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Posts tagged ‘Suicide’

Aug 27

Reflections, Part 8

The New Frontier

As I write this, I’m still doing a countdown to the anniversary of the suicide.

When I decided to do this series of posts, I had not thought them out, and I allowed my fingers to weave the tale of the last decade. I have no regrets in doing this, as the things that got said were what needed to be conveyed.

It is said that grief rearranges the address book. I’ve found this to be true. After Jon’s suicide, some of his friends struggled with what had happened, and people I knew distanced themselves for whatever reason. Most people, instead of saying something, failed to say anything. This was true of family as well. While they did help with the burial cost, there were no flowers—nothing that would have been an outward sign of being thought of. The unexpected surprise was the friend who sent money to help. We’d never met—that would happen in 2019 when I made a trip to the central US. “B,” you will always be in my heart.

The events of those first few days melt together, and I’m thankful for the therapy that I have done. My iceberg—you know, the one I’ve crushed on—kept me safe and allowed me to get to where I am today. She is now resting away.

That Monday I sat at my dining table and asked myself how I, as a disabled woman, would be able to navigate what was ahead. I found out later from someone who is now on the periphery of my life that I had been expected to fold up, board a flight, and move back to the US. I’m an eight on the Enneagram, and eights don’t run from stuff—even if it takes us decades to come out. We must ultimately face it: all of it.

Over the past ten years, I believe I’ve done a really good job of dealing with stuff.

While doing the hard work of recovering from the loss of Jon, I realized that yes, I still miss him at times, and I don’t miss him. As I read through old posts, the things I learned in that real time resurface like old friends reminding me that they still are present in my life. I honor my grief wisdom. I reflect on the Serenity Prayer and the wisdom it offers to all of us. There are things we can change, and things that we need to let be. We can’t change our feelings: we can do the work of acceptance, and that in turn might alter some of the feelings.

I think back to the night of the suicide, and how my friends took me in that night. They offered hospitality in an unexpected manner, and it came with a prayer that turned out to be helpful—well, what I remember of it.

I look at more posts and come across the one about fluffy towels, and I remember the joy. I still feel joy using them. The freedom of not having to deal with the crazy part of things with Jon is a good thing. There are no longer feelings of guilt or compassion fatigue. It is true that the quality of the tears changes in the process, and the first two years of crying jags were awful. And then, the tears changed. I’m a believer in this process. If a person allows the process to unfold naturally, the body and mind will make space for a gentle change. One day you wake up, and you notice that things are different. It’s kind of mind-blowingly wonderful. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, just that it did, and it was sometime late in my second or early third year.

One huge happening in all of this is that I lost a village and discovered a new one. This village is filled with those that face life courageously and call me out when I need to be called out! They are friends who speak a new and better language than the one I once spoke so well.

I’ve often returned to the metaphor of crossing Styx. It wasn’t something that I read about in a book. Styx is that place we go in grief and loss to do some of the deepest work we must do to discover the new life.

The discovery I’m making on this new soul journey is that I will always revisit things I’ve learned in new ways. I used to joke with Jon about him having the “aha” moment after I’d said it ten times. The truth is that we often need to hear it many different ways until one of those ways sinks in and we sit up and take notice. The human mind is both amazing and goofy. If we can allow our minds to teach us, they will do just that. Once again, we’ll think we’re having a watershed moment when it is just our brains noticing things in a new way.

I started this blog years ago, and the title for the blog came about because of my husband’s psychiatrist. During a session he stopped Jon from talking and listened as I expressed some feelings that needed to be put out there. At the end of the session, I thanked him, and his response was: “You needed to be heard.” I knew I had the title for this blog.

The grieving need to be heard until they don’t need to be heard. We talk about our loss until we come to a point in time when the storms calm, the winds stop raging in our minds, and we can once again stand tall and breathe in the fresh air of life on the new shore and take our first secure steps forward.

Aug 20

Reflections, Part 7

The Deconstruction of a Marriage

Somewhere in my reading on grief, I read that in order to do honor to myself and to the relationship, I needed to deconstruct it before I could even consider moving forward and on to another relationship. This made complete sense to me.

Jon’s suicide came out of nowhere, even though I understood suicide to be a reality of being married to someone who had a diagnosis of bipolar 1.

With twenty-two years behind me, I’d been through it, raged over it in a raw form, wound up in my rose room, and found unstable peace.

Ultimately, if I was to do the honest work of moving forward, I had to take my marriage apart. I was about to make the mistake that so many people make: not fully examining the relationship before moving forward. How does someone look under the hood in this situation? You start with the facts that you know about, and then, as those facts are either confirmed of disconfirmed, you move forward with new information. You are boring through the mountain again, but this time the rock of the mountain isn’t placed on the conveyor belt and sent out to be used someplace else. This time you are examining it for content.

What I knew at the beginning was that, overall, we were friends first, and I had married a friend who would engage me in conversations that could go well into the early hours of the morning. Jon preferred sour candy, and I thrived on the sweet stuff of life. We were both adventurous and would try things, either doing them again or deciding against a repeat. He loved his pumpkin pie, and for me it was lemon meringue. It was pie, and we’d have pie instead of cake on birthdays, and it was a good thing.

I understood that he tried to cope with the bipolar as best he could and struggled with doing so in a dignified manner. I knew I was committed to caring for him as best I could, and that meant clearing the house of objects that could be used as weapons on the self. This was hard, and scary, and went along with some sleepless nights. I developed compassion fatigue. I don’t think you can understand how bad it is inside until you’re on the outside of the situation. I recall telling my mother before her death what it was really like. She asked why I hadn’t told her, and I replied that all you would have wanted me to do was to get out. I didn’t like the volatility that bipolar can bring, and yet, I knew leaving would need to be carefully orchestrated. I had sat with this thought and decision for some time. I had considered divorcing him that summer, but I made the choice to stay for the time being. I didn’t know his mind was moving towards a psychotic break that would decide things for him. He’d told me he would not endure that place again.

I came to understand that, while the marriage was not about his bipolar disorder, the mood swings, with their verbal abuse, were a part of the marriage.

In 2010 I made the decision to call him out on the anger and aggression he was showing towards me. Once he could hear it, he was able to work on it and commit to not behaving in that way anymore, and he didn’t go there again. When he began the DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) process, which includes acceptance for one’s actions, things began to level out in new ways.

What was my part in the marriage? As mentioned previously in the piece on exiting the Mormon Church, I was battling some demons of my own.

I needed to understand how everything I was dealing with affected the marriage. Being raised to be a good Mormon girl and woman had a great deal to do with a lot of who I was in the marriage. How did I enter into this relationship?

There was a great deal of suppression involved in the process.

In the first grade, it was the girl who had the pretty white and pink dress and the jump rope. She wore cute little Mary Jane shoes. I didn’t have Mary Janes, and I wanted some. They were so feminine. I thought it was normal to think that way. As an adolescent I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about boys. I glossed over it and, in doing so, sent it away to not be thought of for years.

Because of my disability and experience at church, I had written off the possibility of marriage.

I met Jon when he came to do a house call on my computer. A friendship developed, and after four years we married.

Being raised Mormon meant that I was supposed to grow up and marry a nice Mormon man. I’d hit the jackpot! I’d married a brilliant man who could have powered the world on a paper clip. It was his out-of-the-box thinking that I loved most about Jon, and he liked that I could go to that place as well.

Still, there was this thing hanging around, and it wasn’t spoken about, and I couldn’t utter the words while he was alive. I don’t get men. I’m supposed to understand men, and I’m supposed to feel attracted to them. I don’t. After his death, the guilt that I felt slowly surfaced. It took several years and didn’t surface in its full ugly form until I’d left the Mormon Church and moved on.

I felt guilty for marrying him, guilty for the sex that really didn’t work well. While thinking all of this, I was also well aware that this was not a one-sided issue. Bipolar disorders affect relationships, and in deconstructing all of this, I came to understand that I was a participant, and there was no blame to be had: just understanding. Blame and guilt are so often miscued in relationships. Looking at this with my own therapist caused me to rethink my thoughts and feelings around having married Jon. In safety, I could admit, actually, that there was no way around this: I like women.

Aug 6

Reflections, Part 5

What I Wore

If there is one thing my sister Beth and I agreed on, it was that Joyce got all the cute clothes. We took the issue to my mother when we were adults, and her response was that Joyce had the personality for cute and bold, and we were pretty and feminine with our clothes types, and so, while Beth could sew and make herself originals, I got pretty from my mother.

To be fair to my mother, she was right. Joyce got the doggie dress that Beth and I wouldn’t have known what to do with. Joyce, on the other hand, would react when someone said that her doggie dress was cute, and then she’d extend the dress to its fullness that revealed a wiener dog. She took delight in the surprise. No, her two older sisters would have failed miserably with that task. Mom just got clothes, and she understood that her two oldest daughters didn’t have the personalities for what Joyce could pull off.  

My mother’s side of the family was filled with women who could sew for themselves, and they all sat at machines and sewed their clothes. But cousin Gwen said it best: “Your mother sews circles around all of us.” She did. While my aunt could create tiny things with personality, my mother created what I came to call dresses with personality, or “dressenality.” She sewed lasting creations that would get stored in memory. I knew when I got it and when I first wore it, and it became hard to grow out of clothes. Well, that’s one good thing about adulthood. Unless I grow, I can wear it for… forever.

A trip to the fabric store was all about the right pattern and the right fabric to go with the wonderful new dress. It worked like this: first look at all the pattern books, find what I wanted, and then, and only then, could I move to the fabric. Rows, and rows of wonderful fabric. If I wanted stripes or pleats in the dress, the dress requirements were much different. Florals? Would it look right? Mom always understood. Sometimes I’d buy fabric and wait for the right dress or top to show itself.  

In first grade, it was the fall colors of the flowers, and the yellow trim, the pleated skirt, and the joy that dress brought me. It was mine, and I loved wearing it. When I was seven, Beth wanted to make the dress. Mom let her. It was a purple twirly dress with long sleeves and a Peter Pan collar. It also had a sash that tied into an incredible bow. I wore it for a “daddy–daughter” night. I also wore it for my school picture that year. Growing out of the purple dress was a sad thing.

As a teen it was the pantsuit. Dark pink pants, a seersucker top that was multicolored, and white slingback shoes that I purchased while working for my father. Working meant I could buy clothes, and I did buy fabric. Why wear what others might be wearing?

When I wasn’t living at home, I’d buy clothes from specialty shops that catered to petite-sized women. They were nice, and I had my sentimental favorite. But, once again, it was what my mother would create for me that made me happy. It was the gift of a skirt and top. The print was on this electric blue background, and the flowers were rich reds, greens, yellows, and purples. The neckline was scalloped, and I had a red belt to dress it up. It was Jon’s favorite. When we moved to Germany, and then to The Netherlands, I thought the sewing would stop. It didn’t. On a home visit, I went shopping at Vivian’s Fabrics. She had to clean out and send it all off to loving homes. Her grandchildren were the recipients of much of the stash. So was I. The last vestiges of my mother: a blue dress that is pure style. I love it. Hopefully, I’ll have it forever. I wear it on special occasions.

With all the happy memories of clothes, how I got them, and where I wore them, I had to tell myself that the one that hurt I could part with.

August 28, 2016. It was the day that turned out to be the worst day of my life. What I wore is burned into my memory. After I showered, I chose to put on a skirt with a black, brown, and white print, and a light tan tank top. Because of the minor stroke I’d had in 2014, there we days when wearing anything with a sleeve wasn’t possible. This was one of those days. It was hot and humid outside.

I wore this as I walked down the stairs to have the final conversation with Jon. I wore this as I binged on Law and Order, and I wore this on that fateful walk into my kitchen—the place I never made it to. I greeted the police in this outfit. I wore it to phone the two sides of the family.

The memory of what I wore on this awful day was pounding in my mind. I was already dealing with trauma: this was the cherry on top. An outfit of a skirt and top had been put into the trauma caldron. NO, not clothes. Gail’s rule number one about clothes is that they are sacred and can’t be damaged. This skirt and top had become tainted.

I tried to wear them separately and together, and even though I wanted to keep them, I finally knew that I’d have to send them off to a home where they could be loved.

When I think back on this series of events now, I realize that it is more complex than just parting with clothes. This is about how we handle parting with something, and also recognizing that there is damage to our souls, and coming to terms with setting it free. This is about doing the deep grief work that is often overlooked in the process of getting to the new place. This is the place where new outcomes and life paths become real.

Jon and I were together for twenty-two years and married for eighteen of them. When you’re with someone that long, it is vital to sort it all out.

At the beginning of the process, all I thought about was that I would never marry again. It just hurt to think about doing that or being in another marriage. By about year three or four, I realized that I needed to take the relationship apart to examine it with no restrictions on what I would not look at. I remember being here at my desk and seeing the sun hit the window on the other side of the street. I started to think that if I didn’t take it all apart, I wouldn’t be able to move forward in a healthy way. Like the skirt outfit and dress that had to go (I sent the pretty dress I wore to his cremation to the secondhand place as well), I needed to be honest about my marriage. I needed to give it a real look under the microscope.

The first big thing I had to come to terms with was that I was dealing with compassion fatigue. While I understood this earlier in the process, I had not allowed myself to step back, pull it out, and dissect it for what it was: trauma. If I ever got to a point in time where I’d want to explore something new, this was a biggie on the road to figuring out a part of my marriage that I needed to see clearly.

The fact of the matter is that many grief journeys omit this step. This isn’t about speaking ill of the dead—though some of that might need to happen. It is about giving the relationship an honest critique, and understanding what made it good, and where the bad points were.

Breakups happen in marriages and long-term friendships. We’d be wise to look under the hood to see where we went right and where we went wrong. In most situations there are always two sides. Being able to look at something and accept the responsibility for our part of the “wrong” is difficult and painful. It is brutal work that needs to happen, and the payoff is worth the pain we go through to get there. This work is not for wimps. Ultimately, when we get through the hard stuff, it brings clarity to everything. Examination also means that we won’t leap into another relationship before we’ve done whatever work we need to do on ourselves to fix what we can.

I think that many people confuse grieving with crying many tears and being ready to move on. NO, the tears and the mess are only a part of the process.

What if the grief process is also a call for a life redo? What if the life we build after a death or loss of a partnership is one that takes us on a new path? What if we’re on a life journey, and this is just one significant stop in the process?

Jul 30

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Reflections, Part 4

Note: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is also known as the Mormon Church. Therefore, I’ll use the name Mormon in this post. For definitions of terms included in bold type throughout this post, please see the Definitions section at the bottom.

In 2008, I knew I needed to listen to what Jon was learning about the Mormon Church (please read my previous post here), and so, my own journey down the rabbit hole began.

Ultimately, I began to realize that it wasn’t what I’d been taught that bothered me as much as what the church represented, and how people were treated by each other. Could I remain in an unsafe place? At this point in time, Jon wanted to quit church over academic issues. I wasn’t ready to quit yet. The struggle for me was values.

People of different races, LGBTQ people, the mentally ill, and the disabled were not treated well. Women weren’t treated well. It was a Jesus thing with me. Jesus the street preacher would not only be present—he’d be calling it all out. I’m big on calling it out. Jesus would be ministering to the people on the margins and expect that others would do the same. Where were the ministers? They were in the main crowd. I found myself thinking about how exclusive Mormonism was, and that Jesus wasn’t running a country club for the exclusive use of some. Church is a place for all who want to be present, and for those who need to be welcomed in as they are. This is when what I’d been taught really hit me: Mormonism was not the exclusive club I should live in. Jon had told me I had a privileged Mormon upbringing, and he was right. Despite the mistreatment, I had access to people most Mormons don’t have access to. My father had been one of them. OUCH.

With Jon’s suicide in 2016, I stayed put and didn’t make any major life decisions. Going to the US in 2017 would send me down a new path. I had not thought about leaving my faith of birth, and I wouldn’t for several more months. Sunstone altered my thinking. Sunstone US is the grandmother of all things that people of the restoration faiths can gather at, and several faiths come together there. Mormons, former polygamists, and Community of Christ all gather under one roof for a long weekend of exchange. I went to see friends and made some new ones. I returned home, and the events of the conference kept nagging at me in my petite mind. I had attended two sessions that touched me deeply, and one of them was being put on by Community of Christ. Finally, I wrote a letter to someone who belonged to another church. I told her, “I don’t normally do this, but I need to write this.” 

I started attending an online group for those in Europe, and I liked what I was hearing and learning. And no, don’t ask me to join your church or do anything like it. They didn’t ask me anything; they let me sit and explore to my heart’s content. Slowly, I wanted some involvement, and they were glad to have me participate.

In March of 2018, while sitting on my pretty blue bed, I realized that I’d have to leave the Mormon faith. I sobbed. It wasn’t all bad, was it? I’d learned the value of service, and that sometimes we’re stretched to do things, and doing so can causes us to grow in ways that we wouldn’t grow otherwise. I’d also learned the basics of public speaking as a very young child. I’d gotten to sing in the choir and enjoyed it. It was the culture that tore me apart, the good stuff and the negative all bundled up together, and I had to leave it behind.

What about my eternal marriage to Jon? As I thought this, the words came into my mind: “I have your back on this.” The words were clear, and I understood it was OK to leave for a new something. It still took me six months to make the move. In September of 2018, I was rebaptized as an adult, and then confirmed into my new faith. I flew home that Sunday evening and got online and resigned my Mormon membership.

At the time of the exit, I thought I understood why I needed to make the move out of the Mormon Church. Like so much in our grief and life journeys, we never see it all until we’re on the river and navigating something new, and then we turn around and gasp a “WOW! Did I really do all of that?” The answer is always a resounding yes. I’m still in the gasping place. It is a good place to be.

In 2026, I think back to the woman who sat at her dining table, who didn’t know how she’d do one year, let alone ten years.

Doing an exit from the Mormon Church was one very unexpected twist in my grief journey. I’m thankful for what I’ve learned, and thankful for how I’ve changed and grown over time.

The great thing about life is that it greets you with the unexpected, and that it teaches us, and molds us in new ways. The discoveries are the best, and the thrills are around all the corners. It’s just that sometimes we don’t fully appreciate the surprise until we’ve gotten through the hell that it takes to get to the wonderful center. Oh, and I do love my creamy centers.

I’m glad I said yes to this change. I’ve expanded in ways that have filled my life in new ways.

Definitions:

Mission: Women serve eighteen months and men serve two years, at the missionary’s expense. Missionaries are sent out to convert others to the faith. Presently, both women and men can go at age eighteen.

Leave: You can’t just leave the Mormon Church. You need to resign by writing a formal letter to Salt Lake City to have your name taken out of the Church database.

Marriage: The Church doctrine on marriage espouses the belief that a man and a woman can be married in this life and the next life. A marriage done in a Mormon temple is done for time and eternity. To leave the Church means you are no longer “sealed” together, and the bond is broken.

Baptism: Mormons baptize children at age eight. Children are not equipped to understand the commitment they are making at eight. Community of Christ offers the option of a redo, to show commitment to Jesus. It is not a requirement for membership but can be a step towards it. I had a redo as an adult and was then confirmed into Community of Christ.

Jul 16

Reflections, Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

The Healing Journey

In July of 2023, I got sick. I wound up in the emergency room of the local hospital, and my kidneys were shutting down. They were at twenty percent function. I was disoriented, scared, and really not understanding how bad it was. At one point in the process leading up to my hospitalization, I became so confused that I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the bed. I couldn’t even think to turn the light on. That is sick, and that is scary. I found out after things settled that this is common for people facing this type of shutdown. Back to the narrative. A friend finally convinced me to call the doctor, who came and had me admitted, and by then it wasn’t good at all.

I was in the hospital for a week, and then a taxi took me home. I was disoriented coming out of the place because the hospital I was in was new, and I hadn’t seen it before. With low vision, this is a real issue.

I walked into my house, sat down my bag, walked to the sofa, and let out the tears. I sobbed, and then listened as my body and mind told me it was time to heal. It was time to do the work that led to healing all of it. All the trauma I’d stuffed. I had some therapy of my own to do, and it was time to find the therapist who would travel with me as I called the people to the encampment of the battleground. Funny how it works. It took another ten months to get to May of 2024, and to begin the intense work of cleaning out my mind and moving forward.

The healing process is an interesting thing. I’ve seen people who come to me and aren’t ready to do the work, and so they run away rather than to what can help. Others believe that grief and loss can be worked through in six easy sessions, and that there is a magic formula that the therapist can dispense. The fact is that this is a soul journey. It is a journey of the mind, the heart, and the spirit, if you will. It leads us to someplace else, and that someplace is the place of wonder and, ultimately, healing, such as it is.

On August 29, 2016, I sat at my dining table and looked at the lights that had been installed so that I would be able to see in my home. I wondered just how I, a woman with low vision, would be able to survive in a country where my limited Dutch would only get me so far. The only thing I knew at that time was that I couldn’t and shouldn’t make any major life decisions for a year. That is something my father had told me, and it was wise counsel.

And so, the journey of healing and discovery began that day, and in many ways it will never end. We may work through our grief and loss: we’re changed by it all.

The social system here set me up with someone to clean the house. At first, my then church came with meals until I realized I needed to cook for myself. If I needed to not work because I was compromised, I needed to do something for myself. I needed to let the process of grieving take place.

On Friday the thirteenth of January 2017, my mother died of a heart attack. We’d giggled, grown together, and experienced the death of my younger sister Joyce together. My mother was also an eight on the Enneagram. We understood this shared experience in life, and she taught me things despite not knowing about her beloved number. She just did life well in many ways. Because of where I was in the process of grieving Jon, I didn’t see and get fully the fact that my siblings telling me not to fly over for the memorial service was really bad advice. I’ve regretted that, and would do that one differently if I could.

By June of 2017, I felt ready to plan a trip to the US to see family and a friend. What I didn’t know then was that the trip would change the course of my life.

In late July of 2017, I flew to Salt Lake City to see some friends of Jon’s and attend a conference called Sunstone. At the conference I ran into people who were not Mormon, and it flipped a switch. I felt, and knew, that I had to check this other church out.

I then went to Oregon to visit another friend, and travelled on to California to see my family and visit the beach.

Staying at my brother’s place first and then moving on to my sister’s place was interesting. At the time I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d see both of them alive.

We made some good memories, and my sister and sister-in-law insisted I take my mother’s green quilt home. Now, they know of my love affair with blue. That green quilt would cause me to do a total room makeover. I painted the room blue, purchased a new bed that was blue and that the quilt would fit on, and realized that I had the piece of my mother that loved green. It has turned out to be one of the things I enjoy seeing, and it serves as a link to her and the love she had for me.

That trip also created a memory of my sis that I could never have done without her help. She got me on the flight with five boxes for less than the price of five extra boxes. I stood there at the airline counter, shut my mouth, and watched in amazement as she talked to the guy. I know when to shut my mouth. So, that quilt and other things came with me to be with me here in my new life.

The trip to the US changed my ability to sleep. In that first year, everything sleepwise changed. I didn’t sleep at normal hours, and family would question me as I called in the wee hours of my Netherlands morning. “Gail, what are you doing?” Well, when I can’t sleep, I call you.

Planning for the anniversary of his death had taught me that if I thought about it in advance, I could maybe, just maybe, control the tears and what would happen. It worked well for year one and failed for year two. What I really learned was that with the body, what we’re grieving will push its way to the surface and force itself on us in ugly ways. The life lesson: let go and don’t try to control what needs to happen. Healthy grief lets grief drive the process so it can heal. Even if grief must be put off because of life that must be done, it will surface, and when it does, embrace it!

What I’ve learned about the first two years of loss are that the tears change in quality and quantity. Looking back eight years, I can see all of the journey better now. How different it was and now is. In letting it all go, I freed myself to trust the grief process in ways that opened my heart and mind to healing, and because of that, I was carried to where I am now. July of 2023 had to happen so that I could write this in July of 2026. I see that now, and that is one of the huge things this journey has gifted me with. Wow, what an amazing place I’ve gotten to!

Jul 9

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Reflections, Part 1

Note: This post contains details related to suicide.

This last Tuesday, I made a call to a friend and asked if he could drive up north and help me empty out the shed—the shed where Jon ended it. I wasn’t expecting him to come up as fast as he did. He said he could come Thursday morning. I was stunned.

I contacted him at eight, and he told me that he had been talking to a friend and mentioned what he was going to do for me. The friend asked if he could help! So, two nice guys came to call on me to clean out, or clean up, a space that has been nothing but dread for me. Not a bad gesture at all.

Then they offered to buy me lunch! This is radical hospitality on their part.

The last ten years have been spent avoiding the place where Jon ended it: the shed. The shed has been a place I unlock, enter quickly, and then lock up again. There is still a place where they couldn’t get the blood out of the concrete despite the deep cleaning they did. They removed what they had to and left the rest.

Several years ago this same friend came, and we sent things off to the trash. I wasn’t ready to do the final clean-out. That took me doing the work of discharging some loyal soldiers.

Mind-cleaning takes time, and it has taken me ten years to be able to deal with the fallout. Now, I was able to make the call to have the rest of it hauled off to a garbage grave.

These two guys told me to go back to the house, and they’d take care of it. When they needed me to get in the car and drive to the disposal site for the first round, they came and got me. It all takes me back to that August Sunday.

Jon came in and woke me up and told me he needed to talk to me. It had been a difficult weekend filled with our last night out on Friday, and a very lazy Saturday. My gut told me to pull back and to let him be. He was on the computer the entire day. I can’t recall what I did most of the day; I do recall that I was quiet.

We went to bed at a decent hour, and I was tired, so it felt good. Then he woke me up that morning to talk. What I didn’t know then was that this would be the pivotal conversation that would alter my life as I understood it.

We sat on the bed because he had this thing about talking to me and looking into the mirror. I didn’t understand it but I honored it.

Jon was enrolled in a DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) process. It is commonly used for those who are dealing with bipolar disorders and borderline personality disorder. DBT teaches some great life skill techniques, as well as advocating that the person receiving treatment take full responsibility for their life and actions within that life (see An Impossible Life for details on DBT and an amazing story of one woman’s journey). We sat on the bed and he asked me how long he thought it would take for him to complete the treatment. I hesitated just a second, and he then said, “You don’t know, and my doctors don’t know.” He’d been in treatment for two years at that point, and the psychologist was working with him, and being conservative. He got up and left the room.

What I discovered was that in that one second delay he’d made up his mind.

I got up and ate breakfast. It would be the only meal I ate that day. At 1:00 pm he came to where I was and said that he needed to talk to me. The conversation lasted less than five minutes, with him having his back to me. In that short time, he tore open my soul, announced that “this isn’t going to work,” and left the room. I followed him. I was angry and stunned as I watched him empty his pockets, and then announce that he was going on a walk.

At that moment I thought: That does it. I’m done. I’m getting a divorce. That was one step too far. I’d been a caregiver and was at that point in time suffering from compassion fatigue. I let him go, and I went and began to binge-watch old Law and Order episodes. As I watched, I was able to calm myself, bring myself to a logical place, and finally realize that it had been two hours, and he had not come back. I realized he could be very suicidal.

I called a friend to confirm the process for getting the police involved; he confirmed what I knew, and then called the 112 number to get the local neighborhood police to go looking so I could get him committed.

I now realized I felt hungry. It was going on 4:00 pm, and so I walked downstairs to head into the kitchen. I never made it into that space. On the table was a note. I can’t tell you how it all happened. I know I called my friend back, told him, grabbed the key to the shed, and I couldn’t open it. I went back inside, and not more than a minute or two later the police came to my door. I led them to the shed; they broke in, and they saw the body. They told me to go back to the house. I never saw the body in the shed.

Dutch police don’t put the yellow crime scene tape up. They did what they needed to do to remove the body from the shed and came into the house to talk to me. The mortician came and took him away. They put hard paper up to cover the broken glass, and that next morning it was all cleaned up.

Meanwhile, I’m in shock, having to call family on both sides, and my friend arrives to be with me. By now it is time to start calling the US. This will take several hours. It is now dark. I end the Skype calls, walk back downstairs, and get told: “You aren’t staying here alone tonight. I’m taking you to our house.” I complied. It was the first kind gesture in my experience that I’ll place in the “please do” thoughts. The last week, he came with another kind person to clean out the rest of the shed. It is done, and my reflection can continue in a new way.

The last ten years have been difficult, an education in new life lessons, and at times both horrifying and joyous. For the most part, I’m thankful for what I’ve learned. What have I learned?

Wow, everything on this blog!

I’ve learned that grief is not about stages. Grief has seasons, and we’ll loop through them many times. It isn’t about getting there, because there is no destination to arrive at. It isn’t that the tears stop: they change, and I’m sure I’m in for some as the fateful date approaches. Ten years. I hope it can be said that I’ve become a better person for living through it.

I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned is that grief is a teacher, and it shows us ourselves in new ways if we become open to letting it. We get a nice peek into ourselves at our worst, and our best. We get called out on the difficult stuff, and at the same time discover strengths that we never would have found if we had not gone down this path.

I’ve done horrible stormy nights and bright, sunny days, and both have taught me to stand up and be me.

I’ve grown in all ways: mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and maybe even physically.

Here I sit on this cool day, celebrating a post I knew would be written before the day it happened.

Would I do it over again? Would I marry Jon and end up a widow? I can’t say what I’d do, because once you go down a path, it changes who you become. I like where I am now. This becomes about learning from a mistake and learning to find the good in it all. And for me it has been a challenge. I can be hard on myself. OK, I’ve learned that I can really be overly critical of myself at times while telling others to cut themselves some slack. I’m working on it.

I think back to the days when I was so raw, and what that felt like, and how forward movement has happened. I think back to when I wrote “Navigation,” and how it blew my mind. I think right now I’ve cycled though some fancy boats, and maybe I’m in a small boat on a new stretch of river that I don’t fully understand now.

We get to new places and must face new lessons in new ways. My new lessons are about being able to learn the value of new relationships. For the first time in ten years, I’m thinking I might want to open up to such a thing. Considering the hurt I’d gone through ten years ago, this is remarkable.

We can’t put life on hold as we grieve. I think that is a good thing. What does happen is that we fall apart. We can’t concentrate or think straight, and sometimes we can’t even do simple tasks. Our dysfunction shows up in the fact that something is terribly wrong in our lives. If we were totally functional, that would be off, and we’re not OK, are we?

So, shed the tears. If you can’t do the trash, maybe a friend can do that for you. The laundry might get scary for a few loads, and the kitchen might need help. Your friends and family need to check to do the things you can’t.

No time limits: it just is, and it will move forward when you’ve done what you need to do to move forward on your own path.

All the above being mentioned, you are not alone, and if you need to find a serious support group or a great therapist, we’re here. Grief is serious, and there are times when you need to bring someone into your space to care for you.

I know asking for help can be difficult, and that it can feel as if a burden is being placed on someone. Real friends can and will step up to the plate on your behalf. There are also times when old friends don’t get it, and new and unexpected people come into your life to show that they care and understand what you need during this time in your life.

I’ve witnessed this in my own life, and it has been a true gift. Thank you for the giving, as it’s made the hard times seem worthwhile.

May 21

A Window Inside (Revisit)

This post was originally published on February 28, 2022.

Six years out and I’m still amazed at this process of walking out of grief. I’ll confess that on the 28th of August, 2016, when I went downstairs to get a late lunch and found the note, my concept of grief was in for a radical change.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about people who grieved the loss of other things; it was the reality that the loss meant something different to me now. This was my husband—my marriage—and it was different. I’d mourned the loss of a parent, grandparents, a sister, our four cats that we’d had to put down, another graduate degree, a home, not having biological children, and friendship. I thought I understood what grief was about. I wasn’t wrong, and I wasn’t right either. I needed to learn some new things.

My father’s death was the one time I was prepared for to death enter my life. I was privileged to serve as one of his caretakers until he entered the hospice unit to stabilize and to allow his body to shut down gracefully. Even that final week was amazing. He’d lived a good life and was ready to die. It was, for me, both difficult and celebratory. The feelings of loss came about five years later when my husband entered my life. I learned for the first time that grief and mourning may enter our lives years or even decades later. I worked through the sadness that my father would not know Jon. This time—and this death—was radically different. This wasn’t easy at all: this felt like grief on steroids.

Five months later my mother died of a heart attack, and I’m thankful that our relationship was one of friendship, giggles, honesty, understanding, and mutual respect. The family had to laugh that she died on Friday the thirteenth. Her death was overshadowed by Jon’s death.

My understanding of my own process now is that it took two years of dealing with the trauma to be able to adjust to a new life alone. Stuff sets you off after a suicide, and stuff set me off! I was in no shape to work. I wasn’t ready to socialize because things got triggered and I’d start crying. It took year three to begin to stabilize. There was so much to do, to understand, and to discover. While time is an ingredient in grief journeys—mourning and doing the work that needs to be done—time itself is not the healing ingredient. Our inner strength and reserves are the healing factors.

Somewhere along the path we walk, the existential crisis rears its ugly head. You may or may not be a person of faith, and that doesn’t matter. Sooner or later we all question our known reality and wonder if our certainty or uncertainty will stand up in our grief process.

One of the huge lessons most of us learn about ourselves is that questioning is normal and healthy. Questioning can make for a robust inner dialogue! Asking ourselves both simple and deep questions propels us towards resolution in our process. This didn’t occur for me until I was in year five of this process. I wasn’t able to think clearly enough about some of the questions I needed to ask myself about our marriage, relationship, and where we were headed in the future. I realized that the questions I was able to ask myself five years out were only possible because I was stable, had done some basic work, and had returned to the work I loved. It wasn’t time that had carried me here: it was my personal stability and the work I had done up until that point that opened up this new avenue of questioning myself.

Looking In, Calling it Out

The universal cry of most who find themselves in the grief process during the early days is “When will this ever end?” The pain is unbearable, raw, unsettling, and triggering. In the beginning we might be triggered hourly or daily. It is true that with time things change, and with time we eventually arrive at a place where the grief is still present, but the texture of the grief softens and allows us to relax with it.

What I’ve noticed over time is that most friends and family forget the “Please Do” items that most of us may still need a year—or four years—out. It is as if the funeral/memorial and dinner afterwards are over, and so is the requirement to show up and offer comfort. Is it any wonder that down the road there is a collective cry of rage from the grief camp? What, do people think this is a simple process where, once our beloveds are buried, cremated, and the ashes sprinkled, it all goes magically away?! That type of closure is overrated.

There is no grief formula. Grief is as unique as we are. How we feel, think, and behave are all part of our personality constructs. What we each do with loss—whether it be loss of vision, a faith transition, or loss of a life partner—will be different from each other.

When we peer into the window of another’s existence, we gaze on them with our life’s prejudices and experiences. As we do this, we’re often tempted to offer up what we want or need rather than what the person who is in a state of grief and loss is needing. Please, no more “I’m sorry for your loss.” Every time I hear that, even on a TV show or somewhere else, I cringe with the thought of “Can’t you think of something more authentic to say?” Have you ever thought that the person, while grieving, may not be sorry? Sometimes death, divorce, loss of a job, or something else might turn out to be the gift we needed in our lives, and it may have been a gift for them as well.

The Window Inside

What people need to know about looking in is that you are offered a glimpse—and only a glimpse—into our passing along the path we walk. At any moment it may change, because at any moment we might discover some piece of life-altering thought that sends us sailing into new territory. It will never fully be over. How do you move on without holding the memory of the one you dearly love? We mourn the loss of what was and could have been. We anguish over the fact that we might have made a really lousy life decision and it brought more pain than happiness into our lives. We hold the memory of our beloved pets in our hearts. We speculate about what our child’s life would have been had they lived into adulthood.

You look in and ask, “Aren’t you over it yet?” We must reply that “No, I’ll never be over it because it all involves love, and love is something precious.”

We’ll draw the curtains closed and continue forward. Ultimately, grief is a thing of the heart and soul. We’ll let you in when it is safe and we’re strong enough to hold you in our presence once again.

Feb 26

From Survival Clothes to Comfy Coats

In the US it’s a zipper; the UK calls it a zip; and here in the Netherlands it is called a ritz. Well, the thing broke on my warm coat that I have worn for over ten years. I was told that I could replace the zipper, zip, or ritz, and the warm, dark-blue coat could continue on for many years. I got to thinking that maybe it was time for a new color. The hunt began, and I found something pretty that will last at least ten years. This time I’ll be in lavender.

The old winter jacket had a double zipper. I loved it, and it also could snap in! I must have put the zipper into the coat incorrectly because it got stuck in a royal way. I’ll have the new lavender version in two weeks. It has to come from the US.

This has made me think about things.

I’m one of those people who loves her clothes, and I’ll wear them forever. The last round of purchases I’ve come to think of as survival clothes. I purchased the stuff after Jon’s death. Now, as 2026 rolls into full bloom, I’m finding that I need to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. It’s kind of like the fluffy towels; I just took a wee bit longer to arrive at this point. This is going to cost me somewhat more than the towels. I’m still liking my towels, so, it is all good.

This time I’m not caring for Jon. This time I’m not in survival mode, and this time I can take my time thinking it through. I realize that I’ll need to write a new “Please Do” post. There are things on the “do” list that I didn’t know then, and that I can now talk about because, as time passes, new things that we might not view as essential come to the forefront.

As I’ve worked through the trauma of Jon’s death and developed a crush on the iceberg, I’ve learned a new form of self-care. I don’t know if it is the grief or the trauma that we can encounter that causes us to not care for ourselves in healthy ways. I think it may be both, and I also believe that it depends on the person. Whatever it is, look out for yourself!

What Version of Death Are You Living With?

There are all kinds of ways to die. As loved ones and family and friends, the versions are many.

My grandmother died in her bed as she drifted off for an afternoon nap. My father slipped away quietly in a hospital bed. His body shut down fighting stomach cancer. He woke up for a minute and my mother told him that it was the thirteenth, and he got on with the business of dying. My mother died quietly in a hospital room, after a heart attack. For the most part, all three of the deaths were peaceful instead of traumatic. The deaths filled with trauma took longer to process, and different types of emotions surfaced, depending on the person and how they died.

I’ve said it here and will continue to say it: THERE IS NOT AN INCORRECT WAY TO GRIEVE, as long as you grieve when you are able to grieve. A decade out of losing Jon, I’ve discovered so much. There is now only moving forward. What a journey! This post is a delightful thing to write because I’ve done some deep soul work. The fact is that when I started out on this path, I was on a road that I had never walked before. Yes, I’d done family and friends’ deaths, but this one has been completely different. My sister died violently as the cancer ate away at her body. My brother slipped away, with Covid being one of the things that caused his death. All things considered, my mother died a peaceful death after her heart attack. Somehow, it was my mother’s death that hit me the hardest. It hadn’t been six months since Jon’s leaving, and I didn’t fly to her funeral. I let my family talk me out of the flight. I should have flown over for it.

I believe that being at a service for those you love helps the process along. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

This new fluffy coat is going to rock my world. So is all the healing from trauma, and what it brings. It is a new season and time in my life. I’ve done well finding my way on this journey. I should be proud of all of this. I’m happy with where I’m headed and give credit where credit is due. Nah, it’s the fluffy lavender jacket.

Feb 19

Exiting the Box (Revisit)

This post was originally published on March 18, 2024.

I was raised in a high-demand religion that placed me in a box. When you’re young, you only sense that something is off, and it was my nature to knock down barriers. Boxes are barriers, and so it began at a young age, the push–pull of trying to walk the line, yet break free of the box. The breaking out was needful, and the process almost broke me.

Breaking free is a process that takes time, knowledge, exploration, and courage. How many of us realize that we each live in a box? Our boxes are made up of different restrictions, in or out of high-demand religions and other groups. It takes strength to knock walls down. It takes strength to call it out when others remain silent. I discovered that it was lonely being the only one in the room who understood that I was trapped. It was lonely not being able to put the pieces together at a young age. It took so much time to fully connect the dots.

I’ve been knocking walls down since my adolescence. I must admit that I wouldn’t know how to live a life without breaking personal barriers, and if it helps others I’ll bring them along. I’ve spoken about this in the sledgehammer piece I wrote. I think over what I’ve done, and I want to share more. How did I find the courage to move to a new place in life?

When I look back at all of this, I’m caught up in the WOW of it all, and I think back to how I navigated the choppy parts of the river. Who was in my boat? People who were living outside of the box I’d been in. At first I didn’t understand this. The further I moved away from what had been, the more I understood out-of-the-box thinking in real time. Being in the box won’t free you to do the thinking you must do outside of the box. First you must get out!

The people outside the box enabled me to leave the bench I was sitting on and move forward. I’ll admit that this process has been both velvet in its feel and scary as I’ve crossed into the underworld and new territory.

Leaving the box causes others in the box to not understand why you would choose to leave the secure space. In my boxed situation, I was told not to “leave the boat,” and I was asked where I would go if I left the boat. I jumped into the water and into the waiting dinghy that was there for me. As I rowed into new, warmer waters, I discovered that there was new growth and so many new places to explore! What an expansive universe I lived in!

I found myself discovering so many new things! The current was swift, and as I stretched myself to learn and to ask new questions, I grew in ways that I never thought I could. Over fifty years spent in a box, and while I mourned, I also moved on. I must also admit that Jon’s suicide was a catalyst for personal growth. How could it not be a process of moving me forward? I wasn’t willing to roll over and play dead.

I discovered that it was time to put the sledgehammer away, and to discover more peaceful means of breaking down walls and moving forward. I was truly sad about stowing the sledge, as it had been a lifelong companion. I was comfortable with it, and I understood the sledge’s use, and there were better ways of creating change.

My soul work moved me forward. I now find myself in a place of peace and contentment, and it’s weird because I never imagined myself in this place. In the box, this was not possible. Outside of the box, it is doable. I think the difference is that I’ve discovered more of who* I am, what the world is all about, and that I’m finding lots of wonderful new ways of looking at everything I encounter.

While my exit from the box was velvet in its nature, it did cause me great pain. There are people who have turned their backs on me, and they’ve walked away. There are others who won’t talk about the hard things. You know—the things that really need to be said. In the box, people can’t go to these places. How I long for people I have known to go to the harder places! The price we pay for breaking ourselves out of the box is the loss of people we thought were friends. So, we must grieve again.

I’ve found that the the grief process here is no different from other grief, and that the “please do” that must be a part of our process in the exit is a major must. This is a lonely process, and it is often one that is done alone because our new village might not understand what we need in our lives.

The box I was in taught me some good things. It taught me to give to others, and to do it when it might not always be convenient. It taught me to listen to myself, and that enabled me to “jump ship” and get out of there. Who I was, and who I am, was not to be found in the tiny box.

I move on, forward, into the unknown, which is exciting, wonderful, and scary. It never ends, this discovery business. I wonder what I’ll learn around the next bend?

Apr 22

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I Miss (Revisit)

Originally posted on June 1, 2022.

Last night while reading, my mind was blown by what was on the pages. It seemed as if I had been sent sailing into the outer limits of my mind, and that I was needing to process all the fantastic thoughts that were coming to me. I realized that my out-of-this-dimension-process-person was gone. OUCH!

In realizing this, I also noticed that I wasn’t shedding tears, I wasn’t angry, or even sad: I just missed him and the easy access to processing wild thoughts. Now who do I do this with? The one person who might go there with me no longer speaks to me due to where my life has gone. (That’s an entirely different post.) What do I do now?

The prospect of finding a new conversation partner for exploring the out-of-the-box things that need to be spoken, pondered, turned over in the mind, and configured into working theory and thought is difficult. He is gone.

I began to reflect on those long conversations that took us into first one and then another subject, until the wee hours of the morning when my intellect was stimulated and all we could do was collapse into bed, not remembering exactly where we began—only knowing where we wound up.

While walking on the treadmill this morning, I realized that somehow, without my knowing it, something inside of me had shifted. What piece of the grief puzzle, the loss, the resolution, had gently moved into place?

Is it that in our journeying and self-discovery and the multiple examinations of the past relationship, we resolve the ugly, the painful, the hidden along with the happy and joyous parts of the relationship?

In contemplating this, my thoughts turned to the fact that death is for the most part traumatic. It is traumatic for the dying and for those left behind. We don’t expect it will happen when it does, or how it happens. We don’t get to have closure. Yes, if there is a terminal illness involved, we might be able to have some of those conversations—but not all of them. We move forward, and in time, shifts happen and things change.

There are no certain answers with the grief process. There is no ready formula that creates resolution and stops the tears. There is no end point. Time doesn’t resolve the pain and loss. There are people who are in the same struggle ten years after they’ve lost someone—the pain is just as intense. I think there are things that can stimulate forward movement. I’ll talk about a few of them in no particular order of importance.

Be open to the tears, because tears tend to cleanse our souls and open new paths of healing. If we fail to care for ourselves by honoring times when we need to let the tears flow by pretending that shedding the tears is weakness, we shut ourselves down to legitimate growth. It is natural to cry in pain, to feel the hurt fully, and to allow our bodies to respond naturally when we’ve been assaulted by physical, mental, or emotional pain. Tears are a cue to the self that all is not right within us.

Shrines are damaging, so don’t build them. Shrines to anyone tend to block progress. They stifle our development by keeping us in a memory loop that can lead to not being able to move forward. We become trapped in the past life we had with this person.

Reclaiming a space that may have been the domain of another person is difficult and emotional work. It is a good idea to go into a bedroom or workspace with a supportive friend or family member to enable the beginning of the process of restructuring the new space.

Photographing things we want to remember enables us to move forward and hold onto memories. It also allows us to create new spaces for the living. I think people create shrines in fear of forgetting. This doesn’t mean that we go in and take everything away. What all of this means is that we give careful thought to finding some of their possessions new and loving homes. We become selective about what will really mean something to us. We might store some things in order to determine at a later time what we want to hold onto. There is an element of realism to this. In sorting through things, we can remember and face some of the work around remembrance that must be done in all relationships. I had sufficient space to store some things until I could realistically come to terms with what I wanted to do with them. Intentionally packing things away, asking others about some of the items, and coming to terms with how I felt about things enabled me to not erect any type of shrine that would be unhealthy.

In stating the above, it does not mean that I’ve wiped my husband out of the home. There are photos and other special memories tucked away that I can enjoy when I want to do so. No shrine.

Stare it all down. If we’re not willing to look at something, we need to as ourselves why we’re avoiding doing so. If we’re in a rush to explore everything, why is it a rush? Would allowing time and a gentle approach serve us better? There are some realities that we’re forced into dealing with, and meeting them with courage rather than denial does wonders for us and others. Denial, in its own way, is a shrine to the unknown.

Recognize that if you listen to your heart, your head, and your gut, you will gain insights into the when and the how of looking at issues. You will also have a better sense of when you are stuck and need to seek help in moving forward to the place where you become unstuck. For most people, the process of looking at it all and facing the reality of whatever loss it is seems to be the most difficult. We’re not animals who are designed to move on. We’re humans, and we function differently than out pets, who may remember and miss their pet housemates or human companions, but who will move on as the scent fades with time. We’re wired to remember, and we should!

Speak the person’s name! Speaking of memories and uttering their name is a good, healthy thing. Burying the person is one thing and keeping them alive in a healthy way is another area of work. Out of sight is not out of mind. Talking helps us all process the loss.

There will come a time when you will be able to remember and reframe the relationship that was lost in a better and clearer manner. Allowing for gentle time, courage, and uncertainty as to when it will all come together is key in moving on. Yes, I miss him in a different way now, and it is both sad and good at the same time.

Oct 9

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Fluffy Towels

Memories flooded my mind this past weekend. My mother, my brother, and my sister all came up for me, and then the towels, and Jon.

Oh, those towels! I think back to when we purchased them. We needed to replace towels, and I wanted fluffy, warm towels that would feel good after leaving the heat of the shower. We disagreed. After his runaway spending, he couldn’t justify fluffy towels in his mind. I relented, and we got towels that I didn’t like. There would be no argument that way, and keeping the peace was important for my sanity. 

I sit here now crying over towels and the wreckage of bipolar in my life, and in our marriage. Crazy what brings one to tears, and even crazier that of all the things that could bring tears to my eyes, it is towels, and the memories, that surface.

It’s the non-logic of bipolar that traps the partner into the crazy. You don’t see it coming, and when you’re in it, you can’t figure out how it is that you got to this place. Seven years without Jon has enabled me to autopsy the “how” it happened.

We were in his car driving home from my work. Driving south on 680 headed homeward, and to this day I can’t remember what I said that triggered the rage. Whatever it was, he went off, and to me, having never witnessed that type of anger, I didn’t get that it was the bipolar talking. What had I said? I was somehow guilty of something, and I had to respond with an answer that would pacify him. He had me right where the dysfunctional mind wanted me. I’d been sucked into something I didn’t understand. His demand for an answer didn’t make sense. In that state of mind, when he was in that place, nothing made sense. Somehow, to him, things made sense, and so he’d demand answers.

I was raised with love, and gentleness, and had not experienced this type of anger or seen it in a relationship. Here it was. I was faced with something I didn’t want, and didn’t understand. This brilliant guy was showing me a side of himself that didn’t make sense. It was borderline narcissism, and it was manipulative rage.

I was years away from understanding what I needed to do in this situation. My response was to attempt to comfort him. What I should have done was leave the rage and let him work it out for himself. I was trapped in a car, and I couldn’t leave easily. It would take his psychiatrist telling me to walk away, and that was over a decade away.

That session was the most helpful session we had with the psychiatrist. This was a man who really cared not only about Jon—he cared about me. He turned to Jon and asked him if my leaving during a rage would be helpful, and Jon, much to my surprise, said that it would be very helpful. For me, those words lifted a burden, and a layer of care. I was already suffering from compassion fatigue, and here was someone telling me to let go! 

This wasn’t the first time this man would tell me to let go. In November of 2011, he took the time to talk with me in length about fully letting go and trusting that Jon would do what Jon would do, and that I needed to let the process unfold. Whether he chose life or death, it wasn’t my call, and I couldn’t do one thing to make it right.

In December of 2011, we walked outside to a waiting taxi, and I was off on a fifteen-month adventure at a rehab center where I learned some skills that enabled me to do more for myself as a visually impaired person. This was also a time of contemplation around the issue of being able to let go, and to let Jon live or not live his life.

I didn’t go to the Loo Erf without a plan for him. I had people that were willing to help and, with that, I could leave Jon at home.

I understand why people leave their partners when there are mental health issues. For those of us who stay, it is both a choice and a hope that things can get better. For Jon, that hope came with a two-year Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT) program. It required him to change his psychiatrist and take on a psychologist. DBT teaches skills, and for Jon, it moved him closer to an understanding of how to escape the crazy of his behavior. This switch did not occur until I was done with my vision rehab in Apeldoorn. Slowly, the burden of caretaking was lifted. It was helpful.

What was most helpful was Jon realizing how the rages had hurt me. His promise that he would not rage again was something that he kept until the 28th of August, 2016. With a psychotic episode looming near, there was one last burst of rage before he ended it. This was not the rage that I’d experienced that first night; it was the rage of escape, and ending. It is a rage that hurt, and it will stay with me forever. His three-minute outburst would justify his doing what he did in the final moments of our living relationship. It took me to a level of anger I had not allowed myself to feel for him in the twenty-two years I’d known him. I needed to cool down.

I sit here wondering how to conclude this. I think about the three other deaths that have affected me post Jon doing what he did. My mother died after a long life of love and giving to us as young children and adults. My brother died, leaving his wife and adult children. His death caused me to ask why he wouldn’t care for himself better. Why? My sister’s life came to an end after a courageous battle with liver cancer.

Looking back on all of this, I shake my head in wonder, but not in disbelief. I’ve lived through it all: all seven years of it.

Yesterday I sat at the computer and realized that putting it off wouldn’t fix the towel issue. What did I want? Fluffy towels! I needed three sets.

Looking at the choices I had, and the price I’d need to pay to replace the old, worn towels, I thought about what I wanted. I’ll take a yellow set, a blue set, and a light pink set. In the cart, to the checkout, confirm the order with the bank, and the confirmation mail hit my mailbox.

Towels: and I’m crying again.

Jul 10

I Suppose

Before me is a blank document. What do I put on the page? This time of year used to be gentle; it has become hard. What were once simple lazy days with blue skies have become days of reflection and wondering. I tend to review, explore and wonder where I am now compared to the last year. I suppose that surviving a suicide of a husband will do that to you. I realize that his suicide freed him from a very painful life, and it presented me with a rare gift.

I am not shocked or upset by this thought. He gave me the ability to move forward myself. I was given the time and freedom to explore our relationship in ways I couldn’t do when he was alive. I was an innocent when we got together.

Before I met Jon, I didn’t understand that you could doubt or question someone’s love. Yes, I got that there was love that is dysfunctional: manipulation masking as love, and love that I had not seen. In my life, and in my mind, love was gentle. My relationship with Jon educated me in new ways. 

Relationships teach us the good, bad, and questionable things about ourselves. Living under the same roof brings with it challenges and a need for commitment to the process of growth. If there is one thing that enabled our relationship to last, it was a commitment to growth and exploring the hard things together.

Sometimes we couldn’t resolve an issue in a day, and that was OK. Being in hard places is good for growth and exploration. I learned to become more adept at remaining open to the long-term solution. There are things that only time and deep insight can resolve, and the commitment to do the work “until” is essential to making it work.

The best counsel I got from his psychiatrist was to give him space. OK, I needed to give myself space too. Walking away enabled us to resolve issues faster. I’m thankful for this knowledge, and the gift that it is.

There were times when I wondered if he could love me. The bipolar cut into him in ways that he couldn’t even express. His upbringing cut into his soul in other ways. My heart ached for the both of us at times. After his death, the love question surfaced, and I knew I’d have to face it.

There is a time in the grief process when it all gets put on the chopping block. It all has to go on the block. It is the deep work of grief and the exploration of the shadows that we hide from. If we’re willing to do the hard work of grief, we must extract the ugly, unpleasant stuff and dive in. This is where many stop their work. It is ugly and messy, and do “I” really want to face this truth? My innocence committed me to explore this place of shadows. Sometimes innocence is a great motivator.

Some couples do this hard exploration while they are together in life, and some widows or widowers are forced to do this difficult exploration after the death, and before moving into a new relationship. I had to cross into this place after, and I’m glad I did. My willingness to do the work didn’t make it any easier. I’ve always invested in self-improvement and growth.

What bipolar takes from relationships is debatable and unique to each person. It took my innocence. In saying that, I’ve had to admit that while I love Jon, he opened my eyes to a very dark side of the world. I would not have chosen to go into the dark abyss of a hell few can explain, and fewer still can understand, and yet I went, and I find that I don’t regret the journey to this place. It is a gift I wasn’t looking for, and I’m richer for having taken the time to open this gift.

The gift of knowing you are loved comes in many forms. In the first few years after his death, my reflections led me to explore the “he didn’t love me” side of things. Sitting with the doubt, the hurt of things done, and understanding who he was deep within, moved me to the place of love. I came to a realization that through all of it he tried his best, and so did I. There was love in the tiny things he tried to do. There was love in the sneaky things he pulled off; there was love in the gifts he thoughtfully gave, and in a mixed-up way, even in the way he ended his life. In that velvet way, I didn’t even notice the change I’d made in my thinking. Wow!

When I think about what it means to show love in deep ways, he did his best to do that. I accept what he wasn’t capable of doing. I can also view my side of things with more realism. I can take responsibility for the failures and the successes of my part of the relationship, and some of it hurts.

I suppose this journey is about being able to find the deep peace that I’ve needed to put things to rest. Coming to this knowing also brings up the fact that nothing is ever at an end point. Only the final eye closure can and will bring things to an end.

I find that I’m standing taller; I’m wiser, and at the same time I question more.

As I pass into this new place where the gifts are for opening and exploring, I turn, look back, and realize that the lazy summers of exploration have gifted me some cloud-filled summer days. I suppose that’s just fine.

Mar 20

Reflections on a Sunday

Yesterday my Sunday peace was shattered by the sound of sirens. I live one block or so away from the police station, which is very quiet, and safe. Needless to say, I’m located in a safe area of town. That wasn’t the situation yesterday, and first one siren shattered the silence of the peaceful Sunday afternoon. 

I noticed that the siren came closer, until I thought that it must be nearby, even on this street. I lowered the shade and looked out, seeing a police car with lights flashing parked on the other side of the street. Then more sirens, and within several minutes, two ambulances were parked there as well. Injury? Domestic violence? I don’t know the people in that house. It was only then, standing and looking at the police car and the two ambulances, that my brain took me back in time to 28 August of 2016. You never get over suicide; you get through it. I sat here at my computer and continued to work on the project I was doing and slowly began to let what was surfacing in my mind out. I had been a part of the disruption to a quiet Sunday that day. I know the police were here, and I know the mortician showed up, but I don’t know what other cars were here. When the nice police officer told me to go inside, I went, and I would not emerge from my home until after 10:00 that evening. I was on autopilot then, doing what I was told to do. 

I won’t ask what happened, because I don’t want to know what act of “whatever” shattered my day and sent me back in time. After all this time, stuff still emerges. The peace and forward movement seem to be an illusion that a look in the mirror can shatter in an instant, and yet, if we avoid the mirror, we avoid life. 

Lately, and as I continue to age, I’ve discovered that not all “old people” have wisdom. I’m taken back to the lyrics of Neil Diamond’s “I’ve Been This Way Before” and reminded that “Some people never see the light until the day they die.” Now I understand that many people will die clueless about themselves and their lives. When I first heard the words, I thought to myself, I don’t think that is a wise way to live a life. And so, I look in mirrors and I choose to stand rather than run from the images there.

Standing at the mirror is hard work, whereas running from the images will claim our lives in different ways. What? What’s this you say, that if I run from the mirror, doing so will alter my life?  Yes, when we face the mirror, we must look hard. What do we like? What aren’t we pleased with? Why? Then we need to explore the reasoning behind the expectations we hold for ourselves. We are faced with new insights such as “I’ll never get into those jeans again because I’ll never be sixteen again and my lifestyle has changed.” How about this one? “I’ll have an older-looking face because I’m older and have lived x number of years.” The recognition that the mirror brings to our lives is good. It calls us to reality. 

I know a hospice chaplain who shared with me one of life’s and death’s realities: “How we live may determine how we die. Anger doesn’t make for a peaceful death.” I had not really given it much thought until she said those words. I love my sister, and yet the last fifteen minutes of her life were the most violent she’d ever seen. It is true that she died from liver cancer, and that the cancer was destroying her body, and it is also true she was one angry person. I don’t know for certain that there was a connection there; what I do know is that I’ve known peaceful people to die peaceful deaths. The exceptions would be the violence we can’t control. 

Reflecting on all of this takes me back to Jon and his death. He spent a great deal of time with the mirror because he had to sort out the bipolar and the family—and, ultimately, his life. He told me that he’d researched the how so that if he made the decision to end his life, it would be a one-time action. 

There is a part of me that will always have wanted to send him off with love, and yet realistically that is something that could never be. I’d be doing jail time. 

We may get through a death; we can face the good and the bad realities of a relationship and choose to move forward. We never get over the reality of what happened. We don’t get over it because you don’t get over someone you loved deeply. 

If you get through it, what do you do to get beyond what has happened?  You look in mirrors. That means you commit to asking some really hard, and sometimes scary, questions. Getting through the bad stuff in life means that we have to commit to deep changes, such as not running from the reality the mirror is showing you. Yesterday, it meant that I lowered the shade, stood at the window, and allowed the peace to be broken and the memory to return. It can make us squirm because of what we must do. It also causes the peace to return when I realize that I can continue to do this hard thing well. 

Nov 19

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Through it

*Note: The four posts in this category are posted from the first–published to the most recent.

The last entry I made on this blog was one of hope and gladness as I had come back from an illness that left some side effects. I was looking forward to returning to work. But that didn’t happen and the blog went silent. Why?

In August of 2016 the man that I’ve been posting about in “Being in the Room” (Part 1 and Part 2) decided to leave the room. He completed suicide. I’ve taken a year off to sort out my feelings and begin the healing process.

My husband Jon and I had many long talks about his situation. We both cried and we both knew that this could happen; it finally did happen.

I will be doing a podcast on this subject, so I won’t go into all of the details here. I may talk about the specifics in future postings. However, today I want to talk about getting through it. I don’t mean getting over it, I mean THROUGH it.

Let yourself imagine a mountain. You have some options, and they each have an outcome that can be managed. Some are better than others, and so, in making the choice of how to approach this landmark, a considerable amount of thought is needed.

In the first hours and days of Jon ending his life, I had to make some radical choices. I think I made some really good ones considering the fact that I was grieving, stunned, and without family physically present. However, I did have some friends who came and gave much-needed support. They cooked, cleaned, advised, and tried their best to show up in a nasty situation.

In the first days and weeks, that mountain loomed large, and I knew that I had to decide how to navigate it. I could go over it, around it, or through it.

Each of these thoughts caused me to think of what would happen if I had made the journey in that manner. I’ve never liked the term “get over it,” as it seemed condescending, judgmental, and uninformed. I discarded OVER right from the start. In thinking about it further, I didn’t want to track OVER the mountain. I didn’t want to miss things that I would miss by going over it. It didn’t seem like the thorough way of facing this situation. While hiking a mountain can be beautiful, this wouldn’t be that type of journey.

Going AROUND the mountain implied denial, and that wasn’t an option. I thought about how this seemed to imply that I’d view the scenery, but not touch anything, and that wasn’t appealing to me. Going around the mountain would leave the mountain intact, or untouched, and that wasn’t what I wanted to do at all. As I mentioned, suicide is messy and requires some hard work to deal with the damage and ruin that it leaves in its wake. While I knew suicide could happen, I had hoped it never would come into being.

I thought about tunnels. I like the technology that creates them and the stories of their builders. I like everything about driving through them, if they are well-lit. I watched with great interest as the Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland was dug from inside the depths of the earth. My first visit to London was not taken on a plane, but through the Chunnel. Yup, I like tunnels and no, I haven’t gone through the Gotthard Tunnel yet.

So, in thinking about what I needed to do, the choice for me to tunnel THROUGH this mountain, and thinking of my journey in those terms, was a natural one.

As I chose to go through the mountain, I chose to be intelligent, wise, weak, vulnerable, and fearless. I realized that I could not control this situation. I could no more control it than control the crazy weather of the Netherlands. I do, however, have options even in tunneling through the mountain.

The First Option: Realism

For me, this has involved planning and visualizing, as well as allowing myself to feel the messiness of the entire situation. It also means that if I’m having a bad day, I allow myself to feel the bad day in all of its glory and pain.

When I say that I’ve planned this journey, it means that I allow myself to think through life scenarios and to imagine the outcomes. For example, the celebration of Christmas could have been really hard. But, thanks to friends, I was not alone, but rather surrounded in a house of love. Rather than letting the day simply come, I opted to take hold of the day. It wasn’t easy; it was better than waking up to not knowing what would be involved with living through the day. But, trying to maintain a certain amount of control is a good thing.

In visualizing and thinking ahead to the obstacles that come my way, I create positive scenarios. I remember the first “everything” that I’ve celebrated without Jon as being mostly happy. Yes, of course I wish he were here at times, but the reality of it is that he isn’t suffering, and for that I’m so thankful.

I’ve cried, or should I say, sobbed. I’ve questioned and wondered if I did a good enough job of supporting him. And after the crying is over the answer is a resounding yes!

I would not wish this on anyone. Going through hell is not fun, and in the past year I have faced hell more than once. The thing I’ve learned about this particular hell (and there are many such places) is that there is respect required in that place of darkness.

The Second Option: Receiving and Acceptance

My great-aunt was wonderful at giving to others, but she wasn’t very good at graciously receiving another person’s kindness. From a young age I became aware that not only did I need to be a great “giver,” but I also needed to learn to accept kindness with graciousness. This week, I had this lesson driven home to me when a friend came by to see how I was, as I’d failed to respond to her emails. During our conversation she said, “Oh, crap,” in hopes that I wouldn’t hear it. (I’m not that deaf!) Then, when I reacted to that remark, it clicked, and she, in an imaginary shaking of Gail, said, “I want to help!” She was hurt and angry, with good reason. I realized that I wasn’t receiving the service she was offering. I had been sick for two weeks with some kind of illness that had been going around, and I’d become hard to reach. We talked about it, and I admitted that having her come by was a good thing. It raised my spirit. It also forced me to realize that I need to assert my needs and let others determine whether or not it is possible to help out. Asserting one’s needs also means allowing others to think about what they are able to do for you.

I realize in talking about being a recipient of kindness that this isn’t always the case. People get confused and they don’t know what to say or do. They overreact or underreact. Sometimes, the best they can do for you is to do what they think they’d want done in your situation. They are only human. This isn’t easy to deal with, and I will admit that one of the lessons I’m still learning as I travel through the mountain is that I need to accept not only the kindness, but also the fact that the kindness might not always be there when you need it. It hurts deeply, but when I last checked, there were, and are, no perfect human beings on this planet! We are all doing our best, or so we like to think. However, sometimes our best isn’t good enough. When you are the recipient, accepting what is offered is an art that most of us need to learn to be better at. So, there are failures in this process: the hard thing is letting the failures stand on their own merit.

The Third Option: Patience

It is going to take time. It isn’t going to happen speedily.

Nobody wants to remain in grief and pain forever, and yet in order to get through the grief, it is essential to remain there until you can move forward. Forward movement is done in steps. If you try to force this forward movement, it actually sets you back. Facing the good days along with the bad, or not-so-bad but not-so-great days, is moving forward. This is not a science but rather a journey. Crossing the milestones, understanding that there will be many such milestones, and allowing them to come naturally is part of the process.

Being kind and gentle with yourself is also needed. Show yourself mercy. Come to understand that you are enough and that simply getting through the death of a loved one is enough. This has been my process. It would be accurate to say that this has been a roller-coaster ride and that I’ve been flipped, raised up, sent flying down, and jerked around. I’ve taken a couple of “Gs” and I suspect that I’ll be hit again. Smoother riding will come. (Is life ever completely smooth?) So, be merciful to your soul and it will pay off.

There is so much to be said about dealing with someone’s suicide. I have time to say it in multiple posts. But, the last thing I will say is that I’m at peace with my Jon and his death. I spent 22 years of my life loving and supporting Jon. I got to know his pain and the fact that each day he struggled to find shelter from the depression and pain that he lived with for 30+ years. There are times when loving someone means that you come to a realization that loving them entails letting go completely. Jon walked a pathway of life for years that held struggle and sorrow. Jon did not end his life impulsively, but rather with thought and an understanding that he had done all he could to heal. In his notes, he grieved that this would cause me pain. But, he also expressed his love for me. I respect that and honor his death. And in that, I have peace.