razorclam

I was never a caregiver, so I can't relate to all aspects of your situation. But I say no, it is not wrong to think this way. My friend, who managed his cancer with grace and courage, was not afraid to die, but he was afraid of pain, and the loss of cognition that would accompany the inevitable morphine drip. He contemplated assisted suicide, but his wife wouldn't hear of it. In the end he died instantly, of a heart attack, before reaching the end staging. As shattering as the loss was, its swiftness and (I was told) relative painlessness were one of the few comforting elements of his story. Your loving wife Annette was lucky to have you, and she is now at peace. May her memory be a blessing.

Lucid, insightful, and articulate -as usual. Always a pleasure to hear from Kieron.

"it was one of the most precious and tragic times of my life all wrapped into one." Great phrasing. That completely describes my journey. He reached out to me after he was diagnosed, I went all in, we fell in love. All via email and texting, in the shadow of his terminal cancer. A wild ride.

Well said. I feel that my friend is part of the natural world now: the air, the water, the sounds of the forest. When I take my daily walks I see his hair in the milkweed pods that are opening up. While I was thinking this one day, a leaf dropped onto my head. Earlier this summer I was cycling on the trail, skidded, and crashed. Got pretty banged up but luckily did not break anything. I think he caught me right before I hit the ground.

You have really said it. What amazed me was that I could love so much, at this age. I thought that was over, that I would never feel that way again, except for my kids.

Dear Kieron, Thank you so much for your description of withdrawal. One thing that tormented me was that my friend never went online the day he died. He had communicated fairly normally the day before, though commented that he was feeling very poorly, and drifting in and out of sleep. Still, he sent me the usual goodnight message at 11:30 PM his time (9 time zones ahead of mine). Then he went silent forever. HIs wife told me that he died in the evening hours, so he was alive most of his last day, but opted not to communicate with his friends. For a long time I was, very selfishly, angry at him for tuning us all out. Eventually, of course, I came to my senses and realized that he was probably too weak or too sick to communicate. But the withdrawal that you describe, and the notion that energy must be expended to die -those are things I had never thought of. "Apparently, there's an inner process that takes place on a level we can't usually detect, some kind of transformation that goes on within, which we are never taught about. Here, again, we are done wrong by a society that simply will not teach us how to face Death." How I wish I had known about this, not that there was anything I could have done. In his case, the transformation happened so fast. Hours... 😢

Hello ladies, Last week Gail Sheehy, author of "Passages", died. I remember seeing the book on my parent's bookshelf in the 70's, but did not read it then. "Passages" is about the "predictable crises in adult lives". I read it last week, and although there are some dated elements, I found it remarkably forward thinking, almost timeless. Gail has this to say about the male personality type she calls a "transient" (in today's parlance, a commitmentphobe) (Bold italics mine). There seem to be elements of this in many posts I have seen about the grieving boyfriend who cuts loose. "When he marries it it mainly to comply with what he believes he should do. Superficially, it may look as if this man has made adult commitments, but it's likely that very little of his gut-level self may be involved in any one of them. Some life accident could snap him out of his drift: a recession....the death of a parent...People who do not invest much of themselves in their early choices may not get much in return that will allow them to change or grow. Taken to the extreme, the unwillingness to commit leaves no quarter for expression of the merger self....Some men remain in moratorium, still groping for a personal identity and strong felt values straight through to middle life."

Ummm....the advice I was referring to was not drinking, it was writing letters to the deceased.

I have seen this advice on several mourning sites. I am glad it worked for you, though for myself, I have not found it very satisfying. One thing I have done it to create and write down imaginary dialogues with people close to him, who I have considered contacting. I followed through in one case, and I think that the prep helped.

I communicated with my friend on WhatsApp, and every two weeks or so I backed up our chat transcripts. In the end, the final version is over 500 single-spaced pages. It surprised me how comforting it is to read this, it's like hearing him in my head. I also started an online scrapbook, of all the communiques between me and my friends after his death, but that's not as much fun.

Tamera, I hope you don't cut yourself off from your friends.They may feel awkward initiating contact, so maybe reach out to them?

Dear Tamera, We never know why bad things happen to good people such as yourself and Richard. This won't diminish your longing -but does it count for anything that he was hiking in the mountains, in God's country, doing what he loved? And although this makes it harder for the survivors, there is something very dignified about dying when still young, beautiful, at the height of one's powers, without having to suffer the indignation of a long decline in independence and cognition. My biggest losses in the last year -my friend/colleague at age 58 to cancer, and my father, at age 93 - illustrated both extremes. My wonderful, kind, brilliant father maintained his lifelong graceful demeanor throughout his long decline, but it was heartbreaking for us kids. My friend, although he was physically very frail, spent his last day reviewing his student's paper during his wakeful hours. The only thing he feared in his heroic fight with cancer was losing his mental acuity (to a morphine drip at the end staging), thank God he was spared that.

Fascinating to follow this thread. I, too, am dealing with the fallout of a transcendent emotional affair that was both spawned, and truncated by his cancer. Somewhere Erich Segal wrote (not in Love Story) “I began to believe that we were the playthings of a cruel destiny that brought us together only to cause us the greater pain of tearing us apart”. Cheap, sentimental prose that just about sums it up. It is such an irony that the illness that killed him is also what gave him to me. We had known each other for many, many years, but because of our physical distance, we did not communicate regularly until he told me of his cancer. Not long after we started emailing and texting regularly, we fell in love. I did see him in person twice during his last year, but we did not go beyond holding hands and kissing. There were plans for a third meeting, that, had he lived, would have taken place 6 weeks after he died. I have thought alot about whether we would have gotten seriously physical at that meeting that never happened, but I doubt I would have gone through with it. Because (not necessarily in this order) I had enough to deal with emotionally without piling on infidelity; I worried it could give him a heart attack; I figured it would make the loss even harder after he died; I knew that I would want to give, and seek comfort from his family after his death, and I could not have looked them in the eye if we had been intimate. My husband was well aware of our friendship, and clearly understood that he wasn't just another colleague. But, husband did not feel threatened by the terminally ill guy overseas with a colostomy...

Tamera, I loved reading about your journey to the place on the trail where he died, and placing flowers there. That sounds wonderful, and took a great deal of courage. My friend who died last year lived in Europe, I live in the US. I visited his country last winter, and his wife took me to his gravesite. (We were fortunate that our spouses were very understanding and tolerant of our friendship.) I am Jewish (he was not), and in accordance with our customs I wanted to leave stones on his grave. His wife worried that they would be removed by the cemetery caretakers, who would understand their significance, so she suggested I put them into the flower vase that was affixed to his headstone. I had brought the stones all the way from Israel, and I kissed them and placed them in the vase. I knew that was the closest I would ever get to him for the rest of this life. I hope they are still there.

Now is a difficult time to be in mourning. Briefly, I felt a sense of closure about my friend who died last year. Had he lived to see these times, I doubt he would have survived the pandemic. He would have either gotten infected through going to chemotherapy, or died from a lack thereof. For awhile, I thought that the sense of inevitability would help me through the grieving process, but it didn't last...

I would go for it, if I were you. It sounds like you bring them much joy and comfort. I visited my friend's country earlier this year and arranged to meet with his wife and daughters. The younger one (age 15) did not join us, I think for the reason you feared. But that did not stop his wife and older daughter (20) -we all went out for a very enjoyable dinner. We didn't talk about him that much - mostly, I asked them to tell me about their lives in the countries they had lived in due to his work. At the end of the evening his daughter said "My dad was lucky to have you as his friend". It was heartwarming.

Hello AnnJ, Welcome. I too am coping with disenfranchised grief, and for me the most helpful thing was to connect with others who were close to him. Can you filter your circle of mutual friends for those who are supportive, not judgmental? And, It sounds like his daughters appreciate you, do you have any communication with them?

I am so sorry you have to go through this. Can you mourn with any of his family or his friends? That can be healing.

Dear Marty and Kaye, Thank you for your compassionate and clear-eyed advice. I'm following it.

My friend who died of cancer 14 months ago had been estranged from his family of origin the last year of his life. About 6 weeks before he died, they reached out to him, in the hope of reconciliation. Plans were made for a face to face meeting on neutral turf. Unfortunately, my friend began to physically deteriorate, and neither the meeting or the reconciliation took place. His family did attend his funeral, though. Around the one-year deathaversary, I connected to my friend’s brother on social media to offer condolences for his loss. His response was warm, grateful, and effusive. After asking how, and for how long I had known my friend (we were professional colleagues for 25 years, personal friends for 8), he asked me to share a memory of him, which I did, including some inspiring words he had written down after he got diagnosed. This was received with warmth and appreciation, though his brother did acknowledge that reading it had been very emotional. He went on to tell me of the estrangement, and the family’s lingering sorrow and pain over their failure to reconcile before the death. The message appeared to open a clear portal for future communication, as he offered to go into more depth on the subject. So I sent another reply, mostly about my friend’s professional recognition and honors. I ended it saying that he had told me of the efforts to reconnect, and had been committed to the goal of reconciliation. I thought this would comfort the family, but evidently it did not, because the communication abruptly ceased. I feel terrible, and now realize I must have hit them too hard emotionally. After no interaction with their brother and son for over 2 years, suddenly a disembodied stranger shows up and starts telling them stuff. I wish I had kept my communiques on the lighter side, although this was actually nearly impossible. My friend and I had a mostly electronic relationship, and it was intense, deep chat, knowing we did not have much time left. I have yet to see this exact situation on the blogosphere, but lots of posts about how people who are grieving sometimes drop their connections abruptly. I am very sad about this, because I never intended to offend them, and because it was so healing for me to be able to share about him, and now that’s over.

That is the thing I miss the most about my friend/colleague who died of cancer last year. In the year before he died, he told me almost every day how much he appreciated our friendship, how good our messaging made him feel. And he was not afraid to say he loved me. One way that I can find redemption in his loss is to teach my sons to be more like this.

"Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand." Rainer Maria Rilke

Who knows...According to my insurance website and Psychology Today, "loss", and "transition" are supposed to be among her specialties. I can't tell if the interaction with is so-so because she doesn't ask or say the right stuff, or whether I just don't see her often enough. We both seem to travel a lot, so the frequency of our meetings on average is once every two weeks. She is the second therapist I have worked with in the last year, and I am more satisfied with her than therapist number 1. That's something...

Thank you. It's good to know that someone understands. His last weekend, they were just starting to bloom, and I texted to him that I would send him a photo in about a week, when they were at peak flowering. He replied "Send now", and I did. Three days later he was gone. I used to love the cherry blossoms, like everyone else. Maybe someday I will, again. Another goal...

Thanks to those who responded. One thing is becoming clear: I seem to be in this grieving scene for the long haul. Now that my friend’s first deathaversary is approaching, the stomach churning, lump-in-the-throat physical symptoms seem to be roaring back, not that they ever totally disappeared. I keep thinking about how brave he was. He faced down his catastrophe with amazing grace and courage, a real inspiration. I told him that many times, and thanked him for enduring his brutal chemotherapy, so he could remain here for all of us who loved him. I think that my focus needs to be setting some goals with my therapist. So far I have just been talking to her, but I don't feel like that is moving me much forward. I am not suicidal, I do not have anxiety attacks, and I am not looking for any drug therapy. I just want to get to a point where my friend becomes a shining, tender memory. Of course, that may be an unrealistic goal. The cherry blossoms are coming out now. Last year, when he died, they were at peak flowering. I hate them.