The Summer of 2023

Yesterday afternoon, I participated in a focus group organized by the UC San Francisco Neuro Oncology Caregiver Support team. Since Sami’s passing, I’ve wanted to find ways to help others who are going through the trauma that our family experienced in 2023. I hope I contributed to improving the support program. I wasn’t quite prepared, however, for reliving the summer of 2023.

Looking back, I realize that I began to grieve on that night in January 2023 when an emergency room doctor in Auburn told us Sami had a “mass” on her brain. We were scared, obviously, but I think I also began to grieve over the loss of what we expected our lives to be like. And I suspect Sami began to grieve over what she knew she might miss - growing old(er) together, certainly, but also watching Emma graduate from college. Watching both girls get married (at some point). Grandchildren (although I think I was more excited about this prospect than Sami!).

But looking back, the late spring and summer of 2023 were the most intense days of our journey; indeed, they were the most intense days of my life so far. As I read my journal entries and blog posts from that time, I realized that we were hopeful, anxious, and terrified. With the perspective of nearly two years, I now also realize that Sami had begun to die. That the seizures that she began to experience in mid May were signs that the two surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments had failed to slow the growth (regrowth?) of her brain tumor.

Yesterday’s conversations forced me to relive the three weeks we spent in San Francisco in June 2023. I revisited the anxiety, anger, and frustration of looking for answers to what Sami was experiencing. And I relived the regrets I sometimes continue to experience - that we spent those weeks in a hospital, when we could have been home - or visiting the places we loved to go together. I relived the day earlier in the spring when we found Sami stacking hay in the barn in preparation for the next day’s feed delivery - after she’d had two brain surgeries. I was so mad. So was she - mad at me for making her stop doing something she enjoyed doing.

After the focus group, I immediately went back to work - meeting about a paper I’m coauthoring with a colleague and setting up my sawmill at a new location. Much like my approach during Sami’s illness and the immediate aftermath of her death, I threw myself back into activity - as a coping (or perhaps avoidance) strategy. But as happened during the summer of 2023 - and has happened in the 19-plus months since Sami passed - I eventually had to slow down last night. As I sat on my new deck with my dogs after finishing my work day, I realized I was sad and exhausted. The feeling of being emptied out entirely, which came frequently in the early days of my grief, returned with intensity. And yet despite my exhaustion, I found sleep to be difficult.

All of this was a reminder (again) that grief is not a linear “process” - that one does not “move on” from loss and trauma. In many ways, I do think I’ve moved forward (and I’ve certainly moved geographically), but the loss and trauma that we experienced in the summer of 2023 will always be with me. My grief, in times like this, will require that I simply sit with it. As someone told me early in my mourning process, Sami had to live through this experience once; I will live through it again and again - for the rest of my life. As I was reminded yesterday, grief will visit me for the rest of my life. To the extent that grief is also memory, I don’t find it quite as unwelcome as I did initially, but days like yesterday are still difficult.