Decision Paralysis

Early next week, we’ll mark the one year anniversary of our family’s decision (Sami’s included) that Sami needed hospice care. After a seizure, a serious fall, and another ambulance ride to the emergency room in Roseville, we realized that Sami wouldn’t recover from the progression of brain tumors resulting from her glioblastoma diagnosis. Sami entered hospice care on July 31, 2023. Exactly two weeks later, she passed away. The coming milestones (including what would have been our 34th anniversary on August 4) will be difficult.

As Sami’s condition worsened during the second half of her chemo- and radiation-therapy in March and April 2023, I found myself, increasingly, in the role of “decision-maker.” In our 33 years of marriage, we’d always made decisions together (or at least we tried to - both of us made unilateral decisions on occasion). When Sami ended up on the neuro-oncology floor at UCSF in early June, she seemed to look to me for decisions about treatment. Thankfully, both Lara and Emma were there to help talk through Sami’s care options, but I felt an incredible weight descending on my shoulders. As Sami’s spouse - and having power of attorney, thanks to the estate planning that Sami insisted we do - I found myself assenting to most of what her medical team decided was best. I signed my name to more forms than I can recall.

Weighty decisions followed me through the autumn and winter - decisions about how to handle wrapping up Sami’s business affairs, when to hold her Celebration of Life, how to help our community remember Sami’s contributions. Again, our daughters (and our family) helped with these choices, but I felt their weight, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

As we began to realize the seriousness of my Mom’s condition, and as I thought about options for being closer to my folks and to my sister and her family, more decisions loomed. Should I transfer to the same job in another county? Should I sell the home that Sami and I had purchased 23 years ago, the home where our daughters were raised? If I did transfer and relocate, where should that be?

This week marks the near-culmination of those decisions. I have sold our home in Auburn, and purchased a new home in Mountain Ranch (in Calaveras County). Thanks to our collective hard work, I won’t have a house payment. By August 10, I’ll be moved out of our Auburn home. I’ll start my new job (really my old job, but in a new set of counties) on October 1. The process of listing, selling, and buying has been emotionally difficult, for sure. The decisions, at times, have overwhelmed me.

One of the consequences of these big decisions has been that small decisions are difficult - and sometimes impossible - for me to make. What should I have for dinner? Should I take next Tuesday off? Should I spend Sunday afternoon fishing in the mountains or packing boxes? I wish someone else would tell me what I should do; paradoxically, I also find myself avoiding the company of others.

In some ways, I suppose that my inability to make small decisions reflects the after-effects of the trauma we lived through last year. Even now, nearly a year after Sami’s passing, I have flashbacks to some of the more difficult periods of her illness. Trauma and grief are interesting emotions - I sometimes think that the trauma we experienced gets in the way of the grief we need to process. The trauma makes me second guess some of my decisions.

In addition to missing Sami (immensely), I am grieving the prospect of leaving the community where our family has lived for so many years. I’ll miss my friends and colleagues. I’ll miss the pastures where my sheep grazed. I’ll miss some things about our home. But as I think about moving to a new community - a new home - there are also things I’m looking forward to. I’m looking forward to quiet mornings on my new deck, without the sound of traffic on Highway 49 in the background. I’m looking forward to deciding to have dinner with my sister or my parents at 4pm on Friday evening - and being with them before 5:30pm. Tonight, as my non-air-conditioned home climbs to 87ͦ F INSIDE, I’m looking forward to air conditioning. I'm looking forward to seeing my sheep and mules grazing on the hillside above my deck. I’m looking forward to getting to know a new piece of land and a new community. And I’m looking forward to making “small” decisions once again.