National Brave Day – How My Story May Empower You

September 28, 2018September 1, 2019 Our Class Cee Life #brave, #distraction, #griefrecovery, #healing, #lifeafterloss, #NationalBraveDay, grief, loss

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“If you want to be in a relationship with me, you had better get used to attending funerals,” I warned him. This was one of the first things that I told my husband John when we first met. I’m pretty sure that he thought I was either joking or crazy. He probably thought that I was both. Sadly, he soon realized that I was right.

I was 19 when we first met. Actually, I was 18, but our first date lasted so long that I turned 19! We went out on the day before my birthday and ended up sitting at a 24 hour Country Kitchen restaurant well past midnight, talking over a bottomless cup of coffee. I told him about losing my father when I was 7, and how, two years later, I lost the only grandparent who I had ever known.

My family. Front row, my grandmother, me, my mom. Back row, my brother, my father.

As soon as I could drive, I was the chauffeur for funerals, taking my mother and her friends and relatives all around the state of Wisconsin. I knew the drill. Drop everyone off my at the front entrance of the church or funeral home, park the car, walk in give my condolences to the grieving family, pay my respects to the deceased in the coffin, and then sit down. After the ceremony there was almost always food and chatter. Finally, I would get the car and drive back to the entrance to get my mother and any other passengers. Then I drove us all home.

So, I warned John. “Have a relationship with me and you will get to attend a lot of funerals.” A little more than two years later, he realized that this could possibly be true when my uncle died unexpectedly about six months after we were married. It was John’s first funeral and he was nervous. In addition to never having attended a funeral for someone he knew well, he had been asked to be a pall bearer. He was both honored and scared to death at the same time! This was his first funeral and he would be playing such an important role!

Then, in March 2015 our world began to spiral out of control. For two and a half years we dealt with trauma after trauma. And we got through it together. I held him up, and he held me up. In March 2015 my mother’s Alzheimer’s Disease began to worsen. She fell and ended up being placed in a rehab center to build her strength back in order to be able to return to her assisted living facility. We cancelled our trip to the Grand Canyon so that I could spend time with my mother, making sure she took her meds and ate; something she would only do if I was with her. Throughout the summer of 2015, she ended up in the Emergency Room 17 times, mostly from falls that had occurred in her assisted living apartment. At this point in her disease, she didn’t know who I was, which actually worked out well for me because my mother and I didn’t have the greatest relationship. When I would spend time with her alone, she often verbally attacked me for what she felt were my poor life choices. She told me that I should never have done things like get married young, have a child, have another child, or move hours away from “civilization,” to live in nature which is what made John and me happy. With her more advanced stage of Alzheimer’s Disease, she was aware that I was someone she knew and trusted, but I changed from being her sister, her cousin , or

sometimes her college roommate. Often, I would be multiple different people within a 20 minute period. During her last hospitalization, she spoke little, but one afternoon while I was explaining to her that she was in the hospital she turned towards me, looked me directly in the eyes clearly knowing exactly who I was and yelled, “Just let me die!” It was the clearest and strongest voice that she had spoken with in months. I could see by the look in her eyes that she had struggled to break through the disease that was stealing her mind. This message was truly coming from her! It took my breath away for a few seconds, but I looked her in the eye softly and replied, “Ok. I will.” And as her medial power of attorney, I did.

She died in hospice about ten days later on August 21, 2015.

Then, my aunt died suddenly after a very brief illness. She died on October 21, 2015,

My aunt. My mother’s sister, died exactly two months after my mother on October 21, 2015

exactly two months after her younger sister, my mother. I went to the funeral, with John holding me up emotionally as well as physically. I sat and cried in the church pew, Why was this happening to us?

Seven months later, it was my turn to hold John up when his father died, also suddenly. John and his sisters were scheduled to meet with hospice early Monday morning to plan my father-in-law’s care and the next steps. But during the night before the meeting, he died quietly in his sleep at the nursing home. John later said to me, “Now we are both orphans. I didn’t realize that it would hurt THIS much.”

My father-in-law. He died on May 18, 2016

His dad had lived on his own in an apartment for several years after his wife had died. He had turned the second bedroom into a little woodworking shop where he would sit and create trinkets to give to his family. When we cleaned out the apartment after he died, I found John sitting in his workshop chair, crying. His shoulders rocked and he swayed as he choked out his feelings, “A few weeks ago my dad was sitting here, working on this project and he had no clue. He had no clue that he would never come back.”

That summer, we decided to take a big trip out West to heal our souls. We packed up our travel trailer and drove to see the Corn Palace, the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Custer State Park, Devil’s Tower, and Yellowstone. John’s right leg was bothering him, so we didn’t do as much hiking as we would have liked, but we quickly fell in love with the National Parks and decided that we would go on another tour the next summer.

A few months after returning home, John’s uncle died. On Oct. 4, 2016 we drove several hours to

attend his funeral and see family that we don’t often get the chance to visit with. We talked about getting together again soon. John was now beginning to see the doctor for the pain in his leg, but they weren’t really sure what was wrong. Tylenol seemed to work, but the pain was starting to become stronger and more steady. ‘

Over the winter, John started going to physical therapy, and in March 2017 he needed a cane to walk. They still did not know what was wrong.

Meanwhile, my cousin, who also happened to be my godmother, was losing her battle with cancer. I went to visit her a week before she died. John held me up as we went to the funeral and I felt overcome with what seemed like trauma after trauma for our family. John had his cane and was in a lot of pain, but he handled the five hour drive to Chicago for the funeral. And then handled the long drive home as well.

My cousin, Sharon, also my godmother, died from cancer in March 2017.

Finally, the pain John was experiencing got so bad that I took him to an urgent care center several hours from home. He had been to every clinic and hospital near our home and no one would help him. Opioid epidemic, they said. Apparently, we couldn’t be trusted, and they would do nothing to determine what was wrong with him or to help him with the pain that was now preventing him from sleeping for more than 20 minutes at a time. We were told to wait for the surgical consult appointment that was still several weeks away.

The next day, I took him to another urgent care center, hoping that they could give us a surgical consult more quickly and help John on the road to healing. Instead, a simple x-ray provided us with a diagnosis of cancer. He was put into the hospital while they tried to figure out exactly which type of cancer he had. It took ten days, and during those days, another cousin lost her life partner to lung cancer.

My cousin’s long-time boyfriend. He died from lung cancer in April 2017.

I couldn’t go to the funeral and I felt awful not being there for her when I had promised that I would be. She had called me and we talked while his health had been deteriorating and he was ultimately put on hospice. She stayed by his side through it all.

John’s hospital admission started an ordeal where he was in various hospitals for 83 days until his sudden death on Oct. 5, 2017.

Shortly after he died I realized that I needed to find a way to escape. I needed a good distraction to help me live through the unbelievable fog of grief. I decided to make Big Plans to travel to many of the places we had wanted to go to together.

So I planned the 83 day trip of travelling over 10,000 miles in my 32 foot motorhome with my two younger daughters. My intent was that each day of the trip would essentially take back a day FOR my husband, it would take back each one of the horrible 83 days where he was trapped in a hospital bed, wanting to be out in nature, travelling and visiting National Parks.

I recorded the entire trip on my Facebook and Instagram feeds, posting pictures of our destinations and the people I had the honor of meeting. The trip went essentially without a hitch, and also with a lot of evidence that John was still with us.

Recently, I sat in John’s woodturning workshop. His pen kits and wooden blanks still sat in the spot that he had placed them for the last time. I realized that just like his father, he had no idea on that day that he would never return.

A lot of people said I was brave to take the trip. Really, I was brave in that I was determined to find the distraction. After that, it was a mission of love. A mission of love for the one person I never wanted to be the name on the funeral program.