From Grief to Grit

 A story about messy love, crushing heartbreak, and beginning the journey of stepping away from despair

-          LKBeshears

  Chapter 1

What Has Happened Here?

My husband died.

 There I’ve said it, and this time I didn’t cry.  I didn’t cry but my heart thudded in my chest and caused me to catch my breath and my stomach pitched.  Wake up, wake up, wake up.  But, unfortunately, I am awake.

 My husband was the finest person I’ve ever known.  He was kind and gentle, wise and witty, calm and steadfast.  He was also messy, often frustrating and on occasion could be downright difficult.  In short, he was a real live human being with a past.   His emotional baggage was thrown together haphazardly in a padlocked steamer trunk.  And, he had lost the key.

 For years, we dragged heavy stuff around with us through life, it belonged to each of us individually, but it took a toll on us collectively.  We threw our stuff in a closet and thought it would magically go away.  It didn’t.  It called to us.  It was always singing under the thrumming hum of everyday life.  It developed a pulse and eventually it would no longer be ignored.  It demanded to be looked at, to be heard, to be felt, and it dared us to even try to vanquish it.

 Mine was easy to kill.  Because I am an over-sharer by nature.  Once I had just looked at it hard and decided it would no longer define me, it crumpled and disappeared.

 But, my husband’s was harder.  He didn’t easily share his pain and he kept the things that ate away at him held closely inside.  His lack of openness came from several places.  His inability to speak a truth that he knew would hurt someone he loved was motivation for staying closed.  But his lack of trust with his heart was an even bigger one.  And, he wanted to trust.  He trusted his children but he couldn’t share everything because of the pain it would bring to them and to himself for telling.  And women?  There wasn’t trust there at all….because his deep pain, the one that had barbs embedded in his heart came from the “gentler sex.”

 He was a man’s man.  He wasn’t afraid of hard work, he was “handy”, he listened with compassion and his advice was always delivered kindly even though it was often hard to hear.  He might not condone a behavior or action but he also never judged.  He delivered advice the way his dad had taught him….from a place of love and understanding of the frailty of people.   He wasn’t a “weepy” guy, but he could be moved to tears by the smallest gestures.  He was a rock, he was an anchor, he was a stand-up guy.  And, because of this, he was used.  We all poured our pain and problems into him like a bottomless well and he took it.  He took it because he felt that was his job.

 I wonder now, how much all of that must have rubbed against those raw and painful parts of him that went unattended.  And I regret my part in that.  His lack of complaint about things just being “too much sometimes” led us all to believe he was just like that watch that took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’.

 My husband and I shared a big love, but it was a quiet love.  That was hard for me because I am an “out loud” person.  A fitting metaphor for our life was a couple on a dance floor.  A guy who didn’t dance standing stock still maybe swaying a little to the music while the woman spun and jiggled in a frenzied state of artificial joy.

 Being different made us complete.  I teased the laughter from him, and he laid a safety blanket on my erratic behavior.  We argued and we slammed cabinet doors and more than once one of us would just drive away in anger.  We learned to quit throwing gas on the fire.  Because of our situation in life, we were often in different places physically and emotionally.  But, we learned that for each other we had to be the North Star guiding us back home.

 Few people saw the really great marriage we had.  Sometimes a few would see the funny parts, others would see the angry parts, some would hear or see the messiness.  But, not many saw the whole...the subtle dance of living together, working through things together from two very different perspectives.  And no one saw the moments when that good old Church of Christ boy would grab his Baptist raised wife in the kitchen and spin her around and draw her close for tender kisses.  The didn’t see the times, his hand would seek out mine and he would bring it to his lips.  And rarely, did they see or hear the side-splitting laughter she could coax from him over the most stupid things.

 And I’m glad.  While it might have made people understand us better, I like knowing those moments were just for us and the little furry things that shared our days and nights.  Those are the moments I hold so tightly, and they make me happy, and they make me laugh, and they make me cry tears because I can still feel those moments.

 I am learning that, for me,  grief has its roots in regret, not in good.  It is those angry moments, the frustrations and resentments, the harsh words, the misunderstandings and the moments when you wish you were anywhere but where you are that you regret.   The more dysfunctional and difficult a relationship is the harder the grief process can be.  That is the ugly bush of Grief some of us grow in our garden.  No matter how much you try to kill it, it will come back, bigger and stronger and more dangerous.  It holds a poison that is addictive, because regret is something you can never completely get over.  It is like a scab that you have to pick at over and over because it hurts…but the pain in disturbing it also feels good.

 So, in my opinion it is important to learn as much as you can about where your grief grows from and, in learning, figure out how you can make it work in your life without destroying you.  And, this is hard.  Because grief is different for everyone.  It is inherently personal and there is no wrong or right way to do it.  And, this is very important…there’s no timeline on it either.  Because of the things I mentioned…the things that no one knew but you…each one will take its own day of reckoning.  And some of them will fight hard against you because the guilt and regret is so deep you have to dig and dig to find its source.

 The process of grieving is unique.  Few people walk that road the same way.   Some people can’t stop crying while others can’t start.  Some people overcompensate and try to make their process more comfortable for others.  There are people who enjoy being distracted by crowds of people while there will be those souls that seek solitude and the comfort being  lost in themselves can bring.  Some people will talk about it endlessly and some will write about it because to talk out loud is intensely painful and watching people’s eyes glaze over because they are “over it” hurts.

 I grieve for the loss of my husband.  Not just for me, but for everyone who knew him.  His footprint here on earth was big and his value was more than he knew.  But mostly, I grieve for the moments of anger and hurt feelings…the things I could have and should have done differently.  I grieve for sometimes not being the kind of wife I should have been and I grieve that I can never make that up to him.

  

Chapter Two

 How Did We Get Here?

 

It’s time I named my husband.  Roger and I married with six children between us.  His four, my two.  Quite the blended family.  Two of the kids had graduated from high school and were starting life, two were juniors in high school and the youngest two were in high school and junior high.    So, it isn’t like we threw together a bunch of toddlers, we were dealing with people who were well on their way to being grown-ups.  And none of them were weak or easily led individuals.  They all had big personalities, strong opinions and there wasn’t a cupcake in the box.  More importantly, they were and are good people.  But, they were and are also people dealing with their own issues and perceptions of how life should be.  And, more importantly, they were all dealing with their own pain from life experiences that were totally out of their control.

 Financially life was a bit tough.  There were times we came home on a Friday to no water or no electricity.  It was a scramble, all the time.  Luckily we both worked and liked to work and so we trudged on.  But there was always a “thing”…someone would need something and the dance of deciding whose issue deserved the most consideration was delicate.  And, not always fair.  Especially in the minds of kids.  They keep score you know and in a family that had been thrown into a helicopter blade to be blended that was fraught with minefields.  His kids get to do this or her kids have this.  You like them best.  And, I wasn’t equipped for this or very good at it.

 We had some very good times and for a while things were enjoyable and happy for the most part, but the older everyone got and the more other people came into the mix it became messy.  And, life was happening to all of us.  It was coming at us hard and fast and sometimes it was hurtful and sad.

 And eventually, we came unraveled.

 This hurt Roger to his very core.  He did what he always did and assumed ownership of the blame.  It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t mine, it wasn’t theirs….it belonged to all of us.  But, no one suffered over it the way my husband did.  This is on my greatest hits list of regret…and guilt.

 But, something happened during that time.  My husband and I spent a lot of time together, alone.  Weekends usually found us sitting on the patio, listening to the neighbor’s dog bark and talking.  He probably had more on his mind than I realized but he started to share things from his past, very tentatively.  I listened.  And sometimes, I asked questions which led to more revelations into what made my husband who he was.  He shared deep hurts, searing betrayals, fears of abandonment and his knowledge (in his mind) of his inadequacies as a man, a father and a husband.  I have never known someone who could wrongly beat themselves up to such a degree.  It became clear that every hurtful thing or harsh word penetrated to that fertile soil of deep regret and was strangling him from within.  It was hard to see and hard to hear but he was learning to trust again.  And, he was trusting me.

 His trust in me did a lot to overcome my own inadequacies and I tried to rise to the challenge of being a person he needed…a person he deserved.  We were finally making ourselves and each other whole.

 After living years in a knee jerk reactionary frame of mind, we began to plan.  A future.  Not an exciting one, but a future together with the hope we could re-knit the fabric of our family and spend what was left of our days as a testament to what we deeply believed in.  That, together we could do anything and with God, all things are possible.

 Suddenly, we weren’t angry anymore, we weren’t afraid and we weren’t regretful.  We were focused on doing and being better.  And we found a tenderness between us we had both always wanted but been so afraid of finding.  We both learned things that made us not like some people very much but because we had each other, we found the grace to forgive them and move on.  There was a sense of peace settling on us.  And it was at this time my husband began to express how much he loved me and depended on me and trusted me.  He was no longer afraid to show his most tender feelings and I fell so much more deeply in love with him, there was no way out.

 The thief in the night comes to rob us of our joy.  And he slipped into our life and tore at our hearts in the only way he could.  He came for my husband.  My wonderful, magnificent husband that I had only just come to know.  He came sneaking in, lurking in corners, snickering about what he knew that we didn’t…and he came fast.

 One day my husband was working and he had a small injury to his shoulder.  It was painful but he was told it was nothing, but it persisted.  It wouldn’t go away and we kept looking for answers and got the same “it will be fine, rest it.”  Then, Roger was unable to work, he was in too much pain and within mere days, he couldn’t walk.

 It was at this point we decided to find someone else who could give us answers.  We got them.  They weren’t great, but at the beginning we felt somewhat hopeful.  Cancer is a BIG word, but there have been advances made and we thought we had some time.  We didn’t.  After hospitalization, a surgery, multiple scans, MRIs, X-rays, blood draws, and a chemo treatment, we learned we had days.

 DAYS

 Not years, or even months, we had days.

 My precious husband looked at me and said, “I want to go home, I have things I need to do and I can’t do them here.”

 And so, we came down the mountain together in an ambulance to the home we built together to end our life together.

 

  Chapter Three

 Where Do We Go From Here?

  

When someone says “you have days to fix this” your life kicks into high gear.  The things that once seemed so important just fall away.  You become focused on what will bring you to a place of resignation to what is ahead of you.

 Roger was a fixer.  Got a flat, he would fix it for you.  Got a problem, he would hear you and give you his advice.  And now, he wanted to “fix” a family.  I realized that unless he could feel like he had accomplished this one thing he would not be able to find peace in the few days he had left.

 To those of us who were able to be here during those days, he took time to speak to each of us about what he expected to happen.  He also expressed his need for all of us to recognize, own and fix our parts of the broken whole.  He asked it of us and because he had never asked for anything for himself, he deserved to ask and he deserved to expect it.

 There is nothing like the knowledge that the one person you knew you could count on no matter what was leaving you forever to change your direction.  Nothing else matters, nothing else is important.  It is a testament to love, Roger’s love, that we were able to give him what he asked.

 The past fell away and hopefully resentments and hurt feelings went with it.  I know for me, nothing mattered more than giving my husband his heart’s desire.  I was single mindedly selfish with myself. I lived every second for what he wanted, what he needed.  Literally nothing else mattered to me but him.  Did I step on toes?  Probably.  Do I care, not really.   Because the one thing I did right was I didn’t hurt my husband.   I wish my husband could have felt he could have asked things for himself  earlier.  But God moves in an interesting timeline.  God had knowledge we didn’t.  He knew the hour and the day and in the end, He made all things perfect for my husband.

 We will all continue to make mistakes.  There will still be misunderstandings, missed communications, poorly handled situations and hard feelings.   Those are inevitable because it’s  part of the human condition.  Roger was the only person I have ever known who could navigate this without making everything personal.  But those blips should not be terminal and it should never become so large and so hairy it can’t be overcome.  It cannot be selfish.  We must learn to never forget October 23, 2024 and the promises we made to the person we all loved.  And we must revisit those pledges and renew them.  We weren’t just promising Roger, we were promising God.  Because I have no doubt that God gave Roger the boldness to ask and wisdom to know how to ask it and the peace to know that it would happen.  Roger’s request to his family was his final blessing to us all because he knew we would need to have one another.  We are all in one form or another, pieces of him that remain here.  We hold his love for us individually but we cannot honor that love without loving each other, the way he loved us all….completely, wholly.  For my part, I cannot move forward not loving these people my husband and I shared.

 So where do we go from here?  We grieve.  Differently, but all painfully.

 I think that if we were all honest about it we could agree that it isn’t the happy times that bring pain with tears.  Happiness might make us cry but it is probably because it has been coated with a layer of deep regret and guilt that we didn’t truly honor the time we had.  And so when we are aching for Roger’s loss, we find guilt and regret poking at us, saying “don’t you wish you would have done that differently?”

 Yes, yes we do.  But, we are still here and we still can.  We should.  But that takes leaving the ME in all of us in the ditch….that’s hard for me.  I try daily, I fail daily but I wake up each day wanting to do it right.  Sometimes I can….other times, it’s a bust.

 Hopefully, with time and our own resources and ability to grieve perhaps we can bury guilt and regret and just honor our grief.  Where there is great grief, there is also great love, great loss and great heartache.

 But, I hope we can all know that there is also great beauty in grief.  It is white hot and refining to us as humans.  Grief can burn out jealousy, rage, mistrust, anger, and harshness.  It leaves a deep aching heartbreak that teaches us we can still feel, still love and still honor and move forward.

 When Roger and I knew we weren’t going to have the future we had started to plan we knew that we would face it together, bravely.

 I told my husband this, “we have not always shown our family how to live a great life, but hopefully, together, we can show them how to end one with dignity and great love.”

 I hope we did that.

 Now, to those who have endured these pages and are struggling with grief:

 Your grief is yours, feel it, express it however you want.  Don’t allow anyone to say you aren’t doing it right.  Try to redirect yourself from guilt and regret and grieve the loss if you can.

 Grieving is a hard gritty process and it takes grit to get through it.

Your grief doesn’t have a clock or a calendar…let it play out as it chooses.

Your grief can actually sit quietly for a while and come raging back…let it sit, but also let it come.

Your grief may wear a different face every day…you will instinctively know it.

Your grief will be uncomfortable for people…that’s on them.

Your grief may motivate you….it may also stop you.  Try to understand why it’s the way it is.

Your grief doesn’t have to be your friend but it doesn’t have to be your enemy either.  It’s you.

Your grief will give you a better understanding of those who also grieve.  Or it won’t, some people can only see their own.  Work on that.

Your grief is like an hourglass and the sand will run in both directions eternally.  If you feel stuck and unable to go on, seek help.

 And pray….and trust the Father.

 Without the knowledge that my husband was lying safely in God’s hands at the end and he was ready for what was next is eternally my joy.  And I want to know that too.   I want to be where my husband is and where God is.  So, if you have lost your faith, I hope you can try to remember God hasn’t lost you, He still knows you, loves you, values you and wants you. 

 And HE knows.

 My journey is not over….I don't think it will ever be and perhaps this document will require more chapters than a reader cares to wade through.  I know I’m changing and I see change in others as well.  There is both good and bad here on this road and it is easy to settle into the pothole with our name on it and stroke those still prickly places that make us itch with discontent.  I’ve rested in a few, but I am finding them uncomfortable and I am avoiding them if I can.

 Where Do We Go From Here?   Wow, I wish I knew.  One thing I do know is that the road ahead likely has a lot of detours and missed turns.  But, whatever that road holds for you,  I hope you go with God and with great grace and mercy.  And know that even though I might not know you personally, I pray for all those who struggle with grief and loss and my grieving heart grieves with you.  I see you, I hear you and I feel you.  May we all know a lesser grief and a greater grit as we journey together.

-END (for now)-