Stopping the clock on our busy lives

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Stay 10 feet away but please stay connected

The new state of the world has the grieving among us, feeling old feelings that we don’t like. It was not all that long ago that anxiety, fear and discomfort were my normal. Going through two years of caring for a husband with brain cancer, followed by two years of grieving his passing has somehow prepared me for this strange moment in history. I feel a sense of familiarity in my body’s reaction to the anxiety. At first it was slow but I did feel it immediately when the tiny bit of control I thought was returning to my life, began to elude me again. With every day of the Covid-19 global pandemic, the control I thought I was regaining slips a little further out of reach and I am reminded that thinking we have control is actually an illusion. Instead, I am trying to focus on acceptance and now. Now, I am in a very comfortable home, with a very sweet dog curled up beside me. Right now I am ok.

These are the exact same things I would do to calm myself when my grief was raw and fresh. I would ground myself in NOW and keep all the other thoughts from entering into that little bit of calm.

Time and control…two elusive illusions
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Since Dave died, and I went back to work full-time, I have often felt like I am living on a hamster wheel – I just keep running. I don’t have much time to contemplate and sort through my feelings while trying to work, parent, manage a house…there are very few breaks. Some people truly get addicted to that feeling of busy, but I am not one of them. As a solo parent, I am the one who is responsible. Always. It is tiring and long, and lonely and hard. So I often daydream about stepping off the hamster wheel, mid-spin. When I have time off, I anticipate it longingly, almost more that I end up enjoying it because often vacation days are taken to “do” something I have to do. Sometimes I fantasize about being able to sit in quiet and not have to be anywhere or do anything, or drive anyone anywhere…

*Poof* my fantasy is reality! With a couple of major caveats:

1) The hamster wheel has stopped in the context of a scary global pandemic;

2) I am still working full-time, albeit from home, and my kids are now with me 24/7;

3) I am navigating said global pandemic as a single, working parent.

FYI – In my fantasy, I am neither working nor with my children constantly, nor have any scary stuff to deal with.

However – the wheel has certainly stopped on a dime. I am anxious, and I am grateful. Feeling both of these things together makes me scared too. I am extremely grateful that recently I became a full-time, permanent employee with benefits. This is huge in this crazy pandemic time. I am anxious that I don’t know when this feeling of choices being taken away will end. I am grateful that I have a comfortable, warm, happy home with space for each of my daughters and I to retreat to different corners and have time away from each other. I am suddenly very aware of how nice it its when my kids are out and I get some time to myself. I am grateful that I have the sweetest, cuddliest dog who loves that we are home with him. I am anxious that all of the progress I have made in healing my spirit will be lost. I am grateful that I have wifi and 8-million shows and movies that I have been meaning to watch, and another 25 books I have been wanting to read. I am less grateful for the 635 projects I need to do around my house, but they will certainly keep me busy long after the pandemic has been eradicated. I am grateful I am healthy and my loved ones are healthy. I am anxious that I am the only one here for my kids and there is nobody here to hug me at night and tell me things will be ok. I am grateful that I have always hoarded cleaning wipes and bought pantry items on sale, own a deep freezer and have a second fridge. I am anxious that this will go on a lot longer than the first estimates. I am grateful that I have so many amazing friends and family whom I can FaceTime, Google Hangout with, Zoom Call or Skype. I am grateful that I also love to be alone. I crave quiet and solitude and time to think and digest. But I am sad for those who are all alone like older people who’s nursing homes are closed to visitors, and single moms with little ones who need, need, need, and can’t give back much care and attention to soothe mom’s fears.

Top left across: old hobbies return, fun with makeup, virtual happy hour
Bottom left across: new talents emerge, my furry coworker, crafting galore

Slowing everything down and being alone with your thoughts can be scary for some people. The hamster wheel has stopped – now what?? I wanted that, didn’t I? But not like this. The relative quiet allows you to think, sort and unpack feelings, and react to every new piece of information that is bombarding us in the news right now. You have to stay home and be by yourself – so take advantage of the time and do all your heavy thinking. Journal it out, talk it out with friends on social media or even call them and chat. You have the time.

I am also taking time to comfort myself in the old ways I developed during my active grief and throughout Dave’s illness. I am praying, meditating, writing in my gratitude journal, exercising, getting fresh air and sunlight, and making sure to laugh. Throw in some Gilmore Girls (Stars Hollow is weirdly comforting to me), cookies and the odd glass of vino, for good measure – because hell -might as well enjoy, and my perspective on this uncertain time softens a bit. It’s ok to be scared everyone, this stuff is unprecedented. It’s also ok to lean in to the mandated break we are getting from the busy lives we all lead. There are so many people working on how to solve this issue globally and that brings me comfort, to know that nations are purposefully united. Read this comforting article when you need to remind yourself of that. A huge thank you to all the people working on the front lines of this pandemic. Healthcare workers, retail and grocery workers, truck drivers and supply chain workers, delivery services, essential service workers, first responders…the list goes on. Thank you. And we will get through this together… but at home, alone and with clean hands.

Sparkly Human

I received a beautiful note from a friend of Dave’s and mine, who had come across this writing space and wanted to reach out to let me know a few things. He had always thought of Dave as someone “better”. By better he didn’t mean that Dave had a self-inflated sense of himself (although he could have been considered cocky by many! LOL) he meant that Dave had something about him that attracted other people, engaged other people and allowed people to feel special.

My sparkly husband. Can’t you just see the charm?

I am wary of romanticizing Dave. I know it’s easy to build the dead into legendary figures posthumously. He was in reality, like many guys, and in many ways we had a very typical relationship and life together. We were not exempt from fighting, being grumpy or falling into other typical couple and family problems. He was messy, he wasn’t the best emotional communicator but he always lived “REAL”. Annoyingly, he always seemed to just get it. I’m talking about anything. Like any problem that you or I might encounter whether it be emotional or a simple everyday issue, he could cut through all the layers of stuff that the rest of us needed to wade through for years in therapy or just by making mistakes, and just see the answer. This was not easy to deal with in arguments. He was essentially always right, in a logical, practical sense. One of his best friends had told me the story that they had all gone together to a psychic years before, and the psychic had told him that he had a white aura. As it was told to me and in a few online resources I found, a white aura symbolizes someone who is highly evolved, perhaps living their last human life – if you subscribe to that idea, and someone who doesn’t need to do a lot of seeking to know what is right. This is exactly how Dave was and boy was it frustrating for this mere mortal with all of her flaws.

A little while ago, I read (I mean listened to the audio book as I now tend to do because I spend a lot of time in the car) Busy Philipps‘ memoir,”This will Only Hurt a Little“. In it, Busy talks about her theory on Sparkly Humans, as is referenced here in this NY Times article about her book – “Philipps, 39, is a case study for her own “sparkly human” theory — something she invented a few years ago. It refers to someone who isn’t necessarily the most famous, but radiates self-confidence in a way that the world opens up to them.” This is a perfect description for Dave, although he might have resisted being called “Sparkly”. He exuded confidence, warmth, positive energy, charm, humour, in a way that was not fake or contrived, it was just real. People gravitated to him. They wanted to help him, or give him things. I don’t want to put the idea out there that sparkly Dave worked less. He had an amazing work ethic. Until he was diagnosed with brain cancer, I don’t think he took more than a couple of sick days in the whole 19 years that I knew him. He liked to say he had a horse-shoe up his butt, meaning he was lucky, but I think it had to do with this law of attraction, sparkly-human part of him. That trait is so hard to describe in people, but he had it, and he put it out into the world with every interaction. I think that is why I get so many people telling me how special he was. Now you know, he was sparkly. And we were lucky to have known him, weren’t we? If you have a sparkly story about him – please share it with me.

Our body memory

Your body knows. Your mind knows. Even when you don’t realize it, your body has the ability to retain the memories and feelings of time and space. At least that is something that seems to hit me in the face over and over again. Why am I feeling this way? I might ask myself at a particular time, only to realize, at this time a year ago I was in a very difficult place or experiencing something making its imprint on my body memory.

Towards the end of August, I kept thinking “the end of summer that’s why I’m down”. Until it hit me, that the last week of August we used to always take off and go on a family vacation of some kind. Sometimes it was something local like Grand Bend. Other times we went to Disney or New York City in the last week before the kids went back to school. A triumphant last dance with summer. And now that week is punctuated with another date at the end of the summer long sentence. The second anniversary of Dave’s death looming, waiting to make the last week even more final. Summer’s over. School is back. Dave is gone.

I used to love back to school and so did the girls. For them it has to be ruthless to drag themselves into routine at the same time as feeling this body memory. It is for me.

I also loved September as a new beginning. And while the anniversary has now come and gone and that is the date my family and friends might remember, the body memories keep flooding my subconscious.

On the 23rd of September 2015, Dave thought he was finally going to get to the bottom of the brutal headaches he had been experiencing for about a month. Glasses! He thought he finally needed glasses at age 46. So off he went to the optometrist to get his eyes checked. Once there she looked in his beautiful hazel eyes and saw something sinister, although she did not let him know. She sent him off to the ER, right away, to get an MRI.

Look at his beautiful hazel eyes. In them, the optometrist saw swelling of his optic nerve – a sign that his brain was swelling. A sign that he had a tumour. Those eyes.

On September 24th, 2015, we found out that the terrible headaches in fact were the worst kind of sinister. Cancer – capital C. In our old relationship before capital C, Dave was the calm reassuring presence, always. I was the hyper-emotional, worrier, who panicked about most things. On that day, I laid my head on his chest and told him not to worry. I would somehow learn to be the calm one, the steady one. The last thing he needed was for me to fall apart.

On September 26th, 2015 Dave had a craniotomy and de-bulking surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible. My family and I sat in the waiting room of the surgical unit just before midnight waiting for the outcome. I barely said a word. I closed my eyes for much of the duration of the surgery and prayed hard. One word, over and over. PLEASE. Dave woke up from his surgery making jokes with the nurses. He was good. I was good.

The 27th of September is my birthday. I always loved my birthday because I have a family who makes them very special. The outcome of the surgery was a great gift, but the package it came in was just not wanted. That year, my sister helped Dave get me a beautiful purse that I had been admiring. It’s my favourite purse. I don’t care if it is now ripped inside or the handles are frayed. When it is your birthday everyone wants to see you being happy and celebrating. I must admit, I’m not into it like I used to be. If I could crawl into a hole and stay there from September 3rd (the day he died) right through to October 12th (our anniversary), I would. But I try my best.

Once the tumour was sent off for analysis, we were told it would be a couple of weeks before we got a definitive answer on the type of cancer, although the surgeon was fairly certain it was bad, like the worst kind of bad. We did not google anything or really investigate anything in those two weeks. Dave was trying to heal, I was trying to just exist. And our daughter was just so excited to be turning 12. The follow up with the surgeon for the pathology report was scheduled on her birthday.

October 7, 2015 – our oldest daughter’s 12th birthday. Our appointment. The news that indeed this is the worst capital C. Glioblastoma Multiforme, a death sentence. Fourteen months we were told bluntly, he has 14 months to live. Do all the things you have always wanted to do, live your bucket list. We cried in the parking lot and just held each other. I don’t remember much else from that day, except that I had promised our daughter that she could get a second ear piercing. So we went to the mall and we tried to make it a happy birthday for her while we tried to fathom the news that Dave would be gone in a matter of months.

This was taken that night. Out for dinner to celebrate our daughter’s 12th birthday. We were so scared. I can see it in our faces. But I also see all the LOVE.

October 12th, 2015 – Our 13th wedding anniversary. How do you celebrate when you know this could be your last one? We went out for steak and wine. That was after we had to go into the hospital and Dave had to have a couple staples replaced in the 6-inch scar in his skull. I remember the nurse smiling with us over the fact that it was our anniversary. It was a sad, knowing smile.

When I look back now on those dark days, tension creeps up my spine without being able to control it. I get a headache immediately. I feel the same incredible sense of panic, fear, complete discomfort. My throat tightens, my temples pulse. My body remembers. And while nobody else might connect all those dates, and even sometimes I don’t think about it consciously, my body and mind make the connection. My body begins to give me the signs at the end of August. I cry more, I get more headaches, backaches, neck tension, fatigue, confusion, brain fog, apathy…and it continues right through mid October. Not constant, but frequent and unwanted.

Maybe next year I can try to reclaim this time and see it as an opportunity to celebrate that I do get to be here for one more birthday. I do get to celebrate, even though Dave doesn’t get to anymore. I am here and he is not. I am sad and I can still celebrate. Both are possible and my body knows.

Year two

This year has been very different for my grief and my emotional journey. I have fallen in love again. I am working full time. I have two girls who are growing up so fast without their dad. Life is moving forward at such a clip I can barely catch my breath. The days just speed by, the weeks, the months. I am very caught up in all of the day-to-day functions of being a single parent and getting everything “done”. I often think about the early days of being at home alone with my grief and the ability to rest, think, pray, heal. The process still needs my attention, my time and my capacity, but not in the same quantity it did two years ago.

A little something for the girls for today.

And yet, every day, I still grieve deeply. I identify as a widow. I think about my loss, Dave’s loss, our children’s loss. I long for him to be here and for all of this to have been a mistake. At the same time, I am enjoying my life now. I have good things in my life and I like who I have become, it pains me to say. I am stronger than I ever knew. I am more compassionate than I ever knew. I am resourceful, thoughtful, protective, deeply appreciative, loving…all in a way that was deepened by losing Dave. Somehow I have grown enough to know that my days here on earth without him need to be lived fully. I do not take things for granted. I do not take people, opportunities, experiences or even the mundane for granted. I try to make good choices, I try to give and receive love freely. I try to be present as a parent, available as a friend, and I keep working on all parts of who I am emotionally and physically. I do all of this because I have walked beside my best friend in this world, as his strength left him and the thing, that made him, him, left him. I watched helplessly as his diseased brain waged war on his body and won, taking him to the other side, and leaving me here to figure it all out. He had no choice in the matter. He simply had to take it. So while I have a choice, I choose to live as fully as I can. I choose to eat delicious food, and go away on vacation. I choose to be nice to people in every way that I can. I choose to see people’s pain and offer my love and help if it is accepted. I choose to keep learning and laughing. None of this is easy for me. It is so very hard, especially without Dave by my side. His absence is a constant reminder that being human has a 100% mortality rate. None of us know when our time here is going to be up, so the time for the proverbial “bucket list” is now.

Our last road/family trip together to NYC. Dave always wanted the kids and I to see where he grew up and we got to do that on this trip. Thank you for taking us there Dave.

How I wish Dave still had the chance to enjoy the ordinary, like a good series on Netflix or a great cup of coffee. I miss being able to talk over our day, I even miss bickering with him about the butter that he always left uncovered, although one of our daughters has taken on that role. I miss his piles of crumpled papers from his pockets that he left on the dresser at night when he emptied his pockets. I miss his laugh, his voice. We all miss his cooking. I miss the way he took care of me and the way I took care of him. In re-reading my early writing after his death, I was reminded of a moment at a coffee shop that reduced me to tears. I saw a couple who were picking up their coffees and the husband was busy fixing the wife’s coffee for her while she waited for their food. The intimacy of that act, struck me so profoundly. He knew her. He loved her. He was showing her that in the simple task of fixing her coffee. It’s not about the big showy things, or the far off ideas of “when we have this much time or money we will…” it is all about the everyday moments between you and those you love.

It breaks my heart when I see friends or people I know ignoring their opportunities to express themselves fully, or not allowing the love in or wasting their time caught up in emotions that prevent them from appreciating their lives. For most people though, lessons are hard learned. You have to go through something to understand it, but if you can benefit from my lesson, please don’t let the little things go unappreciated. Please be present for the love that is available to you. Please take pleasure in someone bringing you a coffee made just the way you like it.

One of the memorial tattoos I got after Dave died, is a fern, with phlox flowers around it. In that early writing, I found some of the research I had done about these plants. To the Maori people, ferns represent peace, tranquility and spirituality along with new growth or new beginnings. Known as the Koru, ferns are also associated with nurturing and when it contains more than one frond, it represents the strength and healing of a loving relationship within family or community. In West African Adinkran culture, ferns are a symbol of endurance and resourcefulness and are worn by those who have endured adversity and outlasted difficulty. In contemporary culture, the fern symbolizes the magic of love, the unfolding of a new life and that everything is reborn and continues. It represents transformation, renewal and hope for the future. Phlox flowers symbolize good partnership, harmony, and represent sweet dreams. When I found these meanings I stopped searching for what was going to make up the tattoo I wanted to commemorate our love and our life together.

So here I am two years into the unfolding of my new life. Harmony is returning, a lot of renewal has taken place. I have learned to heal through the strength I draw from what Dave taught me in our relationship and how he loved me. Life continues to bloom for our daughters and bring them and me transformation. He is a part of everything we are. Sometimes that is still very painful but it is always good, it is always beautiful. I am enduring and so are they. We miss you Dave. Two years without you here is two too many.

27

I wrote this last year and posted on my social media feed. I miss him every day. The raw intensity of that pain is not really part of my everyday any longer but the scar is ever present. Grief has existed along side more than half of my life. The greatest teacher I wish I had never encountered.

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Twenty-six years ago I was still a happy go lucky kid with not a care in the world other than my wisdom teeth having been just removed, and missing the first day back to college. I was 17 – almost 18. My dad went off to work and similar to many mornings I argued with him about something trivial, something teenage. I never saw him again. Late that day two police officers came to our home to tell us what we feared the most. I watched my mother crumple in front of me at the door. The rest is blurry. Everyone arrived. I mean everyone. Within minutes (?) hours (?) our house was FULL of all the people who loved us; my sisters and brother, all our friends, extended family, neighbours…everyone.
Late that night my sister Robin and I sat talking. She said it was as though the moon and the stars had fallen out of the sky…and yet the world had not taken notice. It was indeed just like that. Miraculously the sun rose the next morning as well. Apparently the sun was also unaware that our father, sweet, gentle, generous, kind, giving, Matthew Douglass, had been brutally murdered, for no reason at all.

I will let those who don’t know the story, look up the details for themselves. Here are your search parameters: 1992 Concordia University, Dr. Matthew Douglass.

What I will share is that the intense grief and suffering that we endured as a family from that moment forward pulled us together in a way that is astounding. From my 17-year old perspective I gained insight into humanity that shaped who I was to become and grounded my beliefs in my fellow man, the universe and spirituality. I didn’t know it at the time of course, but the single biggest lesson that changed the core of the way I would lead my life was this – when I looked around the church on the day of my father’s funeral, I saw hundreds and hundreds of people, most of whom I did not know. All of whom knew my dad. His gentle nature and influential teaching had touched so many that they were literally pouring out of our tiny church, just wanting to be close to share their love for our dad. I realized right then that this is what life is all about. It’s not about the car you drive or the money you make or the things that fill in the cracks in your life. Life is about your relationships. Life is about love – in every shape and form. Life is about living every day as if you intend to leave this earth a better place. It didn’t all come to me just like that – but the essence of those sentiments were present that day so long ago. I was just three years older than my own daughter now, hard to believe.

One year ago today, on the 25th anniversary of my father’s death, I sat in a hospital room beside my dying husband. He was not really responding to us anymore, but he still knew I was there. In the years between 1992 and 2017, I would never have imagined that life would throw yet another incredible tragedy my way. And yet here we were, the moon and the stars falling out of the sky again, the sun still rising…and the world unbelievably, still turning. I sat grieving my father last year, thinking a quarter century had passed. The intensity of that grief has dulled but we have never stopped missing him. I read somewhere that grief is like a wound on your skin. At first it is raw and continuously painful and you can’t help but focus all your energy on it, trying to heal it and very conscious of how exposed and delicate it is. You can’t see the healing happening really but one day when you have become accustomed to the bandage you have been putting over it, you realize you no longer need to hide it from the light. You are certainly left with a scar though. It is still visible for all to see, but over time, it fades, and becomes a part of your skin, a part of you. And you always have the memory of how that came to be.
The bigger the love, the bigger the grief. Dr. Matthew McCartney Douglass – I only had you for 17 of my years on this planet but you managed to fill those years with immeasurable love, teachings, laughter, music and memories. What a life you had. What a legacy you left. ❤️💕❤️

My dad and I in 1991. I was going to a semi-formal.

Holidays and birthdays

For us, Dave’s birthday and Father’s Day almost always coincide or line up one shortly after the other. Being only two years into this widow thing, it’s not my favourite time of year. It’s not very fun to spend a fatherless Father’s day with your kids. I lost my dad too, many years ago, and this particular celebration lost its luster for me, way back then. I was happy to make it a joyful occasion again for my kids and Dave, but that ache never went away for me.

Last year, these occasions were harder for me than the anniversary. My Dave wasn’t so into his birthday but I always tried to make it special. For his 40th, I threw him a surprise party. I am fairly certain he was not surprised and although we all had fun – I am honestly not a great hostess! I never felt like it was what he truly deserved.

Not very surprised at his “Surprise 40th”

10 short years ago and also a long decade ago

His 50th was spent in a very different way. Grieving his absence. Almost two years after his death, here was this day that would have been a momentous occasion if he were here. In many ways it feels like the anticipation of these anniversaries are worse than the days themselves. After Dave died, his cousin asked if she could come visit me at his birthday every year and we could celebrate him together, along with his best friend. This to me was a perfect request. It provided me with the knowledge that she wanted to remain close to me and that she wanted to keep Dave’s memory alive. It also spoke to my heart with the knowledge that there are others who are grieving him deeply and would always remember and want to celebrate him. So our tradition of meeting up and spending that day together was born. We decided to do things he would have loved. Go the movies and eat good food! Dave worked for an incredible company, IMAX. He loved his work and he loved movies. So we go to the IMAX theatre, we sit in the best seats from his ‘audio-nerd’ perspective and we see something he would have loved. In fact it would have been something he would have worked on. Oh my Dave, you would have loved Toy Story 4. It was hilarious. It was so well written and the sound was incredible. Happy 50th birthday and Happy Father’s Day. I wish you were here.

Time and grief

Two steps forward, one step back

It seems like our progress in this grief work is so very slow. The constant swirling thoughts in our heads are so overwhelming. If you have never been in the hot seat, so to speak, when it comes to grief, it is all consuming until it is not. There are no timelines, or hard and fast rules about how long the intense part of grieving will last. There is just time. And that part might be now and then again in a couple hours and then not hit you for months. One day you might be relatively ok and even enjoying yourself and then a song will come on and you will dissolve into a puddle. Another day (possibly in the same week), you feel like you can’t get out of bed, your longing, your anxiety and your pain are so intense. These scenarios can happen the first week after losing someone close to you or 17 years later. I think that’s why there is so much backlash against the Stages of Grief, by Elilzabeth Kubler-Ross. As explained in the linked article, Kubler-Ross never intended the stages to be linear or to even truly apply to grief, they were originally conceptualized for those who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

2001 – Back when we thought we had an eternity to spend together. First day home for our pup Chachi. We were in love, living together and playing house with our puppy.

And yet we are drawn over and over again to try to fit things in a neat and orderly straight line. My timeline sorting goes something like this: “On this date I was completely unknowing of the tragedy about to befall us, on this date I knew and was coping, on this date we were dealing with challenges, on this date it was just before he went into the hospital the last time…”My life before made a lot of sense in sequence. My life after losing Dave doesn’t play so nicely with time.

Right now I am mid-step. I am taking steps forward but keep fumbling and going backward also. It’s not bad or wrong but it’s hard to grasp. The constant duality of emotion is exhausting. I am beginning to like my new life but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss my old one. If I like my life now, am I being disloyal to my old life? Exactly the opposite of linear, feeling and living both/and/also is challenging and messy (AND TIRING).

July 2017 – just days before Dave went into the hospital for the last time. He went in on August 9 and never came home. He died on September 3, 2017.

When I look back at the raw emotions I felt days after losing Dave, my writing is different and yet I can recall that pain in an instant. I refer to this as a raw wound that is slow to heal. I’ve written about this before – it was something I had read somewhere. At first it is all you can think about and any touch is excruciating. After some time it begins to heal but you are still guarded about anyone coming close to that sensitive area and it is still very much at the forefront of your awareness. At some point the horrible wound turns into a scar, and it is not quite as noticeable to everyone around you that you were hurt so badly, but if they get close or probe, your recollection of how you received that traumatic injury comes back to you instantaneously.

In thinking about writing this, I was looking through some photos of our life together and looking for those timelines. A couple steps back…so much love and anticipation in our faces. A couple steps forward, fear and exhaustion. A couple steps back – who knew what lay ahead? A couple steps forward…trying to live in that mid-step. Not forward or backward. In the and.

What’s in a name?

A year and a half worth of thinking

WhatName_0

Well this took me long enough. I mean it actually took me 18 months to commit to a name for this blog. You might think that is ridiculous, unless you have ever tried to write a blog and then abandoned it because the name no longer fit the purpose. (check!) I could have just named it something with my name, but I felt like that was too boring and it would give those searching no glimpse into what this blog will actually be about. Like I have people searching!?

Well I have had a few people tell me to write a book and I do have this need to share my story. So here is the very quick version: I am a mom and a widow. My husband of 15 years, Dave, died on September 3, 2017. Dave was and is the man of my dreams. I was actually floored when he fell in love with me. It felt like winning the lottery. We got married, had our ups and downs, had two kids, a house a dog and 10+ good years. Life was good and ordinary and beautiful. Then Dave started having headaches, he was rarely sick, so of course it had to be a brain tumour. Unfortunately I am not kidding. Like the worst most aggressive kind – Glioblastoma Multiforme Stage 4.(I encourage you not to click that link and just take my word for it – it’s bad. Like the worst kind of bad.) If you are Canadian or a Tragically Hip fan you will recognize this cancer as the same kind that Gord Downie had. So we had two years of hell AND two years of awesome living. Strangely, they were the same two years. He actually fared really well with his first surgery, chemo, radiation and all that effed up cancer stuff and would sometimes wake up and say…”I forgot I had cancer for 3 days!” In that good year we went on a couple of great family trips (Dominican Republic and a NYC road trip), one couple trip (Chicago), I was home with him for a great summer and then things started going wrong again. Because with this particular type of hellish cancer (they are all hellish), you can never really get rid of all the cancerous cells, you can just try to keep them “stable”. When things changed, they became very unstable. He couldn’t walk, he slept for 18 hours a day, he was on several medications to keep the brain swelling down and then he had to have another surgery. I will go into more detail in future posts, but this is the cheat sheet. When the end came, it was ugly. It was terrifying and brutal. Realizing that the only way out of the hell you are in is to lose the love of your life is not a good place to be. And then he was gone and I was without my person and my girls were without the best daddy. So the last 18 or so months have been about rebuilding, relearning, redesigning my plans, our lives, our futures. And just when I started to get a bit of a handle on things I also, rather inconveniently, fell in love again. Terrifying and wonderful. Amazing and weird.

So I needed a space for my writing. I need to write, because when I don’t my head gets too full of all my thoughts and I can’t keep them organized. I have a whole lot of thoughts all the time, on grief, on life, on love, on parenting, on dating, on falling in love, on pain and suffering, on joy and happiness, on all kinds of stuff. That’s what this blog will be about, but that’s way too long for a catchy blog title. The most pervasive feeling that has been with me over the recent months is how to be okay with the duality that lives within me. At any given moment, I am feeling intense grief and intense gratitude. I love my old life and I am learning to love the new. I am sometimes excited and also devastated. The old me would have said that these feelings are at odds with one another but there is no rule about that so I am trying my best to live with both, with and, with also.

Other criteria for choosing a blog name:

Not a million other blogs with the same name
Not only about grief or being a widow.

So here we are. BothAndAlso. See you soon (not really), talk to you soon, (nope not that either), write to you soon 🙂