Navigating

At almost 2 1/2 years since losing my husband, I am learning to live in this world without him. Some days I feel pretty strong, secure even proud of myself as I Navigate this new life without Glenn by my side. Then there are those days that still strike me down, take me out at my knees and I feel like I can’t breathe all over again. There are some basic things that I had with my husband that I definitely took for granted. One of them is trust. I trusted him and he trusted me. We had our share of struggles being married 21 years and raising 3 kids, that I would never deny. However, I trusted his word, I knew he would not lie to me, nor would I lie to him. This sounds so basic yet as I Navigate this life after Glenn, I am finding that trust is not something that you just give away, it truly does need to be earned. I never had a reason not to trust, so I gave it away. What I am learning is that I have the right to question people and situations and I have to safeguard my trust and only give it to the people who earn it. I always told my kids, “you have my trust unless you give me a reason to not trust you”. Well perhaps in the case of my own kids, I can be more inclined to give my trust away. However, in the case of my own life interactions, I now know that I cannot simply give my trust away, it truly needs to be earned.

Some mornings I wake up to a world that feels right. This is some serious progress. I still maintain contact with one online grief group after dropping more than 3 this past year. The “support” I receive is now carefully hand picked by myself, this new women who I have put my trust into despite not always feeling worthy. I am learning that I have choices each and every day, each and every minute as to how I want to spend my time, how I want to expend my energy, where , what and who I choose to focus on. I must admit, I like having choices, I enjoy making decisions on my own about my life. This independence feels good to me, it feels like I am coming home to a long lost friend and getting to know her all over again, but this time with an incredible perspective, an ability to see things through a lens of gratitude, with this secret knowledge that each and every day is a gift, and our time here on this earth is short, we must live in the moment, love and laugh with wild abandon and cry and hold space for others who are just beginning to Navigate this new territory, life after loss…

Allowing myself to let life, laughter and love back into my life after losing Glenn is a struggle for me. I am thoroughly committed to the process however feelings of guilt will rare their head every now and then and I am not quite sure how to Navigate them. Guilt has always been a theme in my life. Guilt for enjoying myself, being happy, laughing, letting my inhibitions go…this may be a remnant of my way back past which wove itself into my marriage and now continues its journey into my grief life. Only now the guilt is much deeper and complex because Glenn is gone, and I am not, and that is not fair. Why should I be here living, laughing, loving???

To answer that last question, to free myself of guilt, my mind must go to a very dark place, a place of fear, insecurity and confusion. My mind must immerse itself back into the past, which up until now, I have most definitely been unable to Navigate. I must close my eyes and bear witness to a women who took care of her dying husband day in and day out 24 hours a day for 9 months knowing he was going to die yet allowing him to have hope. The pure physical acts of performing his daily ritual of meds, feeding him through trans peritoneal nutrition each and every night which consisted of taking a refrigerated bag of liquid food, infusing it with 2-3 additional vials of vitamins and insulin, mixing it up and hooking it up to his Pic line, which of course had to be flushed with heparin and saline first. This process of prepping the food, setting the machine and hooking him up for the night took approximately 20-25 minutes each night. Then as morning came, the food had to be taken off his Pic line, the line needed to again be flushed with saline, the bag had to be disposed of and the meds needed to be given and set aside for the intervals throughout the day. Glenn had to be bathed, he needed help to ambulate to and from the bathroom, to shower, to change his Fentanyl patch every 72 hours, to shave. All of this while finding the right temperament to Navigate this caregiving process, to walk the fine line of providing care for my husband let allowing him the dignity of choice in each of these moments. To hold space for the absolute overwhelming Elephant in the Room called Terminal Cancer. To have one foot in his world of Hope and vile suffering and another foot in my world of reality, knowing death was near. Add to this that I was working part time as a Physical Therapist which requires providing care and support for people with physical injuries, chronic pain and often attached to this, emotional needs. I was caring for and attempting to parent 3 teenage daughters while being present with the fact that they were watching their Dad die as well. It was insanity and as I allow my mind to wander back to those days, I feel sick. I feel in awe of myself, what I did was superhuman. It truly was not in the human capacity, and of all of it, the most horrific memory always goes back to the fact that I had to watch my husband suffer in the most inhumane, disgusting, horrid, outrageous manner each and every day. Its actually still and probably always will be just too much for my brain to process. So why do I even bother? Mostly , if I am being honest, because of guilt. Guilt for moving on with my life, guilt for laughing, guilt for engaging in living, and most of all guilt for wanting love and intimacy with another person again.

I do believe that some fragment of guilt will always be there for me but I am determined to not live my life by that code. Instead I will choose Gratitude. I will do my best to stay grounded enough to always remember my pain, Glenn’s pain, my loss, Glenn’s loss yet Grateful enough to live a life of love, family, human connections and service to others in need. Losing Glenn and all the life plans that went with him has forever changed me. My goal is to be able to live in the space of humility, where I can honor myself for the love and care I gave my husband yet humble myself to acknowledge that this is not special, this is what God intends for all of us, to serve others and in my case, to honor my vows as a wife, till death do us part.