sudden detour

This is what I wrote on the caring bridge site that first day:

“It is with a heavy and grieving heart that I tell you my best friend and partner of almost 30 years, John Douglas Jackson (Doug), passed this morning at 2:51.  His heart stopped beating at the end of the MRI.  They were able to revive him but his heart could not hold a blood pressure, even with the highest amount of drugs available.  Additionally, the MRI showed that he had had several strokes, possibly due to the last surgery, we don’t know.

Lorie and I were with him until the end.

Your thoughts and prayers have sustained me over these past three weeks and I ask to be remembered as I begin to make my life without the person who has been my biggest supporter these past 30 years.  He was a wonderful partner and friend, a caring, loving man and he will be greatly missed. ”

I didn’t write anything on the first month anniversary.  We were getting ready for Doug’s memorial, which was March 1.  I was still numb.

The second month anniversary I wrote:

“Today is the two month anniversary of Doug’s death.

It seems like 20 years and it seems like yesterday.

I’m coping.  I have to.  But it’s really, really hard and especially hard today.

There continues to be tender mercies among all the difficulties.  The reconnecting with an old friend who also lost her husband recently.  The tears, laughter, and wine over a dinner.  Coffee at my breakfast table with a  neighbor.  A trip to the botanical gardens with the dogs and close friends on a beautiful, spring day.  My students who have been so, so sweet.  I treasure these so much.

The loneliness takes my breath away sometimes and the next 20 years looms large and daunting.

I remember a trip I took with my father shortly after Doug and I became a couple.  I missed Doug so much I could barely stand it. We were staying at my aunt’s house in Oregon and I would sneak downstairs in the middle of the night for long phone calls.   Little did I know then how insignificant that missing was compared to now. ”

The three month anniversary came right after what would have been our thirty year celebration of being together.  We were going to renew our vows.  I renewed them in my heart.

The four month anniversary was bleak.  After being numb for several months, the feeling returned and it was fairly brutal.  I wrote:  “It seems like yesterday and it seems like an eternity.  I can’t believe I’m still managing to stumble along.” ….”I’m very lonely but learning to live with that loneliness.  I knew I would be as friends have had to return to their own lives.  I’m learning to make my own connections and that feels good.  No one can replace Doug, anyway.

There continues, though, to be wonderful acts of kindness and I’m committed to paying those kindnesses forward.  ”

So, where am I five months later?  Well, I’m managing albeit imperfectly.  I guess I’m settling in.  I spent the day with my god daughter, purging clothes.  We moved seventeen large trash bags out of the house.  I’m finding it therapeutic to remove stuff.  It also makes my life easier as I adapt to doing all the household things that were done by Doug.

I went to a grief support group.  I didn’t think I would like it but it had been recommended to me by someone I trust so I wanted to at least give it a chance.  It turned out to be a good thing.  There were about thirty women and we just shared our experiences.  So many of the women had lost their husbands in January.  I’d like to know what that’s about.  There were women there who had been coming to the group for over a year, too.  We cried together and even laughed.  I found out that my experiences are shared.  I was surprised to find that at least two thirds of the women no longer cook dinner and most of them have had things break and go wrong in the house.  Like me, they miss having their husbands to talk to.  One woman said something so poetic that I made a point to remember it.  She said “we were all successful in our marriages.  I am confidant that we will  be successful as we learn to be alone.”  I’ve found myself going back time and again and thinking of those words.  Hanging on to them, really.

I’ve been thinking a lot about detours and why I decided to call my blog “sudden detour.”  This is tied up with how I’ve begun to think about my life without my love and best friend.

Doug died at 2:51 a.m. My God daughter was by my side and we stayed at the hospital until about 3:30.  We were both exhausted.  When we got in the car to drive home, I remember distinctly telling her “well, my life is effectively over.”  I sincerely felt that way then and still feel that way from time to time.  Certainly the life I had.  The life I had with a full time cheerleader, a fun companion. a confidant, a partner,  a love.  Over.  What am I going to do with the next (perhaps) 20+ years?   It was a desolate feeling then and remains so now.

I began, over the past month or so, to re-frame things.  I began to think of my life as a journey and this as a big detour from the journey I had planned.  Much like our trip to Oregon that I wrote about in the first post.  That detour took us into some beautiful country in Oregon that we wouldn’t have seen without having taken the wrong path.

Who am I now?  Who do I want to be and what do I want my life to look like?  I realized that I had a choice, unique perhaps to someone my age.  The choice to regroup and reform my life in a new way.  I don’t like it.  I don’t really want to do it.  I don’t want to think about where to go and I don’t want to work that hard.  But, I have no choice.  It’s either do the work or be miserable and as much as the work is hard, being miserable is harder.

I really like what reader Karen said in her comment regarding detours:  “They can take us down the wrong path, or set us back on track, sometimes they open up new possibilities.”  I want to explore those possibilities while remembering Doug and our life together.

It started after Christmas.  Doug complained of his stomach hurting and making his back cramp.  He was vague regarding his symptoms and I became impatient.  I made an appointment for him with our primary care physician and went with him.  He wasn’t able to see the doctor but saw her nurse practitioner.  Big mistake.  If only. If only.  If only.  Words that ping pong around my head like a sick mantra over and over.  If only.

The nurse gave a precursory examination, told him to take Prilosec, and to have an ultra sound made for his gall bladder.  We diligently followed that advice and the office closed down for new year’s without giving us any further information.

Sunday, January 4.  Doug was still complaining and having trouble doing much of anything.  I had to play for a worship service (I’m a pianist) and later went to a tea given by a dear friend.  We played a game where we figured out our Tarot card for the year using our birth date.  My card was “Strength.”  Little did I know how much strength I was going to need.

On the way home Doug texted me two texts that didn’t make any sense and I realized he was getting worse.  When I got home I told him we were going to the emergency room  he didn’t argue.  That was unusual.  Once there, they took him in right away, drew some blood and determined he was having heart problems.  They said he’d be admitted to the hospital and Doug being Doug said “Okay, I’ll go tomorrow morning.”  The doctor smiled but was firm.    No.  Tonight, via ambulance.  The rest was a whirlwind of getting him settled in intensive care and all the things that go into it.

The next day, when I began to realize what we were up against, I created a Caring Bridge page.  The Caring Bridge site is a wonderful resource for people who are in crisis.  It’s a brilliant way to inform all the people in your life and wider circles what’s going on when you are someone you love is having a health crisis.  I don’t know how I knew about it.  I don’t even know how I was able to find the site.  Divine intervention perhaps.

I’ll share with you some of my caring bridge posts as a way to bring you up to date with my story, as a way for me to remember, and as a way for me to write more about what was going on at the time.

I’m Deborah and I hope to get to know you as you get to know me.  This is my first blog post and I’d like to start with a story.

In 2006, my husband and I drove from our home somewhere in south Texas to pick up our God-daughter and her soon to be husband at their university in Oregon.  We had driven various routes to the school many times and thought we’d do something different this one time.  It was going to be the last.  They were graduating and moving to the other side of the country.  We didn’t anticipate any other cross country trips.

We took a more circuitous route and ended up going through Utah and past the great Salt Lake.  Taking off west, with me driving, we were sure we’d be in Oregon in no time.  The landscape was lovely if a little bleak.  There were some rolling hills and we were on a road that had little, if any, traffic.  It was idyllic.  We drove and drove and drove some more and seemed to get nowhere.  We didn’t have a GPS, just a map and were having so much fun we actually forgot to look at it.  After awhile, though, we realized we weren’t getting any closer to civilization and thought it might be a good idea to find out where we were.  About that time, we saw a roadside sign that read “French Glen.”  French Glen!  Where the heck are we.  We quickly determined that there was nothing in French Lick except a sign and a whole lot of mosquitoes.  This was not on our carefully highlighted route.  In fact, I think we both had to take off our glasses to squint at the map and find out where the heck we were.   We had taken a detour of about 50 miles.

I’ve thought about this story many times over the past few months.  You see.  I’ve taken a detour.  A sudden detour and one that I certainly hadn’t planned on.  My sweet husband, the love of my life, died on January 27, 2015.  Unexpected.  Certainly unplanned.  And sudden.  No time to even wrap my head around the fact that he would be leaving.  And there aren’t enough maps in the world to get me back on track.

I’m going to tell you my story.  I’m going to share with you my pain, my struggles, and even some joys.  I’m going to invite you to leave comments. I want to hear from others who have lost their loves.  I want to support you as you support me.  I want us to knit together a community of hope.  There must be something on the other side of grief.  I’d like to invite you to go there with me.