A Very Lucky Man

[HAP]

Dear friends,

I’m a very lucky man on very many levels.

I was reminded of this last week when an old friend came to visit for a few days. Her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s less than two years after they got married. By the time his cancer took him he hardly knew who she was. They had less than ten years together—and he was seriously ill for most of them.

By contrast, including the time we were friends and going out together, Jane and I had nearly a quarter century—and were married for 21 years, four months and eight days of that time. She was brilliant, caring, strikingly beautiful—and my best friend—as I was hers. Very few people get the gift that we were given.

We both loved teaching and learning. Together we drove back the walls of ignorance, both in our own lives and in the lives of others. Just as importantly, we became role models for students who too often lacked them. Ours was a marriage young people aspired to, as were the lives we led in the public square.

Jane broke every stereotype for women there was. She worked in chemistry and biology and physics. She didn’t just tell her female students they could aspire to be anything they wanted to be—she showed them by being as good—or better—than any man in the sciences. She told them, “If I can be here and do this, so can you.” And then she showed them how.

Our marriage broke all kinds of other stereotypes as well. We shared every chore. We both cooked, we both cleaned, we both did laundry, shoveled snow, mowed the lawn, and tended the garden. Everything we did, we did by consensus. Neither of us had the final say on anything.

We had the best marriage two flawed human beings could have. We fought sometimes. We had significant, private, disagreements. But we loved each other too much to let those disagreements be more than shallow potholes in our lives to be filled as soon as we could manage. There were nights we went to bed angry, but we never woke up that way.

We faced her cancer the same way we faced everything else in our lives: together. It would have surprised everyone who knew us if it had been otherwise. That I have continued that fight since her death should equally surprise no one.

But it does. I can’t tell you how often people ask why I keep doing this—why I don’t just move on with my life. They point to other spouses who cared for their husbands and wives passionately, right up to the end. But once the coffin was lowered into the ground they walked away from the disease responsible as though it never existed.

And there is some truth to what they say. But there is also much they do not understand. Mourning does not end with the funeral service. It does not end in a month or a year. We get better at dealing with the empty side of the bed and the empty seat in the car. We get better at presenting a painless face to the world. Sometimes, we can even laugh.

But the pain of loss is a constant that follows us everywhere on every day. We never know when we will turn a corner and be forced to fight back tears from a flower that triggers a memory of another time and place when we were truly happy.

And I understand too well the pain that sends people rushing away from the illness that took the one they loved. Every encounter I have with a NET cancer patient is loaded with emotional triggers. There is something about their eyes, something about the way they carry themselves, something about their faces and their conversations, that can take me back in an instant to Jane and her long struggle with a disease we could not name until four months before her death.

There are days I wish I could walk away from the vow Jane and I took the day she was diagnosed to kill this disease. There are days I wish I could turn my back on those who still live with this disease—could somehow ignore their suffering so I could bury my own grief and move on with my own life.

My contributions to the battle against carcinoid/NETs may not be much, but the scientists tell me they are making a difference. If I can save even one life from the death Jane confronted, it will also save a husband or a wife, it will save a son or a daughter or a parent or a brother or a sister from the throes of grief so many of us endure.

In less than a month, I will observe the fourth anniversary of the day Jane and I first heard the words "carcinoid cancer." Less than three weeks later, I will observe what would have been the celebration of our 25th year of marriage. Both days will be somber and painful in ways only those who have similar losses will understand.

Too often, lately, I feel the weight of those two dates approaching. I get up each morning with the best of intentions. But as the day winds down, I look at my list of things to do and discover too little done and too much left to do. I hear Jane’s voice in my head telling me it’s OK, but it isn’t. Not really. People are dying needlessly—suffering needlessly--and I’m not doing enough to help stop it.

I am crippled by grief—but I am still a lucky man. I had 21 years, four months and eight days of the kind of marriage few people get to experience for even one day. There is a price to pay for such a marriage. And I pay it every day.

Peace,

Harry

[mfh]

Harry, this post is inspiring and lovely. Your description of your marriage mirrors Bill's and mine in so many ways and how can either of us not be grateful for such a rare, deep, and fulfilling gift. Just as you work with NET cancer, I choose to work with bereavement and I am sure there are people around me who think I should move on also...whatever in the world that means. I do understand how turning a corner and bumping into a grief trigger is a frequent occurrence....happens a lot to me also.

As you walk into this round of anniversaries know that you do not walk into them alone. We are all still here with you....and yes, there is indeed a price to pay for such a marriage...I totally get that. The deeper the love, the deeper the grief. Many here understand that also.

You are in my thoughts and prayers

Mary

[feralfae]

Harry,

That is very beautiful. I had the same marriage with Doug. We are so incredibly blessed to have been among this who were not only unafraid, but did not know that perhaps we should be afraid, to establish new traditions, and to blaze new trails, and to serve as way-showers for others.

My counselor told me that my grief has been so acute in part because the Love has been so magnificent. I get that. Whatever the cost, it is worth it to have had the love we have had. Yes, many here understand that also.

Peace to your loving heart, Harry, and we are here with you through this time. I think Jane is a super spirit, personally, since she did the photon trick for you that day when she sunlit the photo.

namaste,

fae

[enna]

Your words once again inspire me, Harry. I understand the ‘gift’ you talk about as Jim and I were gifted with each other’s togetherness for forty years.

I am glad you have all these beautiful memories of your Jane and at the same time sad that she is not still with you physically as the two of you together would no doubt be doing wonderful things.

Anniversary days are filled with memories and we know now we do get through them.

Thank you for sharing with us.

Anne

[kayc]

Harry, we did not get the length of time that you and Jane got, but what we lacked in time we made up for in quality, we had the marriage the two of you had, and people watched us enviously.

I know why you do this, Harry, it's because it is your calling, and that is something one cannot ignore. Few of us are as passionate about something as you are...I envy you that...my passion ended the day George died. I have always poured myself into my marriage, my children, my work...now I have nothing to pour myself into and I feel it.

I see you as still having 25 years together, she is in your heart as surely as she was when she lived and breathed.

[Wifflesnook]

Yes, Kay. Those 25 years that Harry and Jane shared are here just as the present moment is. Time is a strange thing and now my Pete isn't physically with me I feel I live in two places. One is the present moment and the other is the past. And I was a lucky woman, just as Harry counts himself a lucky man. No one else in the universe had the love of my Pete, and as far as I'm concerned that means I'm the luckiest person in the universe. Still.

[kayc]

Me, I feel like I drag George with me everywhere I go...no one else sees him, but he is with me. I talk to him in my mind or aloud when no one is present. I write to him too, kind of a carryover from our courtship days. But oh how I miss his physical presence! To me, heaven is having his arms around me.

[mfh]

Kay, I feel Bill with me all the time. I would just bet George is right there eager to be with you every single moment. Where else would he choose to be? I also talk to Bill, write to him and think of him every single day. We were blessed but yes, miss their physical presence.

[HAP]

Dear friends,

Part of what I am dealing with this month is that Jane's new body was conceived earlier this month. She will be reborn in April, 2015. As that date comes nearer, she will increasingly less be here--and then gone into that new life. That is the pain that goes with Buddhist/Taoist belief--which come as close to what we are as anything. Sometimes I feel I am losing her all over again.

Peace,

Harry

[Wifflesnook]

Oh Harry. I didn't know of that and I'm not sure I want to. My beliefs are a strange amalgam of Pantheism, Buddhism, Taoism, remnants of mine and Pete's Christianity, and heaven only knows what else. I suppose that the only thing I know is that if it's at all possible my Pete will never leave me. And 'to death us do part' isn't relevant. Death (mine) will reunite us somehow,

[HAP]

The good news is we always find each other again--though we sometimes take a few lifetimes to pull it off.

--H.

[feralfae]

Harry,

When Doug was close to leaving, he reminded me that I must not limit him in spirit by the beliefs we humans hold here on Earth. He told me a lot, but one of the significant bits he shared as he was leaving was when I questioned him about being in more than one place, and he told me that I must not limit the possibilities of spirit with my limited understanding of spirit.

Free will of spirit is a concept that is seldom discussed, although Aquinas certainly explored and expanded the concept. Spirits are free, and all the laws and rules we think we know about afterlife are merely our best human attempts to make sense of the mystery and the possibilities. It is quite possible that Jane is both reincarnating and also with you every moment. Do not limit her spirit.

namaste,

fae

[Wifflesnook]

Wow Fae. How do you do it? I love your open spirit. I was visited today by a man whose wife died after almost 40 years of marriage. We had so much in common. His grief was newer than mine but similar. But he had no belief in any after life whatsoever. And I'm not sure what I believe but I'm glad I don't share his total sureness that death is the end. I didn't say anything to him. He had worked out how he felt and that was his path. But I was glad I had some small hope.

[kayc]

I'm with you, Jan, I'm glad I believe in afterlife, although I respect other people's choices to find what they believe. I always said, I believe in George going to heaven, if you know different, don't tell me!

[ohsosad]

I wish I could believe in an afterlife. It would make it easier.

Rita

[Wifflesnook]

Dear. Rita

Pete and I were Pantheists which meant that we believed that everything was connected but we didn't believe in the survival of the soul. But then Pete died and it wasn't enough. Nothing like enough, and since then I've been searching. And somehow I think Pete is near me. In fact I almost know it. It may be wishful thinking. But I can't cope if I don't think that.

[MartyT]

It seems to me, dear Jan, that you can believe whatever you choose to believe, as long as it brings you comfort. Who among us can prove you wrong, anyway? ♥

[kayc]

Jan, we can believe whatever we choose to believe. I think, somehow, we know deep down inside of us. I feel like George is in me, around me...I miss his physical body, I miss getting to hear him answer me back with his soft sweet voice, but knowing he is here is enough for me...it has to be.

[melina]

Harry - I understand the significance of dates. We would have celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary on July 9th, but most likely we would have forgotten it, as we usually did as it was in the middle of vacation, and then remembered suddenly weeks later and celebrated then. However, I did not keep with tradition this year. I remembered it. I've been saving some of my husband's ashes, and take some with me wherever I travel. I spread some of his ashes in a waterfall near Toronto this year on our anniversary, and later in a forest in Maine. In January some of his ashes were spread at a Buddhist temple in Japan on New Years Eve. Last year part of him was spread off the coast of Istanbul, a city he'd always wanted to visit. He's traveling a lot more now than he did while alive.

I believe in an afterlife, but I have no idea what it will be like, what form our souls will take, or even if we'll have any contact with the physical world and loved ones after death. Hopefully my husband is near me and is following our lives, but maybe not. I don't know. I never receive any signs. I never see or hear anything unusual. I don't feel anyone is near me. It would be wonderful to have strong faith in such things. Sometimes I'll ask myself a question and almost hear my husband's voice answering. I know it's me doing the talking, but I like to think he's communicating with me.

I try to keep the good things we had together in mind - keep a positive feeling of our time together. My husband's sudden diagnosis and even more sudden, traumatic death has overshadowed these positive moments for a long time. It's hard to look beyond the trauma. It still haunts me and at times brings me to tears and panic. But I'm glad we did have our good times together, despite our arguments and irrationalities. August 5th, the death day, will be a very bad day for me, as it has been for the last four years, but I'll try to keep your optimism and think about the love that I had rather than the love I've lost.

Metteline

[ohsosad]

I am fearful now that I've said I don't believe in an afterlife that I have alienated some of my comrades here. Honestly, I wish I did have your faith in something after this life - something that would bring me to wherever Steve is - to be with him and our wonderful animals forever. But I don't feel it. I don't feel him with me as some of you feel your loved ones with you. I just feel loss and pain and sadness.

Rita

[melina]

Rita,

Whether you believe or don't believe in an afterlife doesn't matter. What matters is how you can learn to deal with this life - the one you're living - after it has changed so brutally. I go back and forth from believing there is something after death to not believing anything at all. How can we really know? We've never been dead. But what's important is working through the loss and pain you feel right now. It will get easier. The loss will still be there - and at times, the pain. But it will get easier to handle and hopefully you'll eventually find some joy again.

That's one thing I do believe, and firmly.

Melina

[mfh]

Rita, I don't believe you have alienated any members because you said you "wished you believed in an afterlife". This discussion about afterlife is one that frequently comes up here on the forums. Some believe in it, others do not and many just do not know. Whenever the topic comes up, what I have seen is more discussion and I have never seen anyone alienated. Everyone here knows that just as grief is unique to each person and we do not judge how a person grieves, neither do we judge what someone believes. So fear not. Feel free to say whatever you wish about your doubts or lack of believe. You are not alone with belief or no belief in an afterlife.

What I think all of us believe is that the love we shared with our beloveds is still with us. It has shaped us in part to be who we are and that love will be with all of us forever.

[MartyT]

It so happens that this past Friday our friend Megan Devine posted an article addressing this very topic. As Mary says, we are not alone in pondering these matters.

See Sudden Death vs. Belief In A Loving Universe

[kayc]

Rita, you can express yourself freely here. We may all be different in our thinking or beliefs, but that doesn't matter, we understand each other, get where each other are coming from. I doubt you could alienate us if you tried! We're all just working through this the best that we can.

It took me a long time to where I felt George was with me and it's not a physical presence, it's just knowing all that he was, all that he said, all that he did, it's impacted my life and still a part of me.

[mfh]

It so happens that this past Friday our friend Megan Devine posted an article addressing this very topic. As Mary says, we are not alone in pondering these matters.

See Sudden Death vs. Belief In A Loving Universe

Very powerful piece, Marty.