalem"s. So I am going to walk this walk--all 20 miles of it. And in June I am going to do the Relay for Life twice--and do all 24 hours of it on the first one--and as many as i can on the second one--and i am going to drag as many people as I can get from the retirement dinner as I can get the night of the second one. And then I don't know what happens. Friends tell me retiring brings its own set of stresses. And how will those stresses be multiplied by the fact I will do it alone instead of with the woman i expected to share the next 20-40+ years of my life with--each of us going into a slow decline physically that would end in us leaving together for the garden that awaits us? There are times I feel i am staring into an abyss. But going to work every day in that school is insanely hard. I get out of the car. I walk up the walkway we walked every morning for 23 years. Open the same door, walk the same corridor, go to the same mailroom. I've been to the science wing just three times since she died--and her room just twice. But i don't want to go teach somewhere else and start all over again either. I have books to write and projects to do, but doing them alone...I just don't know. But the hummers are back. The grass is green. The broccoli and lettuce are in the garden and getting bigger every day. And Sunday I will walk 20 miles for a cause I believe in. I had dinner tonight with friends and did not feel like a total oddball and wet blanket. I should feel better than I do--but I don't. I hope a good night's sleep will get me back in a positive state of mind. Jane would say, "Just keep moving forward." But somehow these last few days that has been really hard to do. I have to stop feeling sorry for myself and whining. I am going to try to go get some sleep now and see if that helps my state of mind. Harry

Dear Phil, There was one woman i met in my physical group who said she had given their bedroom set to her children very soon after her husband's death because she found it impossible to sleep in there without him. Pat of the reason i have moved stuff around has to do with that same kind of problem. I didn't want to cook in the kitchen because it stirred up too many memories i could not deal with. it was so bad I found myself looking for excuses to eat out. Given portion sizes etc., doing that was a really bad idea, so I had to do something so i could cook at home. I have real trouble sleeping alone in this bedroom. I would have made changes here as well, except that we had planned to swap into a different room to sleep after we retired. To do that means doing painting and other projects I just don't have the time to do yet--or the energy. I think everyone has different things they need to do to deal with this stuff. Some people need to leave everything as it is/was. Others need to redo everything. Others find middle ground somewhere. I don't quite know which group i belong in. I just keep plugging at things. Jane's mantra was always, "Keep moving forward." I try to honor that as much as I can, but sometimes things are ahead--and sometimes they are behind as one translation of the Tao puts it. Getting tired and beginning to babble. need to sign off before i stop making sense all together. Harry

Friends, A quick update first on the hummingbird situation. I put the feeders out last night. When i was going around the yard after work--Jane and I used to walk the yard every day to see what was new at this time of year--I saw a shadow whiz by me. A hummingbird landed on the feeder at the corner of the house, had a few sips and then flew into one of the oak trees--landing on a branch for a few minutes to check out the terrain. I was so excited that i was literally jumping up and down and screaming, "They're back! Honey they're back. Kayc: One of the things on the agenda for after June is to write several different books over the next few years. Teaching left way too little time for those kinds of things. And that assumes I don't get involved in some things I see as much more important in some respects--not least of which is finding ways to eradicate the cancer that took my wife and now threatens my brother. Lainey: I try to be forgiving about the plant thing--but it really does aggravate me. My anger at that is all out of proportion to the size of the crime, so i suspect that it is masking anger about Jane's illness and death. As I said to her when she was sick, I get angry at little things because i need to stay in control when I am dealing with the big things. I can't afford to become angry when there are major decisions to make. And anger does little beyond raise my blood pressure--a thing I really cannot afford to do, Marty: Thanks for the picture of the nest in use. The one I found was really too beaten up by the winter weather to make anything like a decent picture of. If I blew on it it would disintegrate. Melina: I find the more time i spend in the natural world the better i seem to feel. Maybe it is just the endorphins from the walking, but seeing that hummer this afternoon really lifted me up like nothing else has. I wish i could find some way to help you feel your husband's presence. I feel Jane's spirit--see so many signs of her presence--that I am constantly reassured that she is ok. Sometimes that presence vanishes for a day or two--and those are the days I find most difficult. To all of you, many thanks for your kind thoughts and words. Peace, Harry

It is late and i am exhausted. But... Have a wonderful Easter, one and all. Harry

Dear Suzanne, I promised myself I would go to sleep after I finished the new topic I wanted to post tonight. But I read your post before shutting down. I couldn't call it a night until I wrote you at least a short note. Other than the day of the funeral I have never not been to my wife's grave alone. It is always a jarring experience. I cannot imagine being there with anyone else. I would not want anyone to see me as I am when I am there. It is the anchor for my grief--the one place I let everything I am feeling come out. I cannot lie to myself when I am there. Your pain leaps off the screen and I have very few words I can say in the face of it. But you make reference to Good Friday and it seems a good anchor. Good Friday was a truly dark day for Christ's disciples--and even for his mother--despite the fact she allegedly knew what was really going on. At the time, I can't think of a darker day in the sense that their leader was dead and they had no idea there was any hope they would escape with their own lives. And then Easter happens. And these men and women who felt like they had lost all they had--that their lives were pointless and meaningless--are awakened by a miracle that they do not comprehend. In fact, they at first think someone has stolen Christ's body--the final desecration. They are wrong--of course--as they were wrong about so many things: they expected a military revolution that would sweep away the Roman Empire like so much chaff in a strong wind. They did not know, really, that they were on the ground floor of what would evolve into one of the world's great religions. The resurrection was a huge surprise to all of them--as were Pentacost and the Ascension. Good Friday was your dark night of the soul, perhaps--or perhaps, alone at last, the beginning of the process that will let you begin to truly deal with your grief. May you begin to find through this Easter weekend the strength to find meaning and purpose in your life as the apostles began their new lives on that Easter morning two millenia ago. Be gentle with yourself, Harry

Friends-- I have said before that it is the little things that get me. Yesterday I got outside. I mowed the lawn--always a solitary task--and got some good thinking in. I needed to get the momentum going because i knew I had to take on one task that was always hers and that it would be hard to do--not just emotionally but physically as well: pruning the Rose of Sharon. We usually do this job in the fall just after the leaves fall, but Jane was deep into the teeth of her heart issue and it was all I could do to keep up with the things that had to be done. We had let it go the year before as well, so we both had no problem with putting the job off until spring. But I so wish now I had found a way to do it in the fall. I do not have great hand-eye co-ordination. Pruning was her thing-not mine. But the plant has to be done every year to keep it within the bounds we set for it. So Thursday afternoon I got out her favorite pruners, the step ladder and the barrel for the trimmings and set to work chopping off all of last year's growth. Those of you who have been here for the last month or so already know the love affair my wife and I have with hummingbirds. Last year we had three or four mated pairs and their children flitting around the lawn, fighting over feeders and making the strange screechy noises that pass for their chirping--who knew hummers even had a voice? At night they would disappear into the gloaming after a final sip at the feeders. We assumed they had nests in neighbors' yards--or maybe in the arbor vita hedge a neighbor put in between our yards 15 years ago. So there I was, hacking away at the top of the bush when I came across a tiny collection of thread and old mulch. At first I thought it was a sparrow's nest, but there was no mud used in its construction. And then I knew what it was; it was a hummingbird nest. Without thinking, I turned to run into the house to tell Jane what I had found. And then I stopped. Jane was not in the house--and there was no one else I could share this wonderful secret with. The neighbors were at work. And this was not something they would appreciate the way Jane would. And then she was there--not physically. I did not see her or even feel her. I just knew she was seeing it, too. And then there was the shadow of a bird on the lawn. I looked up and saw the falcon drifting into the oak tree in the northwest corner of the yard. She landed there, looked out over her domain. I told her hummingbirds were not to be on the menu this summer. She lifted off and headed off into someone else's yard. She flew back over three times over the course of the afternoon as I finished the pruning and moved on to the next project. But the tears come back each time I recall that stumbling discovery--as they did when I showed the remnants of the nest to a friend who came by to visit this afternoon. I think she may have thought I was a little crazy as I marched her up the hill to see the nest before she had even half gotten out of the car. But she is among my oldest friends and has long shared in the madness my wife and I made a habit of. And it took her mind off the troubles she is carrying--her husband has been told he needs to see a specialist in Boston because his local doctor is baffled by the illness that has landed the husband in the hospital twice since Christmas and left him too weak to do more than walk a few hundred feet at a time--this in a man who at Thanksgiving was climbing rock walls in a local gym. And as I write this, I am again reminded: "Be kind to others--for you do not know what burdens they are carrying." But it is hard to be kind sometimes in my thoughts. I wish Jane had found that nest last fall. Or that I would have found it then and been able to share it with her--even if had had to carry her out to the garden on my back to see it. It would have helped to raise her spirits--and her spirits needed raising in November as her legs--indeed, her whole body--increasingly failed her. I wish she had lived to find it this Spring. The nest would have brought her hope that a new Spring was coming--a Spring and Summer of healing and of hope. Instead, I found it alone yesterday. It brightened my day--and softened this powerful anger I had discovered early that morning. I went by the cemetery to check to see if the plants I put there on Monday needed water. The rain that was supposed to be heavy at times the two days before had never been more than a light mist. And truth be told, I just wanted to be there to weep a little while. But when I got there I found anger instead. Some plants I put there two weeks ago were still there. But the lilies I had put there Monday--one for Jane and one for her mother--were gone--pots and all. This is not the first time this has happened. We had a few similar events before Jane got sick. Plants we left there for her mother sometimes vanished over night--and we had heard even before that the people often steal flowers from graves. How do people do things like that? The loss is bad enough as it is without this added stupidity. But then, from other posts, I know that people do not get this state until they are in it. How else explain people asking if you have found a new man/woman yet? How else explain people making passes at folks they know to be recently widowed--as though we were merely bachelors or bachelorettes coming out of a failed relationship. People just don't know--or understand--what love is. The divorce rate should tell us that. But who knows what burdens they are actually carrying. Part of it, I think, is their desire to believe that if a loved one dies, the pain will be finite, both in terms of intensity and duration. Who does not fear the end of love? And what tiny fraction of us does not fear death? I cannot blame them for whistling past the graveyard. I remember the conversations my wife and i had before her cancer got really awful. We talked about her potential death. She fully expected that I would quickly go through her drawers and closets--cleaning them out and disposing of what was in them--that I would quickly return to a normal life, secure in the knowledge that these earthly shells are just vessels for the souls to journey in. My God--how wrong could we have been? These are but vessels we journey in. But the ache of loss takes no notice of that knowledge. It is not until we experience real loss--loss without the hope of recovery--after all, a break-up does admit the possibility--however small--that the loved one will come back to us within this lifetime--unlike death, which really closes the door on that fantasy--that we really understand what it feels like to truly lose someone. Loss is an emotion of the heart--not a piece of evidence we can roll over at our leisure in our minds. And it is something we cannot understand until we have experienced it. A year ago, I lost my mother. It in no way prepared me for losing my wife. It hurt, but my mother had Alzheimer's. It hurt, but my mother was nearly 80 and had lived a full life that was filled with every good kind of adventure. It hurt, but my mother was not the other half of my soul. When she died I did not feel like half my body--half of who I am/was--was suddenly ripped out without benefit of anesthesia. When my wife died, half of me died with her. In stories, Satan always says the soul is a little thing--that you will hardly miss it when it is gone. They don't call him the prince of lies with out cause. If we miss half our soul with this much pain, how much worse would losing the whole thing be? The mind shudders at the thought--and then shuts down. But these folks who ask if we have started to date yet, who steal flowers from graves without a passing thought, who say that at the end of a year we will be back to normal--say and do these things not out of spite or malice or because they are unfeeling. They do these things out of ignorance and fear. They are largely ignorant of the knowledge of death and grief--and what little they do perceive scares them the way the monster under the bed scares a small child. They can only gain that knowledge by being forced to eat of the fruit that has been stuffed down our gullets. We know the burdens we are carrying. But would we have recognized those burdens in others before our close encounter with death ground its lessons into our souls? I like to think that I have always been a compassionate person--that I would not have said or done the things that now upset me. But I also believed there was a term to grief. I believed that cleaning out my wife's drawers and closets would have been done within a couple weeks of her death--a belief she shared. I had trouble packing up boxes of stockings she had never worn a month ago--and the clothes she took to the hospital--the clothes she wore to the hospital--I wonder now if I will ever be able to unpack them. The nightdress she wore to bed the last night she slept here still hangs where she left it--as though she will come through that door tonight and put it on. I worry about my friend. I worry about her husband. I see this awful fruit on the table in front of them. I want to whisk that apple away from them. I don't want her to experience this. I don't want her husband to go through what my wife did. I worry about my niece. My brother--her father--has just been diagnosed with the same cancer--albeit much less advanced--that killed my wife. I want to whisk that apple away from them. I don't want her to experience this. I don't want her father to go through what my wife did. I worry about the people i do not even know. I want to make death go away for all of them. I want to protect them from this awful knowledge of what it is like to be the one left behind. There is very little I can do to protect any of them. Half the world will experience what we are going through right now--and I can't stop it from happening. None of us can. We can only use the knowledge we have gained at this hideous price to try to help those who survive cope. People will be people. They will say things without thinking. They will try, like my father-in-law did for years--to rationalize their beliefs that what happened to someone else will not happen to them--that guy was on a lot of medications--that's what killed him--I don't take as many medications, so I won't die. But like the parent whose teenager says, "I hate you" or does one of the 10,000 other things adolescents do that drive adults crazy, we have knowledge about the world they have no perception of. They do not know--or care--about the burdens we are carrying. They know too well, sometimes, the burdens they think they are carrying. And those burdens blot out our own in their minds. Their experience is all they know--and nothing penetrates that goes beyond the boundaries of that experience for the majority of them--just as no one could have told us what we now know to be true before we experienced it. The patience the world demands of us is enormous. It is one more unfairness stacked on top of all the unfairnesses we are expected to carry. But we can either light one little candle each--or we can curse the darkness. I know it's a tall order. I know most people won't want to hear it. But we all know we will be here when they stumble into this dark cave. After all, many of you were here when I first stumbled into this dark place. I wailed and moaned and ached like a newborn orphan. You picked me up and held me in your arms until I became rational again. I've watched us all do it for nearly six weeks now. Most of you are coping with this awfulness far better than you know. And those of you coping less well just haven't been around long enough for the effect to move into your blood. The pain is not going to go away. It won't be over in a year, likely. Maybe not even for a decade--or maybe ever. But we get better at coping with it every day--even on the days we seem like we are going backwards. The hummers will be back in my neighborhood within the week. Maybe they will leave me another surprise next fall. And that falcon seems to have taken up permanent residence not far away. I can't stop life from happening any more than I can stop death from happening. I'll learn to cope. And I'll learn to help others cope. It's what we humans do. As always, thanks for listening. Harry

Dear Phil, I have a longer piece i want to write of my own but I want to jot you a note here, too. I finally washed her bathrobe last weekend, but her clothes from the hospital--those may take a while longer--a long while longer. But one never knows. I suddenly found myself moving furniture and shampooing the living room rug Wednesday night. Then this morning I finished rearranging the furniture in that room. The furniture is the same, but changing where things sit has given the room a different feel. It took more time--and way more energy--than I expected. But the room feels lighter--less burdened. The memories are still locked in each piece of furniture--but the memories are brighter--less gray--than they have been in that room. We really did live there most of every winter. Still some work to do there--I need to hang some pictures and buy a bookcase or something to put some tapes, cds, and dvds in where they will be less visible and more out of the way. But that gives me some more positive energy to work with. I have a similar problem with vanishing plants at the cemetery. But the problem is not deer--it's people. Jane and I had a similar problem with flowers we put on the grave for her mother--they are buried in the same plot. We will all go there eventually. The problem is people stealing the plants off the grave. I put a blue pansy on there about a week ago. It was gone three days later. I put two lilies on there--one for her mother and one for her--and when I went by yesterday, they were gone. Other flowers are still there. Someone explain to me what kind of miscreant steals flowers off of graves. The sinking of the ground happens a lot here in New England. Once the ground warms up a bit more they go around and top off all the winter graves. I'll give them a few more days before I go ask them to get it done sooner. They'll be happier getting there in their own time. They know their jobs and do them well--but with all the budget cuts they are running short-staffed. Sigh. Be careful out there. Harry

I wish any of us could tell you what you most want to hear. The pain seems overwhelming. I know what you mean when you say you feel like you can't breathe. I don't know when you are going to feel better. People who have been here far longer than I have say the pain never entirely goes away--that grief sneaks up on them and reduces them to tears out of nowhere some times. But they also say that over time you learn to cope with it better. Four and a half months after my wife's death I begin to see some bits of truth in what they say. I still cry every day. Sometimes I am so angry at the powers of the universe that I shout at heaven. Sometimes it hurts so badly I want to have a heart attack and be done with it. I hate the waking up alone in the morning. I hate the solitary meals. I hate the looks I get from the people in the breakfast place who knew both of us when I take my niece or an old student out to eat there and they think I am dating younger women. I hate the silence in the house--but I equally hate being out among the crowds of people who laugh and glory in their coupleness. I hate the long empty drives, filled with the long empty silences. I dread going to bed at night. But then a friend calls me on the phone to tell me her husband is out of the hospital--a former student from three decades ago sends me a note that says he has been thinking about me lately and how he learned something new about facing life from watching me at the wake and at the funeral--a colleague sees me in the hall and thanks me for some imagined kindness--a parent tells me how moved their child is by what we talked about in class this week, how I have changed their lives and made both of them better. Or a former student of Jane's sends me a card that says how important Jane was in convincing her that a woman could do science. Or her sister calls to tell me how important it is that we find ways to help the memory of what Jane did live on beyond her. Or a student lets slip that they are going to dedicate the yearbook to her--or create a garden in the courtyard in her memory. Or I get a letter from Dana Farber Cancer Institute that someone else has made a donation in her name. Or I discover the mums have survived this New England winter, that the crocuses and daffodils are in bloom--or the tulips are rounding toward that sudden burst of color that always surprises me as much as the sudden arrival of the leaves on the maples and oak trees in the yard Or a falcon lands on the deck while I am talking to her best friend--and stays there until the conversation ends, peering in through the slider in intense interest. Or I read about a hummingbird being seen just south of here--and know that soon I will fill their feeders and greet them back home--as I know my love will greet me when we are, at last, together again--when the work that remains for me to do here is finished and I, too, can fly home. And I am surprised by joy in those moments as certainly as I am surprised by grief in others. It makes it possible to endure the pain to know that I can still be surprised in that way. There are small kindnesses in every hour. We do not always hear them above the sobs of our grief, but they are there--waiting for us to re-emerge into the world where we can perceive them. For now, I will weep--as I do as I write this--when my body and mind are moved to tears. But I will also laugh when they are moved to laughter--and smile when they are moved to that. I will find joy and face sorrow. I will teach and I will learn and I will strive to make this world a better place than I found it. I will seek forgiveness for my errors--and, most importantly, I will forgive. The day before we went into the hospital, my wife sat on the couch with me. She looked at me and she said that I had been the best husband she could have imagined for herself. She said that if I thought I had ever done anything wrong, I was to know that she forgave me for those things--though, she said, I had never done anything that needed to be forgiven. I said the same to her that day--and again the night before she died when she came back to consciousness one more time. I cannot say how powerful those moments were. Forgive yourself, then, for mourning for your husband. It is ok to mourn, to scream at heaven--as it is for me to mourn the loss of my wife--and to scream at heaven for the injustice of her death and the life I must now face. If someone cuts you in half, it is going to hurt. And half of each of us has been amputated. Forgive yourself for screaming in pain, then. And anyone who does not get that, I pray they never find out. And forgive your husband for dying. He did not want to go. He did not want to leave you here alone. Jane did not want to leave me here either. But we do not get a choice in these things. Forgive him. As Rachel says above, you have indeed come to the right place. None of us wants to be here--but we are all glad we found each other. Read. Write. Be embraced by the love that is this place in this time. But also be patient with yourself. This grief has found you suddenly--it was--in some senses--built virtually overnight. But like an earthquake or a tsunami, the rebuilding will take time. Harry

Dear Phil, Sorry this took some time to get back to. The day school vacation started I caught the intestinal bug that has bouncing around school for the last month. Still feeling a bit under the weather, I'm afraid. I made the mistake of opening a bag with Jane's hospital clothes in it a few weeks back. I know what you mean about not wanting to unpack. We were married 21 years, three months, and eight days and had gone out for three years before that. But the day is coming that I am going to face that. It is not going to be pretty, but there are people who can use her old clothes--and she would not want them sitting in a closet when there are people who are in need out there. Still, it won't be today--or likely even this week. And i will keep some things that had special meaning for us even when I get the courage to go deal with that. Be glad your physical group meets that often. The group here is better for me most of the time because the other is so infrequent. And go even if it does seem weird. The live humans fulfill a different need than the electrons here--no offense folks, but virtual hugs are not as good as physical ones. I have been fortunate in the closeness of my friends and my niece who check in regularly and make sure I have not gone off the deep end. The cemetery--yes that is brutal--still. But I found going there less frequently--I go once a week plus special occasions--the day of her death, our birthdays, special, private anniversaries--has eased that piece of it a bit. The visits are somehow less wrenching than going every day was. That she was buried in December after the ground was frozen--and has now sunken--does not help much. The soil collapsed under me one day in February, and that was pretty jarring. But going every day put a huge added weight on my emotions that I just could not deal with. I am still working and I have to be able to function like a real human being sometimes. And with spring here...Monday I spent the day working in the yard on our flower gardens and tilling the vegetable garden--these were things we did together. Today we would have spent in Concord and Lexington, walking the Battle Road and remembering another life while we got ready for the final push to June--for one last time before retirement. Instead, I am here, planning a vegetable garden for one, trying to think out plans for a cutting garden and choosing plants for a memorial garden in the space we had planned for our next landscaping bed. What was supposed to be the victory lap to two long and rewarding/exhausting careers is turning into a slow and lonely grind of papers to correct and lessons to prepare. That the weather remains cold and unseasonably raw is no big help either. But the daffodils are in bloom. The tulips are brightening. The mums we have nursed through the winter are sprouting. The lettuce is in the ground. The other plants for later in the season are growing under lights in the dining room. In a few days I will put up the portable green house on the deck that we use as a cold frame to start hardening off the early transplants. Today I will mix up the first sugar solutions for the hummingbird feeders--there was a ruby throated male sighting in Rhode Island just two days ago--so the early arrivals will have something to tide them over for the next few days. The joy of it all will be muted for me. Jane's physical form is gone from the world. But the world will green and the birds will nest and sing, and I will, in that, find hope and a quantum of solace. Hard as it will be, try to find some similar hope in the return of spring despite this grinding loss that seems to consume us all. Harry

Dear Anne, I just got in from dinner with my niece. She sounds a little like your son as she does try to make sure i get out periodically. I hope your day was as special as you are. My birthday was two weeks ago and i had hoped to do what you have planned--but my students and in-laws intervened and made it a pleasant day in a different way. The powers hat be seem to know what we actually need and make sure we get it. Hope your rash clears up quickly. You deserve a pleasant day. Harry

Your story moved me to tears. My wife was also 56 when she died just over four months ago. For the first three months I was completely numb. I went through the daily motions, but slept poorly--and dreamed not at all. Then the waves of grief hit one weekend. I could not stand to be in the house. I went to a local mall and walked aimlessly for hours. i went into a book store and stared at the shelves and finally convinced myself that buying a book on grief was a necessary evil--I hate self-help books. They seemed such a cop-out at one time. I had found a physical grief group, but they met only once a month--and the tsunamis always hit at times no one in the physical world was really available--1-2 a.m. A voice in my head said to see if there was a grief group online somewhere--and here I am. I wish I could tell you things are going to get radically better for you in a hurry. I can't. My wife and I both see these bodies as mere vessels for our souls to journey in. And neither of us saw how awful this grief was going to be--especially given how we both viewed life and death. I know she is off building her new body. I know we will be together again. But none of that brings much relief or consolation. But things are getting better. I visit this site daily. Every day there is inspiration here. I try to post here every day, but the last two weeks the real world has intervened with responsibilities I have had to honor. I teach and grades were due Tuesday. I have felt myself slipping back into a place I do not want to go as a result. Every day needs some space and time in it for grief and the self. It is a hard lesson I am still learning. Each morning I try too read a little when I first get up. The book I bought has one entry for each day. I try to hold that idea in my mind for the day--try to act on that experience or that knowledge--try to see the world through a different set of eyes. Some days that works better than others. One thing i have found that seems to help me is making a conscious effort to keep doing the little things I am tempted to give up doing: making the bed, remembering to eat three good meals a day, making the shopping list, cleaning the house--at least at the surface level--getting into the closets is still just a bit too scary--getting up and going to work, talking to people, going for a walk every day, working in the garden, trying to be kind--because I can never know the burdens others are carrying. I fail at all of these things sometimes. Facing this house and all the work it entails--let alone the memories it contains--all alone gets overwhelming sometimes. But someone said to me early on that keeping up those rituals would help to keep me sane--or at least I would be less likely to get depressed over how the house looked on top of the depression of missing my wife. I do not know if that has been entirely the case, but I had to let some of those things go the last two weeks--and tonight was a bit overwhelming when I saw how much work i was going to have to do to get those chores caught up. I did them anyway--and feel a bit better as a result. When my wife was in the hospital one of the things she said to me was that she did not want to know about the past--that she wanted to keep moving forward. That we failed to keep her body alive despite constantly trying to move forward in no way diminishes the wisdom of that idea. I try constantly to do things that will move me forward through these trying days. I read the posts of the people who have been here longer and I can see that they were once where I am now--and that even though they may not feel like they are making progress sometimes, they are moving forward. And that gives me the confidence to believe that I will one day be where they are--that while the pain may stay with me for the long term--that I will increasingly be able to cope with it better. I can't tell you whether any of my rituals and efforts will work for you. The other thing I am learning here is how different the paths we are all on are--despite the fact we are all suffering from the same problem: the person who defined a half or more of who we are is gone--the other half of the bed is empty--the person we talked with at breakfast--whose feet we massaged at the end of the day--is no longer here. The physical companionship is over. The spiritual companionship continues. The emotional ties are still there. But it just isn't the same. Still, you have come to a good place that can help you to heal your soul. None of us wants to be here. But we are all glad we have met each other. Sit down and be welcome. Harry

Dear Anne, My experience with a physical grief group was similar to yours. I actually went there first before finding this group. The problem with my group is that it only meets once a month--and the intervening weeks can be pretty empty. I have not figured out why they meet so infrequently, but suspect that it is a financial issue as much as anything. Or maybe there is less call for it here than elsewhere. Yankees tend to want to tough things out sometimes on their own. Makes no sense to me, but there you are. I find both groups very useful. This group forces me to set things down on paper, as it were--which for me, at least, is very therapeutic. But physical presence has a lot to offer as well. I like to be able to see people's faces when I talk--and when I listen. There are lots of cues we can miss here. I worry a lot about that because sometimes my words run away with me--I can easily cause offense in writing things because I can't see the reaction--if that makes any sense. I also find the actual sound of people's voices reassuring and comforting in ways words on a page--or a screen--rarely can be. On the other hand, I seem to be the only male currently in that physical group. Sometimes it is nice to hear what another male's perspective is. No offense to the women present, because I find that perspective very important as well--but I think one of the things that makes this group so useful is that both sexes are represented. It gives the meetings here a very different flavor. The geographical range also brings a lot of different perspectives to the table. So I strongly second your suggestion that people get out to local grief groups. It is a very different experience than this is--and in many way just as beneficial. Harry