Anniversary Rituals?

This month would have marked the 25^th anniversary of our wedding if my husband was still alive.  I wonder if he knows?  If things had turned out differently, I’m sure we would have thrown a big party for our family and friends to help us celebrate 25 years flying by since we first said “I do” to each other.

I looked at the calendar this year and thought about all those other anniversaries.  Of course, I haven’t celebrated a wedding anniversary for the past eight years and, truth be told, some anniversaries were more fun than others.  I think that’s true for every couple because it’s just part of the emotional roller coaster of being married.  But the important thing was we always tried to make time to do something special, remember that eventful day and reminisce about the wedding itself.  We had such a good time at our wedding that after the reception ended we joined a group of our friends who were going to a local bar to continue celebrating.

For our first wedding anniversary, I made the dinner reservation and I put a lot of thought into trying to find a place neither of us had been before.  I wanted to find a restaurant where the food was delicious, the atmosphere was comfortable and romantic but it wasn’t too expensive.  I thought I had done well but instead I had flunked reservation making big time.  We walked into the restaurant and my husband didn’t like it AT ALL.  Since I didn’t really want to go through that again, we agreed that in the future, he could make the anniversary reservations.

Fast forward to the wedding anniversary that arrived just after my husband died, and I was emotionally drained.  I didn’t really feel anything except numb – just as though I was walking through cotton candy.  Life’s daily routines were definitely surreal.

The next year was much harder for me because as silly as it sounds, it took me about a year to really absorb the fact that he was gone.  In that first year, I still was sort of looking for him.  Once, I was driving the car to the grocery store and I saw a man walking on the opposite side of the street with the same physical build as my husband,  dressed in the same uniform my husband wore: khaki pants and a denim shirt.  In that split second I thought it was him.  I remember there being something about the way the man walked that made me do a double take.  I had to pull into a parking lot and collect myself.

25 years. . . how could it be?  We were married for 17 years before he died and we had known each other for three to four years prior to getting married.  He was my best friend.  I recently browsed through the album of wedding pictures and shut it after a few pages.   The flood of emotions was unsettling.  In some ways, it felt as though it happened yesterday but it also it felt like a dream.  Did that really happen to me?  Is that really me in that wedding gown?  My God, we took so much for granted. 

Now the date is a day without rituals but I still have my memories.

 

A Beautiful Song

The multi-talented singer songwriter Jewel At The Golden Globes

While watching the Golden Globes this past Sunday night, I was reminded of a beautiful song that the singer/songwriter Jewel performed in 2010 during the "In Memorium" section of the program.  Jewel said she wrote the song, titled "A Hole In My Heart," about a friend who had recently passed away.

Thanks to Google, I found the lyrics to her touching song and thought I would share them with you:

"A Hole In My Heart"

By Jewel

September settled softly

Leaves are starting to fall

I recall, last time you were here

Your laughter a melody that lingers still

There's a hole in my heart

And I carry it wherever I go

Like a treasure that travels with me down every road

There's this longing lonesome and deep

Kind of bitter, kind of sweet

There's a hole in my heart in the shape of you.

Time stealing swiftly

Children having children of their own

And around life's merry-go round goes

And there you are wanting what you cannot hold

There's a hole in my heart

And I carry it wherever I go

Like a treasure that travels with me down the road

There's this longing lonesome and deep

Kind of bitter, kind of sweet

There's a hole in my heart in the shape of you

Even though my heart aches

There's a smile on my face

Just like a window to heaven

There's a light shining through

This hole in my heart so I carry it wherever I go

Like a treasure that travels with me down every road

There's this longing lonesome and deep

Kind of bitter, Kind of sweet

There's a hole in my heart

There's a hole in my heart

There's a hole in my heart in the shape of you.

It's A Love Thing -- Valentine's Day Workshop

The human heart is an amazing organ. We fall in love, break up, and then perhaps fall in love over and over again, testing the resiliance of our courageous hearts.  Somehow, throughout our lives, we ride this emotional rollercoaster and our hearts manage to survive and keep on beating.  When a relationship doesn't work out, we are sad but eventually we pick ourselves up and carry on until we meet the next person who catches our fancy. 

But when your loved one dies, it truly feels as though you heart has broken into a million pieces and the first thing you want to do is shut it down forever . . . because you never want to feel that kind of pain ever again.  You don't want to be vulnerable to feelings so intense you feel like you might die yourself.

Then slowly, you do begin to heal and realize that life is about trusting your feelings and taking chances, losing and finding happiness and appreciating the incredible memories that were made with your loved one.

In the face of loss, it is even more important to keep your heart open to love.  For love is what brings excitement to our lives.

Being Open To Love/Valentine Workshop -- Art Therapy @ Sibley Hospital

WHY: Art Therapy is a conduit to express one's feelings and can facilitate communication and healing.  One's art can say things that one cannot or will not verbalize.

WHEN: Monday, February 14, 2011 from 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM

WHO: Art Therapist Erin Brindle will lead you through art exercises.  No artistic talent is required.  All materials will be provided.

WHERE: Sibley Hospital, Renaissance Building, Room 2, 5255 Loughboro Road, NW, Washington, DC

COST: Free

REGISTRATION:  Contact Julie Potter at  202-364-7602  or jpotter@sibley.org

Holidays 101

This is to all of you who white-knuckled it through the holidays... After eight years, I know this for sure: you can make the holidays anything you want them to be. Only you know how much you can take of the 24-hour holiday music that follows you wherever you go, the marathon holiday parties and the general holly jolly holiday atmosphere.

This may sound simplistic but it's not.

 You need to give yourself permission to do what you think you can handle and nothing more.

You don't have to celebrate the holidays the way you did before your loved one died.

 There are no rules.

When my husband died in November of 2003, I was hit with a rapid succession of what are supposed to be celebrations: Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday and our wedding anniversary. They say that timing is everything and his death came at a particularly hard time of the year.

If I could have I would have gone away and traveled to some tropical place that wouldn't have reminded me of anything to do with those special days. But my son desperately wanted everything to remain the same so I whiteknuckled it and followed through on all the usual holiday rituals.

Eight years later, we have changed a few things and kept others. We come at the holidays from different places and now are more open to change. We have also come to the realization that the holidays are yours to define any way you want. And that's a truly merry thought.

Clothes To You

With the today's launch of Cry, Laugh, Heal, I’ll start by sharing an unexpected moment that helped me cope with my husband’s death.

Grieving can take you down some unpredictable paths -- sometimes revealing humor where you least expect it.

I learned the importance of having a sense of humor early in life while growing up in a large Irish Catholic family.  If you couldn’t laugh at yourself, then someone else would imitate you until you did.  So laughing and making jokes about life’s bumps in the road was part of my DNA, an integral part of my spirit, and it served me well until my husband died.

Suddenly, I found myself in this new role of being a middle-aged widow and single mother and I felt as though I was outside of myself performing some sort of high-wire act.  On the one hand I was trying to move forward and support my young son, while on the other hand I was completely numb.  As much as my family and friends supported me, I felt as if no one really got my “spin cycle” of emotions and what I was trying to handle. 

I decided I needed to find others who had also lost loved ones and talk to them about how they managed to put the pieces back together and go on with their lives.  I started going to group support sessions at Sibley Hospital’s bereavement group called Widowed Persons Outreach (WPO) and it was there that I found the emotional resources and freedom to talk about ALL the issues surrounding my husband’s death -- even the things that sound really irreverent and crazy to other people.

Talking about the emptiness, the surreal feelings, the memories and the loss of future memories was exhausting but therapeutic.  But the best thing that came out of these emotional dialogues was that I unexpectedly rediscovered my sense of humor. 

We were talking about what happens when you have buried your loved one yet their belongings – their clothes, their food, their books, most of what they owned – is still all around you.  I jumped into the discussion and began talking about what happened to me one day when I was in the house all by myself.  That particular day, I really felt like I was falling apart and all I wanted was some kind of contact with my husband.

 I opened my cell phone, walked around the room and stared at it, thinking there actually was the possibility that something might happen -- a ring, a text, a signal of some sort from my husband.  I know it sounds strange but when you are in the throes of deep grief and your loss is so raw, you are just hurting and not being logical. 

I closed my eyes and imagined that he was hugging me.  Then I opened the hall closet and took one of his tweed jackets off the hanger.  I put it on and of course I immediately felt better. I smelled him in that precious jacket and I imagined his arms around me.  I was comforted and torn up at the same time.

As I talked about this experience to my group, I talked directly to the husky man sitting across from me and said, “Trying on his clothes really made me feel a lot better.  Haven’t you ever done the same thing?”

Without missing a beat, he said with a completely straight face, “I gotta tell you.   I have never, ever once thought about wearing my wife’s clothes.  Wearing her pink cardigan would not make me feel better!”

I totally burst out laughing.  Something about the serious expression on his face, his delivery and the mental picture of this big guy in a small pastel sweater made me laugh so hard I couldn’t get my breath.  And everyone else started laughing too so I knew that we had hit on something close to people’s hearts.

It was then that I knew life was going to be a little softer.  Nothing was going to be great or wonderful; just slightly more bearable.  For a long time, I didn’t think it was okay to laugh.  I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying myself and besides, nothing was funny to me anyway.

There is a very thin line between crying and laughing.  Many times you find yourself doing one of them and all of a sudden you are doing the other.  But a good cry or a good laugh can make you feel as if a huge weight has been lifted and that’s what this blog is here to do.