Checking In with Myself

In the eighteen months since the onset of Sami’s glioblastoma symptoms, I’ve come to realize that my writing is partly (mostly, maybe?) a way for me to check in with myself. The jumble of thoughts and emotions that have come as part of living in limbo for the last year and a half periodically coalesces into something halfway coherent - or at least something that I need to put into written words to begin to understand. And part of this process of discernment, I’m beginning to understand, is putting these words out into the world. Whether anyone else ever reads them, the act of sharing my writing helps me release what’s been bottled up inside.

Grief, lately, has seemed like a deep well, or maybe a spring. The water level is sometimes static; other times, I can feel it welling up through my chest and into my throat. Sometimes the water overflows. Writing, in some ways, relieves the pressure of grieving.

These last three weeks have been chaotic. After my house sold for more than the asking price less than a week after it was listed, the close of escrow was delayed nearly a month by complications associated with the California Fair Plan insurance scheme. Escrow finally closed yesterday afternoon. I’m also in escrow on a property in Calaveras County (close to my new job, and closer to my family). Hopefully, I’ll have enough overlap in the timing of all of this to get moved by the second week of August.

But with my house closing, I’m confronting the reality of leaving the community where Sami and I spent most of our married life. Therapists and books have told me that making a big decision in the first year after such a loss might be a mistake. I don’t know. Being closer to my family - and being able to help my Mom and Dad navigate their own health issues - is important to me at this stage. Last month, a friend who had recently moved following the loss of her husband told me the move had been helpful. “I was able to leave the hard memories at the old house,” she said, “but the happy memories came with me to my new place.” I hope I find similar peace. But with the reality of moving approaching, I confess that I’m worried about whether this is the right path for me at this stage of grieving.

Over the last several weeks, both Emma and Lara have been able to come home to help me with packing. We’ve had a wonderful time together, but packing up our old lives has been difficult, too. This morning, I realized that they have both now visited the home where they grew up for the last time. I’ve never experienced this; my folks still live in the house I left when I went to college nearly 40 years ago. I’m anxious to have the girls visit me in my new home, but I know it won’t be the same for any of us. And I know I’m a bit afraid of moving to a community where nobody will remember Sami, where nobody will know what my family has gone through.

On Independence Day, I went to a baseball game in Lincoln, planning to stay for the fireworks. The extreme heat, along with the huge crowd, were too much for me; I left after the sixth inning. Driving home, I realized that Lincoln was no longer the sleepy little town it had been when Sami and I moved to Placer County 30 years ago (I bought my first ram from the ranch that was located where the Home Depot sits now). I recalled our first Fourth of July in Penryn in 1994 - we’d driven to the top of Clark Tunnel Road (at that time, a gravel road that connected Penryn with the Newcastle Highway) and watched three or four fireworks shows in the valley below us. Today, that road runs through the Bickford Ranch housing development, and I suspect it’s been paved. Curious about the magnitude of the changes in Placer County in the last 30 years, I came home and looked up the county’s population. In 1994, about 192,000 people called Placer County home. Three decades later, that number has more than doubled. By contrast, Calaveras County (where I’ll be living) has only grown by about 10,000 people in that same 30-year time span.

Like most cliches, “change is inevitable” is at least partly true. But the pace and magnitude of change in Placer County have been weighing on me, even before Sami’s passing. During the spring, as I was traveling to Calaveras County to look at properties, I found myself enjoying the drive on Highway 49 south of the American River - fewer people and fewer cars! Similarly, I found myself dreading the drive westbound on Interstate 80, and generally avoiding Highway 49 through Auburn. While moving my home and my work to Calaveras County is mostly about being closer to family, I’m realizing that I’m also looking forward to living in a smaller town. Even so, leaving our friends here in Auburn will be difficult. Moving away from my support system might be a mistake.

Several weeks ago, I reread The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig, a story about a widower raising three boys on a Montana homestead in the early 1900s. The story is narrated by the oldest boy, and I came across this passage:

“... surely I looked at life a lot more warily after it took Mother from us. In Father’s case, he had our symptoms to tend to as well as his own. In short, none of us was over Mother’s death, but we had adjusted to the extent we could to that missing limb of the family.”

Our family’s experience has certainly made me more wary, and Sami’s loss, in many ways, does feel like an amputation - I still reach out to grasp a hand that isn’t there any more. This summer, I have occasionally struggled with my roles, too - as the father of grieving children, I wish I could take away their sadness and pain. I also wish someone could do the same for me. Some days, I find it incredibly difficult to give comfort when I can’t seem to find any for myself.

Going through the 23 years of accumulated things in our house has brought all of us a mix of laughter, wistfulness, and tears. Earlier this week, I went through Sami’s dresses and found a light blue dress she’d worn to our niece’s wedding eight years ago. As I took the dress off its hanger, I could imagine the feel of the fabric over Sami’s hip as we danced at the wedding, and the well of grief overflowed momentarily. The next day, I consigned Sami’s show saddle and bridles, as well as her show clothes, to a local tack store, and sold her horse trailer - which felt like closing another chapter on Sami’s role in our community. But later, we all laughed about the half dozen used Chick-fil-A containers Sami had saved in a kitchen cupboard. Sami had always insisted that she wasn’t a hoarder, but the evidence this week suggests otherwise! 

Ultimately, I don’t know if moving and changing jobs within the first year of my grief is the right thing to do. I feel like I’ve been living with incredible uncertainty since the morning in late January 2023 when I drove Sami to the emergency room for the first time. My sense of limbo has continued through the aftermath of Sami’s death. Trying to learn to live by myself, trying to be a supportive father and a grieving widower, selling a home and buying another, have all been discombobulating. I feel knocked off kilter. While I know that more changes are inevitable, I hope I find some sense of stability (and purpose, even) in a new home, a new community, and a new job.

End Note: As I post this on Saturday morning, Lara and her boyfriend Micah are driving back to Las Cruces. Emma is in Moscow, Idaho. Both girls have now left this house for the last time. After more than a week of hot, sunny weather, we have cloud cover in Auburn this morning. The low sky makes the empty house seem even quieter than usual. And the water level in my well of grief seems higher than it’s been for some time. I find myself thinking about other “last time” experiences - the last time I’ll sleep in this house, the last time I’ll walk out the door, the last time I’ll cook a meal here. All of these things will happen in the next four weeks. I want the new chapter in my life to start, but I’m awfully sad about this chapter ending. At least on this quiet, cloudy Saturday morning.