1000 Days

Around the time I turned 50, I remarked to my brother-in-law (who is slightly older than me) that I thought I’d know more by the time I was that old. He laughed and said, “I just didn’t realize how much I’d forget!” Now that I’m well into my extremely late 50’s (I’ll be 59 in April), I occasionally have the feeling that I’ve figured some things out. But mostly I just keep blundering through - figuring out life as I go. Burley Coulter, my favorite character from Wendell Berry’s novels, puts it this way: “I never learned anything until I had to.”

Just over 1,000 days ago, Sami began struggling with speech. She apparently had several seizures, as well. Nearly 900 days ago, she passed away. One of the things I’ve had to learn in the last 1,000+ days (and that I find I must continue to learn) is how to carry on with day-to-day life in spite of my grief over losing my partner of 33 years. And just as I woke up one day and realized I was well past middle age, I woke up this weekend and realized that nearly three years have passed since Sami’s glioblastoma symptoms first manifested.

My grief began on that evening in the emergency room in late January 2023 when the doctor came in and told us that the CT scan he’d ordered showed a small mass on the front of Sami’s brain. The next day, after her first craniotomy, we (or at least I) had a glimmer of hope - we’d acted quickly, and Sami’s surgeon was confident that he’d removed the tumor. When she ended up back in the hospital two weeks later, and we learned from another neurosurgeon that the tumor had - what, regrown, not been entirely removed, we’ll never know - our grief and our anxiety returned.

Over the last three years, I’ve realized that the “stages” of grief inaccurately portray grieving as a linear process. According to this “model” one must experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance, before moving “on.” But I’ve also learned that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who famously described these elements of grieving, was not convinced that they were stages. My experience suggests that grief is a cycle - I’ve moved in and out of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance since that day in late January 2023. I suspect I will for the rest of my life. And while I hope to move forward, I doubt I’ll ever move on from grieving for Sami and for what our old age might have been together.

I’ve also realized over the last year or so that Sami was also grieving throughout her brief illness. At one point, she told me she thought she’d outlive me (she said it laughingly, but she was serious). In some ways, I think, the cancer in her brain progressed so quickly that she didn’t have time to go through all of the “cycles” of grief. She certainly seemed to experience denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Who could possibly experience acceptance of something like that?

Last weekend, I finished The Place of Tides, the latest book by James Rebanks (who, coincidentally is a sheep farmer. Like Wendell Berry. Like me). He writes, “There is no end to learning…. I had imagined that there was a moment when you felt wise, that you had learnt it all…. We are all just children. We never know enough, not even the half of it.” I’ve long felt this way about learning and experience; I now wonder if grief is the same. That once we’ve grieved for the loss of someone, we’ll always feel that grief. It will change as our lives change, as we have new experiences. But we’ll never know enough not to grieve. At least that's how it feels to me.

Over these last three years, the pain of losing Sami has (mostly) become easier to bear. In that autumn after Sami passed, I heard someone describe the pain of grieving as a box with a large ball in it. The box also has a button that causes pain. Early in the grieving process, the ball is quite big, and it frequently hits the pain button. As time goes on, the ball of your loss remains just as big, but the box of your life grows - and so the ball hits the pain button less frequently. That seems to be true for me.

Last weekend, I was sad and lonely (as I often am after having a wonderful time with our daughters). For the first time since Sami died, I didn’t feel withdrawn on Christmas, which felt good. On the other hand, we went through some of Sami’s belongings - sorting what we wanted to keep, what we wanted to donate, and what we needed to dispose of. That affected me more than I expected. Going through her things brought back the sense that we were robbed of the opportunity to grow old(er) together - and so I guess I was angry, as well as sad and lonely. Sometimes the cycles of grief seem to overlap.

Early on in my grieving, I felt as though most of the people around me knew what our family had just experienced. Like my grief (and the reason behind it) was obvious. As time flows on, I meet new people who have no idea of my backstory. Sometimes I wish there was a “grief shirt” I could wear so I wouldn’t feel compelled to awkwardly tell a new acquaintance, “hey, my wife died recently.” Perhaps the Jewish tradition of rending one’s clothes when a loved one dies acknowledges our need for others to see our grief.

Today, 1,000+ days into this season of my life, I find that I often feel an odd combination of wanting people to know what happened but struggling to bring it up in conversation. Obviously, I write about it frequently (too frequently, perhaps, but I find sharing my written thoughts therapeutic). But last summer I decided not to attend my 40th high school reunion, simply because I didn’t want to tell the same story about why I was there alone over and over again.

I’ve come to think that when your partner dies, something dies in you, as well - and your grief feels doubled. I guess this is true when anyone close to you dies, but it seems especially true when it’s a life partner. And grieving, I think, is partly a process of rebirth. Of discovering who you are going forward, while honoring who you were before.