It feels like a lifetime since I wrote for this blog.
It has been a lifetime. Almost a year.
What a journey I've been on this past year.
I know last year in January, I said I would do my best to start blogging on a regular basis again and then I became a hospice nurse...well not actually a hospice nurse but I became healthcare proxy / caretaker and everything for my friend and ex husband Steve as he faced the horrors of pancreatic cancer.
My current husband and I spent seven weeks last February and March living at my former home with my daughters and my ex-husband as we helped him with the painstaking process of letting go of his life.
What a journey I've been on this past year.
The truth is I wouldn't have wanted it any other way and as soon as Steve told me that he was sick, I told him I would be with him through the whole journey and that I had his back, as I had for 30 years of our lives together.
Wait, I guess the ACTUAL truth is, I would have wanted it one other way, it would have been nice if he wasn't sick at all and he didn't have to die at all... that would have been the only other way I would have wanted it. But since he was sick, and it was pancreatic cancer (the shittiest of all cancers) all I could do was to help him face it with as much dignity and strength as possible. I had to do everything in my power to make sure Steve had what he wanted and needed. And I wanted to prevent our daughters from having to be too involved in the care processes involved...for Steve’s sake as well as theirs.
It was a horrible process and I'm sure anyone who has witnessed cancer eating away at someone understands exactly what I mean when I say it was a horrible horrible process.
I'm grateful I was there because it was also a sacred process. I'm grateful I was there because I was able to give Steve everything he asked for and needed during those final weeks. So many tough decisions and hard work but we were able to protect my daughters from having to be his caretakers and be filled with memories of their Dad at his most vulnerable. I wanted them to know he was safe and cared for and they had only to love and enjoy whatever days were left. Our daughters are adults and they were both very eager to be hands-on in caring for their Dad, but I felt very strongly that it was too big of a job for them and I'm glad that I was there to protect them from as much of the awfulness as possible. The truth is Steve asked for only my husband and myself to be the ones doing the really hard stuff. He wanted very few people around him.
So for 7 weeks last February and March my daughter’s, my husband, my ex-husband and I lived together for those sacred weeks that led up to Steve passing.
What a journey I've been on this past year.
As a medium you would expect that I would have a greater sense of comfort about a loved one being on the other side, but the truth is, the pain is still just as overwhelming, the sadness is still just as deep. You would think as a medium I’d have some sort of immediate connection with his Spirit (we had all these plans of how he’d tell me what the deal is over there and help me write a book) but I didn’t have an immediate connection... I tell my clients that their newly transitioned loved ones will often stand back and wait to make connections with them because they recognize the sadness that it would create to feel their energy while in the midst of deep grief.
I was at the receiving end of my own advice. He wasn’t going to come around while it was too painful. After a few months he started making himself known and we’ve settled into a new way of knowing each other. A new normal.
Steve and I were good at creating new normals in our relationship… for many months before he died it was the kind of normal that shifted weekly and then eventually daily until he finally released his hold on his earthly existence and transitioned.
Since then it’s been finding a new normal in this life without Steve. A world without Steve. It’s still surreal. And I’m still not sure what my normal is but I do know more changed through this process than I could have ever imagined. I have felt grief and healing and releasing of baggage that was 30 years old and defined much of my youth. I have felt a reconnection with my friend Steve in a gentler kinder way than I had ever experienced in life. His humor, his laughter and strong opinions are still heard clearly in our home. A new normal.
Dictionary defines normal as conforming to a standard; usual, typical or expected. I heard Dr. Phil say once that something was normal as long as it wasn’t adversely affecting your way of life or your living.
Steve dying did indeed adversely affected my life and my way of living. It's not normal. Cancer is not normal. But now that the cancer is gone, now that Steve’s life has gone with it, we are tasked with finding a new normal. We are tasked with figuring out how to go through each day without calling him. How not to reach out when we have a question. How not to call him when we have news. He was a person I could go to with anything and he was a person who knew me and my life in ways no other ever will, because he was there for it all… He was my friend.
This new normal wasn’t anything I wanted or asked for and frankly finding the strength to not resent it and move forward is a huge challenge. It’s not a choice, it’s was pushed onto us all and decided by some other power. It’s hard to not resent it. It’s hard to push past the anger and sadness and start living this new normal as best we can.
I don’t really have any answers. I don’t know how we’ve found the fortitude to laugh again and find happiness in our moments. I don’t know when the sadness will take over. I don’t know how to get used to this new normal and I don’t have to. I just have to keep moving forward, I have to keep looking into our future with faith in the goodness and blessings finding their way to my life…
Normal. Normal is overrated is what I used to tell my kids when they were young. My goal is just to feel as much as I can at any given moment, joy, love, sadness, anger… my normal is finding the strength in the moments and not resisting what is while hanging on to what was.
What has your journey through grief taught you? How have you found your way to feeling “normal’ again?
