The more things change...

[Vassago]

My wife is from a motorcycle racing family and we are big fans of MotoGP.

While Marc Marques is not our favourite rider, his ability to get a bike back upright is unparalleled. To my knowledge the farthest over he has been verified to come back from is 69 degrees. (63 degrees is typically the extreme limit while still in control). The key to his abilities includes never believing it is lost until he parts ways with the bike. (Plus the fact that he has the reflexes of a cat.)

When first diagnosed I told her it was like Marc when the bike is cranked over and both the wheels are sliding deep in a corner. Keep steering, apply a little power and push with whatever you have to get back on two wheels.

She has a an enormous scar from a six hour operation. The cancer has now become resistant to the most used chemo treatment but the one after that appears to be working for now. While there is life there is hope.

Nice to see you! I'm so sorry to hear about your wife. I wish you and her well on the journey to healing and your retirement. I'm unfortunately a long way from retirement. I definitely feel my age catching up. I've also lost many people I was close to to many causes over the last few years and it's opened my eyes to my mortality as well. I'm trying to do better for myself, but I'm feeling my age more these days, too.

 

[Galaxiom]

On Friday, with our family close by, I kissed my wife the last goodbye. She spontaneously sang "The Long and Winding Road", accompanied on the verse I could remember the words to, then finishing it solo with her beautiful voice. Then she was gone.

The doctor and nurse in attendance both told us it was the most beautiful passing they had ever witnessed. Short of a miracle recovery, this is the best we could have hoped for.

I've been preparing myself for this a long time by connecting with the joy of 45 years as close friends, 38 years as partners and 27 years married. I've prepaid a lot of grief but I know there is more to come. It takes a lot of joy to overwhelm that grief so I find myself in a quite surreal state sometimes.

I'm taking each day as it comes as we prepare for her funeral and I'm staying strong for our family. The whole experience has been very affirming of the love we all have for each other.

I formally resigned my job at the end of January when my long service leave ran out.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Sorry to hear G, keeping both of you in our thoughts.

 

[Isaac]

So sorry to hear of your loss, Galaxiom. I'm glad you were able to experience some sort of 'preparation', as little as it's really possible to do, and that the passing + the aftermath had an element of beauty and peace to it. Keeping you & family in my thoughts.

 

[NauticalGent]

May you mind peace with this Greg. I wish I had something inspirational and moving to say, but I am at a loss.

I hope that if I have to go through this it will be as beautiful an experience as yours...

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Greg, I know this trauma from when I lost my mother. Oh, how I envy that your dear love had a chance to say good bye to you in a way that suited her dignity. To lose a loved one is not a good thing, but it sounds like it was not unexpected. The grieving that you did before that final moment is valuable, but I can't honestly tell you that mourning ahead of time helps. Mom's decline give me years to prepare, but that ton of bricks is waiting to fall just the same.

In the days ahead you will have your share of grief, and it is natural for us to mourn a loss. Right now, you are powering through for the rest of your family. But you will need time for yourself, too. The next several days, weeks, months,... will have their brutal moments. But as time passes and the immediacy of your loss fades, you will be able to look back at the good times and remember your good fortune for having found a good long-term partner. It will represent a level of healing when you will be able to look to the future again as you enjoy gatherings with your family. You will never forget - but you might just find peace in the memories you made with your partner and the memories you can still make with your family.

It is now almost 40 years since I lost my mother and I still think of her from time to time. But at least I can look back on the totality of our time together and remember our celebrations as well as our sadness. I can hope for you to find this level of peace with the past. Don't try to force it. Don't try to stave it off. Healing comes at its own pace for each of us. But Greg, know that peace CAN come if you let it.

 

[Galaxiom]

We celebrated Christine's life on Thursday and everyone there was in awe of the experience, saying they felt amazingly uplifted. I came home in a state of euphoria that continued through Friday and has not yet entirely passed.

I presented a 25 minute eulogy, which was described by some as a masterpiece. The parents of one of our daughter's close friends attended and, although they had never met Christine in person, they said they felt they really knew her by the end of the service.

I concluded the eulogy with this paragraph, and along with the family members who spoke subsequently, it apparently worked wonders.

"As we mourn Christine’s passing here today, I urge you to remember the joy she brought into your life and let that be the overwhelming emotion you experience. Christine would not have wanted it any other way."

I put together a small choir of four from our friends, including myself and a male friend on lead and a soprano to sing the backing vocals, to perform "The Long and Winding Road" to end the service. People told me their spines tingled during it.

My wife was a truly incredible person and it was such an honour to have spent so long together and remained passionately in love to the end.

 

[Galaxiom]

Everyone I have spoken to, including the funeral director, says they have been to some good celebrations of life but this one was on another plain. Some have been confused by their emotions, guilt for feeling so uplifted or it had a life changing effect on them where they realised they could be so much more than the limits they had been living by. Spines tingled during the song. Death has not yet diminished her positive energy.

I watched the recording last night and everything was incredibly well articulated by all the speakers with their stories flowing beautifully onto the next speaker despite not collaborating. We painted a vivid picture of an exceptionally generous and inspiring person.

Of course, my eulogy was a masterpiece because its subject was so remarkable and the stories about her character inspired the life changing decisions among the audience.

This experience has been one of the most beautiful in my life.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

It sounds to me like you respectfully honored her life and memory. I offer belated congratulations to your now-departed partner for having had the luck to find such a caring and devoted partner for her life.

 

[Isaac]

We celebrated Christine's life on Thursday and everyone there was in awe of the experience, saying they felt amazingly uplifted. I came home in a state of euphoria that continued through Friday and has not yet entirely passed.

I presented a 25 minute eulogy, which was described by some as a masterpiece. The parents of one of our daughter's close friends attended and, although they had never met Christine in person, they said they felt they really knew her by the end of the service.

I concluded the eulogy with this paragraph, and along with the family members who spoke subsequently, it apparently worked wonders.

"As we mourn Christine’s passing here today, I urge you to remember the joy she brought into your life and let that be the overwhelming emotion you experience. Christine would not have wanted it any other way."

I put together a small choir of four from our friends, including myself and a male friend on lead and a soprano to sing the backing vocals, to perform "The Long and Winding Road" to end the service. People told me their spines tingled during it.

My wife was a truly incredible person and it was such an honour to have spent so long together and remained passionately in love to the end.

As I read this I mourn with you yet am incredibly impressed that you brought about a celebration of life that is so not only mitigating the feeling of loss but going far in the other direction - inspiring so many. I have daydreamed before about my spouse passing and I tend to feel like I would be in such a messy state that I wouldn't be able to do much of anything except rely on others to put a ceremony together, and speaking at it would be out of the question ... I already get choked up when talking about anything of extreme importance with anyone. I'm glad that you were able to not be like that and sounds like you made quite a few people happier in an appropriate way of honoring the memory of your wife, wow !

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I'll admit that I was near worthless for a while after Mom passed, but her doctor called about two weeks before her death to discuss her situation. At that time, I had to make the dreaded "DNR" decision and at that point, I knew what would happen all too soon. So I called the funeral home we had used for Dad and also called the Bessemer, AL funeral home that was used by about 40% of my close family. Got the two homes talking so that I could have a service in New Orleans, then one in Bessemer followed by burial. Once that ball was rolling, there was nothing to do but wait. I'll also admit that when Mom passed, I was torn by grief and relief. Grief at her loss, and particularly for the condition she was in - near catatonic and unresponsive for the last few months. Relief because it was over. I had a chance to tell her, on the Saturday before she died Sunday morning, that if she felt God was calling her, she could go and that I would be OK - her suffering and mine. I'm guessing about 12 hours after my visit, she was gone. She never responded to what I said, but at least I had the chance to let go. I wish that I could have managed a celebration of her life, but that wasn't something I could manage at the time.

Good on you, Greg, for having that celebration. And Isaac, you never know what you can do until you do it.

 

[Galaxiom]

I have daydreamed before about my spouse passing and I tend to feel like I would be in such a messy state that I wouldn't be able to do much of anything except rely on others to put a ceremony together, and speaking at it would be out of the question ... I already get choked up when talking about anything of extreme importance with anyone.

I went though that anguish about ten years ago of Christine having a lung cancer scare. It turned out that the shadow on the chest x-ray was not a cancer. In fact we never found out what it was. The specialist literally cried on her shoulder when he told her how rare it was for him to give someone good news.

It powerfully brought mortality into my focus so my mental preparation for what has happened goes back a long way. Such are the demands of how I have to deal with life because of my autism. I flounder socially when put on the spot and I don't have an understanding of how "normal" people behave to guide my reactions so I tend to overthink everything.

Perhaps it was a strength this time.

And Isaac, you never know what you can do until you do it.

Indeed. I had no idea that I could do what I have done. I feel that Christine is channeling herself though me in our time of great need as we try to move forward without the undisputed matriarch of our enormous extended family.

I read the eulogy so many times until I could do it without breaking down because I wanted to do my very best to honour her. The emotion came through but I kept it together. Similarly our daughter who doubted herself. Just when she thought she would break she remembered to think of the joy Christine had brought to her life.

The female singers and I all wondered if we could get though but healed so much in the rehearsal that we knew it was vitally important to the service.

Remembering the joy is the key to getting though it. For any of you who are not finding that joy with your living partner, I urge you to go back and rediscover why it was that you joined your lives in the first place, because one day it will be too late and regrets will hurt.

My biggest struggle right now is the feeling that I was probably not worthy of having been with such an incredible person, with so much of who she was brought into sharp focus though her passing. However the confidence of knowing I had left her with no doubt that I truly loved her and the beauty of the send off carries me on.

I understand the feeling of her manifesting within me as the unveiling of what she had instilled into me blossoming because I had never needed to before while she was such a larger than life presence in my life.

I'm going to be a better person and try to show everyone the side of me that she saw and loved.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Remembering the joy is the key to getting though it.

Indeed, that is what I found to be the key to my own emotional healing. When your loved one passes of a lingering disease, your freshest and therefore strongest memories are not of a good time. But as time passes, you learn to skip over the recent memories and call up the older but better times. And as you survive, you realize that you have other loved ones with whom there are still memories to be made. At the time Mom passed, I was alone. But a few months later I had a good business experience and a couple of years later, I met my dear Linda who became my wife. Our vacations, incidents with my grandsons, and many other events showed me that my own life wasn't over. It was changed - but not finished. I know that Mom would have wanted me to go on with my life, and I have.

Greg, each of us are different in many details, but we are people who share the ability to grieve and to heal. For this situation, I can wish no more for you than you get past the grieving and reach that state of healing. Your Christine would not have wanted anything less for you.

 

[Isaac]

Remembering the joy is the key to getting though it. For any of you who are not finding that joy with your living partner, I urge you to go back and rediscover why it was that you joined your lives in the first place, because one day it will be too late and regrets will hurt.

My biggest struggle right now is the feeling that I was probably not worthy of having been with such an incredible person, with so much of who she was brought into sharp focus though her passing. However the confidence of knowing I had left her with no doubt that I truly loved her and the beauty of the send off carries me on.

I just relate so strongly to what you are saying I barely have any words to respond. But yeah ... for anyone who is struggling, my wife and I went through a rough patch over the past year and it's really inspired me to pause and think HARD about things. I'm one of I suppose you could say a few lucky ones who have only ever had one wife, the one I married at 19 and am now 46. I'd love for that to continue until I die and not let petty anger, differences, drifting apart work its awful way in between us until the 'D' word becomes part of our vocabulary/thinking, which it did come up a bit over the past year but I decided I refuse to go in that direction. And things have become better now in the past few months. i went to visit my parents in Wisconsin this past weekend and when I go there I am always reminded that I truly do have a beautiful wife - and of course, physical beauty is just the beginning of all that she is to me, the very tip of the iceberg. Regrets hurt terribly but we always have the option to limit them from growing - and the mere fact that it can always get worse also means that you can PREVENT that damage and it can get better!

Having a long term lifelong- (or similar) type of marriage is an unspeakably huge blessing. And it permeates into the life of the kids to no end.

Your relationship is still alive in a sense and will never leave your hearts nor the hearts of the many that it touched.

 

[Galaxiom]

for anyone who is struggling, my wife and I went through a rough patch over the past year and it's really inspired me to pause and think HARD about things.

You had the presence of mind to stop and reevaluate. So many don't and pay the price. At these times it is so important to get in touch again with the things that made you fall in love in the first place. And then to nourish and grow as a couple as well as individuals. There are three entities in any marriage that need to be nurtured, aside from the children.

It can be a big challenge when there is so much potential for change in a world where change is de rigueur.

We were incredibly lucky to have found in each other, a person who was content to be just us and so committed to growing together.

Successful couples often say how they deserved the happiness because they always worked though the challenges and that is true of me and Christine to some extent. As much as we could really annoy each other sometimes, we also had a deep, powerful and unshakable, physically tangible attraction to each other that neither of us has ever experienced with another person. We felt it the first time we had the opportunity to spend some quiet time near each other. So we can't take so much credit for being an emotionally intelligent couple as one might believe we deserved.

We won the lottery of life and invested the proceeds well.

 

[Galaxiom]

Grief on this scale is a very lifechanging experience with unexpected turns in wind direction through completely uncharted waters. I'm trying to make the most of the energy without ripping the sails and have managed to avoid the worst of the rocks so far. A reef looms ahead but I've charted it and am going to see a psychologist before I get any closer.

I'm grateful that my wife has been spared going though this experience as she would have if it were I who passed away first.

 

[NauticalGent]

Liking the maritime metaphors...

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Greg, I fully understand. The quiet moments when you realize that the house is empty? They are the hardest for a while. Mankind abhors change, and you just had a big change in your life. Your life goes on, but hers does not. Or does it?

She is still in the living memory of those knew her, loved her, and enjoyed her warmth and courage as she bravely battled her cancer. You've told us of her spirit and her battles. The trace of that spirit is not gone as long as the people who knew her are still around,, but right now it is your spirit that is damaged.

Before, you could go talk, hug, watch TV or sunsets together. Now, you have to call up her spirit in your memory - and that is the part of you that is hurting. This close to your loss, you have not adapted yet and calling up her memory brings the most recent memories most easily - but those are the worst memories because of her decline in recent times. The memories that WILL eventually comfort you at least a little bit are those of having done everything you COULD do to help her. You will recognize that you kept your promise.

Promise? Your marriage no doubt included a vow with "in sickness and in health" - and you held to that vow, with love and pride that you COULD help your loved one in at least some ways. You couldn't take on all of her suffering, but trust me - your presence DID help HER get through those times. When you remember her, remember that you were true to her and helped her in tough times. That is evidence of the truth of your love for her.

All you can do right now, Greg, is to recognize that you CAN get through this. Nobody ever said that grief was easy - but it fades with time. Even now, nearly 40 years after I lost my mother, I still have those moments. They never go away, but in a way they prove to you that your love was real because of the scars that her passing has left on you. Just keep on slogging through the swamp, my friend, and eventually you will reach high, dry ground. It ain't fast - but it IS possible.

 

[Galaxiom]

Your marriage no doubt included a vow with "in sickness and in health" -

When she was diagnosed, Christine had told me she would understand if I wanted to leave. I told her she had promised to be together in sickness and health and I wasn't letting her off that vow.

BTW One in seven women diagnosed with breast cancer experience a marriage breakdown. I wondered at a man who would do that then realised there would also be some women who decided that they were better off without the man they could no longer stand anyway.

All you can do right now, Greg, is to recognize that you CAN get through this.

I came down from orbit on Saturday and the reentry was incandescent. I listen to P!ink's song Try, especially the line, Just because you've burned Doesn't mean you're gonna die. Funny thing how a breakup song can fit my circumstances too but I guess it is a bit like a breakup.

Even now, nearly 40 years after I lost my mother, I still have those moments.

While I understand how painful it can be to lose a parent, especially to an untimely death, the loss of an intimate partner can take one to some very strange places mentally. I have an affirmation about letting go of the idea there is a good or bad way to get through this and just focus 100% on survival.

I've had people say bizarre things like "You'll find someone nice to have coffee with" and "Well at least you aren't young any more.", as though passion and intimacy are no longer relevant at my age. It feels like someone telling me to enjoy riding the aeroplane on the merry-go-round after the Lear jet I've had for forty years crashed.

I've also had some really good experiences. Yesterday I found a little place in town that offered free mental health support. The lady was a wonderful listener.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The lady was a wonderful listener.

A good listener helps because of a little thing called catharsis, which usually requires a listener to be present in order for it to be successful.

Why do you suppose that the Roman Catholic Church so actively supports the confessional? Protestant ministers who aren't lost in the glamor of running a mega-church are very good at letting people tell their stories. Also rabbis.

Not that I'm suggesting that you espouse a religion, but rather it is that the churches have recognized the value of having a good listener. Whether we agree with their message or not, we can recognize that they learned something valuable about human nature.

Please don't think that I'm considering your loss and mine to be equal. Every situation is different. But to the extent that I have seen others go through their losses and grief, I can say that within my own sphere of experience, I can relate to your loss in at least some degree.

I have an affirmation about letting go of the idea there is a good or bad way to get through this

Good, because you don't care about bad way or good way. You only care about getting through. But if I may make a prediction, when you DO get through, your family will be there to help and that will be a time of true healing.