52 Weeks

A year ago today, Sami and I left Las Cruces a few minutes before 7 a.m., headed for Reserve, New Mexico (for a lunch meeting) and ultimately for Flagstaff, Arizona (our halfway point on our drive home from visiting Lara). The desert sunrise was notable; I still have a photo on my phone, taken from Lara’s front steps. Sami slept off and on as we made our way through Silver City and along the Gila River, which she often did during long trips. While we ate lunch, snow started falling, making the drive into Arizona slippery. Driving a road I’d never driven before, through the snow, required all of my concentration; I finally relaxed a bit when conditions improved north of Alpine, Arizona.

As I relaxed, I began to notice that Sami was having difficulty finishing sentences. She’d start to say something and then trail off before she could finish her thought. As the afternoon wore on, I grew frustrated with her - she seemed so distracted. When we arrived in Flagstaff after dark, we checked into our hotel and walked next door to grab dinner. I asked her what was going on - what was wrong. “Nothing,” she insisted, “I’m just tired.”

We pulled out of Flagstaff early the next morning. Interstate 40 was icy, so I drove first. We switched seats in Kingman, and Sami drove us into California. The weather cleared, but the wind was blowing - we joked that the wind was pushing the truck around, making it hard for Sami to stay in her lane. Somewhere between Needles and Barstow, I got behind the wheel again, taking us through Bakersfield. By the time Sami started driving again near Tulare, it was late afternoon. She was still having trouble finishing a thought, and trouble staying in her lane of traffic on Highway 99. We called Emma in Idaho, putting her on speaker phone - Sami didn’t say much.

We reached Merced and a confusing stretch of roadwork after dark. Sami exited the freeway and asked me to drive. We had trouble figuring out how to get back on the freeway; Sami was confused by what Google Maps was telling us to do. I, of course, grew frustrated again.

Sometime after 8 p.m., we pulled into our driveway. Since we’d been gone more than a week, the house was cold. Sami said she’d unload the truck if I’d work on getting a fire going in the wood stove and feed the animals. She stopped unpacking about halfway through, telling me she was tired. I grumbled my way through unloading the rest of the truck. We went to bed.

The next day (Wednesday), I went back to work. Sami stayed home to put things away and return phone calls. She still had difficulty finding words (a condition we would soon learn was called aphasia). On Thursday morning, we both arose around 5 a.m. Sami said she felt nauseous. I left to move sheep. When I returned home around 8:30, Sami was sitting in front of the wood stove. She said, “I just passed out. I thought I was going to be sick, so I went into the bathroom. I came to on the floor. I don’t know what happened.”

I insisted that she try calling her doctor. When she couldn’t get through, we decided to go to the emergency room. After running a series of tests, the doctor thought she had some type of aortic aneurysm, and since she’d fainted, the doctor suspended her driver’s license.

That evening, Sami had a fair board meeting she didn’t want to miss. I took her to her meeting, picking her up when it was over. We talked about the meeting, and Sami noted that she’d had difficulty writing (she was right-handed). We both thought that was odd.

Friday morning, I had to leave for work early. By this time, all of us were very worried. Lara and I talked while I was driving to work, and we made Sami agree that we would check in on her every half hour or so while I was gone. When I got home that afternoon, we finally heard from Sami’s doctor, who found the neurological symptoms (aphasia and writing difficulties) concerning. She told us to go back to the ER, and she called ahead to talk to the doctor. As we walked from the parking lot, I remarked that Sami seemed to be dragging her right foot. Later that night, the doctor told us a CT scan had revealed a mass on Sami’s left frontal lobe. He had referred her to a larger hospital for an MRI as soon as possible. By 10:30 the next morning, Sami was being prepped for what was to be the first of two brain surgeries. Just 202 days after we started home from New Mexico, Sami passed away from glioblastoma.

Even a year later, this six day stretch of time seems so clear - and so surreal. When we got into the truck on that January morning, I was excited to see new country, and nervous about the snow in the forecast. When we arrived in Flagstaff, I was relieved to be off the icy roads and annoyed with Sami for being so distracted. Annoyance gave way to anxiety and uncertainty, as we began to realize that something was seriously wrong. And then my memory grows a bit fuzzier; the two weeks between her first surgery and her second are far less clear, as is the rest of 2023.

Sami recovered from her first craniotomy and returned home. Lara and Emma returned to their homes, too. And then Sami felt worse - just 16 days after her first surgery, she was back in the hospital. And just 18 days later, she underwent a second craniotomy. My next clear memories are of the second surgeon telling us she had glioblastoma, and of sitting next to her in the neuro ICU after she’d come out of surgery on February 15. She held my left hand all night, rubbing the knuckles raw with her thumb. We were both so scared.

Looking back at all of this a year later makes me think how naive I was. On that Monday morning, we both expected that life would simply go on as it had been going. We were in our mid fifties and (we thought) in decent health. Sami was training for a half marathon in March. I was looking forward to lambing season in mid February. We were both figuring we’d settle back into our work routines upon returning from a wonderful trip.

Today, 52 weeks later, I find myself searching for lessons. Cliches like, “take life a day at a time,” and “live every day like it’s your last,” resonate to some degree, but they fail to acknowledge the magnitude of what our family experienced. I also find myself thinking about how Sami experienced those weeks after we returned from our trip. As much as I try to put myself in her shoes, I know I’ll never truly understand what she was feeling. And I find myself wondering who and where I’ll be 52 weeks from today. I guess that might be one of the lessons of this past year - none of us really know. 

All In

I’ve always admired those people who go “all in” on something. Who train and work at a skill and become incredibly proficient. I’m not talking about athletes or professional musicians (although there are some among these folks who I admire) - I’m talking about buckaroos. Loggers. Cabinet makers. Sheepherders.

Becoming great at anything, I think, takes drive, dedication, and focus - and 10,000 hours of work, according to Malcom Gladwell! But becoming good at caring for livestock on rangeland, or falling trees safely and efficiently, or crafting useful and beautiful furniture, takes more than that, I believe. Going all in, in any of these occupations, requires a sense of place. A sense of the aesthetic. A sense of how others will use the end product of one’s work. And lots of sweat.

I have never been able to focus enough to go “all in” on one particular set of skills. In high school, my favorite classes were woodshop and drafting - even though I knew I wanted to go to college to study agricultural economics. My woodshop teacher even nominated me for a Bank of America award in applied arts - my presentation focused on the value of skills like woodworking and welding - “arts” that improve our everyday lives. I didn’t “win,” but I did get a small scholarship!

As I’ve grown older, I’ve tried to learn skills like falling trees, milling lumber, roping calves, shearing sheep, and farming vegetables. At some of these, I’ve been reasonably successful - I’m pretty good at lambing out ewes, for example. At some, I struggle - I’m not a great logger, nor am I a great roper. But I’ve enjoyed the learning process. I’ve enjoyed trying to understand the combination of intellectual knowledge and physical skill. I’ve enjoyed embracing my own curiosity and fallibility.

I’ve also enjoyed learning a bit more about what it takes to become proficient at the skills in which I’ve only dabbled. I’ve come to understand that some things can only be learned by doing - falling a tree in the right direction and in a way that preserves the log requires lots of mistakes. Roping a calf safely and gently requires lots of misses, and probably a few wrecks. From experience, I know that lambing out a bunch of ewes will inevitably come with a whole bunch of problems!

Ultimately, I suppose I’ve tried to be a jack of all trades - and I’ve ended up being a master of none. But my attempts to understand the work involved in housing, clothing, and feeding all of us have given me a greater appreciation for the skills involved. Maybe that’s where I’ve gone “all in.”

What I Didn't Know Then...

In Against the Wind, Bob Seger sings, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” I’ve always liked that line - sometimes, gaining wisdom from life experiences is painful. There are some lessons I wish I didn’t have to learn - and I would certainly count most of the lessons I learned in 2023 in that category. 

I traveled to Denver last week to participate in the American Sheep Industry Association annual conference, as I’ve done every year since at least 2016. Last year’s meeting was in Fort Worth, and I realized as I was driving to the airport, last year’s conference was the last normal week we had. I left Sami at Lara’s house in Las Cruces to fly to Fort Worth; I returned to Las Cruces to Sami waiting up late for me. We enjoyed a wonderful weekend of hiking, barbecuing, and pecan harvesting. When I look back on who I was the last time I participated in this conference, I was so naive about many things - I didn’t know what glioblastoma was. I didn’t know how to respond to a grand mal seizure. I didn’t know how to help care for someone who couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t know I’d be returning from this year’s conference to a cold and empty house.

At one point during the first day of this year’s conference, I felt sadness building up inside me. I felt the need to be alone - I find that sometimes my grief needs company, while other times I need to sit with it by myself. Some days, I’m extroverted; other days I’m introverted. Losing Sami doesn’t seem to have changed that - and the grieving process for me seems to reflect this oscillation. In some ways, I think, grieving has intensified these extremes for me.

I started the second day of the conference by having breakfast with my friend Cat Urbigkit from Wyoming. We always have great conversations - usually about sheep and livestock guardian dogs. But Cat has also had close experience with glioblastoma (we had talked while Sami was sick, which I found immensely helpful). Last week, she reminded me that I have a choice about what parts of my life with Sami I choose to relive. In the five months since Sami passed, I have found that I mostly relive the hard moments of her disease. Cat reminded me that I would need to work to relive the happy moments of the life I shared with Sami (and there were many). And so here’s one….

Sami loved collecting coffee mugs (you might say she horded them - much like I horde pocket knives and hats). At some point last spring, the girls helped me clean out the coffee mug cabinet - even with four or five of us in the house, we figured we didn’t need two shelves full of coffee cup options. Some of these mugs went to Goodwill; others ended up in Emma’s apartment. This morning, as I took down a mug to make a cup of coffee at Emma’s place in Idaho, I saw Sami’s mugs. I would have been sad to see these three months ago. This morning, while I did feel a pang of melancholy, the mugs brought back happy memories of Sami drinking Maxwell House Cafe Francais instant coffee (what our family always referred to as “Mom Coffee”). I laughed to myself about her habit of leaving a half-full mug in the microwave - “I might want some later,” she’d say.

If I concentrate, I find that I can recall brief moments of light and laughter we experienced even after we learned of Sami’s diagnosis. Reliving the uncertainty of Sami’s early symptoms, the anxiety of waiting for a diagnosis after her first brain surgery, the cycles of hope and despair we experienced during her radiation and chemotherapy treatments, and the ultimate sadness of the progression of her brain cancer during the summer months, come easy. Remembering how happy she was when we remodeled the porch and planted flowers is more difficult. Remembering the weeks when I slept in the living room so that she could sleep better in bed - when she awakened me each morning by squeezing my big toe on her way to make her morning “Mom Coffee” is challenging - but far more rewarding.

Perhaps this is the difference between moving forward and moving on. As I’ve written previously, moving on simply doesn’t describe the process of grieving for me. I don’t want to move on - Sami and I spent 35 years together, 33 of them as husband and wife - this will always be part of who I am. I do want to move forward - I want to cherish the good times we spent together, and learn from the hard times (and make no mistake, there were hard times that had nothing to do with Sami’s glioblastoma - any couple who stays together for that long will have hard times!). Celebrating Sami’s life before Christmas was an important part of this process for me (which I am realizing as time goes on). Seeing a hall full of people who shared happy memories of Sami - who have supported our family throughout this process - helped me fully appreciate the impact Sami had on our community. Hearing others share happy memories of Sami helped remind me to relive ALL of our life together, not just the last 12 months. That said, I would still rather be ignorant of glioblastoma. I still wish that I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.

Random Thoughts on Grief, Celebration, and Facing a New Year

As the holiday season winds down and a new year begins, I continue to reflect on my experiences over the last year - on Sami’s sudden illness, on her treatment and ultimate passing, on being a father of children who’ve lost their mother while grieving myself, on finding myself suddenly alone. And on what moving forward looks like. 

We celebrated Sami’s life with our family and community two days before Christmas. I wrote previously about the stress of worrying whether we’d have enough food and about trying to remind myself that I wasn’t throwing a party (rather, I was creating a time and place for us all to celebrate and remember Sami). As probably everyone but me predicted, my worries were entirely unfounded. Looking out on a completely full hall at the Gold Country Fairgrounds - a hall full of people who loved Sami and who love my family - was both humbling and comforting. Looking at all of the leftover food was daunting! Looking back ten days later, I know that part of the relief I feel is simply having the event behind us, but my sense of comfort is more profound. Sami touched so many lives. The celebration included friends from throughout our marriage, and gave us all an opportunity to reconnect. I’m so glad we held a celebration rather than a funeral - and I know that Sami is, too. 

On the day after the celebration, we drove to Monterey Bay. The girls and I felt like we wanted to be somewhere other than home for Christmas; I felt like I needed to be at the ocean, where Sami’s cremated remains had been placed. On Christmas morning, we took our dogs to the rocky coast near Lover’s Point in Pacific Grove. At a sandy beach, I waded into the ocean - several months ago, someone had told me, “Sami’s molecules are still here - all around us,” and I felt the need to be in the ocean. As I submerged myself entirely in the cold water, I felt Sami’s presence physically - I returned to the beach and cried. When I got in the water a second time, a swell engulfed me and lifted me off the ocean floor ever so slightly. I can’t explain it logically, but it felt like Sami was there, embracing me. I decided I wanted to be at the ocean on our anniversary in 2024. 

Later that afternoon, we took the dogs to Del Monte beach to play in the waves (which, as it turns out, Mae does not enjoy!). At one point, I noticed Mae looking intently at a woman who was walking past us 50 yards or so away. To me, and at that distance, she resembled Sami ever so slightly - and I wondered if Mae was thinking the same thing. Mae’s reaction made me think what Sami’s absence must be like for our animals - especially for the dogs and the mules. I’m not anthropomorphizing here, but I do know our animals enough to know that they’ve “noticed” that Sami is gone.

Speaking of animals, Lara remarked last week that the mules could probably use some more groceries during the winter months - she thought they looked a little thin. I find that seeing the world (including livestock condition) through someone else’s eyes is always helpful - I upped their hay ration. But it also made me wonder if there are other things I thought I was handling - keeping the house clean, preparing nutritious meals, keeping up with my bills - that I was fooling myself about. I expect I’ll need feedback about these things over the coming year, too.

That brings me to “my” versus “our” - it was always our house, our daughters, our sheep - our life. Some things are now mine, but I still find myself saying “our” - I probably always will.

For me, at least, the “stages” of grief and “moving on” don’t seem to describe my experience. I seem to oscillate between the “stages” - one day I’m angry, the next I’m sad. Some days I can accept being alone, other days I’m depressed by my solitude. From talking with friends who have experienced similar losses, I suspect my grief and its various manifestations will be with me the rest of my life.

And “moving on” is simply bullshit - I don’t want to “move on.” I hope to move forward - to discover who I am now that Sami is gone. But I don’t know how one moves on from 35 years of relationship. For that entire time, part of my identity was “Sami’s significant other.” That is still - and always will be - part of how I think of myself. Moving forward, I’m sure there will be new elements of my identity, but “Sami’s husband” will remain.  

Today, nearly five months after Sami’s passing - and nearly 12 months after we discovered something was horribly wrong, I’m beginning to understand what an awesome responsibility I assumed. Making medical decisions for someone else is incredibly stressful - the adrenaline of the crisis moments we experienced masked its intensity. I have no regrets, but I’m finding that the stress of this responsibility is leaving my body and my psyche slowly.

I’ve tried talking with a grief/trauma therapist online. I’ve found these sessions moderately helpful - just talking about the last year with someone who is totally unattached is therapeutic. What’s more therapeutic, at least for me, is working with my hands at something that also engages my intellect. Operating my new Lucas portable sawmill has done me more good than anything else I’ve tried so far. The mill was more expensive than therapy, but I enjoy seeing what I’ve accomplished when I finishing operating it!

All of this self-examination culminated in the physical act of turning my weather journal back to page one yesterday. Christmas without Sami was difficult, but I was able to cope. Celebrating Sami’s life before Christmas was filled with both sadness and joy. But realizing that I’m getting another year, while Sami isn’t, was incredibly hard for me.